The Murderers' Row of 1970s Manga: Shonen Jump's Stretch of Simultaneous Long-Running Baseball Series

While baseball is nicknamed "America's Pastime", one could probably make a decent argument that Japan may possibly love the bat-&-ball/safe haven game even more so. I mean, let's face facts... the United States don't have anything close to an equivalent to the Spring & Summer Koshien tournaments, which are literally for high school teams yet are seemingly treated almost as important as the big leagues. Introduced to the country in 1859, baseball would become a school sport in 1872, and by the 1920s there were already professional teams, though it wasn't until the 1930s that the pro league concept truly became a hit with the populace. Naturally, manga about baseball would get made alongside the growth of the sport, and in the late 1940s Kazuo Inoue's Bat Kid would become the first "proper" manga series about baseball. The next evolution in baseball manga would then come about over a decade later across three series, the last two written by the late Kazuya Fukumoto: 1958-1963's Kurikuri Pitcher by Hiroshi Kaizuka, 1961-1962's Chikai no Makyu/The Magic Ball of Promise (drawn by Tetsuya Chiba), & 1963-1965's Kuroi Himitsu Heiki/The Black Secret Weapon (drawn by Daiji Kazumine). All three fully established the concept of the "makyu" to sports manga, allowing for all variety of fantastical pitches to be thrown, while also emphasizing the "pitcher/batter" dichotomy as the dramatic focus of each game. Then, in 1966, Weekly Shonen Magazine saw the debut of Star of the Giants by Ikki Kajiwara (story) & Noboru Kawasaki (art), which would become one of the most iconic & influential sports manga of all time, as well as the very first sports anime, its impact still arguably felt to this very day. Two years after the debut of that megahit would see the debut of Weekly Shonen Jump in 1968... and it's here where things get interesting.

Debuting in (there whereabouts of) August 1968, Shonen Jump's very first issue saw only two serialized manga (Harenchi Gakuen did appear in it as a one-shot, but wouldn't become a proper serialization until Issue #11), and one of those was a baseball manga: Chichi no Tamashii/Father's Soul by Hiroshi Kaizuka, the creator of Kurikuri Pitcher. Detailing the journey of Hayato Nanjo as he makes his way up the school baseball ranks, this was the first long-running serialized manga in Jump history, and outside of some short-lived titles in 1970 (like Animal Kyujo & Namida no Gyakuten Homer) & a single short-lived title in 1971 (Yami no Senshi) Chichi no Tamashii was the only truly notable baseball manga that ran in Weekly Jump at the time. Things would change with Issue #36 of 1971, though, which saw the debut of Samurai Giants, the creation of legendary writer Ikki Kajiwara & relative newbie artist Ko Inoue that told the story of Ban Banba, a teenage pitching prodigy known for his immensely strong & forceful pitches who finds himself scouted to play for the Yomiuri Giants. In fact, Shueisha apparently had an exclusive contract with the Giants that had predated the debut of the magazine, hence why Chichi no Tamashii had actual pro players appear in it & why Samurai Giants saw Ban join the actual team, and there are varying stories regarding why Kodansha was able to get away with Star of the Giants. It's either that Tadasu Nagano (who would become Jump's first Editor in Chief) simply allowed it "for the sake of the manga industry" (according to Shigeo Nishimura, the future third EiC) or Shonen Magazine's third EiC Masaru Uchida personally made a deal with the Giants himself, which then resulted in Shueisha terminating the exclusivity deal (according to author Shigeru Ohno). Regardless, Jump wouldn't have two long-running baseball manga serializing at the same time for long, as Chichi no Tamashii would end just eight issues after Samurai Giants' debut, in Issue #44 of 1971, after 128 weekly chapters across 14 volumes, though it would get a three-volume continuation in Monthly Jump from 1975 to 1977, showing Hayato's time in the pros; as of today only the Weekly Jump run has ever seen re-release, though.

However, Samurai Giants wouldn't see a similar run as Jump's (mostly) isolated long-running baseball manga. No, starting the following year Weekly Shonen Jump would go on a multi-year streak where it would have multiple long-running baseball series running simultaneously, and even if you just count two as enough then it would be a nearly decade-long stretch! Not just that, but from 1972 to (technically) 1978 Jump saw a new baseball manga debut each & every single year, nearly all of which would go on to be simultaneous long-runners!! Was there just something in the water at Shonen Jump back in the 70s? Was the Japanese populace just more obsessed with baseball than usual? (To be fair, the Yomiuri Giants were on a bit of a hot streak during this time) Regardless, let's get taken out to the ball game & see what baseball manga were running simultaneously in Weekly Jump during these years & try to figure out how this "Murderers' Row" fared for the magazine.

