The office of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made a suggestion on May 22 that Japanese professional baseball should expand from its current 12 teams to 16. Prospective locations for four new franchises were listed, and the idea would be to help further economic growth in some of the more rural areas of the country. However, can a 33.3 percent expansion be successful — or would it be a disaster?
As pointed out many times in this column, Japanese baseball has followed the North American major leagues in several aspects of the game, but expansion has not been one of them.
As a youngster, I grew up watching major league baseball with 16 teams; eight each in the American and National Leagues. Then MLB added teams in 1961, 1962, 1969, 1977, 1993 and 1997, reaching the current number of 30 AL and NL franchises. Japanese baseball, meanwhile, has stayed with 12 clubs since the 1950s with little or no mention of expansion.