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Old 07-07-2018, 07:47 PM
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Default Morimichi Takagi

Morimichi Takagi had a 21 year career playing for the Dragons. He was a second baseman with some power and some speed, but no on-base skills. Takagi started out as a lead-off type hitter, stealing 50 bases as a 21 year old in 1963, but over time his speed dropped off and power developed. (This is pretty normal as players age.) But he never did develop a lot of power, topping 20 HRs in a season only twice. Seven times he was selected for the best-nine, which is a record (shared with Chiba, more on him in a future post) for second basemen.

After retiring he managed the Dragons on-and-off, posting a total winning percentage of .524, and retiring for (I assume) the last time in 2013.

Here is some video of Takagi. It's been ages since I took Japanese, so I don't know what they're saying (beyond the occasional 'so desu ne', which is a kind of positive-but-non-committal thing you can say), but the Dragons player wearing #1 is Takagi. (The caption underneath the video says that it's about Takagi and somebody else.)

The card is an uncatalogued menko. It has the same size and shape as the "pillar" menkos that were popular in the late 1940s, but this card is obviously much newer than that. (Not least because Takagi didn't start playing until 1960.) The guy I bought it from thinks it's from the 60s; I suppose that's a good guess, if for no other reason than not many baseball menko sets were made in the 1970s.
Attached Images
File Type: jpg takagi.jpg (61.6 KB, 253 views)
File Type: jpg takagi back.jpg (74.9 KB, 245 views)
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