The Tokyo Yakult Swallows () are a Japanese professional

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball games, bat-and-ball sport played between two team sport, teams of nine players each, taking turns batting (baseball), batting and Fielding (baseball), fielding. The game occurs over the course of several Pitch ...

team competing in

Nippon Professional Baseball is a professional baseball league and the highest level of baseball in Japan. Locally, it is often called , meaning simply ''Professional Baseball''; outside of Japan, NPB is often referred to as "Japanese baseball". The roots of the league ...

Central League The or , also known as the for sponsorship reasons, is one of the two professional baseball leagues that constitute Nippon Professional Baseball in Japan. The winner of the league championship plays against the winner of the Pacific League i ...

. Based in

Shinjuku , officially called Shinjuku City, is a special ward of Tokyo, Japan. It is a major commercial and administrative center, housing the northern half of the busiest railway station in the world ( Shinjuku Station) as well as the Tokyo Metropol ...

, Tokyo, they are one of two professional baseball teams in Tokyo, the other being the

Yomiuri Giants The are a Japanese professional baseball team competing in Nippon Professional Baseball's Central League. Based in Bunkyo, Tokyo, they are one of two professional baseball teams based in Tokyo, the other being the Tokyo Yakult Swallows. They h ...

. They have won nine Central League championships and six Japan Series championships. Since 1964, they have played their home games at

Meiji Jingu Stadium The is a baseball stadium in Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan. It opened in 1926 and holds 37,933 spectators. Property of the Meiji Shrine, it is the home field of the Tokyo Yakult Swallows professional baseball team. It also hosts college baseball, incl ...

. The Swallows are named after their corporate owners,

Yakult Honsha is a Japanese company founded in 1955 to sell its flagship product, Yakult—a beverage made using industrial lactic milk, a bacterial strain discovered by Minoru Shirota in the 1920s. Yakult Honsha is a multinational corporation that sells ...

. From 1950 to 1965, the team was owned by the former

Japanese National Railways The , abbreviated JNR or , was the business entity that operated Japan's national railway network from 1949 to 1987. Network Railways As of June 1, 1949, the date of establishment of JNR, it operated of narrow gauge () railways in all 46 pre ...

(known as Kokutetsu (国鉄) in Japanese) and called the Kokutetsu Swallows; the team was then owned by the newspaper ''

Sankei Shimbun The , name short for , is a daily national newspaper in Japan published by the Sankei Shimbun Co., Ltd, ranking amongst the top five most circulated newspapers in Japan. Together with its English-language paper ''Japan Forward'', the ''Sankei ...

'' from 1965 to 1968 and called the Sankei Atoms. Yakult purchased the team in 1970 and renamed it the Yakult Atoms, before renaming it again as the Yakult Swallows in 1974, and then the Tokyo Yakult Swallows in 2006.

Kokutetsu and Sankei era (1950–1969)

The franchise was established for the first time in 1950 when the team was created by the owners of what was then

(now the privatized

Japan Railways Group The Japan Railways Group, commonly known as the or simply JR, is a network of railway companies in Japan formed after the Corporate spin-off, division and privatization of the government-owned Japanese National Railways (JNR) on April 1, 1987. ...

). The team name was made the Kokutetsu Swallows. The team never finished with a winning record in their entire first decade of the 1950s. In 1961, the team ended up being third in the league for first time in their team history. Konkutetsu chose "Swallows" as JNR had an express railway, which at the time, was the fastest in Japan, which was named Tsubame (or

swallow The swallows, martins, and saw-wings, or Hirundinidae are a family of passerine songbirds found around the world on all continents, including occasionally in Antarctica. Highly adapted to aerial feeding, they have a distinctive appearance. The ...

in English). Other name ideas were railway themed, such as "Service" or "Whistles". Express was also considered, but was put out, due to fears within JNR of the team's name in headlines like "Express crashing" when the team was in a slump, or "Express explodes" when the team began winning a lot. (This similar issue would be the reason why Randy Bass would have his name lengthened in Japanese as ''Bāsu'' (バース, pronounced aːsɯ, due to Hanshin owning a bus line at the time, and bus in Japanese is known as ''basu'' (バス), which would similarly have a negative impact on Hanshin's bus line.) Pitcher

Masaichi Kaneda was a Japanese professional baseball pitcher of Zainichi Korean origin, one of the best-known pitchers in Japanese baseball history, and is the only Japanese pitcher to have won 400 games. He was inducted in the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame i ...

