Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters

The is a Japanese professional baseball team based in Kitahiroshima, Hokkaidō. They compete in the Pacific League of Nippon Professional Baseball, playing the majority of their home games at ES CON Field Hokkaido. The Fighters also host a select number of regional home games in cities across Hokkaidō, including Hakodate, Asahikawa, Kushiro, and Obihiro. The team's name comes from its parent organization, Nippon Ham, a major Japanese food-processing company. Founded in 1946, the Fighters called Tokyo home for 58 years, as co-tenants of the Tokyo Dome & Korakuen Stadium with the Central League's Yomiuri Giants near the end of their tenure in the capital city. The franchise has won three Japan Series titles, in 1962, 2006, and, most recently, 2016. Team history Senators and Tokyo eras In 1946, Saburo Yokozawa, manager of the Tokyo Senators in 1936–1937 (and later a prominent umpire), looked to revive the franchise and soon founded the new Senators. He assembled a team of ready and able players like Hiroshi Oshita, Shigeya Iijima and Giichiro Shiraki, but as a newly formed team the Senators faced strict fiscal management and resorted to using hand-me-down uniforms from the Hankyu Railway's pre-war team (who would eventually become the modern-day Orix Buffaloes). Former Japanese statesman Kinkazu Saionji, grandson of the influential Kinmochi Saionji, became the team's owner, and Noboru Oride, borrowing heavily from a Ginza cabaret proprietor, became the team's sponsor. Eventually, trapped by a lack of funds, Yokozawa was forced to resign as the team's manager.