win the Japan Series, as they lost to the Tokyo Yakult Swallows in 5 games in the 2001 Japan Series. The Buffaloes are the second team to make the Japan Series but never win it, the first being the short lived Shochiku Robins, who only made the Japan Series in NPB's inaugural season, losing to the Mainichi Orions (now Chiba Lotte Marines) before folding at the end of the following season and being merged with the Taiyo Whales (now Yokohama DeNA BayStars). Sale and merger In 2004 the team was sold to the Orix Group, the owner of the Orix BlueWave baseball team. The new owner then announced that the financially challenged Buffaloes and BlueWave would be merged into one team, called the Orix Buffaloes, before the start of the 2005 NPB season. At the time, Kintetsu Railway, the Buffaloes' owners, were in ¥1.3 trillion (or $11.2 billion today) in debt. This caused Buffaloes legend Tuffy Rhodes to sign with the Yomiuri Giants as Kintetsu was not able to strike up the multi year deal he wanted. The proposed merger of the teams led to the biggest crisis in the traditional two-league structure in NPB and finally caused the first baseball player strike in Japan. The dispute officially ended after the two groups reached consensus on September 23, 2004. As part of the agreement, the Rakuten Golden Eagles were newly created (at a reduced "entry fee") to keep the former six-team league structure. Other agreements included the leagues adopting interleague play to help the Pacific League gain exposure by playing the more popular Central league teams. All these changes took place before the 2005 season. Players of note Former players Japanese Toshiya Adachi (安達 俊也) Motoyuki Akahori (赤堀 元之) Hiromasa Arai (新井 宏昌) Hideyuki Awano (阿波野 秀幸) Masahiro Doi (土井 正博) Takashi Imoto (井本 隆) Hiroo Ishii (石井 浩郎) Koichi Isobe (磯部 公一) Hisashi Iwakuma (岩隈 久志) Ken Kadokura (門倉 健) Yoshiaki Kanemura (金村 義明) Hideo Koike (小池 秀雄) Tetsuya Matoyama (的山 哲也) Eiji Mizuguchi (水口 栄二) Norihiro Nakamura (中村 紀洋) Masataka Nashida (梨田 昌孝) Hideo Nomo (野茂 英雄) Naoyuki Ohmura (大村 直之) Daijiro Oishi (大石 大二郎) Kazuyoshi Ono (小野 和義) Koji Ota (太田 幸司) Akinori Otsuka (大塚 晶則) Tomotaka Sakaguchi (坂口 智隆) Osamu Sasaki (佐々木 修) Junzo Sekine (関根 潤三) Keishi Suzuki (鈴木 啓示) Takahisa Suzuki (鈴木 貴久) Hiroshi Takamura (高村 祐) Masato Yoshii (吉井 理人) Yuji Yoshioka (吉岡