Here's another player that
I've written about before. Tokuji Iida was a power hitting first baseman.
This card is an uncatalogued menko. It's a pillar-style card, however, so it's pretty easy to guess about an issue date: late 40s or maybe 1950 or so. The art is weird. It makes him look like a lizard wearing blush.
Iida played for Nankai from 1947 through 1956, and Kokutestu for the rest of his career. Wondering what happened for him to change teams, I went through the roster of the 1956 Kokutetsu and 1957 Nankai teams, trying to find the player that he was traded for. But no one played for both of those teams. Anyone know what happened such that players changed teams in the 1950s, or, even better, what Iida's story is?
It's true that in the early days the reserve clause wasn't a formal part of player contracts, but after a scandal involving Takehiko Bessho it was included in the standard player contract starting in 1951. So Iida couldn't have just declared himself a free agent the way that Bessho did. I tried looking him up on Japanese Wikipedia but - probably due to my poor Japanese - couldn't find any information.