Editing Nippon Professional Baseball (section)

===Origins===
The first professional baseball team in Japan was founded by media mogul [[Matsutarō Shōriki]] in late 1934 and called the [[Dai Nippon Tokyo Yakyu Kurabu]] ("the Great Japan Tokyo Baseball Club"). After matching up with a team of visiting American All-Stars that included [[Babe Ruth]], [[Jimmie Foxx]], [[Lou Gehrig]], and [[Charlie Gehringer]], the team spent the 1935 season barnstorming in the U.S., winning 93 of 102 games against semi-pro and [[Pacific Coast League]] teams. According to historian Joseph Reaves, "The only minor drawbacks to the team's popularity in the States were their [[kanji]] characters and their cumbersome Japanese name. They rectified both by renaming themselves the [[Tokyo Kyojin]] ['Tokyo Giants'] and adopting a uniform identical to the [[New York Giants (baseball team)|New York Giants]]..."<ref>Reaves, Joseph A. ''Taking in a Game: A History of Baseball in Asia'' (U. of Nebraska Press, 2002), p. 77.</ref>

From 1936 to 1950, [[professional baseball in Japan]] was played under the banner of the [[Japanese Baseball League]] (JBL). The league's dominant team during this period was the [[Tokyo Kyojin]], which won nine league championships, including six in a row from 1938 to 1943. (The team was officially renamed the [[Yomiuri Giants]] in 1947.)