All-Senria Baseball League
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Current season, competition or edition: 2023 All-Senria Baseball League season | |
 | |
| Sport | Baseball |
|---|---|
| Founded | June 18, 1936 |
| Commissioner | Souhei Kosoegawa |
| No. of teams | 24 |
| Countries |  Senria |
| Headquarters | tbd street Keisi, Senria |
| Most recent champion(s) | Kasaoka Sea Lions (1st title) (2022) |
| Most titles | Keisi Dragons (20 titles) |
| TV partner(s) | Senria Broadcast SHK STBS TV Senzou Zensenryuu TV Mercury Sport Live streaming M+ International Live streaming tbd |
| Domestic cup(s) | All-Senria Championship Series |
| Related competitions | Senrian Minor League Baseball System (First Division, Second Division, Third Division, Fourth Division) Senrian Women's Baseball League |
| Official website | www |
The All-Senria Baseball League (Senrian: 선썬류우야뀨우런메, Zensenryuu Yakyuu Renmei), or ASBL, is the top-level professional baseball league in Senria. Originally formed in 1936, the league currently consists of twenty-four teams divided into two leagues and four divisions.
Baseball was established in Senria by 1900, with small collegiate leagues emerging in the 1910s and the first efforts to organize professional teams occurring in the 1920s; however, the Senrian Revolution and Great War disrupted the professionalization process, contributing to the ASBL's late founding when compared to Premier League Baseball and the Arucian Baseball League. The ASBL was established with eight teams in 1936, with the league's early years defined by barnstorming and a dead-ball tendency caused by rubber rationing. As its popularity grew, the ASBL was expanded from 8 teams to 12 in 1952 and to 16 teams in 1960; to accomodate the larger number of teams, it was subdivided into the Mountain League and Ocean League with its 1952 expansion and into four divisions, two in each league, with the 1960 expansion.
The league experienced its greatest troubles in the 1970s; cheating & match fixing scandals damaged baseball's reputation in Senria, and many teams were revealed to be plagued by financial problems. Stringent punishments for unsportsmanlike behavior and a revenue-sharing arrangement returned stability to the ASBL, which spent the early-to-mid 1980s recovering. Expansion of the league resumed with a third wave of new teams in 1987, followed by a fourth wave in 2006, bringing the ASBL up to its current 24-team roster.
The standard season of an ASBL team consists of 168 games divided into 56 three-game series. The top two teams in each division then proceed to postseason play, with the winners of each league's pennant proceeding to the All-Senria Championship Series, or Senrian Series, a best-of-seven playoff whose winner is declared the league's champion. The Keisi Dragons hold the most ASBL championships with 20 wins across 30 appearances, and - as the Keisi Sparrows - won the first edition of the series in 1936. The reigning champions are the Kasaoka Sea Lions, who won their first championship by defeating the Tosei Tigers. ASBL teams also engage in practice & exhibition games, as well as international play, during the off-season.
The ASBL is Senria's most popular professional sports league, with survey data typically listing it as the favorite sport of 45 to 50% of the country's population and the Senrian Series one of its most-watched sporting events. It is also one of the world's top leagues by average attendance, with an average match attendance of nearly 31,000, and one of the most lucrative professional sports leagues in the world by revenue. The most prominent of the world's professional baseball leagues, the ASBL has adopted a posting system with the RBL and ABL to restrict the flow of their players to the ASBL.
The All-Senria Baseball League also oversees the operations of the leagues within the Senrian Minor League System and the Senrian Women's Baseball League.
Organizational structure
The structure of the All-Senria Baseball League is dictated by the ASBL Charter, originally written in 1936, and its amendments, the most recent of which dates to 2011. The ASBL Charter establishes the league as a legal entity; its two sub-leagues, the Ocean and Mountain Leagues, and their divisions exist entirely within the legal entity of the ASBL and are not separate legal entities in their own rights. Since the 1980s, the designated hitter has existed universally within the ASBL, standardizing rules and regulations across both leagues.
The chief executive officer of the ASBL is styled as the Commissioner, who acts as the ASBL's director, organizer, and chief administrator. The commissioner, currently Souhei Kosoegawa, is assisted by an Office of the Commissioner and by the first deputy commissioner, currently Hiroyosi Hakeyama. The commissioner and first deputy commissioner, in turn, jointly oversee the Commission of the ASBL, which consists of the second deputy commissioner (who manages the Senrian Women's Baseball League), chief operations officer (who oversees a variety of administrative matters), chief strategy officer (who formulates and implements the league's strategic objectives), chief revenue officer (who manages ASBL finances), chief marketing officer (who oversees brand management and advertising for the league), chief legal officer (who advises the ASBL on legal matters), chief communications officer (who handles public affairs and the ASBL's relations with the national baseball team, international baseball authorities, and foreign baseball leagues), chief scouting & development officer (who manages Senrian Minor League Baseball and oversees the ASBL's relations with Senria's independent high school, college, & amateur baseball leagues), and one to three "general senior advisors". All positions other than that of commissioner are nominated by the commissioner and approved by the commission; the commissioner is elected by the combined vote of the commission and team owners.
