The Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles(東北楽天ゴールデンイーグルス,Tōhoku Rakuten Gōruden Īgurusu?) are a baseball team founded in 2004 to begin play in 2005 in the JapanesePacific League. The team was created to fill the void left by the merger of the Orix Blue Wave and the Kintetsu Buffaloes, who merged at the end of the 2004 season due to financial difficulties, leaving the Pacific League with only 5 teams, which causing one biggest crisis in the traditional two-league structure in NPB and finally caused the historical-first baseball player strike in Japan (see This entry for details). The team is based in Sendai, in Miyagi Prefecture. It inaugurated its first season with a 3 – 1 victory over Lotte. The team is owned by the Internet shopping company Rakuten[1].
As of the end of the 2007 season, the team's manager is Katsuya Nomura. He will be Eagle's manager until the end of 2008 season.
10 - This number is worn by both team mascots, Clutch and Clutchina, and is considered the number of the fan, the 'tenth player' on the field. It is the first retired number in NPB involving a fan, inspired by some J-League Teams which retire "12" (However, Pacific League normally have 10 starting members, since DH-rule is used), Chiba Lotte Marines also honors number 26 for similar reason.
Hisashi Iwakuma - P
Ying-Chieh Lin - P
Marcus Gwyn - P
Domingo Guzman - P
Fernando Seguignol - 1B
Aaron Myette
