Japanese HOF Project

[nat]

It's great having people around who have actually seen these guys. To me they are names on a baseball card (or a list of stats), but I would certainly have liked to have seen them play.

One more BBM card and then we'll go back to vintage.

This is Tsutomu Ito. He had a very long career, and so managed to accumulate some respectable career numbers, but he really wasn't much of a hitter. A career slash line of 247/319/363 does not strike fear into the heart of opposing pitchers. He was a great defensive catcher, however, and his defense got him sixteen all-star selections. I don't think that someone like this would make the American hall of fame. We do have hall of famers who are there primarily for their defense, but the only one who was consistently below-average as a hitter was Bill Mazeroski, and he (1) was the greatest defensive player ever at his position, (2) had a really famous home run, and (3) was such an embarrassing mistake that they reformed the veteran's committee afterwards to make sure that a mistake like this doesn't happen again.

Also, I don't have any idea what 'affluent nineteen' means.