The first stadium I have ever went to in Japan, was back in 1999 at Yokohama Stadium.
While at the time there was no baseball, there was a school soccer competition taking place. But Yokohama Stadium is known for hosting many outdoor concerts. American artists such as Michael Jackson, Madonna, Tina Turner have performed there.
At the time, my good friend went to college at Kanagawa University and when it came to baseball, it may surprise people but as big as a Yomiuri Giants fan that I am, in 1999, it was around the time I wanted to forget a girl and both of us liked Yomiuri Giants and out of spite, as childish as I was, I ended up becoming a Yokohama Baystars fan at one time.
While I’m not a fan of the Yokohama DeNA Baystars, I do respect the team and their fans. In Japan, DeNA is known for providing mobile portal and e-commerce websites. The company purchased the 66.92% of the team from TBS Holdings back in October 2011. Probably best known to many for their live streaming service, SHOWROOM.
But as far as the Baystars are concerned, I do feel that the Baystars have one of the most loyal fans who are very supportive of their team, win or lose. In fact, the team has not won a Japan Series since 1998 (the last win before that was in 1960 when they were known as Taiyo Whales).
Yokohama Stadium is located in Naka-ku (Naka Ward), Yokohama and opened back in 1978 and has the capacity of 34,046.
For the Central League of the Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) League, it’s one of the three outdoor stadiums next to the Yakult Swallows home stadium (Jingu Stadium) and Hiroshima Carp’s Mazda Zoom-Zoom Stadium Hiroshima.
But it was quite interesting visiting the stadium sporting my Yomiuri Giants gear.
I absolutely love the vibe from the fans at this stadium and while my team lost this day, while I watched Yomiuri Giants vs. Yokohama DeNA Baystars games at Tokyo Stadium before, I achieved one thing in my bucket list was to watch a game between both teams at Yokohama Stadium.
And after all these years, glad I was finally able to accomplish that!