Under the commission are the various administrative structures that handle hiring umpires, negotiating labor & broadcasting contracts, handling marketing & promotion, and other routine or necessary league affairs. The ASBL does have a multimedia branch under its communications division, the ASBL Media Office Organization, which operates the websites of the ASBL, SWBL, SMLBS, and their teams, as well as certain radio broadcasting services; however, the ASBL lacks the unique control over media contracts held by Asteria Superior's Premier League Baseball. Nonetheless, close business ties between the ASBL and Senrian broadcast media companies have usually guaranteed it favorable deals for television & radio broadcasting.
Unlike the Arucian Baseball League, the league's player union - the Association of Senrian Professional Baseball Players, founded in 1962 - is not formally integrated into the structure of the ASBL; nonetheless, as it contains a majority of the ASBL's players, coaches, and training staff, it is necessary for the ASBL to regularly consult or negotiate with it in both informal and formal capacities.
History
Origins
Following the 1869 Keiou Restoration, the Emperor Keiou - building on the gaigaku programs of his father Youzei - launched an ambitious slate of reforms intended to bring about the country's rapid Northernization, a key part of which was the modernization of the country's education system. Accordingly, during the next three decades, the Senrian government hired Euclean and Asterian educators and academics to develop and operate the country's nascent public education system. Furthermore, the establishment of nominal freedom of religion by the country's 1871 Constitution ended the country's longstanding ban on Sotirian proselytization, attracting Euclean & Asterian missionaries to Senria.
These educators and missionaries brought their cultural practices with them, including their sports. By the late 19th century, baseball was well-established in Asteria Superior and was spreading into the Arucian Sea and Asteria Inferior, with the Rizealand Baseball League established in 1871, the Asterian Baseball League in 1877, and the Arucian Baseball League established in 1876; accordingly, many of the Asterians who came to Senria as foreign advisors or missionaries brought the sport with them, and incorporated it into their curricula as a form of physical education. Senria also brought in many foreign experts from Estmere - where the related sport of rounders was popular - and sent Senrians to study abroad in these countries - where they also picked up familiarity with these sports and, upon their return to Senria, brought knowledge of their rules back with them. These factors further reinforced the sport's presence, and nascent popularity, in Senria during its earliest years there.
H.W. Lamar, a Rizean agronomist hired by the Senrian government to assist in the establishment of the Isikawa Agricultural College (now Isikawa A&T University), is commonly given credit in popular memory for introducing the sport to Senria, having supposedly organized a team at the university as early as 1872; while it is widely accepted that Lamar did organize a team at the university at some point during the 1870s, most historians regard the story as apocryphal or mythical on account of a lack of reliable primary sources and the presence of several other potential candidates, including Westmarckian missionary Percival Cleaveland Sterling, linguist Lionel Ralston, and pedagogue & painter Ada Ernestine Blythe, operating in the same timeframe.
Regardless of the precise details of its arrival in Senria, baseball proliferated rapidly across the country during the subsequent decades, having become widely entrenched by 1900. Baseball became a mainstay sport at Senrian secondary schools and colleges with the tacit, and on some occasions active, encouragement of the Senrian government, which regarded it as a means to promote physical fitness, teamwork, and honorable conduct. The country's first private adult baseball team was organized in 1877, and a litany of other adult teams - including teams affiliated with sports clubs and company works teams - were established between 1880 and 1910. During this period, however, the sport remained strictly amateur within Senria; when the Kusida River Sporting Club - an early baseball club in Tosei - was discovered in 1889 to have paid three of its players, it provoked such a scandal that other teams refused to play against them, eventually forcing Kusida River's dissolution.
In 1894, the Akabane Athletic Club of Keisi organized a friendly between its own team and a team composed of foreigners residing in the Keisi Legation Quarter, which Akabane won 15-6; coverage of the match was taken up widely by several Senrian newspapers, who touted it as a Senrian triumph over Euclea and thereby imbued the sport with a tinge of nationalistic pride, further encouraging its spread in Senria. The first Senrian baseball match in which spectators were charged for admission - between Akabane and a Keiou Densan Industrial works team, won by Keiou Densan - was held in 1902, and the first barnstorming tour of professional Rizean baseball players in Senria took place in 1909.
In the 1910s, the baseball teams of several Senrian universities began making serious efforts to create formal collegiate leagues with organized seasons, a change from the much more informal structure that had prevailed previously. These leagues were largely local or regional in nature, consisting of teams from the same city or traditional region; among the most prominent collegiate leagues of the period were the Keitou Collegiate Baseball League (established in 1911), Kinkeidou Premier Baseball League (established in 1915), and Saisandou League of College Baseball Teams (established in 1916). However, the overall trend of organization and formalization in Senrian baseball was negatively affected by the Great Collapse (a trend which collegiate leagues only narrowly escaped by virtue of state support for academic institutions), and the process stalled entirely during the Senrian Revolution, which functionally halted the sport's development for its nearly six-year duration.
Following the conclusion of the Senrian Revolution with a republican victory in 1923, efforts were made to restart this process. Hideyosi Asada, noble-born founder of the confectionary company Yanyan Seika, founded the country's first explicitly professional baseball team in December 1923; a flurry of imitators, primarily other businessmen and previously-amateur athletic clubs, followed suit throughout the next few years. Asada's team was initially named the Keisi Lions; however, another team by the same name was founded by the Ibaraki Athletic Association the following year, and after a few months of confusion both teams agreed to distinguish themselves by the color of their uniforms, with Asada's team becoming the Keisi Golden Lions and the Ibaraki team becoming the Keisi White Lions. Other teams formed during this period included the Mainiti Republicans, Keisi Sparrows, Tosei Tigers, Hosokawa Foresters, Nisiyama Falcons, and Isikawa Athletics. Many teams did not even have official stadiums during this period, instead playing at whichever of several suitable fields in the area was available at the time.
