The Greatest Pennant Race In NPB History
Remembering the 1986 Central League
The Greatest Pennant Race In NPB History
I might be guilty of a click-bait title — or I might not. It’s up to you to decide.
Most people think of the famous 1994 Central League race as the greatest in Japanese baseball history. That was the year the Yomiuri Giants finished the season tied with the Chunichi Dragons — the year that everything hung on the final game of the season. And the final game of the season is probably the most famous regular season game in Japanese baseball history — even though the 6-3 final score was anticlimactic.
But just look at the Central League standings in 1986:
Have you ever seen a season end like that? Have you ever seen the team with the most wins miss out on the postseason entirely because they didn’t have enough tie games?
Then as now, Japanese baseball games end in a tie if there is no winner after 12 innings. It’s amazing that Hiroshima managed 11 such games in a 130 game season — but that’s the way it was.
I came across this for the first time while doing research for my video on the history of R.B.I. Baseball:
And, unfortunately, there aren’t many details out there. In the end, I had to rely on Warren Cromartie’s excellent book Slugging It Out In Japan for a description of what happened.
Cromartie hit a grand slam home run to win a key game near the end of the season, part of an 8 game winning streak by the Giants:
And it seemed that the pennant was certain:
The Giants won 2 of their last 3. Hiroshima, however, managed to win 7 of their last 8:
Could you imagine something like that happening in the United States?
The Lions out-tied the Buffaloes to win the Pacific League pennant in 1988, and the Buffaloes out-tied the Braves to win the P.L. pennant in 1989. In fact, in 1989 the Braves were one percentage point behind the Buffaloes, and the third-place Lions were two percentage points behind.
In 1989, the Buffaloes met the Giants in the Japan Series and the Buffaloes won the first three games only to lose the last four, as Cromartie won his only Japan Championship.
Attending a Carp home game is on my bucket list.