Osamu Mihara was a force in Japanese baseball for decades. He rose to prominence with Waseda, and went pro as soon as it was an option. At 24 he was playing for the Giants (then Kyojin). He made his debut in the fall of 1936. All of his professional appearances (as a player) would be at second base, and there would be a total of 108 of them between 1936 and 1938. Although he was a part of the All-Japan team that played the Americans in 1934, once he went pro he was, at least as a batter, nothing special. He never hit a home run, although he did steal a few bases. His batting lines are about what you would expect from Japanese baseball in the 30s. I don’t know what his fielding was like, but whatever reputation he had at the time couldn’t have been from his offensive production.
B-R says of his role in the war only that he was a private in the army. Presumably that’s what interrupted his playing career. When he came back from the war he was 35 and hadn’t played professional baseball in nearly a decade. A return to the field was not in the cards. He seems to have quickly secured a role managing the Giants, however. In 1947 Mihara supplanted Nakajima. The Giants, as usual, were extremely successful, but he didn’t last long as the helm. Yomiuri replaced him briefly with Nakajima again, and then permanently with Shigeru Mizuhara (see the post above this one).
Because I’m looking into it: here’s an aside on Giants managers. The Giants are looking pretty good on this one: Fujimoto, Yokozawa, Nakajima, Mihara, Nakajima again, Mizuhara, Kawakami, Nagashima, Fujita, Oh, back to Fujita, back to Nagashima, Hara, Horiuchi, back to Hara. That is a heck of a lot of hall of famers managing the Giants, although admittedly not all of them are in the hall because of what they did as managers. Yoshinobu Takahashi breaks the streak. Although he was pretty good in his own right, we’ll see. Everyone who managed the Giants from their founding in 1936 through 2015 is in the hall of fame. One starts to wonder in which direction causality runs here. Are the Giants super good at finding gifted managers, or does managing the Giants make a manager look like they’re gifted?
Mihara’s tenure at the head of the Giants was short-lived. Three seasons and then out. He sat out the 1950 season and then took over the top job for Nishitetsu. This is where he really made his name. The Lions were the powerhouse of the Pacific League during the 1950s and Mihara led the team through all of it. Their star third baseman was Futoshi Nakanishi, who married Mihara’s daughter. Probably a good way to ensure that you’ve got a spot on the team, but Nakanishi (a hall of famer in his own right) didn’t need the help. In 1960 he moved on to the Taiyo Whales, leading them to their lone championship. In 1968 he joined the Kintetsu Buffaloes, with whom he had a fair amount of success. And then the last three years (starting in 1971) he managed the Yakult Atoms. They were a bit below 500 while he was there. Mihara was famous for a relatively gentle managing style. For instance, he never hit his players. The fact that this was notable I leave here without comment.
The card today is an uncatalogued bromide. Mihara is on the Giants, so that means the card is from 1947-9, but I can’t pin it down any better than that. He’s talking to Shigeru Chiba, which is neat, two hall of famers on the same card, but it doesn’t help date the card. Chiba played his entire career for the Giants, including the entirety of Mihara’s tenure there. The back of the card has a stamp which, if my high-school Japanese doesn’t fail me, is the kanji for ‘roku’ or ‘five’. It’s common for bromides to have back stamps – usually they indicate that the stamped card was a “winner” which could be redeemed for a prize (usually a bigger card). I’ve never heard of a fifth-place prize (1 through 3 is pretty common), but I guess that’s what it could be.
Mihara is another late addition to my list, so picking up this card doesn’t advance me towards my goal very much. I’m at 91%.