The are a professional baseball team based in Nagoya, the chief city in the Chubu ("Middle of Japan") region of
Japanis an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
. The team is in the
Central LeagueThe or is one of Japan's two major professional baseball leagues, the winner of which plays the Japan Series against the winner of the other league, the Pacific League....
. They won the
2007 Japan SeriesThe Japan Series, the 58th edition of Nippon Professional Baseball's championship series, began Saturday, October 27, 2007, pitting the Pacific League Regular League and Climax Series' Champion, the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters, and the Chunichi Dragons, winners of the Central League's Climax...
and Konami Cup Asia Series 2007.
The Chunichi Dragons were formed in 1936 as the Nagoya Club. They had experimented with 5 different names between 1936 and 1953 before settling with "Dragons" in 1954. 1954 was the same year that the Dragons won their first Japan Series championship.
The are a professional baseball team based in Nagoya, the chief city in the Chubu ("Middle of Japan") region of
Japanis an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
. The team is in the
Central LeagueThe or is one of Japan's two major professional baseball leagues, the winner of which plays the Japan Series against the winner of the other league, the Pacific League....
. They won the
2007 Japan SeriesThe Japan Series, the 58th edition of Nippon Professional Baseball's championship series, began Saturday, October 27, 2007, pitting the Pacific League Regular League and Climax Series' Champion, the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters, and the Chunichi Dragons, winners of the Central League's Climax...
and Konami Cup Asia Series 2007.
History
The Chunichi Dragons were formed in 1936 as the Nagoya Club. They had experimented with 5 different names between 1936 and 1953 before settling with "Dragons" in 1954. 1954 was the same year that the Dragons won their first Japan Series championship. The Dragons had won the Central League pennant seven times until 2006, but until 2007 their last Japan Series victory was in 1954, the longest such drought in NPB. In 1974, the team won the league title for the first time in 20 years, and this victory stopped the
Yomiuri GiantsThe are a professional baseball team based in Bunkyo, Tokyo, Japan. The team competes in the Central League of Japan's top-tier major league, Nippon Professional Baseball, and they play their home games in the Tokyo Dome, opened in 1988...
from winning the league for their tenth consecutive year. Another league title came in 1999, and in that year, Dragons set a record by winning 11 consecutive games at the opening of the season. In the 2004 season they reached the
Japan Series, or is a seven-game championship played by the teams of Japan's two professional baseball leagues .The Series is the highest level of play in professional baseball in Japan. It is usually played in October or November. As in all of the best of seven series, the first team to win four games is...
, but lost to the
Seibu LionsThe are a professional baseball team in Japan's Pacific League. As a company, it is a subsidiary of Prince Hotels, belonging to Seibu Group. Recently, the team had stood on shaky financial ground, until the Boston Red Sox signed Daisuke Matsuzaka. The Lions got a 6 billion Japanese yen posting fee...
, the
Pacific LeagueThe or is one of Japan's two major professional baseball leagues, the other being the Central League.It was founded as the Taiheiyo Baseball Union in 1949 with seven teams, the name changing to its current form in 1980...
Champions. Although they have had little success in the playoffs, they are still known as one of the most powerful teams in Nippon Professional Baseball.
2007 Japan Series Title
In early 2007, the playoff rules were changed: The top team in the league would advance automatically, while the 2nd and 3rd teams in the league would play a best-of-three series. The winner would face the 1st place team in a best-of-five series to see who would advance to the Japan Series finals. The Dragons took advantage of the new playoff system, and after finishing second in the season standings, swept the
Hanshin TigersThe are a Nippon Professional Baseball team based in Koshien, Nishinomiya, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan, and are in the Central League. Hanshin Electric Railway Co., Ltd., the subsidiary of Hankyu Hanshin Holdings Inc., owns the Hanshin Tigers directly...
in a best of 3 series, then, in a huge upset, swept the heavily favoured
Yomiuri GiantsThe are a professional baseball team based in Bunkyo, Tokyo, Japan. The team competes in the Central League of Japan's top-tier major league, Nippon Professional Baseball, and they play their home games in the Tokyo Dome, opened in 1988...
in a best of 5 series to advance to the Japan Series against the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters. In an exact reversal of the 2006 Japan Series, Hokkaido won game 1 of the series, but the Dragons won the next four straight games, including a combined
perfect gameA perfect game is defined by Major League Baseball as a game in which a pitcher pitches a victory that lasts a minimum of nine innings and in which no opposing player reaches base. Thus, the pitcher cannot allow any hits, walks, hit batsmen, or any opposing player to reach base safely for any...
from
Daisuke Yamaiis a professional baseball pitcher for the Chunichi Dragons. In the 2007 Nippon Series he threw eight innings of a combined perfect game with Hitoki Iwase to decide the series against the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters....
to star closer
Hitoki IwaseHitoki Iwase is a professional baseball player from Nishio, Aichi, Japan. He is a closing pitcher.In 2005, he marked 46 saves with a 1.88 ERA, renewing the single-season save record previously set by Kazuhiro Sasaki....
in the deciding Game 5, to become the 2007 Japan Series Champions.