Amidst this proliferation of domestic professional teams, Rizean and Arucian teams resumed barnstorming in Senria, drawing renewed public interest to the sport. Seeing the success of these tours, Asada and the Golden Lions barnstormed across Asteria Superior and the Arucian in 1926, playing against teams ranging from local amateur clubs to college teams to farm teams to an ABL all-star team featuring Louis Remont and Jean-Luc Leroy. Acclaimed Senrian players of the period included slugger Masaharu Honda, outfielder Tarou Kageura, two-way player Risaburou Sakaguti, and pitcher Ieyasu Kisida.
This short-lived flourishing of a newly-professionalized Senrian baseball was abruptly halted by the outbreak of the Great War in 1927. Faced with the existential threat of the Shangean invasion of Senria, the National Preservation Government of Katurou Imahara ordered that all available resources be devoted to a program of "mass production, mass industrialization, and mass mobilization", aimed at securing victory in the conflict; resources such as timber, leather, and rubber were redirected to the Senrian Republican Armed Forces, and the vast majority of Senria's professional baseball players were conscripted into the military, with many of them dying or being wounded in combat. While the Senrian government permitted some limited amateur play as a means of maintaining morale, the slew of professional teams established between 1923 and 1927 were forced to suspend their operations. Many of them folded, were dissolved, or simply ceased to exist; the Republicans, Foresters, Athletics, and Golden Lions all became defunct during the war. Those teams which managed to survive the war - most notably the Sparrows, White Lions, Tigers, and Falcons - did so narrowly.
Establishment and early years
Following the successful expulsion of Shangean forces from Senria in 1932, some baseball teams began to discuss the possibility of resuming operations - Nisiyama Falcons owner Yasuhiro Kuwahara and Keisi Sparrows owner Kuranosuke Hagiyama apparently met to discuss the matter as early as November of that year - but the continued demands of the war effort made this a practical impossibility until the final conclusion of the Great War in 1935.
These preliminary discussions, however, did help to speed up the revival of the surviving teams following the end of the war. Kuwahara, convinced that the establishment of a formal baseball league was the best way for the surviving teams to proceed, began reaching out to the owners of other teams and to business associates who had the money to form new teams; meanwhile, Hagiyama used his connections with officials in the Senrian government - up to Katurou Imahara himself - to ascertain if the government was willing to provide support for the formation of a league. Imahara's government was keen to foster a "return to normalcy" following the preceding two decades of socioeconomic upheaval and brutal military conflict; Hagiyama successfully persuaded officials that the formation of a baseball league would symbolize such to the weary Senrian public. Accordingly, the government agreed to subsidize Kuwahara's and Hagiyama's proposed league for the first five years of its operation in exchange for promises that the league would explicitly "work to maintain and raise Senrian public morale".
The All-Senrian Baseball League was formally established on June 18, 1936, with Kuwahara as commissioner and Hagiyama as deputy commissioner. The league had eight teams: the Isikawa Reds, Keisi Sparrows, Keisi White Lions, Nisiyama Falcons, Tosei Tigers, Ubeyama Stars, Ueda Steelworkers, and Yosida Whales. Of these, the Sparrows, White Lions, Falcons, and Tigers were teams that had survived the war, while the Reds, Stars, Steelworkers, and Whales had been established afterwards for the creation of the league. The ASBL's first games were held on September 14, and the first iteration of the Senrian Series saw the Sparrows win out over the Tigers.
During the ASBL's first few years, the legacy of the war still loomed large over the sport. While each team had an official playing field, the Senrian government heavily pressured the league to have teams barnstorm across Senria as a means of maintaining public morale, and teams spent much of the season away from their home fields as a result. Rubber continued to be subject to rationing for years after the end of the war, so baseballs were instead made with gutta-percha and balata, resulting in a strong dead ball tendency. Many players during these early years were also two-way players as a result of wartime injuries and deaths reducing the number of playing-age men fit for placement on a pro baseball roster.
In the 1940s, things began to truly settle down as the legacy of the war steadily faded. As the country recovered, barnstorming was steadily replaced by standard play at official stadiums, and the league's operations and style of play began to develop and mature as a new generation of players replenished team rosters. The Keisi Sparrows and Isikawa Reds rebranded as the Dragons and Red Foxes in 1939 and 1944, respectively. While the two Keisi teams consistently performed well, taking five Senrian Series titles between 1940 and 1949, they did not overwhelmingly dominate, and the league was highly competitive. Many of the most prominent players of the era - such as Kousuke Inoi, Takenori Toyomura, and the Soravian-descended Mykyta Klymenko - were pitchers, a legacy of the preceding dead ball years. Other prominent players included two-way player Akira Sugiura, infielders Daisuke Yokoda and Kazuteru Honda, outfielder Satosi Yamaguti, and Rizean catcher Scotty Kerr.
