Nippon Professional Baseball used to have three sets of different professional All-Star Events that ran at different points each year. This includes of course the current annual NPB All-Star and Fresh All-Star Games. Two other series of all-star exhibitions ended a few decades ago: the Pacific League All-Star East vs. West, and the Central League All-Star Game. That’s one game each season for each of the NPB’s two pro leagues, both being held separately at the end of the NPB season.
This gallery only features a few of those ultra-rare official Pacific League All-Star Game balls, for a few reasons:
We only have five Pacific ASG balls, but there aren’t many others in existence as far as we know. We’ve only seen balls from 1999-2003 and the final Pacific League ASG in 2006. The 2004 game was canceled and we’ve never seen a 2005 ball. Perhaps there are a few from the mid to late 90s yet to be discovered?
There was also an end-of-year Central League All-Star game as mentioned earlier, that ran from 1979-1999, but we’ve never seen a special game ball for it. Pity.
Final details: The Pacific League All-Star East vs. West competition was held most years at Shizuoka Kusanagi Stadium in Shizuoka, Japan. This event was held 19 times, meaning 19 total Pac. League All-Star games across 25 seasons. So it wasn’t exactly an annual event. It was played on and off from 1982-2006.
