Hiroshima Toyo Carp

The Hiroshima Toyo Carp (広島東洋カープ, Hiroshima Tōyō Kāpu) is a professional baseball team based in Hiroshima, Japan. They compete in the Central League of Nippon Professional Baseball. The team is primarily owned by the Matsuda family, led by Hajime Matsuda (松田元, Matsuda Hajime), who is a descendant of Mazda founder Jujiro Matsuda. Mazda is the largest single shareholder (34.2%), which is less than the portion owned by the Matsuda family (about 60%). Because of that, Mazda is not considered the owner firm. However, the company connection is highlighted in the club name; until 1984, Mazda's official name was Toyo Kogyo Co., Ltd. (東洋工業株式会社, Tōyō Kōgyō Kabushiki Gaisha). The Carp are the only one of the 28 Asian professional baseball teams to be majority privately owned. As the Carp was founded only four years after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and had risen to the Central League champion along with the reconstruction of Hiroshima, the team is often referred to as "the symbol of the post-war reconstruction of Hiroshima".

Currently, the team has the longest Japan Series championship drought, as they are the only team to not win the series in the 21st century.

The Nippon Professional Baseball league was planned to be split into two separate leagues in 1949, and Hiroshima prefecture decided to establish a professional baseball team as part of the reconstruction process after the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The team joined the Central League in December 1949 as the Hiroshima Carp. They were named the Carp after the koi fish that climbed the rapids of Hiroshima Castle, chosen to signify Hiroshima's rebirth after the above said bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War 2, and their perseverance in adversity. Said name was put forth by a politician named Noboru Tanigawa, who was the face of Hiroshima's bid. Another name put forward was Greens, after a successful semi-professional team of the same name. Others included Bears, Rainbows, Doves, and morbidly, Atoms. However, all the names were put aside, as Tanigawa was so influential to the team's bid, he always had the final decision.

The team's first home field was a prefecture-funded stadium, and the team's lack of sponsorship made it extremely difficult to recruit players. Manager Hideichi Ishimoto had to personally scout players just to form a starting lineup. The ragtag team ended up in last place from 1950 to 1951.

The team's lack of funding became an even more serious problem in 1951, and it was proposed by NPB that the team be disbanded, or merge with the Taiyo Whales team, which was based in Shimonoseki, Yamaguchi at the time. Hiroshima citizens strongly protested against disbanding the team, and raised the money needed to keep the team through donations.

The Central League had seven teams in 1952, making it complicated to form a coherent schedule for each team. Therefore, it was decided that any team that ended the season with a winning percentage below .300 would be disbanded or merged with another team. This agreement may have targeted the Carp, since the team had been in last place every season. The team won only 37 games in 1952, mostly on the back of ace Ryōhei Hasegawa, but ended with a .316 winning percentage, saving itself from being disbanded. The Shochiku Robins ended the season in last place with a .288 winning percentage, and was merged with the Taiyo Whales. While the Robins "merged" with the Whales, since technically the Robins were jettisoned from NPB and folded, this left most of their star players as free agents; Hiroshima signed most of them as a result.

The team's financial plight only worsened in the following years, and the team could only issue one uniform per player in 1953. Nevertheless, the team continued to play each season. The team moved to the newly constructed Hiroshima Municipal Stadium in central Hiroshima in July 1957. Finally, in 1960, they ended the season above the .500 mark.

In 1968, the Toyo Kogyo company became the team's chief sponsor, and the company name was inserted to become the Hiroshima Toyo Carp. The company was renamed Mazda Motor Corporation in 1984 after the Matsuda family sold their stakes in the company to Ford, but kept their 60% stake in the team, which they hold onto to this very day. The Toyo name remains memorialized in the name of the baseball team, although the team is rarely mentioned by its full name; only in the draft and in official news outlets. The team ended the season above 3rd place for the first time the year corporate sponsorship started, but fell back into last place from 1972 to 1974. The Hiroshima Carp were also the last Japanese team to have a non-Japanese player on its roster (excluding Japanese-Americans). Zoilo Versalles, the 1965 American League MVP, was the first non-Japanese player to play for the Carp.