Ramirez and Tanishige
I've been lax with updates to this thread. Since I last posted, we've had four more people elected to the hall of fame. We'll do two of them today, I'll write up another later. And then I need to track down a Randy Bass card. The only Japanese Bass cards on e-bay right now are autographed with a $70 asking price. Considering that I don't care about the autograph, and that the cards are only worth about a buck or so without it, I'm going to hold off on him for a while.
Motonobu Tanishige was elected to the hall of fame about a month ago. He was already in the meikukai, so I've already done a write up about. You can read it
here.
The long and short of it is that he was a catcher for the Whales, Bay Stars, and Dragons, for many years. He played from age 18 to age 44. He had a couple good seasons in his early 30s, but was mostly a meh hitter. I'm guessing a defensive specialist. Hard to pick a comparable American player. Maybe think, like, Jim Sundberg, but give him a much longer career.
The other player featured in today's post is Alex Ramirez. He's also a meikukai member for whom I've previously done a write up. It's
here. Ramirez is Venezuelan, he played briefly for Cleveland and Pittsburgh, but couldn't stick in the major leagues. While he was with Cleveland he was reasonably good, but those teams were stacked and he couldn't secure a permanent job. The Pirates had an opening in the outfield, but he struggled in his time with Pittsburgh, and wasn't given a second chance. After leaving MLB he played 13 seasons in Japan, mostly with the Swallows and Giants. In Japan he was a big slugger.
In the past few decades the number of American players headed to Japan has increased dramatically. (Up from just, like, three of four back in the 1950s/60s.) A fair number of these guys became stars. But until last year the hall of fame ignored them. Tuffy Rhodes still isn't in, which is kind of bizarre. But the hall has seen fit to elect Ramirez (and Bass), so maybe things are changing.
No new card for Ramirez. But I decided to buy another Tanishige card. This one is from 1992 BBM.