Buoyed by the Keizaikiseki (Senria's post-war "economic miracle"), its competitive play, and the popularity of its star players, the ASBL performed well financially during the 1940s, capturing the attention and the loyalty of the Senrian public. Due to this financial success, at the end of the decade, the league - once again headed by Kuwahara, following a brief interval in which Hagiyama was commissioner - was looking into expanding.
Initial expansion
Following the success the league enjoyed in the 1940s, commissioner Yasuhiro Kuwahara was determined to expand the league, believing that an increased number of teams would strengthen the league financially by allowing it both to tap into new markets and to create new cross-town rivalries in Senria's larger cities (akin to the rivalry between the Keisi Dragons and White Lions, whose matches had quickly become some of the league's most lucrative events). However, it was also widely understood by ASBL leadership and team owners that any expansion would likely necessitate the division of the ASBL into smaller sub-leagues for practical purposes, and there was disagreement about how best to implement this division. Additionally, some professional baseball teams outside the ASBL umbrella had expressed interest in joining the league, sparking debates about how many of the expansion teams should be existing teams joining the ASBL versus new teams created for the expansion.
Following several months of negotiations, the expansion plan was formally agreed upon. Four teams - the Nakamura Blues, Nobeoka Mariners (the league's first team on Gyousuu), Tosei Unions, and Tukayama Oxen - would be added to the league beginning with the 1952 season, bringing the league up to 12 teams. Two of these teams - the Blues and Unions - were pre-existing non-ASBL teams, while the Mariners and Oxen were created for the expansion. The ASBL's twelve teams, in turn, would be divided between the Ocean League and Mountain League; in order to guarantee the financial viability of both sub-leagues, the ASBL's most prominent teams would be divided between them, with interleague play implemented in order to guarantee that lucrative rivalry matchups were preserved. Finally, the Senrian Series - which had previously simply pitted the top two teams in the ASBL against each other - would now pit the best Ocean League team against the best Mountain League team.
The league continued to do well throughout the 1950s. Some of the younger stars from the 1940s - most notably Satosi Yamaguti - continued to play prominent roles throughout the 1950s, but the decade also saw the emergence of a new generation of stars, including pitcher Isao Sasaki, outfielders Andreas Tanaka and Masayuki Inoue, Chloéois infielder Aimé Toussaint, and slugger Kanzaburou Saimon.
The continued success of the 1950s convinced the league that it was in a position to expand further, and the ASBL grew from 12 teams to 16 in 1960 with the addition of the Hukuyama Pheasants, Katuyama Stags, Sakata Clippers, and Ukyou Ravens (the latter two teams representing the first ASBL teams on Tousuu); the Ocean and Mountain League, in turn, were further subdivided into eastern and western divisions of four teams each. The Senrian Series was also restructured, this time with the creation of a series between the top teams from each division to determine which one would win their sub-league's pennant and, in turn, proceed to the Senrian Series itself. 1960 also saw the Ocean League implement the designated hitter rule.
Teams were also widely confident in the league's continued success throughout the 1960s, reassured by the smooth sailing of the 1940s and 1950s. The salaries offered to star players and managers ballooned, as did the illicit payments offered to high-potential draft picks as a means of exploiting the league's "reverse draft" system. This process was driven by the league's largest teams, in particular the Keisi and Tosei teams, with the league's smaller franchises forced into attempting to compete in order to retain talent. Many teams also invested heavily into renovating or expanding their home stadiums, or into constructing new ones, out of the expectation that ticket sales would continue to steadily rise.
Another notable development of the 1960s was the ASBL's effort to bring the country's minor leagues under its control, with the goal of turning minor league teams into farm teams for the ASBL. These early efforts focused primarily on bringing the several minor leagues into existence into a single system under the ASBL's purview. While the goal of ASBL control over the minor league system was achieved, several idiosyncracies persisted. Skill levels within the various minor leagues varied widely, and the exact relationship between major and minor league teams was left unstandardized; some major league teams had several minor league farm teams, sometimes even having multiple farm teams in a particular minor league, while other major league teams had no official farm teams and simply picked at will from unaffiliated minor league teams.
Prominent players of the 1960s included Isao Sasaki, Andreas Tanaka, infielder Takuya Nisimoto, outfielders Kazuya Kitayama and Tomoyuki Yosida, Astero-Rizean pitcher Bill Texeira, slugger Hideaki Kondou, and catcher Kensuke Huziwara. While not especially notable for his career in the Senrian leagues, pitcher Hideo Haraguti - signed in 1964 by the Tosei Eagles - was sent as a "half-year understudy" to the Portmouth Cubs only to be subsequently signed by the Cubs, provoking a contract dispute which ultimately led to the first major formal agreement on recruitment and signing between two top-level baseball leagues, signed in 1966.
The "Troubled 1970s"
Optimism around the ASBL's future, which had defined the 1950s and 1960s, persisted through 1970 and 1971. On June 5, 1972, however, Gendai Sinbun reporter Kiyoharu Sakamoto published an article revealing that, in May of that year, a member of the Yosida Whales - later revealed to be first baseman Naosuke Miura - had approached him, claiming that the Karasawa-gumi yakuza gang had attempted to bribe or threaten several members of the team, including himself, to throw the 1971 Senrian Series in favor of the Keisi Dragons, and that the team's players had functionally allowed the Dragons to win the series 4-0 as a result.
