Teams From Japan and Korea Connected Through Their Parent Company
This blog post is all about how two teams, one from Japan and one from Korea are “related” to each other. Not only by name of the owning company, but also (back in the day) by uniforms.
The two teams we are talking about are the Lotte Giants from Korea and the Chiba Lotte Marines from Japan.
The Chiba Lotte Marines were founded in 1949 as the Mainichi Orions, one of the founding members of the NPB (Pacific League). Unlike of what one may think, the Yomiuri Giants didn’t win the very first Japan Series in 1950. No, it was the Mainichi Orions. In 1958, the team was merged with the Daiei Unions and renamed the Mainichi Daiei Orions. In 1964, the team changed its name into Tokyo Orions and in 1969, Lotte bought the club and renamed it Lotte Orions. Lotte is Japanese candy factory, once founded by a Korean business man. And there the Lotte Giants come around the corner.
This Korean business man returned to Korea and started a business there, which turned into a typical Korean conglomerate which runs businesses in practically everything: hotels, department stores, theme parks, chemicals, etc.
This business man also wanted a baseball team in Korea, so the Lotte Giants were founded in 1975. Unlike the Lotte Orions, the Giants started as an amateur team but turned pro and became part of the KBO in 1982 and moved from Seoul to Busan, where they are located until today.
Why the Lotte Giants were named the Giants and not Orions remains a mystery. There is a theory that the name was inspired by Japan’s most iconic team (back in the day), the Yomiuri Giants.
Since both teams were kind of sister teams,the uniforms were practically the same. Same design, (almost the) same script, and same colours.
But in 2003, the Lotte Giants changed their colours to orange. Nowadays the team has a variety of uniforms and the colours of their main logo have turned from orange to blue and red.
Through the years, the Lotte Orions led a vagabond existence. They moved from the Tokyo area to Sendai. But when they won the Japan Series in 1974, strangely enough, the team held the victory parade in Tokyo which led to disgruntled fans and low attendance figures. Eventually in 1992, the club moved to Chiba where it became the Chiba Lotte Marines. The Marines opted for black as main color and adopted pinstripe home uniforms and black road jerseys. And with that, neither the Lotte Giants nor the Chiba Lotte Marines look alike.
But that is not the end of this blog post yet. Even though the two teams do not have similar looks nowadays, you should take a look at their mascots. Both teams have seagulls as their mascot, and it is clear they are “related.”
The Lotte Giants opted for seagull mascots as the seagull is the official bird of the city of Busan. Why the Marines opted for a seagull is not clear but likely it is because a seagull is a marine bird.
Since both teams are still connected through the owning company, they face each other in exhibition games during spring training.