Baseball Hall of Famers (incomplete list)
The following Hall of Famers played and/or managed for the Dragons, and are listed with the years they were with the club.
(1947) (1947-1950, 1954-1958, 1963-1968) (1949-1958) (1960-1986, 1992-1995) (1961-1962, 1963-1966, 1970-1977) (1978-1980) (1984-1986) (1999-2003) (1998-1999)
Trivia
The Dragons were featured in the 1992 movie
Mr. BaseballMr. Baseball is a 1992 American film that starred Tom Selleck and was directed by Fred Schepisi.-Plot:Jack Elliot is an aging American baseball player who's put on the trading block by the New York Yankees in favor of a younger player , and there's only one taker: the Nagoya Chunichi Dragons of...
starring
Tom SelleckThomas William "Tom" Selleck is an American actor, screenwriter and film producer, perhaps best known for his starring role on the television show Magnum, P.I., and for his recurring role as Dr...
. Their logo at the time, which they used for many years, was "Dragons" written in
scriptThe Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. It evolved from the western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, and was initially developed by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language.During the...
which resembled the logo of the
Los Angeles DodgersThe Los Angeles Dodgers are a Major League Baseball team based in Los Angeles, California, USA. The team is in the Western Division of the National League. Established in 1883, the team originated in Brooklyn, New York, where it was known by a number of nicknames before becoming the Brooklyn...
.
The oldest pitcher in NPB to throw a no-hitter is Dragons veteran Masahiro Yamamoto. He performed the feat on September 16, 2006, at 41 years of age. Nearly two years later, Yamamoto also became the oldest pitcher in NPB to throw a complete game on August 4th, 2008, one week short of his 43rd birthday, for his 200th career win.
Daisuke Yamai (8 innings) and Hitoki Iwase (1 inning) combined for the first perfect game in Japan Series history on November 1, 2007. The 1-0 victory came in Game 5, which clinched the series for the Dragons. Though NPB does not officially recognize the perfect game (as NPB only recognizes no-hitters and perfect games by a single pitcher), the perfect game is commonly referred to as the "Perfect Relay".
The team is referenced in
an episode"Six Months Ago" is the tenth episode of the first season of the NBC science fiction drama series Heroes. The entire episode is set six months before the series' premiere, displaying how all the characters initially developed their powers.-Plot:...
of
HeroesHeroes is an American fantasy television drama series created by Tim Kring, which premiered on NBC on September 25, 2006. The series tells the stories of ordinary people who discover superhuman abilities, and how these abilities take effect in the characters' lives...
, where
Hiro Nakamurais a character on the NBC drama Heroes who possesses the ability of space-time manipulation. This means that Hiro is able to alter the flow of time. Previously, his ability allowed him to teleport, stop time, or travel through time, but recent events in the series have prevented him from regaining...
tries to convince that he is from the future by correctly predicting a game in which "the
Swallowsare a professional baseball team in Japan's Central League.The Swallows are named after their corporate owners, the Yakult Corporation. From 1950 to 1965, the team was owned by the former Japanese National Railways and called the Kokutetsu Swallows; the team was then owned by the newspaper Sankei...
will slay the Dragons".
The team is again reference in
Haruki Murakami'sis a Japanese writer and translator. His works of fiction and non-fiction have garnered him critical acclaim, and he is the sixth recipient of the Franz Kafka Prize for his novel Kafka on the Shore...
novel
Kafka on the Shoreis a novel by Japanese author Haruki Murakami . John Updike described it as a "real page-turner, as well as an insistently metaphysical mind-bender"...
by the character Hoshino, who wears a Chunichi Dragons cap throughout the course of the narrative.
In Grand Prix 13 of the
tokusatsuis a Japanese term that describes any live-action film or television drama that usually features superheroes and makes considerable use of special effects ....
Super SentaiThe is the name given to the long running Japanese superhero team genre of shows produced by Toei Company Ltd., Toei Agency and Bandai, and aired by TV Asahi...
series "
Engine Sentai Go-ongeris the title of Toei Company's thirty-second Super Sentai series of Japanese tokusatsu television series. It premiered on February 17, 2008, a week following the finale of Juken Sentai Gekiranger, and ended on February 8, 2009. It aired as part of TV Asahi's 2008 Super Hero Time block alongside...
" (2008), the evil water-polluting monster Hikigane Banki shouts out just before he explodes at the end of the episode that his only regret is not seeing the Chunichi Dragons' winning streak one last time.
External links
Chunichi Dragons official web site