The ensuing uproar, known as the Three Black Series scandal, lasted for nearly two years, as subsequent investigations by the news media, teams, and the league revealed that the 1968 and 1970 Senrian Series had also been fixed in favor of the Dragons at the expense of the Nisiyama Giants and Nobeoka Mariners respectively, and that players on several teams were illegally betting on ASBL games. By 1974, fourteen players (including star Giants pitcher Masaru Endou, Mariners pitcher Kazunori Sonoda, and Whales outfielder Ryouta Iwasaki) had been banned for life by the ASBL, nine were suspended for periods ranging from six months to three years, six had been given "severe warnings", and three retired to escape punishment. Many more players had their salaries cut, or were kept in the dugout in favor of "untainted" players during games.
The official ASBL investigation concluded that the 1966 Series between the Dragons and Tosei Tigers had been clean and that the Dragons had been "entirely unaware" that the 1968, 1970, and 1971 series had been fixed in their favor, exculpating them of any role in the match-fixing. Even this was controversial, however, as some fans alleged that the ASBL investigation of the Dragons - conducted unusually rapidly - was a whitewash, supposedly undertaken either at the behest of the league itself to protect one of its most profitable teams, in response to threats by the yakuza, or at the behest of the Senrian government under Takesi Takahata, which regarded the Dragons as a de facto national team.
The Three Black Series scandal devastated fan faith in the ASBL, and in many of its teams. Ticket sales dropped precipitously and some former fans swore off baseball altogether; some Senrian players sought to escape to other leagues, while many foreign players in the ASBL - most notably Cassien two-way player Théo Soulier, acquired only a year beforehand by the Tukayama Oxen at no small expense - opted to return home. The drop in revenues in the wake of the scandal, meanwhile, revealed the unsustainable financial decisions of the 1960s - particularly for the league's smaller and newer teams, which did not have the same cushion as the Keisi and Tosei teams. The Dragons themselves became a particular target of disgust from the fans of all other teams; having been contentiously exonerated by the ASBL, they continued to use their fiscal reserves to exploit the reverse draft system and poach talent from other teams, winning the 1973, 1974, 1975, and 1977 Senrian Series.
In mid-1974, shortly before the start of that year's season, the Mariners and Whales - two of the teams most implicated in the scandal - announced that they would be folding due to fiscal insolvency. In order to keep the league's roster full, the league was forced to promote two minor league teams, the Koriyama Sentinels and Toyotori Cranes, to replace them. Then, in 1975, Tukayama Oxen owner Yuutarou Takanohara announced that his team would move to Isikawa beginning with the 1976 season, where he anticipated they would be able to invent a lucrative cross-town rivalry with the Isikawa Foxes, a move which outraged the team's fans in Tukayama.
The Oxens' move to Isikawa, in turn, broke the finances of the Nisiyama Giants, who had only clung to financial viability in the wake of the scandal on account of their own rivalry with the Oxen, and who were consequently forced to cease operations before the start of the 1977 season. The ASBL once again promoted a minor league team - the Sekiguti Robins - to fill the now-vacant spot in the roster. Shortly thereafter, the Ubeyama Stars announced that they would move to Nisiyama beginning with the 1979 season, with the goal of capturing the fan markets in Nisiyama and Tukayama left without a team following the folding of the Giants and the Oxens' move to Isikawa. In this, they succeeded; however, they incurred in turn the anger of Ubeyamans, who now found themselves without a home team.
As the ASBL continued to flounder, it also found itself facing two new challenges: other baseball leagues, and leagues for other sports. The 1970s saw several attempts at establishing rival baseball leagues, such as the New Senrian Baseball Association, Island Baseball League, and Senria Phoenix League, though of these only the NSBA managed to persist beyond the end of the decade. More threatening was the rise of association football's S1 League; founded in 1965, the S1 League had struggled to gain a market foothold in face of the ASBL's dominance during the first five years of its existence, but with the ASBL in turmoil, it seized the opportunity to market itself as a clean alternative to baseball. By chance, it also happened that four of the S1 League's first ten teams - Gerossa Yosida Sporting, Nobeoka Dämmerlicht Gyousuu, Tukayama Sivicamo, and Itakura FC Ubeyama - were located in cities which lost their ASBL team during this period. This made these S1 teams obvious choices for former baseball fans in these cities. The S1 League's efforts to paint itself as an "untainted" alternative for Senrian sports fans paid dividends, and it expanded from 10 to 14 teams between 1970 and 1979 (and two of these expansion teams, SR Feiring Athletic and Crux Motors FC, were located in cities which had just lost, or had never had, an ASBL team).
Panicking amidst the folding and relocation of several teams (including the folding of one of the league's founding members) and the rising threat of the S1 League, former Senrian ambassador to Estmere and newly-elected ASBL commissioner Yosinobu Kida attempted to implement a series of drastic changes aimed at staunching the league's financial losses, re-stabilizing its roster, and restoring fan faith. Kida oversaw a massive effort to "clean house" within the ASBL, replacing a large proportion of the organization's staff, and initiated a series of multi-year-long negotiations between itself and the teams, aimed at stabilizing the finances of the league's smaller teams and preventing further relocations.
