Card Of The Week January 4

I contributed a trivia question to John Gibson of the Japanese Baseball Weekly podcast last week - what team has won the Nippon Series for the most different owners?  The answer is the Hawks, who have won the Nippon Series for three different owners - Nankai (1959 & 1964), Daiei (1999 & 2003) and Softbank (2011 & 2014).

There's actually an odd amount of symmetry with the Series wins - the Hawks have won two championships under each owner.  Each set of championships under a particular owner were won by the same manager (Nankai - Kazuto Tsuruoka, Daiei - Sadaharu Oh, Softbank - Koji Akiyama).  Half of the Hawks' championships have come from defeating the Tigers - one time for each owner (Nankai in 1964, Daiei in 2003 and Softbank in 2014).  The amount of time between each owner's championship is progressively getting shorter - 5 years for Nankai, 4 years for Daiei and 3 years for Softbank.  So if these trends keep up, the Hawks will not win another championship until they are sold to another owner.  Once they win for their new owner, they'll win again two years later by beating the Tigers.

Here are the "celebration" cards for BBM's Nippon Series sets for the Hawks championships in 1999, 2003 and 2011:

1999 BBM Nippon Series #S59

2003 BBM Nippon Series #60

2011 BBM Nippon Series #S63