C.J. Nitkowski pitched for several major league teams from 1995-05. He's now playing his second year in Japan for the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks and will file periodic updates for The Associated Press on his experience. His stories will be archived on his Web site, www.cjbaseball.com
By C.J. NITKOWSKI
For The Associated Press
FUKUOKA, Japan (AP) -Interleague play began in Major League Baseball in 1997. You would think with its early success, they would've immediately tried it in Japan.
That was not the case and it wasn't until 2005, for a host of different reasons, interleague play got launched here.
Our versions of the American and National leagues - the Pacific and Central leagues - operate independently. Although they come together for an All-Star game and playoffs, it seems they are rarely on the same page.
You also get the sense as a player here that the Central League believes it is the better league, most likely because the CL is home to Japan's two most popular teams, the Yomiuri Giants and the Hanshin Tigers. Both have historic ties to professional baseball in Japan that run much deeper than any Pacific League teams.
The Central League began its 2008 season seven days after the Pacific League held its Opening Day, unusual with no apparent logical reason. Also, up until 2007, the leagues ran their playoff systems differently - the CL regular-season winner would go directly to the Japan Series while the PL's top three teams participated in a playoff system.
So the CL champion would idly sit by for about two weeks while the PL decided who would advance. It wasn't until 2007, after losing four straight Japan Series to Pacific teams, that the Central wised up and joined in on the three-team playoff format.
Interleague play also took a while to develop. In 2004, there was a two-day players' strike that resulted in the merging of one Central and one Pacific team - that club stayed in the CL while an expansion team was put in the PL. To boost interest in this new team that would be playing its game in Sendai, a somewhat rural part of Japan.
That's when Japanese baseball approved interleague play. The idea was to give these new fans in Sendai an opportunity to see not only the PL teams, but the more popular drawing teams like the Giants and Tigers. It was viewed as more of an economic stimulus plan for not only the new team in Sendai (the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles) but also the entire "weaker" Pacific League.
The format has been slightly tweaked since the 2005 inception. Currently, the six teams in both the CL and the PL play each other four times. Those games are held during a window of about six weeks - the leagues leave off four days at the end to make up any rainouts.
Now this is where it gets fun.