Initially, these negotiations made little headway, largely due to opposition from the ownership of the Keisi and Tosei teams, and Kida's efforts at equalizing the playing field between teams stalled. In April 1979, however, he gathered the owners of the league's teams, presented financial predictions which suggested that six of the league's teams (the 1960 expansion teams Katuyama, Sakata, and Hukuyama, plus the former minor leaguers Sekiguti, Toyotori, and Koriyama) would not survive until 1985 unless drastic actions were taken, declared that this would represent the death of the ASBL, and refused to let them leave until they agreed to implement revenue sharing between teams, abolish the reverse draft system, and tighten enforcement of the ASBL's anti-gambling and anti-cheating rules. This finally broke the resistance to Kida's reforms, all of which had formally been adopted as ASBL policy within a month.
Return to growth
[early 80s mostly recovering from the 70s, bar the designated hitter rule being implemented league-wide]
[late 80s see the start of a decade of hegemony for the white lions, dubbed the "indomitables", thanks to a new manager and a powerful lineup; at the same time, they develop a reputation for fair play that prevents them being universally loathed as the dragons became and, in particular, rehabilitates the ASBL's image abroad; expansion resumes in '87 with the stallions, sea lions, timberwolves, and tanuki]
[90s are keeping it steady for the ASBL, though the minor league system is reworked to try and clarify the various levels of play and the home field advantage for the senrian series are changed]
Recent history
[2006 expansion - phoenixes, warriors, otters, hares; minor league is reworked into its current format during this period, with each ASBL team having one minor league team at each minor league level (where previously the # had varied)]
[2010s and 2020s - schedule tweaked, for the postseason the top two teams in each division now play each other to see who goes to the league championship]
Teams
| Defunct teams | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Team | City | Stadium | Founded | Joined | Ceased operations | Notes | ||
| Nobeoka Mariners | Nobeoka | Yatigasira Park | 1952 | 1952 | 1974 | Folded due to financial insolvency. The ASBL regards the Nobeoka Otters as the de facto successors to the Mariners. | ||
| Yosida Whales | Yosida | Kanagawa Stadium | 1936 | 1936 | 1974 | Folded due to financial insolvency. The ASBL regards the Kasaoka Sea Lions as the de facto successors to the Whales. | ||
| Nisiyama Giants | Nisiyama | Kairakuen Stadium | 1926 | 1936 | 1977 | Folded due to financial insolvency. The ASBL regards the Nisiyama Stars as the de facto successors to the Giants. | ||
Timeline
Season structure
| Senrian Series records | ||||
| Team | Number of Series won |
Last Series won |
Series played |
Last Series played |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Keisi Dragons (OL) † | 20 | 2017 | 30 | 2017 |
| Keisi White Lions (ML) | 15 | 2009 | 26 | 2021 |
| Tosei Tigers (ML) | 12 | 2008 | 24 | 2022 |
| Isikawa Foxes (OL) † | 7 | 2020 | 17 | 2020 |
| Tosei Eagles (OL) | 5 | 2013 | 8 | 2013 |
| ‡ Nisiyama Giants (ML) † | 3 | 1969 | 5 | 1969 |
| Ukyou Ravens (OL) | 3 | 2021 | 5 | 2021 |
| Koriyama Vipers (OL) † | 3 | 2006 | 4 | 2006 |
| Nakamura Bears (ML to OL, 1979) † | 2 | 1964 | 8 | 2016 |
| Isikawa Oxen (ML) † | 2 | 1980 | 5 | 2019 |
| Ubeyama Tanuki (OL) | 2 | 2014 | 3 | 2014 |
| Nobeoka Otters (ML) * | 2 | 2015 | 3 | 2015 |
| Nisiyama Stars (OL to ML, 1979; ML to OL, 1987) †* |
1 | 1956 | 5 | 1990 |
| ‡ Yosida Whales (OL) | 1 | 1945 | 4 | 1970 |
| Katuyama Stags (ML) | 1 | 2004 | 3 | 2017 |
| Toyotori Cranes (ML) | 1 | 2010 | 3 | 2010 |
| Ueda Steelworkers (OL) | 1 | 1978 | 3 | 1997 |
| Hisakawa Stallions (ML) † | 1 | 2001 | 2 | 2006 |
| Kasaoka Sea Lions (ML to OL, 2006) * | 1 | 2022 | 2 | 2022 |
| Keisi Timberwolves (ML to OL, 2006) | 1 | 2005 | 2 | 2012 |
| ‡ Nobeoka Mariners (ML) | 1 | 1963 | 2 | 1970 |
| Sakata Seagulls (OL) | 1 | 1998 | 2 | 2008 |
| Sekiguti Robins (ML) | 1 | 2016 | 1 | 2016 |
| Hukuyama Pheasants (ML) | 0 | 1 | 2013 | |
| Itimura Phoenixes (ML) | 0 | 1 | 2020 | |
| Yokomatu Hares (ML) | 0 | 1 | 2018 | |
| Keisi Warriors (ML) | 0 | 0 | ||
| OL=Ocean League ML=Mountain League | ||||
| † Totals include a team's record in a previous city or under another name (see team article for details). | ||||
| * Totals do not include the record of a defunct team regarded as a team's de facto predecessor by the ASBL (see team article for details). | ||||
| ‡ Team is now defunct. | ||||
Regular season
Consisting of a total 168 games, the ASBL's regular season is slightly longer than Premier League Baseball's 162-game season and significantly longer than the Arucian Baseball League's 100-game season. The seasonal schedule of an ASBL team is subdivided into fifty-six smaller series of three games each, generally grouped into "homestands" (a group of two or three series played at their home stadium) and "road series" or "awaystands" (a group of two or three series played away from home). During the course of a season, an ASBL team plays 5 series (or 15 games) against every other team in its division, 3 series (or 9 games) against every team which is in the other division of its league, 1 series (or 3 games) against every team of the other league, and an additional 1 series (or 3 games) against its "natural rival" (another team which is formally designated by the ASBL as an official rival team, usually another team from the same city or a nearby city, though the intensity and fan recognition of these rivalries can vary heavily). The current seasonal structure was implemented in the 2010s as a refinement of the system implemented with the 2006 expansion to 24 teams, itself ultimately based upon the format implemented by the ASBL's 1950s and 1960s expansions.