, nicknamed "The Emperor", starred for the team during this era and was the league's most dominant pitcher. Kaneda holds numerous career records in the Japanese leagues. For the Swallows, he went 14 straight seasons with at least 20 wins, led the league in strikeouts 10 times, wins three times, ERA three times, and won the Eiji Sawamura Award three times. Kaneda pitched for the Swallows from 1950 to 1964. In 1965, the team was bought by

and Sankei retained the Swallows name for 1 year before switching their name to the Atoms, as they were one of the leading advocates of nuclear energy and because of

Astro Boy ''Astro Boy'', known in Japan as , is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Osamu Tezuka. It was serialized in Kobunsha's ''Shōnen'' from 1952 to 1968. The 112 chapters were collected into 23 volumes by Akita Shoten. Da ...

, which is known as Mighty Atom in Japan, hence the name of the team. Astro Boy would then be part of the team's logo. Sankei, however, underestimated how costly running a baseball team was, and their ownership would only last 3 seasons.

Yakult era (1970–2005)

In 1970, Sankei Shimbun offloaded the team to

, and Yakult kept the Atoms name for 3 seasons before changing the name, as by 1973,

Mushi Production or Mushi Pro for short, is a Japanese animation studio headquartered in Fujimidai, Nerima, Tokyo, Japan. It previously had a headquarters elsewhere in Nerima. The studio was headed by manga artist Osamu Tezuka. Tezuka started it as a rivalry wi ...

, the creators of Astro Boy, went bankrupt. Originally, Yakult ran a poll to determine the new name, and announced the winning name, Jaguars, at the 1973 All Star break, and the name was supposed to take effect starting the 1974 season. However, amidst fan pressure, Yakult dropped the idea, and reverted to the Swallows name. Sankei kept a minority stake in the team, negotiating a deal that broadcasts all Swallows home games on

Fuji TV JOCX-DTV (channel 8), branded as or , is a Japanese television station that serves the Kantō region as the flagship (broadcasting), flagship station of the Fuji News Network (FNN) and the Fuji Network System (FNS). The station is owned-and- ...

ONE. The team won its first

Japan Series The Japan Series ( , officially the Japan Championship Series, ), also the Nippon Series, is the annual championship series in Nippon Professional Baseball, the top baseball league in Japan. It is a best-of-seven series between the winning cl ...

championship in

1978 Events January * January 1 – Air India Flight 855, a Boeing 747 passenger jet, crashes off the coast of Bombay, killing 213. * January 5 – Bülent Ecevit, of Republican People's Party, CHP, forms the new government of Turkey (42nd ...

. In 1990,

Katsuya Nomura was a Japanese Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) catcher and manager. During his over 26-season playing career mostly spent with the Nankai Hawks (now the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks), he became one of NPB's greatest offensive catchers. He was award ...

became the new manager of Swallows, making drastic changes in the team. Although his first year with the Swallows resulted in them finishing in fifth place, the Swallows improved to third in the league the next year for the first time since 1980. From 1992 to 2001, the team won five Central League championships, prevailing in the Japan Series in 1993, 1995, 1997, and 2001. (Nomura managed the team to the first three of those championships.)

Tokyo Yakult era (2006–present)

In 2006, "Tokyo" was added to the team name, resulting in the team name of Tokyo Yakult Swallows, and the logo of

Tokyo Tokyo, officially the Tokyo Metropolis, is the capital of Japan, capital and List of cities in Japan, most populous city in Japan. With a population of over 14 million in the city proper in 2023, it is List of largest cities, one of the most ...

was added to the uniform for the first time since the Kokutetsu era. The team maintained a

winning percentage In sports, a winning percentage or Copeland score is the fraction of games or matches a team or individual has won. The statistic is commonly used in standings or rankings to compare teams or individuals. It is defined as wins divided by the to ...

of .500, and ended up in third place in the league. The Swallows entered the Climax Series in 2009, and faced the

for the stage 1, which ultimately resulted in a 2–1 victory. Swallows advanced for their first time into stage 2 and faced the defending

champions, the

Chunichi Dragons The are a professional baseball team based in Nagoya, the chief city in the Chūbu region of Japan. The team plays in the Central League of Nippon Professional Baseball. They have won the Central League pennant nine times (most recently in 2011 ...