The only 1972 cover I could find that
shows both Samurai Giants & Team Astro.

We start with 1972, which saw Samurai Giants continue on in earnest at its most popular time, being a consistent "Top 10" manga (in terms of its placement in each issue of the magazine, at least), alongside the likes of Koya no Shonen Isamu (which outside of a single chapter never went lower than the Top 8 its entire run), Harenchi Gakuen (which would end for good in Issue #41 that year), Toilet Hakase (still relatively early into its seven-year run), & The Gutsy Frog. For the majority of the year Samurai Giants would remain Jump's sole baseball manga at the time, but that would change with Issue #39, which saw the debut of Astro Kyudan/Team Astro. Created by the duo of writer Shiro Tozaki (a former freelance editor for Jump who wound up being the chairman of a temporary workers union, which resulted in him being forced to resign, but his fellow editors secretly rehired him as a manga writer) & artist Norihiro Nakajima, Team Astro told the story of the Astro Supermen, nine people who were all born at the same time & had a baseball-shaped birthmark somewhere on their bodies. This moment was predicted by Eiji Sawamura (considered one of the greatest pitchers in Japanese baseball history), but the only person he had told this to was J. Shuro, a Filipino boy Sawamura had met during his time stationed as a soldier during World War II; the real life Sawaumura died en route to Borneo, via Manilla, as a Japanese soldier during the war at the age of 27. Shuro would then make it his mission in life to find these nine men & create the greatest baseball team ever seen.

A fusion of epic Japanese novel Hakkenden (which is where the "men born at the same time with matching birthmarks" idea came from), Tozaki's wish to reinspire the populace after the failed 1970 Anpo protests, & Nakajima's idea of how "a man should live his life", Team Astro was almost nothing like Samurai Giants in execution. While Ban Banba was no doubt an Ikki Kajiwara lead like most of his others, i.e. hot-blooded, cocky, rambunctious, powerful, & could perform the occasional bit of superhuman feat, the Astro Supermen that J. Shuro accumulated over the course of Team Astro were literal "supermen" who were capable of feats that no baseball player could ever think of achieving in real life. Pitcher Kyuichi Uno would be known for purposefully cracking a wooden bat before going up to plate, so that when he hits the ball the bat would shatter, creating fast-moving objects alongside the ball to confuse anybody who tries to catch the fly ball, while his pitches would send the ball down physics-breaking wild curves & the like. Kyushichi & Kyuhachi (yes, they're all named the equivalent of "Ball 1-9") were twin brothers who were complete opposite in size (Kyushichi was small, while Kyuhachi was a literal giant), which allowed Kyuhachi to literally hurl his brother into the air to allow for ridiculous open-air catches for what would otherwise be guaranteed home runs in real life. Kyuzaburo was an ex-race car driver who loses his sight before joining the team, but has such keen senses that his lack of sight makes no difference. Meanwhile, Kyuzaburo's also considered the first true "pretty boy" character in Jump, creating a common character type still seen to this day. Also, to match the "astro" theme, most of the pitches & swings done by the Astro Supermen would be named after various space-related things, like the Skylab Pitch or the Andromeda Nebula Swing. Team Astro's going to be around for a good portion of this overview, so we'll come back to it a few times.

Therefore, 1972 saw Weekly Shonen Jump with two simultaneously long-running baseball manga.

"Weekly Shonen Jump"? More like
"Weekly Shonen Yakyu"!

Up next is 1973, which saw the true & final end of Jump's first real hit manga, Otoko Ippiki Gaki Daisho (which technically had ended in late 1971 but returned in 1972 after Hiroshi Motomiya's follow up, Musashi, bombed hard), as well as the end of another long-runner in Arashi! San-piki (Satoshi Ikezawa's first hit, but he'd return soon enough), as well as the end of the year-ish (& unfinished) run Mazinger Z had in Jump, which also marked Go Nagai's end with the magazine. Meanwhile, Jump would see some notable debuts in this year as well, namely Barefoot Gen (Keiji Nakazawa's series about life in Japan after the atomic bomb), Hochonin Ajihei (a 70s cooking manga classic), Obora Ichidai (Motomiya's successful Gaki Daisho follow up), & Onna Darake (an comedic drama series about a boy living with his older sisters). Meanwhile, Samurai Giants entered a notable point in its run where Jump seemingly started losing interest in pushing it, as from Winter through Summer of 1973 it became a series readers more consistently saw in the middle of each issue of Jump, if not near the very end. While not quite as notorious as it would later become, it still generally wasn't good to be placed at ends of issues of Jump, even this early in the magazine's life. However, Samurai Giants would receive renewed interest that Fall with the debut of a TV anime adaptation by TMS, which saved the manga from cancellation & allowed it to continue running for a while longer. As for Team Astro, it actually more or less started off as a latter-half-of-magazine title for its first year or so, but by the very end of 1973 it suddenly started catching readers' interest, getting its first color pages (Jump didn't guarantee color pages for every new manga's debut until the late 70s), right in the middle of the manga's second major game that saw the Supermen take on a fictionalized version of the real life Lotte Orions (known as the Chiba Lotte Marines since 1992).