As Senria is located in the Southern Hemisphere, the ASBL's season is usually scheduled to begin in late September or early October and ends in late March or early April. Teams generally play on every day of the week except Monday, for a total of six games a week; doubleheaders are rare compared to other major baseball leagues, used primarily to either account for the possibility of or in response to rainouts, or to accommodate national holidays. Unlike the ABL, protested games are not permitted under ASBL rules. A week-long break is scheduled roughly midway through the season, usually in late December, during which the league holds an all-star exhibition match, which pits the best players from the Ocean and Mountain Leagues against each other; since 1997, the starting lineup for this game has been chosen by public vote, with reserve players selected by players & coaches and pitchers selected by managers.
The rules of play in the ASBL are broadly similar to the rules in other leading baseball leagues; however, there are some distinctions. Due to the constraints regarding land availability in the rugged and densely-populated Senrian archipelago, the ASBL's minimum dimensions for baseball fields are smaller than those of the RBL and ABL; ASBL rules mandate dimensions of 90 meters (~295 feet) down each foul line and 115 meters (~380 feet) to center field, in contrast to the measurements of 99 meters (~325 feet) and 120 meters (~400 feet), respectively, mandated by the RBL and semi-officially followed by the ABL. Accordingly, many ASBL ballparks are regarded as "hitters' parks" rather than "pitchers' parks", though in recent years some ASBL teams have sought to expand their fields to bring them closer to the RBL-ABL standard. Some Senrian ballparks are also known for their large foul territories.
The official balls used in the ASBL, manufactured by Yamamura, are smaller and have more prominent seams than those used in the RBL, making them easier for pitchers to grip, spin, and break. Like the RBL but unlike the ABL, the ASBL utilizes designated hitters, a practice which began in the Ocean League in the 1960s and was implemented league-wide in the 1980s, and has openly considered following the RBL in implementing pitch clocks to speed up pace of play, in spite of pushback from players. Conversely, the ASBL has stood alongside the ABL in refusing the practice of using "ghost runners" when games proceed to extra innings.
One particularly unique feature of ASBL play is that ASBL rules allow for tie games. If a game is tied at the end of the nine regulation innings, the game proceeds to extra innings; if an extra inning ends with one team in the lead, then the game ends accordingly with said team as the winner, but if the game is still tied after three extra innings (twelve total innings), then the game is declared a tie.
Postseason
The ASBL postseason is typically held in late April and early May, providing players a small break following the conclusion of the regular season. The format of the postseason - initially just a singular seven-game series between the top two teams - has been altered multiple times as the ASBL has expanded, with the current format being adopted in 2010.
Under the current format, the top two teams from each division play each other in a best-of-five series in order to determine who wins each division. The first two games of the series are held at the stadium of the team holding second place in the division, followed by two games at the stadium of the team holding first place in the division, with the series returning to the stadium of the team holding second place for the fifth game; this format is intended to "level" the competition by giving the "weaker" team a slight edge in terms of home-field advantage.
The winners of each division-level series then play the victor of the other division series in their league in another best-of-five series for the Ocean and Mountain League pennants; the league-level series follows a similar scheduling format to the division-level series, with the first two games of the series being hosted by the team with the weaker regular season record that year, the second two being hosted by the team with the stronger record, and the final game being hosted by the one with the weaker record.
Finally, the pennant winners from each league meet in the All-Senria Championship Series, commonly referred to as the "Senrian Series", which is a best-of-seven series. The Senrian Series follows the same conventions for determining home-field advantage as the league-level pennant series, with the difference that the first six matches are divided into blocks of three (rather than two, as they are at the division and league levels); however, from 1952 to 1963, it simply alternated by year (with the Ocean League given home-field advantage in even-numbered years and the Mountain League holding it in odd-numbered years), and from 1963 to 1998, it was determined by the outcome of the annual all-star match.
As ASBL rules allow for tie games, special rules exist to account for the possibility of a tie game resulting in a tied series. If a series is tied after all regulation games in the series are completed, an additional tiebreaker game is held; unlike all other ASBL games, which are capped at twelve total innings, these tiebreaker matches have no inning cap, with play continuing as long as needed until one team wins.
