The Pacific League (パシフィック・リーグ, Pashifikku Rīgu?) or Pa League (パリーグ, Pa Rīgu?) is one of the two professional baseball leagues constituting Nippon Professional Baseball in Japan. The winner of the league championship competes against the winner in the Central League for the annual Japan Series. It currently consists of six teams from around Japan.
The circuit was founded as the Taiheiyo Baseball Union in 1949 with seven teams, the name changing to its current form in 1980. Designated hitters are used in Pacific League teams' home games, as in the American League in Major League Baseball.
Read more about Pacific League: Current Teams, PL Pennant Winners, Climax Series Winners, Most Valuable Pitcher
Famous quotes containing the words pacific and/or league:
“It is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one’s being alone.... It is not worth the while to go round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
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—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)