However, while the two current long-runners had ups & down during 1973 they would be joined halfway into the year in Issue #27 with a third baseball manga that would be undeniably popular from the very start: Play Ball. The creation of the late Akio Chiba, younger brother of the legendary Tetsuya Chiba, Play Ball was interesting because it wasn't a wholly original work. Rather, it was a simultaneously-running sequel to Chiba's Monthly Jump series Captain, which had debuted a year prior in 1972. In short, Captain initially told the story of Takao Taniguchi, who transferred over to Sumitani Junior High & would become the captain of his school's baseball team... until Takao graduated to Sumitani High School, though he broke his finger during the game against his prior team at Aoba Academy. However, Chiba came up with an interesting way to follow things up by switching the main character role for Captain over to Taniguchi's teammate Marui, who was now captain of the Junior High team, while Play Ball was created to continue the story of Taniguchi, who eventually decides to join Sumitani High's baseball team after temporarily leaving the sport behind. This does mean that Chiba was now making two baseball manga simultaneously, one for Monthly Jump & one for Weekly Jump, which no doubt was an immense workload for Chiba. But aside from being connected to a popular Monthly Jump manga, Play Ball also was the complete & utter opposite of Samurai Giants' Ikki Kajiwara-written action/drama & Team Astro's utterly bonkers & superpowered feats by being as realistic as possible. This was, quite simply, the tale of lifelike teenagers who had a pure love for the sport & worked hard to create proper camaraderie & become a team that could go all the way to the top, all while the actual baseball games themselves were treated like the real deal; readers could more or less duplicate the events of Play Ball in real life. In the end, readers at the time could have their preference of baseball manga to keep up with: The bombastic tale of someone their age playing in the majors (& later had an anime airing on TV), the sheer spectacle of "supermen" doing things you couldn't see in the majors at all, or the relatable trials & tribulations of kids just like them.

Therefore, 1973 saw Weekly Shonen Jump with three simultaneously long-running baseball manga.

We now move into 1974, which is where Jump's stretch of multiple baseball manga truly began in earnest. First, in terms of overall long-running manga, the start of the year (Issue #2, to be exact) saw the end of Koya no Shonen Isamu (which, with an average "rank" of 2.54, makes it the #2 most consistently "start-of-issue" long-running manga in Jump history, with only One Piece beating it), while later in the year saw the end of a two-year run for Sore Ike Jump de Young Oh! Oh! (a tie-in to a long-running variety show, & the last of its kind that Jump would feature), as well as the initial cancellation of Barefoot Gen (seemingly due more to financial problems stemming from the 1973 oil crisis, though Nakazawa would continue it elsewhere). Meanwhile, Jump still had nine manga that ran throughout the year that had started last year, if not earlier, which included the continued serializations of both Team Astro & Play Ball. For Team Astro 1974 saw the remainder of the Lotte Orions game, as well as the long set up & very start of the game against Team Victory (led by Kyushiro, who wishes to kill his fellow Astro Supermen), a game that would take up almost the entire remainder of the manga's run; yes, this game would take ~1.75 years to fully tell. As for Play Ball, which I have to go off of weekly chapter titles & a general online synopsis, 1974 mostly saw that series focus on Sumitani High's 3rd Round game in the tournament they were competing in, where they took on a properly seeded team in Toujitsu High, with Taniguchi needing to prove that his guts & determination on the pitcher's mound could surpass Toujitsu's knack for strategy.