As of the conclusion of the 2022 postseason in May 2023, the reigning champions are the Kasaoka Sea Lions, who defeated the Tosei Tigers to win their first series (though, as the ASBL regards the Sea Lions as the de facto successors to the defunct Yosida Whales, the Sea Lions are allowed to count the Whales' 1945 victory as one of their own). The Keisi Dragons hold the record for most series won and most appearances at the Senrian Series, having appeared 30 times and won 20 times; the Dragons, then named the Keisi Sparrows, were the victors of the first Senrian Series in 1936, and made their last appearance at the series in 2017. Following the Keisi Dragons in the rankings for most series won are the Keisi White Lions with fifteen wins, the Tosei Tigers with twelve, the Isikawa Foxes with seven, and the Tosei Eagles with five. Four teams - the Hukuyama Pheasants, Itimura Phoenixes, Keisi Warriors, and Yokomatu Hares - have never won a Senrian Series; of these four, the Keisi Warriors are the only team in the ASBL to have never made an appearance at the series. The ASBL team with the longest championship drought is either the Nisiyama Stars, who last won in 1956 as the Ubeyama Stars (if one does not count the 1962 and 1969 championship wins by the Nisiyama Giants, to whom the Nisiyama Stars are regarded as de facto successors), or the Hukuyama Pheasants, who have not won the championship since their creation in league's 1960 expansion. Of the 71 Senrian Series held following the ASBL's 1952 division into the Ocean and Mountain Leagues, 37 have been won by the team from the Ocean League and 34 have been won by the team from the Mountain League.
Off-season
The league enters the off-season period following the conclusion of the Senrian Series. For players, this off-season period provides them valuable time to rest and recover following the lengthy ASBL season. It also usually (though not always) allows them to participate in international baseball competitions and events such as the Summer Invictus Games without worrying about these events conflicting with regular season play.
Shortly following the beginning of the post-season, usually in late May or early June, the ASBL draft is held. Players must register and have their eligibility for the draft verified by the ASBL in order to participate. In order to be eligible, prospective players must either hold Senrian nationality or have graduated from a Senrian high school or university; must have never played with a Senrian professional baseball team or be free agent Senrian players in a foreign league; and, if they are members of Senria's high school or collegiate baseball federations, must inform the federation beforehand. The order in which teams make picks is determined by the standings of the previous season, with the team with the worst record in the previous season receiving the first draft pick. The selection process ends once the total number of players selected reaches 240. Historically, the ASBL draft process incorporated a feature known as the "reverse draft", in which potential draft picks had the option to name a team for which they wanted to play, and - if this differed from the team which picked them during the draft - were given the choice between either playing for the team which drafted them, or waiting a year before being signed by the team they selected. However, wealthier teams regularly offered high-potential draft candidates clandestine payments in exchange for being named in the reverse draft process, allowing them to hoard young talent, thereby defeating the purpose of the draft; the system was abolished in 1979 as a result.
Following the draft, it is typical for ASBL teams to participate in exhibition games and tours abroad. This includes ASBL teams playing each other in matches hosted abroad, ASBL teams playing foreign teams in the other team's home country, and ASBL teams hosting matches against foreign teams. For practical reasons, exhibition games against foreign teams tend to involve teams from other leagues which schedule their seasons around the end of the year (like the Arucian and Aucurian leagues) rather than the middle (like the Asterian Premier League). In some years, the ASBL has also hosted exhibition matches between an ASBL all-star team and the Senrian national team, or all-star teams fielded by foreign leagues.
Roughly two months before the start of the regular season, the preseason begins. During this period, which typically spans the majority of August and September, teams hold training camps and play exhibition matches against other ASBL teams. The preseason provides the existing members of a team's roster time to practice before the resumption of competitive play, newly drafted or acquired members of the team the chance to compete for position spots, and managers the opportunity to experiment with calling up players from a team's minor league affiliates. The friendly matches of the preseason are also sometimes used as a way for teams to play additional games against their traditional rivals, a practice which is popular with fans and highly lucrative for teams. The ASBL encourages teams to barnstorm during this period by playing preseason matches at neutral venues in smaller Senrian cities and towns, both as a harkening-back to Senrian baseball of the 1920s & 1930s and as a practical measure to drive public interest in the sport.
Champions
Awards and records
International play
[further elaboration on some of the stuff mentioned in the off-season section - any regular foreign exhibition stuff the ASBL does]
Expatriate players
[history of foreign players in the ASBL; posting system and quotas (probably slip in details about rosters here since it fits - 25 man game roster, extended roster as long as the team wants but nobody goes above 40 by custom - and only 5 members of a game roster can be foreign players, though they can still sign as many foreigners as they like) to limit the ASBL poaching RBL, ABL, etc. players; notable names]
ASBL players abroad
[stuff which i'll have to work out w/ others]
Stadiums
Media coverage
[within senria: mercury sport has full regular season broadcast rights plus the senrian series; STBS gets one day of the week + one league's race for the pennant; tv senzou gets another day of the week + the other league's race for the pennant; STBS and senzou alternate which league they broadcast annually; zensenryuu gets yet another day of the week; SHK broadcasts highlights]
[mercury's M+ does livestreaming; the ASBL also has its own channels on pinpin (both pinpin douga and pinpin tandou) and ihweb's wirvid for uploading highlights]
[radio - mercury sport radio plus NHK highlights]
[international broadcasting & streaming - in estmere NSE holds broadcasting and duhamel on demand streaming, in other countries tbd]