Japan's professional baseball players' association will go on strike for the first time if owners go ahead with a proposed merger of two teams later this week, the group's leader said Monday.
The players decided at a meeting that if their demand to suspend the merger between the Pacific League's Orix BlueWave and Kintetsu Buffaloes is not met, they will refuse to play, said Swallows catcher Atsuya Furuta, who heads the association.
"If they decide to reduce the [number of] baseball teams, we will conduct a strike," Furuta told reporters.
In a preliminary vote that raises the likelihood of the Orix-Kintetsu merger, representatives of the 12 professional baseball teams endorsed the deal on Monday at a meeting called by the commissioner's office, according to Kyodo News agency. The commissioner's office declined to comment.
The baseball owners are widely expected to give final approval to the merger at a meeting Wednesday, which could lead to up to 100 players and team personnel losing their jobs.
It could also spur more mergers, reducing the sport from the current two Central and Pacific leagues of six teams each to just one 10-team league.
The players have said that three conditions -- including a one-year freeze on the proposed merger -- must be met by Friday. If not, they will refuse to play all weekend games for the rest of the month, public broadcaster NHK said.
If the players carry out those plans, it would be the first strike in Japanese baseball history, and would be 10 years after US Major League Baseball players went on strike in 1994.
The owners had held back on merger negotiations after the players sought a court injunction against the plan, but were set to resume after a high court decision earlier Monday.
Presiding Judge Kazuyoshi Harada of the Tokyo High Court upheld a district court ruling allowing the merger to proceed, rejecting an appeal by the players, court spokeswoman Chieko Kamiyama said.
Many owners in the less profitable Pacific League are said to favor a single league in order to cash in on the higher revenues garnered by the Central League's Yomiuri Giants.
The Giants have long been Japan's most popular team and draw large crowds wherever they play in Japan.
But the players have fiercely battled the planned merger, and the plan is also opposed by many fans. Critics argue that there are less drastic ways to cut the pie -- interleague play and the more equitable distribution of television broadcast rights.
On Friday, Yomiuri Giants' former owner, Tsuneo Watanabe, who still wields enormous influence in Japanese baseball, proposed moving his team to the Pacific League. He suggested it would keep a balance between the two leagues should the Pacific League be reduced to four teams as a result of a merger.
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