Meanwhile, 1974 also saw the end of Samurai Giants in Issue #42, after 150 chapters across 16 volumes. The final chapter would go down in a bit of infamy as Ban Banba literally dies on the mound of a heart attack after finally striking out his greatest rival, Mansaku Taihou, due to Ban relying heavily on his Bunshin Makyu/Replica Magic Ball pitch, which added immense strain to his body; notably, this wasn't too far off from how Kajiwara had ended Ashita no Joe a year prior. Where Joe's ending would go on to become an epoch-defining moment that's been referenced & paid homage to so often that every anime fan is familiar with it in some way, though, Samurai Giants' ending (which is not how the anime ends, to my knowledge) has kind of become forgotten over time, outside of its infamy. Crazily enough, though, just one week later in Issue #43 a new baseball manga would debut to replace Samurai Giants... and it also literally had the word "Giants" in its title, due to it referencing the Yomiuri-sponsored team. Written by Jiro Gyu (under the pen name Shiro Saegusa, as he was still also writing Hochonin Ajihei) & drawn by Ryoji Ryuzaki, Honou no Giants/The Blazing Giants went a bit ostentatious with its concept, as it starred Shinobu Honou, son of Yotaro... a literal "baseball ninja" for the Yomiuri Giants who lost his eye due to an accident & had to retire. Blaming the Giants for ruining his father's career, Shinobu steals the secret "Giants Ninja Technique Book" that would completely turn the baseball world upside down if it ever went public & uses its information to get himself onto the team, all with the goal of destroying the Giants from within. This... actually sounds absolutely amazing, and it's kind of astounding that the Yomiuri Giants actually signed off on this being an officially licensed work that used their logo & team members, especially during what was apparently a real low point for the team; kind of a "kick them while their down" scenario. To be fair, Honou no Giants didn't run anywhere near as long as the other titles focused on in this overview, lasting only 56 weekly chapters across seven volumes, but it was heavily pushed by Jump during most of its run (it had 30 chapters, or ~53.5%, serialized with color in some form) & still ran long enough to be within the near bottom of the Top 200 longest-running manga in Jump history; remember, roughly 3/4 of all Jump manga don't even make it to a solid year of serialization.

Therefore, due to Samurai Giants ending a week before Honou no Giants debuted, 1974 saw Weekly Shonen Jump with three simultaneously long-running baseball manga.

The cover to Issue #1 of 1976, as 1・2 no Ahho!!
didn't appear alongside the other ballers much.

It's now the midpoint of the decade, 1975, and Shonen Jump had a solid selection of long-runners still being serialized. Toilet Hakase, The Gutsy Frog, & Hochonin Ajihei were all still going strong, & the very first issue of the year saw the debut of The Circuit Wolf, Satoshi Ikezawa's true smash hit, a title so inundated with chapters featuring color pages across its ~4.5-year run that it still holds the #5 spot for "Most Color Chapters in Jump History", at 82; for those curious, only One Piece (over 200, currently), Kochikame (151), Bleach (117), & Haikyu! (100) surpass it. There was also the debut of Doberman Cop, the Dirty Harry-inspired manga that put both writer Buronson & artist Shinji Hiramatsu on the map & ran for a solid four years. Meanwhile, the year also saw the end of a number of longer titles, namely Manga Drifters (what looked to be Jump's equivalent of something like MAD magazine), Obora Ichidai, & Onna Darake. As for the continuing baseball manga, Team Astro continued on with the match with Team Victory, which eventually went so far as to be declared a literal "deathmatch" between the two sides. At some point Shiro Tozaki actually stopped writing the manga entirely, though I can find actual confirmation if it was because he couldn't take the constant escalation & absurdity or if it was related to his secret rehiring as a writer, but there's no doubt that by this point Tozaki was gone; he would still be credited as writer for copyright purposes, though. In his place would be editor Hiroki Goto helping Norihiro Nakajima ghostwrite the manga, with the two relying heavily on reader surveys to figure out what direction to go in next, & future 3rd EiC Shigeo Nishimura would later cite this as "the origin of how Weekly Shonen Jump would create manga" from then on out. Over in Play Ball, this year saw Taniguchi be promoted to captain after the prior one graduates, while a former rival named Kurahashi eventually joins the team & they prepare for the Spring Tokyo Tournament. Again, these two titles were able to co-exist within Jump due to their sheer difference in style & execution.

