11 September 2004	Saturday	25 Rajab 1425

TOKYO, Sept 10: Japanese baseball players and team owners huddled on Friday for a second day to avoid a historic strike in the local game, which has already been hit by declining popularity and an exodus of top players to the United States.

The prospect of the two sides reaching a deal looked slim, however, after the owners of the leagues' 12 professional ball clubs agreed this week to push ahead with a planned team merger, which the players had demanded be shelved for a year.

The players' union has decided to strike every weekend in September, beginning Saturday, unless management puts off plans to merge two teams in the six-team Pacific League.

A strike, which would be the first in 70 years of Japanese professional baseball, would almost certainly deal a blow to what was once the nation's favourite sport, and the furore has grabbed headlines even in financial dailies.

Most fans appeared to sympathise with the players, and the media has painted a picture of arrogant owners making decisions behind closed doors, ignoring the voices of the fans and the players, some of whom will lose their jobs due to the merger. Even the head of Japan's central bank, a devoted baseball fan, took a swipe at the ball club owners, saying that running a team was not just purely business. -Reuters