By Takao Ohashi
Sports in Japan often are organized as a pyramid structure of European style. Soccer is a typical example, with a professional league at the top and amateur leagues and local organizations under its umbrella. However, baseball is not really a pyramid structure, although a unified organization has been formed for the Olympic games.
Historically, when baseball was introduced to Japan in 1878, it was played in high schools and universities. Amateur baseball became a popular sport in Japan. As a result of its popularity, 10 national tournaments were held each year. Games were played on weekdays, and students moved between schools like today’s professional players. Many also stayed in school another year to continue playing baseball, paying no attention to their studies. In 1932, the then Ministry of Education became concerned about this situation and enacted the Baseball Control Ordinance, and the government got control over student baseball. Student baseball remained under government control for about 15 years until 1947, when the Japan Student Baseball Association (of which the author is currently a board member) was established to oversee high school and university baseball. Student baseball in Japan is popular in the spring and summer with National High School Baseball Tournaments (called “Spring Koshien” and “Summer Koshien” because they are held at the Koshien Stadium), and the Tokyo Big 6 Baseball (the famous university league).
In addition to student baseball, companies began to own their own non-professional baseball teams and hold national tournaments around 1916. In Japan, the annual “Inter-City Baseball Tournament,” a national tournament, is still popular today.
Professional baseball in Japan was launched later than amateur baseball, with Japan’s first professional baseball team being established in 1934 and the professional league starting in 1936.
A Rift Develops between Amateur and Professional Baseball
Thus, baseball in Japan has developed through the establishment of separate organizations for student, non-professional, and professional baseball. Such three organizations concluded agreements on various issues, such as player poaching, and operated in such a way as not to infringe on each other’s territory. However, in 1961, a professional baseball team poached a player from a non-professional baseball team while the agreement had expired, and also negotiated with a high school student player to join the team without going through the necessary procedures. This incident prompted the non-professional baseball organization to declare that it would sever all ties with the professional baseball, and the student baseball organization concurred with it, prohibiting student players from being coached by anyone related to professional baseball (including retired players) under the Japan Student Baseball Charter. This marked the end of the relationship between professional and amateur baseball in Japan. It took more than 30 years until professional baseball resumed its relationship with the non-professional organization and the student baseball organization.
Against this backdrop of Japan’s baseball history, many Japanese players from the Nippon[1] Professional Baseball (NPB) began to join the MLB in 1995 when Hideo Nomo joined the Los Angeles Dodgers. The freedom of players to move to and from the MLB began to attract attention at that time in Japan.
In the NPB, it was operated based on a draft system and a reserve system, etc., similar to the MLB system. Although the Japan Professional Baseball Players’ Association (JPBPA) became a labor union in 1985, it was unable to bargain collectively with the NPB and was unable to conclude a collective bargaining agreement. Thus, the draft system, reserve system, etc. were operated based on the rules set by the NPB and each team. The Fair Trade Commission (FTC), the enforcer of Japan’s Antimonopoly Law, considered professional baseball players as employees, and was of the opinion that the Anti-monopoly Act did not apply to the relationship between the NPB (including each team) and a player. The free agent (FA) system was introduced in the NPB in 1993. In other words, there was no FA system until 1993 in Japan.
However, when the FA system was introduced at first, it required 9 years in principle to become eligible for FA status, and a team that acquired a FA player under the FA system had to compensate the team from which the FA player was transferred with a player or financial compensation. The FA system was modified in 2008. But a domestic free agent (Domestic FA) was given 7 years (8 years for high school graduates) and an overseas free agent (Overseas FA) was given 9 years. The compensation system was also relaxed, but not abolished. Due to this restrictive FA system, by the time a player obtained the Overseas FA, he would be in his 30s and well past his prime.
The aforementioned Hideo Nomo did not have an Overseas FA, and his agent found a loophole in the NPB rules to make the overseas transfer to take place. Also in 1996, Hideki Irabu didn’t have an Overseas FA. However, his strong desire to move to the New York Yankees led the San Diego Padres to trade him to the Yankees.
