Teams Profile
| Affiliation | Pacific League |
|---|---|
| Ballpark | Fukuoka PayPay Dome |
| PL Pennants | 19 |
| Japan Series Title | 11 |
Introduction
They compete in Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) as a member of the Pacific League. Founded on February 22, 1938, as the Nankai Club, being the first Kansai team to play in Osaka proper, the team went through a few name changes before settling on Nankai Hawks in 1947, eventually changing ownership in 1988 and moving to Fukuoka in 1989. The team subsequently became known as the Fukuoka Daiei Hawks until 2005, when they were purchased by SoftBank Group, becoming the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks. Since 1993, the Hawks have played at the Fukuoka PayPay Dome, which has gone under several name changes and seats 40,000 people.
The Hawks are often regarded as one of the most successful franchises in Pacific League and the richest in all of baseball under the ownership of SoftBank Group, with the second most wins in all of Japanese sports, only trailing the Yomiuri Giants. The Hawks have played in the Japan Series 20 different times. The club also won two Japanese Baseball League championships in 1946 and 1948 while the team was based in Osaka. The Hawks' 11 Japan Series championships, including seven championships between 2011 and 2020, and 19 Pacific League pennants, with the most recent of both coming in 2020, are second-most in Pacific League and third-most in all of NPB.
For various reasons, the Hawks experienced a 35 year title drought between 1964 and 1999 including a period of 26 years from 1973 to 1999 without a single Japan Series appearance, despite the relocation to Fukuoka. The drought finally ended in 1999, with gradual additions over the previous five years under new manager and home run king Sadaharu Oh. Under Oh (as manager and later executive), Daiei, and later SoftBank, the Hawks embraced internal development and sabremetrics as they eventually formed a baseball dynasty off of a core led by slugger Yuki Yanagita and aces Kodai Senga and Tsuyoshi Wada, capturing Japan Series titles in 2003, 2011, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020, making the Hawks first team since the 1965-1973 Yomiuri Giants to win more than three consecutive championships.
Through 2023, the franchise's all-time record is 5616-5000-402 (.529). The team's manager is Hiroki Kokubo and the organization's acting CEO is Yoshimitsu Goto.