As mentioned, Honou no Giants wouldn't last anywhere near as long as its fellow two baseball manga, ending in Issue #47 that year, though Ryoji Ryuzaki would go on to make more baseball manga. In 1976 he'd do the short series Jitsuroku Kyojin-gun Monogatari/The Authentic Story of the Giants (which looks to be a straight-up historical retelling of the Yomiuri Giants' existence up to that point), and in 1978 would get his first iconic work over in Monthly Jump with Dokusare Kyudan/Team Rotten, a baseball manga that relied heavily on historical facts & realism; it'd run until 1982 across 19 volumes. However, four issues before Honou no Giants ended Weekly Jump would see the debut of a new baseball manga, one that would go on to be yet another true long-running series... and help introduce a new form of baseball manga (sort of). Debuting in Issue #43 of 1976, 1・2 no Ahho!! by Kontaro was unlike any other baseball manga seen in Jump up to that point by actually being a gag manga, rather than a serious baseball story. It followed the misadventures of Yujo/Friendship Academy's baseball team, made up only of the Coach & a single player named Shoji Sadaoka (named after the then-rookie player for the Yomiuri Giants), and they pretty much never actually play baseball itself. Rather, the manga was more about how Coach & Shoji would constantly find themselves getting caught up in the events of other people at their school, & sometimes rival schools, with a strong focus on absurdist humor, pop culture parodies, & satire regarding then-current events. In some sense it probably shouldn't really count as a "baseball manga" for this overview, but 1・2 no Ahho!! would go on to have a solid three-year run in Jump (as well as two different revivals decades later), & its style would help lead to the creation of a new form of "gag baseball manga", as while Kontaro had obviously focused more on comedy than baseball with his manga the sport was still central to the manga's identity. Even legendary pro wrestler Giant Baba, who had played for the Giants for five seasons in the 50s, once remarked on how 1・2 no Ahho!!'s recurring "Disposable Giants" segment was actually a topic amongst former Giants players at one point, as I imagine the segment poked fun as former players.

Therefore, even if it was only for five issues near the end of the year, 1975 saw Weekly Shonen Jump with four simultaneously long-running baseball manga.

Up next is 1976, a year that would mark the start of a serialization that, in all likelihood, will never be topped in Jump history. Specifically, Issue #42 marked the debut of Kochikame, Osamu Akimoto's iconic sitcom about beat cop Ryo-san & the various misadventures he & his fellow officers find themselves in, usually due to Ryo-san's own antics (often involving him try to make money). The manga would run without missing a single issue of Jump for 40 years before ending in 2016 after 200 volumes, though it's since continued to make the occasional one-shot reappearance since then, even later getting a 201st volume. Before that point, though, The Gutsy Frog would end its six-year run in Issue #24 after 297 weekly chapters across 27 volumes, and then only two weeks later Issue #26 would see the end of Team Astro after 183 weekly chapters across 20 volumes, bringing an end to the deathmatch with Team Victory & finally uniting all nine members of the Astro Supermen together in the final chapter... & head over to Africa take on a group of Masai warriors in baseball; remember, Team Astro was all sorts of wild. I've seen some feel that Team Astro's finale would also mark the end of the "makyu" era of baseball manga, as from here on out baseball manga would focus primarily on either character drama & realistic games or simply be a gag series, with the old concept of outrageous maneuvers & wild pitches being thrown being mostly forgotten (outside of maybe as a gag once in a while); I mean, to be fair, where else could the makyu concept even go after Team Astro? However, one mangaka named Masami Kurumada (who had worked as an assistant to Ko Inoue during Samurai Giants' serialization) would eventually take Team Astro's makyu-driven ability to "attract" readers & utilize it in a different sport which, in turn, would completely change the way action manga would be handled forever... but we're not at that point quite yet.

Over in Play Ball, 1976 would focus on both Sumitani High's 4th Round match against the powerful Seiryo High & later their match against Shukan High, while 1・2 no Ahho!! continued to be the irreverent baseball-themed comedy it always was. However, unlike the previous year which saw only five weeks where Jump had a quartet of long-running baseball manga, 1976 had a much longer stretch because about 20 issues prior to Team Astro's finale a future legendary mangaka would make his own debut in Jump. Debuting in Combined Issue #5-6, Akutare Giants/Rowdy Giants was the weekly debut for Yoshihiro Takahashi, who around the same time(-ish...maybe?) also made his monthly debut over in Monthly Jump with Shiroi Senshi Yamato, the first manga by Takahashi focused on a subject that he'd become iconically connected with: Dogs. However, Akutare Giants had nothing to do with dogs, instead telling the story of Akira Murase, a fifth-grader who loves to watch the Yomiuri Giants do their training at the Tamagawa Baseball Ground & is the powerful pitcher for his little league Shinmachi Young Giants team, but lacks the ability to properly control said strength. However, after meeting a new rival in Makoto Hiramatsu of the Kawasaki Whales, Akira learns to control his pitches & with his friend Kabo acting as his catcher they aim to take their team as far as they can go. In that regard one might wonder how exactly this one differed from something like Play Ball, but I think it's easy to see even from this general conceptual synopsis that Akio Chiba's manga (aside from being related to Monthly Jump's Captain) was focused on high school baseball with a goal of making it to Koshien, whereas Yoshihiro Takahashi's manga was focused on little league with a goal of kids simply wanting to improve their skills. When combined with Team Astro's (ostensibly) pro-level focus & 1・2 no Ahho!!'s focus on gags, it's plain to see that Shonen Jump knew how to balance things out so that it could offer almost a literal handful of baseball manga that all differed from each other, in some way or another.

