Okinawa’s First Professional Baseball Team Bankrupts Itself After Less Than Four Years “COVID-19 crisis salary reductions and unpaid salaries” that had surfaced since ’21

The team office of the Ryukyu Blue Oceans, which was aiming to become Okinawa’s first professional baseball team to join the Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB), filed for bankruptcy with the Okinawa Branch of the Naha District Court on March 31, it has been learned. Teikoku Databank announced the filing. The amount of debt is currently under investigation.

According to Teikoku Databank, the Ryukyu Blue Oceans, which was established in July 2007, aims to enter the NPB, with Naoyuki Shimizu, a member of the 2006 World Baseball Classic winning team and ace right fielder for the Chiba Lotte, as manager. The team has acquired several players with first-team experience, including Kyohei Muranaka, a left fielder who played for Yakult, and Hiroki Yoshimura, who played in the middle lineup for DeNA and Softbank. The team was aiming to enter the NPB in 2010, and was aiming for a NPB berth by the end of 2010.

However, due to the spread of the new coronavirus, the company was unable to hold most of the games it had planned since its establishment, and its income was limited to a small amount of sponsorship income and sales of merchandise. FRIDAY Digital discovered that the company had been cutting back on salaries and unpaid wages to players from a very early stage, and published an article about the situation on October 11, 2009. The following is a reproduction of the article as it appeared at the time (some of the content has been altered).

The article recounts (with altered content): “I feel a little sad that the team I was a member of filed for bankruptcy, but considering what the team did to us players at the time, I guess I had no choice. ……”

In October 2021, one of the players who left the baseball team due to his distrust of the team’s management’s handling of nonpayment and reduction of compensation stated, “I think the team did what they did to us players at the time.

What exactly did the team do to us players? On October 1, 2009, the Ryukyu Blue Oceans, Okinawa’s first professional baseball team, announced the free signing of 15 players. Until September of the same year, the team had 27 players, but by October 1, 2009, the team announced the free agency of 21 players. Not a few of the players who signed free-agent contracts left the team on their own after growing distrustful of the team’s executives’ handling of nonpayment and reductions in compensation.

Just two years earlier, in July 2019, what had happened to a new baseball team that had just been established with the aim of joining the Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB)? One player who was a member of the team revealed with a sigh.

One player who was a member of the NPB revealed with a sigh, “Since last year (’20), we have been struggling financially…. We were paid a yearly salary, with the total amount divided by the number of months and paid monthly. However, due to the impact of Corona, our compensation continued to decrease from the middle of last year. This year, we were not paid in May and again in August.

　The unpaid amount for May was paid in June, but it was not the full amount, and the amount for August and later months has not been paid yet. We wanted to ask then team president Kitagawa and manager Shimizu-san about the reason for this, but they could not give us a satisfactory explanation.

Okinawa is home to Okinawa Shogaku and Konan, which have won the Koshien championship in high school baseball, and nine professional baseball teams camp there every spring. In addition, at the beginning of 2020, about six months after the team’s inauguration, SoftBank chairman Sadaharu Oh announced on a news program the “expansion plan to 16 teams” with the aim of increasing baseball enthusiasm by broadening the scope of the market. The newly launched Ryukyu Blue Oceans, with 2006 WBC champion Naoyuki Shimizu as manager, and players such as Muranaka, a left fielder who played for Yakult, and Yoshimura, a center fielder for DeNA and Softbank, were gaining momentum in their quest to join the NPB.

The 26 teams in the independent leagues throughout Japan are organized by local teams and hold their own games. Since 2009, these leagues have been considered professional, just like the NPB, but players are paid only about 100,000 per month and their contracts are for about six months, so financially, they are not well off. However, Ryukyu’s players started out with a 12-month contract at 200,000 yen per month, nearly four times more favorable treatment than other independent league teams, even if they did not have professional baseball experience. However, after February 2008, when the team’s activities began in earnest, the spread of a new type of coronavirus throughout Japan began to take a turn for the worse. One of the players mentioned above continued, “In the beginning, we were not allowed to work, but we had to pay our salaries.

In the beginning, I was grateful because I was paid even when I was not able to work. However, due in part to the Corona virus, my compensation began to decrease in April of last year. Initially, I was notified in advance that ‘the amount will be reduced’ for April and May, but eventually I received a transfer with a reduced amount even though I was not notified, and later I received a document notifying me of the reduction. Even when activities resumed and we were able to practice and play matches, some months resulted in a reduction.”

The new strain of corona would come and go, only to reappear in waves, so Ryukyu anticipated in advance that scheduled games and practices might not be possible depending on the status of the corona infection, and in February 2009, the following memorandum was signed by the players

<In the event that a state of emergency is declared, etc., and the players are completely unable to perform, their compensation for that period shall be reduced by 100%. <In the event that the players are not able to play in the exhibition due to a state of emergency declaration, etc., their remuneration shall be reduced by 50%.

This means that if the entire practice or scheduled games are cancelled due to the spread of the new corona outbreak, the salary will be cut. The team was so thorough that no one would be allowed to participate in spring camp without signing this memorandum of understanding.