Because of these irregular transfers, the MLB and the NPB concluded an “AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE OFFICE OF THE COMMISSIONER OF BASEBALL AND THE OFFICE OF THE COMMSSIONER OF NIPPON PROFESSIONAL BASEBALL” in 1998. In Japan, this is known as the “Posting System.” The Posting System did not allow a player to transfer to MLB of his own will but required a decision by his team. For this reason, the team did not, in many cases, respond to a player’s request for an early MLB transfer, and the player was allowed to use the Posting System in the year before he obtained the Overseas FA. The Posting System was also initially based on a bidding system, where only the team that offered the highest bid money could negotiate to acquire the player. There was no upper limit to the amount of bid money, and the news that the Boston Red Sox bid $50 million for Daisuke Matsuzaka in 2006 made headlines. The JPBPA criticized the Posting System as a human trafficking deal that ignored the will of players, but the JPBPA accepted it as an unavoidable measure for players who wanted to move overseas as soon as possible. The Posting System has since been improved, with a maximum bid of $20 million and the ability to negotiate with the teams that bid for the player, making it easier for the player’s will to be reflected. However, it has been pointed out that a new negative effect of the Posting System is that a team would refrain the use of the system when his team do not expect to receive a high bid money.
As the door to overseas transfer gradually opened and many Japanese players became active in the MLB, some amateur players tried to join the MLB directly without going through the NPB. In 2008, Junichi Tazawa, a member of a non-professional baseball team, was the centerpiece of 2008 year’s NPB draft, but he refused to join an NPB team and announced that he would try out for the MLB, which deterred NPB teams from selecting him in the draft. As a result, Tazawa signed a major league contract with the Boston Red Sox that year. This incident triggered the NPB’s concern about the outflow overseas of talented amateur players, and the NPB made a new rule that a player who rejected the NPB draft and signed with an overseas team could not sign with an NPB team for two years (three years for high school graduates) after leaving the overseas team. This is the so-called “Tazawa Rule.” It was not until 2020 that the JPBPA pointed out that the “Tazawa Rule” was suspected of violating the Anti-Monopoly Act. In 2020, the FTC also announced that the Tazawa Rule was suspected of violating the Anti-Monopoly Act, but the NPB had abolished the Tazawa Rule prior to the FTC’s announcement.
Enter Shohei Otani
Shohei Otani entered Hanamaki-Higashi High School, a strong high school baseball team, in 2010. He had great admiration for Yusei Kikuchi (now with the Toronto Blue Jays). After playing in the Koshien Tournament for three years in high school, Otani became the centerpiece player in the 2012 NPB Draft. However, Otani expressed his desire to try out for the MLB after graduating from high school and was in contact with MLB teams before the NPB draft took place. In that year’s NPB draft, the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters (Fighters) selected Otani with the first pick. However, Otani had every intention of competing in the MLB. The Fighters, while respecting Otani’s will to compete in the MLB, tried to persuade him by presenting a lot of data and information, including the advantages of playing in the NPB and the team’s development plan for a two-way player. Hideki Kuriyama, then manager of the Fighters and manager of the Japan national team for the WBC in 2023, was also present at the meeting. As a result of the Fighters’ efforts to persuade him, Otani finally chose to play in the NPB. After six years in Japan, Ohtani joined the Los Angeles Angels in 2017 through the Posting System. In the MLB, starting in the 2022 season, the so-called “Ohtani Rule” was implemented to allow Ohtani to play as a two-way player: a starting pitcher can also serve as the DH and can continue to play as the DH after the pitcher has been taken off the mound. Even if the DH is substituted for a batter, he can continue to pitch. The NPB also introduced the “Otani Rule” in 2023.
Takeaway
This overview of the history of baseball in Japan and Shohei Ohtani’s move to the MLB has highlighted that there are still some areas that need improvement regarding the player transfer system in professional baseball. As a board member of the Japan Student Baseball Association, I am well aware that the relationship between professionals and amateurs in Japan is inflexible, while the relationship has thawed a bit. As a person involved in the baseball world, especially as a lawyer, I realize that the relationship between each organization should be reconciled and the baseball system must be modified so that talented young men like Shohei Otani can play baseball in an environment that meets their wishes.
[1] Nippon means Japan.