Therefore, if only for just shy of half of the year, 1976 saw Weekly Shonen Jump with four simultaneously long-running baseball manga.

As we near the end of Shonen Jump's first full decade, 1977 can maybe be seen as the first year in which Jump truly had itself a killer line-up of titles, as come the end of the year it would be home to 11 manga that all ran for at least two whole years, and of those titles seven of them had already been running for at least a year beforehand. This year marked the debuts of Ring ni Kakero (the boxing manga that Masami Kurumada would eventually transition Team Astro's "makyu" concept into, but at first started off more focused on character drama), Asataro-den (Norihiro Nakajima's solo series after Team Astro), & Hole in One (Jump's original long-running golf manga), while it also saw the ends of both Toilet Hakase in Issue #23 (after 319 weekly chapters, across 30 volumes, a number Kochikame wouldn't surpass until 1983) & Hochonin Ajihei in Issue #45 (after 212 weekly chapters across 23 volumes), both of which having their own legacies. While it was no doubt originally done as a gag, the Metakuso Gang's motto of "Friendship, Effort, Victory" in Toilet Hakase would be adopted as the official motto of Shonen Jump itself & is still used to this day, while Hochonin Ajihei's focus on showcasing how to cook delicious fast food for cheap (even if the sanitary conditions shown weren't necessarily ideal) apparently resulted in many noodle shops in Japan taking the name "Ajihei", in honor of the manga's main character.

Meanwhile, on the baseball front, Play Ball (which became the oldest manga running in Jump at the time after Toilet Hakase & Hochonin Ajihei both ended) continued the game between Sumitani High & Shukan High, followed by Taniguchi's old middle school teammate (& Captain's second main character) Marui finally joining Sumitani High's team, after numerous failed attempts at getting enrolled into the school, as well as the start of the Fall Tournament. As for Akutare Giants, its utter obscurity when compared to Takahashi's later success (the Ginga Series) makes it tough to really figure out how the story of this series goes, but from chapter titles I can see that the manga during 1977 saw Akira & the Young Giants make their way into the semi-finals of the tournament they were a part of, where they had to take on a junior Yankees team's style of "American Baseball" led by their talented pitcher, Riser; the manga was still doing decently enough, but it was slowly losing popularity with readers. Finally, 1・2 no Ahho!! continued on with its gag-focused style, though it also wasn't quite on fire with readers as it once was, as it received fewer color-paged chapters than it did in 1976 (5 vs. 14, and no multi-issue stretches either). However, in the latter half of the year these three baseball manga would be joined by two more, one relatively short-lived & one that'd be a smash hit.

The short one came first, as Issue #33 saw the debut of Big 1 by Masatoshi Suzuki (not to be confused with the 1962 manga of the same name by Fujiko Fujio that ran in Shonen Sunday), but there's very little info to be found about this series, outside of it only lasting 20 chapters before ending in Issue #52, the final issue of 1977; from what I can tell, it's never been collected into proper volumes, either. While I don't know the main character's name, from what info I can find & surmise from he was notably left-handed & seemingly had the dream of hitting 756 home runs, which would be one more than Hank Aaron had made before retiring in 1976, the year prior to Big 1's debut; Barry Bonds would eventually be the one to break that record in 2007. Issue #41, however, marked the debut of Susume!! Pirates, the serialized debut of Hisashi Eguchi, which told the story of the Chiba Pirates... the worst team in the pros, especially after their funding started drying up & their best players all left. However, young promising pitcher Ippei Fuji joins the team, hoping to get them back into shape, but his new teammates simply find Ippei to be easy to poke fun at. I'll get into more detail regarding Susume!! Pirates in the next year, but needless to say it would be a major lynchpin for Jump's baseball manga roster moving forward.

Therefore, 1977 saw Weekly Shonen Jump with four simultaneously long-running baseball manga, FIVE if you want to include Big 1.