. The Swallows eventually lost against the Dragons by 2–4, ending their postseason. At the end of season,

Hirotoshi Ishii Hirotoshi Ishii (石井弘寿, born September 14, 1977) is a Japanese baseball player. He currently plays as a relief pitcher for the Tokyo Yakult Swallows. He has repeatedly expressed a desire to play in the majors, and several teams have sho ...

retired from the team. 2011 was an impressive year for the Swallows. In April, the Swallows topped the

and kept 1st place until September when the

climbed to win in the pennant race, ultimately leaving the Swallows in 2nd place in the

. In 2012, Norichika Aoki was posted to the

Milwaukee Brewers The Milwaukee Brewers are an American professional baseball team based in Milwaukee. The Brewers compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (baseball), National League (NL) National League Central, Central Di ...

. On 19 March 2012, the main office was moved to Kita- Aoyama which is located close to the

from Higashi-

Shinbashi , sometimes transliterated Shimbashi, is a district of Minato, Tokyo, Japan. Name Read literally, the characters in Shinbashi mean "new bridge". History The area was the site of a bridge built across the Shiodome River in 1604. The river was l ...

. In 2013, Swallows outfielder

Wladimir Balentien Wladimir Ramon "Coco" Balentien (; born July 2, 1984) is a Curaçaoan- Dutch former professional baseball outfielder. He played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Seattle Mariners and Cincinnati Reds, and in Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB ...

broke the NPB single-season home run record, finishing the season with 60 home runs. This was majorly due to the league secretly introducing a more juiced ball that allowed more home runs to be scored, which caused three-term NPB commissioner Ryozo Kato to resign when the juiced ball was found about. The Swallows finished the 2015 regular season with the Central League's best record and defeated the Yomiuri Giants in the Climax Series to advance to the

, where they lost to the

Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks The are a Japanese professional baseball team based in Fukuoka, Fukuoka Prefecture. They compete in Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) as a member of the Pacific League. Founded on February 22, 1938, as the Nankai Club, being the first Kansai t ...

in five games. The Swallows clinched the 2021 Central League pennant on 26 October 2021 with a 5–1 victory over Yokohama DeNA BayStars, coupled with Hanshin Tigers losing 4-0 to Chunichi Dragons on the same night. The victory clinched the pennant with two games to spare in the regular season. This allowed them to advance to the final stage of the Climax Series, sweeping the Yomiuri Giants, 3-0, to advance to the Japan Series. They eventually won the series against the

Orix Buffaloes The are a Nippon Professional Baseball team formed as a result of the 2004 Nippon Professional Baseball realignment by the merger of the Orix BlueWave of Kobe, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan, and the Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes of Osaka, Osaka Prefecture ...

in six games to win the Japan Series, their first since 2001. They backed it up in 2022 with an 80-59-4 record, winning the 2022 Central League pennant and returning to the

by sweeping the Hanshin Tigers in the

2022 Central League Climax Series The 2022 Central League Climax Series (CLCS) was a set of two consecutive playoff series in Nippon Professional Baseball is a professional baseball league and the highest level of baseball in Japan. Locally, it is often called , meaning s ...

, once again facing the Orix Buffaloes. This time however, the Buffaloes would exact revenge on the Swallows, beating them in the Japan Series in seven games, 4–2–1. Third baseman

Munetaka Murakami is a Japanese professional baseball infielder for the Tokyo Yakult Swallows of Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB). Amateur career Munetaka started playing baseball at five years of age. He entered Kyushū Gakuin Integrated High School where he ...

broke the Japanese-born single season

home run In baseball, a home run (abbreviated HR) is scored when the Baseball (ball), ball is hit in such a way that the batting (baseball), batter is able to circle the bases and reach home plate safe (baseball), safely in one play without any error ( ...

record in 2022 with 56 home runs, surpassing

Sadaharu Oh Sadaharu Oh ( Japanese: , ''Ō Sadaharu''; born May 20, 1940), also known as Wang Chen-chih (), is a Japanese-born Chinese former professional baseball player and manager who is currently the chairman of the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks of N ...

's record of 55 set in 1964.

Gallery

File:2019 神宮 (46809466734).jpg, View of Meiji Jingu Baseball Stadium, the Tokyo Yakult Swallows's home ballpark File:Meiji Jingu Stadium.JPG, Swallows fans holding umbrellas in 2006 File:Gk ryoDSC 93972.jpg, Tetsuto Yamada (2011–present) in 2018 File:Gk ryoIMG 5603.jpg,

in 2018

Current roster

Honoured numbers

*1: Tsutomu Wakamatsu (若松勉) *6:

Shinya Miyamoto is a former professional baseball player from Suita, Osaka, Japan. He played shortstop. He was chosen as the captain of the Japanese olympic baseball team for the 2004 and 2008 Summer Olympics The 2008 Summer Olympics (), officially t ...

