The Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters (北海道日本ハムファイターズ , Hokkaidō Nippon-Hamu Faitāzu) are a Japanese professional baseball team based in Sapporo, Hokkaidō. They compete in the Pacific League of Nippon Professional Baseball, playing the majority of their home games at the Sapporo Dome. 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 with the Central League's Yomiuri Giants near the end of their tenure in the capital city. The franchise has won two Japan Series titles, in 1962 and 2006 and as well as one Asia Series title in 2006.
In 1946, Saburo Yokozawa, manager of the Tokyo Senators in 1936–1937, 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.
For a time, the team was even mockingly nicknamed "Seito" (Bluestockings) after a Japanese feminist magazine of the same name. As the Yomiuri Giants' pet name was "Kyojin", baseball personality Soutaro Suzuki thought that other teams should also have pet names like the Giants, and names such as the Osaka Tigers' alias "Mouko" (fierce tiger), the Senators' "Seito" and the Pacific's "Taihei" (tranquility) began to be used by the press. However, the other teams rejected the use of these pet names, so they were not fully adopted.
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