Sawayaka Mantaro wasn't exclusively baseball,
but this was absolutely a baseball-focused issue.

Finally, we end the main focus of this overview with 1978, as this year more or less marked the inflection point where Jump's obsession with baseball manga started to truly diminish. In terms of the magazine as a whole this was actually a bit of a quiet year, as the vast majority of the long-running manga going on would continue on past this year, and in regards of notable debuts there were really only three. First was Sawayaka Mantaro in Combined Issue #3-4, which was another of Hiroshi Motomiya's numerous titles for the magazine, this one being a unique multi-sports series, as main character Mantaro Hanami would assist the various sports teams at his school; this included baseball, but I won't count it towards the tally for the year, since it wasn't only baseball. Then Issue #21 saw Keisatsuken Monogatari by Kousuke Miki (story) & Saburo Ishikawa (art), which was a character drama about a boy who grows up alongside a group of police dogs. Finally, for the truly major one, Issue #45 saw the debut of Cobra by Buichi Terasawa, which would go on to be an iconic pulp-influenced sci-fi series in its own right. However, there were two notable finales in this year, as in the same issue that saw the debut of Keisatsuken Monogatari there was the finale of 1・2 no Ahho!!, and while Kontaro would return rather quickly with a follow-up in Loose! Loose!!/Ruse! Ruse!! (I've seen both used) in Issue #42, which saw Coach return as a phantom thief, that new series would be dead by the start of the next year.

Then Issue #31 would see the end of Play Ball, which itself had taken a five-month hiatus during the start of the year, a clear sign that doing both Captain & Play Ball simultaneously was becoming too much for Akio Chiba; in fact, Play Ball's sudden end would be due to his doctor telling him to stop for his own health. Captain would then end one year later in 1979, and while it seems that Chiba had intended to one day return to his iconic baseball manga franchise he would sadly take his own life on September 13, 1984 due to issues relating to bipolar disorder. However, in 2017 Chiba's family & Grand Jump magazine would allow mangaka Cozy Jokura (of Gurazeni fame) to create Play Ball 2, which continued the story where it left off at back in 1978 (though with some alterations from Chiba's outlines), now bringing Captain's third main character, Igarashi, into the Sumitani High story; Jokura even made sure to replicate Akio Chiba's art style as closely as possible. Then, in 2019, Cozy Jokura debuted Captain 2, which likewise continued from where that series stopped, in the middle of fourth main character Shigekazu Kondo's time as the Sumitani Junior High captain, and once Play Ball 2 ended in 2021 (after 12 volumes) all four main characters of Captain were united under one Sumitani High team, with a now-graduated Taniguchi as coach; Captain 2 is still running, as of this overview, with 16 volumes currently out. Meanwhile, though 1・2 no Ahho!! had ended Susume!! Pirates was still running as an undisputed smash hit, and the reason why they were able to co-exist previously was because while Kontaro's series was a gag manga themed around baseball Hisashi Eguchi's series was a baseball manga themed around gags. Therefore, Susume!! Pirates was still very much a "proper" baseball manga, complete with games being played, but by focusing on a terrible team that made for consistent gags & jokes it brought something truly new to the genre, and its template would go on to be replicated by many other gag-themed sports manga for decades to come; even when the manga's popularity started to dwindle over the next two years it was a very slow decline.

Then there was Akutare Giants, which by the start of 1978 had effectively lost almost all of the popularity it once had & come June was seemingly on the verge of cancellation, especially after Akira had finally managed to beat Hiramatsu. However, as revealed by Yoshihiro Takahashi in 2018, an idea Masami Kurumada gave to him would help save Akurate Giants from cancellation: "You Can Turn Your Enemy Into Your Ally". Taking the advice, Takahashi would have Akira, Kabo, & Hiramatsu join forces as part of a new "Giants Jr." team, coached by the Yomiuri Giants themselves, with the goal of winning the Jr. Japan Series & besting the top seed Hanshin Jr. team. The move would revitalize Akurate Giants' popularity with readers & allow it to continue for an additional 1.5 years, resulting in it becoming Takahashi's longest series during his time with Weekly Jump. Despite all that, though, the manga has become mostly forgotten with time, not even having a digital option in Japan. Beyond all of that, there was only one new baseball manga that debuted in Jump in 1978, Rock 'n Roll Baseball by Masamichi Takeichi (story) & Kazuo Miyazaki (art), which debuted in Issue #32 (one issue after Play Ball's finale) & only lasted 11 weekly chapters before ending in Issue #42; it never received a collected release & is probably most notable for starring a team naming itself after Elvis. However, of note for this year would be Issue #37, which was very much baseball-focused as out of the 16 manga featured six were about baseball. There was naturally the trio of Akutare Giants, Susume!! Pirates, & Rock 'n Roll Baseball, but Sawayaka Mantaro was also in the midst of its baseball arc at the time, while there were also two baseball-themed one-shots that appeared, Chibaryo! Tomi Shiro & Kurojishi-Damashi.