(宮本慎也) *8:

Katsuo Osugi was a Japanese professional baseball first baseman in Nippon Professional Baseball. He played for the Toei Flyers / Nittaku Home Flyers / Nippon Ham Fighters from 1965 to 1974 and the Yakult Swallows from 1975 to 1983. He was the Japan Series M ...

(大杉勝男) *27:

Atsuya Furuta Atsuya Furuta (古田敦也, b. August 6, 1965) is a Japanese former baseball player and player-manager for the Tokyo Yakult Swallows professional baseball club in the Nippon Professional Baseball's Central League. Drafted in the 2nd round in ...

(古田敦也) – Player manager in 2006–2007

Former players

(1950–1964) (1952–1964) (1963–1969) (1968–1985) (1970–1985) (1970–1993) (1971–1981) (1972–1989) (1973) (1974–1977) (1976–1978, 1981) (1978–1979) (1983–1995) (1984–1990) (1984–2002) (1985–1994) (1987) (1987–2004) (1987–2006) (1989–1997) (1989) (1990) (1990–2007) (1990–1994) (1991–1992) (1991–2000) (1992–1994) (1993) (1993–2008) (1994–2006) (1995–1996) (1995–1996) (1995–1997) (1995–2002) (1995–2004) (1995–2013) (1996–1999) (1996–2005) (1997–1998) (1998–2009, 2019–2020) (1999–2000) (1999–2002) (2001–2007) (2003–2007) (2003–2021) (2007–2011) (2008–2012) (2008–2012) (2008–2018) (2010-2015) (2011–2019) (2014–2023) (2016) (2016–2022) (2019–2022) (2021–2022) (2010–2023) (2004–2011, 2018–2024) (2021–2024)

MLB players

* Masato Yoshii (1998–2002) *

Kazuhisa Ishii Kazuhisa Ishii (石井一久 ''Ishii Kazuhisa'') (born September 9, 1973) is a Japanese former professional baseball pitcher and manager and general manager. He played in Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) for the Yakult Swallows and Saitama Se ...

(2002–2005) *

Shingo Takatsu Shingo Takatsu (高津臣吾, ''Takatsu Shingo'') (born November 25, 1968) is a Japanese professional baseball pitcher and manager. He had a short stint with the Chicago White Sox where he was the closer for two seasons until struggles closing ...

(2004–2005) * Akinori Iwamura (2007–2010) * Ryota Igarashi (2010–2012) * Norichika Aoki (2012–2017) * Tony Barnette (2016–2019) *

Domingo Santana Domingo Alberto Santana (born August 5, 1992) is a Dominican professional baseball outfielder for the Tokyo Yakult Swallows of Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB). He has previously played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Houston Astros, M ...

(2014-2020) * Jose Osuna (2017-2020)

Managers

* (1950–1953) * (1954–1955) * (1956–1960) * (1961–1962) * (1963) * (1964–1965) * (1966–1967) * (1968–1970) * (1971–1973) * (1974–1976) * (1976–1979) * (1980–1984) * (1984–1986) * (1987–1989) * (1990–1998) * (1999–2005) * (2006–2007) - Player Manager * (2008–2010) * (2011–2014, 2018–2019) * (2015–2017) * (2020–present)

Top starting pitchers

Source:Nippon Professional Baseball League (NPB)

Mascots

The team's mascot is a black swallow with a red face named Tsubakuro (つば九郎). He is known for his feuds with the

mascots. He always wears a batting helmet. Whenever the Swallows wear special home unis, Tsubakuro also wears the same. The number on the back of his uniform is "2896" as opposed to 111/222 used by Buffalo Bull and Buffalo Bell, the Buffaloes' mascots. There is also a female swallow mascot named Tsubami. She wears a skirt and may be intended as Tsubakuro's little sister, just as Bell is Bull's little sister. Unlike her brother, she wears a sports visor. Before Tsubakuro was created, the teams mascots were Yabo and Sue-Chan (ヤー坊 & スーちゃん), who were the team mascots from 1979 to 1994. The team also had a third mascot named Torcuya (トルクーヤ), a swallow who resembles a luchador. He always carries around a parasol and a bottle of Yakult that he carries on his back. The team also had a former mascot named Entaro (燕太郎), a swallow who wore a jersey and his jersey number is 8960. He was replaced by Torcuya in 2014.

Minor League team

The Swallows farm team plays in the Eastern League. The team was founded in 1950.

References

External links

Official website

Tokyo Yakult Swallows official English website
{{Authority control Nippon Professional Baseball teams Baseball teams established in 1950 Baseball teams in Tokyo 1950 establishments in Japan