League Championship Series

The League Championship Series (LCS) is the official name for the semifinal round of postseason play in Major League Baseball which has been conducted since 1969. In 1981, and since 1995, the two annual series have matched up the winners of the Division Series, and the winners advance to meet in the World Series

The League Championship Series was promulgated in 1969, when both the National League and the American League increased in size from ten teams to twelve with the addition, via expansion, of the Montreal Expos and San Diego Padres to the former and the Kansas City Royals and Seattle Pilots (now the Milwaukee Brewers of the NL) to the latter. Concomitant with this, both leagues formed Eastern and Western Divisions, the first-place teams from which faced off in the LCS.

Originally, the League Championship Series were best-of-five using the 2–3 format in which the team without home field advantage hosted the first two games and the team with it hosted the remaining game(s), making it impossible for the disadvantage team to win the series at home. It also allowed those teams the unusual luxury of starting a series at home, possibly having home field advantage in a three game series, and a guarantee that they play the maximum number of games possible at home (2).

Kazuki Takahashi

Kazuki Takahashi (高橋 和希, Takahashi Kazuki, also 高橋 一雅, born October 4, 1961) is a Japanese manga artist and game creator, best known for creating Yu-Gi-Oh!.

Career

Takahashi started as a manga artist in 1982. His first work was Tokiō no Tsuma (闘輝王の鷹), published in 1990. One of his earliest works, Tennenshoku Danji Buray (天然色男児BURAY), was published from 1991 to 1992 and lasted two volumes. Takahashi did not find success until 1996, when he created Yu-Gi-Oh!

Takahashi's Yu-Gi-Oh! manga led to the creation of the Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game published by Konami. Originally intended as a one-shot in the manga's episodic introduction of new games, the game was named "Magic and Wizards" as a reference to the card game Magic: The Gathering and its publishing company Wizards of the Coast (the card game's name was changed to "Duel Monsters" in the anime adaptations). However, Shueisha, the publisher of the Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine, received so many letters and fan-mail asking about "Magic and Wizards" that Takahashi decided to extend it.