Therefore, for at least the first half of the year, 1978 saw Weekly Shonen Jump with four simultaneously long-running baseball manga, but for a single issue later in the year featured FIVE baseball manga, in general, SIX if you count Sawayaka Mantaro.

The 1981 cover on the right may very well be the last one
in Jump history to feature multiple baseball manga at the same time.

After 1978, though, things would starkly change when it came to baseball manga in Jump. While 1979 would see the continued serialization of both Akutare Giants & Susume!! Pirates, they would only be joined at the tail end of the year by Nekkyu Suikoden/Hot Ball Water Margin by Norihiro Nakajima. However, while Nakajima had great success earlier in the decade with Team Astro, Nekkyu Suikoden would only last 11 chapters, running from Issues #42 to #52. 1980 would also see a short stint of three simultaneous baseball manga with the debut of Diamond Star by Satoshi Ikezawa in Combined Issue #3-4... only for Akutare Giants to then end in Issue #9 after 204 weekly chapters across 20 volumes. At the time Akutare Giants was the oldest-running manga in Jump, and with its end that status would move over to Kochikame, a status that it would keep until 2016 when its serialization ended & One Piece would then claim that status (to this very day, so far); to think, there was a time when Jump's oldest running manga was only four years old. Diamond Star would end in Issue #22 after only 18 chapters & was instantly replaced by Super Giants by Kazuo Kaburagi (story) & Tsukasa Tanaka (art), not to be confused with late 70s series Super Kyojin (a manga about microcomputers that ran in Shonen Champion) or the late 50s manga Super Giants, which likewise also only lasted 18 chapters, ending in Issue #39; Super Giants also might possibly be the last Jump manga that was officially affiliated with the Yomiuri Giants. This left Susume!! Pirates as the sole surviving baseball manga in Jump until Issue #43, when Bun no Seishun! by Takeshi Miya debuted... before Susume!! Pirates then ended in Issue #46 after 151 weekly chapters across 11 volumes. Yeah, at this point Jump's Murderers' Row of baseball manga were all now retired.

To be fair, Bun no Seishun! would run all the way until the end of 1981, lasting 60 chapters across six volumes, and it was joined by two other baseball manga (Fine Play by Geki Fujimori [story] & Masato Yamaguchi [art], & Forever Shinji-kun by Katsuyuki Edamatsu), but neither of those were anywhere near as long (10 & 30 chapters, respectively). After that Jump really wouldn't have another long-running baseball manga until late 1986, when Kenritsu Umisora Koko Yakyu Buin Yamashita Taro-kun by Koji Koseki debuted & would run until mid-1990. Ever since then Jump has certainly had the occasional baseball manga success story, namely Yoichi Takahashi's Ace! (1990-1991), Koji Koseki's Pennant Race: Yamada Taichi no Kiseki (1991-1994), Masanori Morita's Rookies (1998-2003), & Shin'ya Suzuki's Mr. Fullswing (2001-2006). However, ever since Mr. Fullswing's finale in 2006 Shonen Jump hasn't really had a baseball manga that wound up being a long-term success, and in fact the magazine has had only a scant handful of attempts at even serializing a baseball manga, in general. Instead, long-running baseball manga more or less became something to find over at Jump's main competitors, like Shonen Sunday with Major (or the variety of baseball manga by Mitsuru Adachi ever since 1978), Shonen Magazine with Ace of Diamond, or Shonen Champion's iconic Dokaben franchise; hell, the late Seiji Mizushima did iconic baseball manga for all three of Jump's rivals. Considering the continued iconicity & love Japan has for baseball to this very day, especially in the wake of multiple Japanese players having moved over to the MLB as outstanding players in their own right, it is surprising that Jump's been without a notable baseball manga for nearly 20 whole years. There's no doubt that the degree of support for the sport will ever reach the Murderers' Row of titles that Jump had in the 70s, but I think it's been more than long enough for Jump to, one day, finally exit its decades-long seventh inning stretch.

Just, you know... let's be reasonable about this. We don't want another 18-inning game, right?