Japanese Baseball League

The Japanese Baseball League was a professional baseball league in Japan that operated from 1936 to 1949, before reorganizing in 1950 as Nippon Professional Baseball. It was established on February 5, 1936, as the Japan Occupational Baseball League with seven teams, three based in Tokyo, two in Osaka and two in Nagoya, and took the name Japanese Baseball League in 1939. Teams were usually named after their corporate owners or sponsors rather than the cities where they played, and they changed names often, partly because of wartime rules against English team names. The league championship went to whichever team had the best record at the end of the season, with no postseason series. Its dominant team was Tokyo Kyojin, renamed the Yomiuri Giants in 1947, which won nine league championships.