Japanese HOF Project

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No new players, but another card that I picked up as a part of a lot, so I thought that I might as well share it.

This is Karou Betto, about whom I've written before. In America Betto is, sadly, probably best known for appearing on one of The Dude's t-shirts in The Big Lebowski. Which, let's be clear, is a fine piece of cinema, but a great player (and manager) like Betto deserves better.

The card is from the JCM 78 set, which was issued in 1949 to commemorate a tour of Japan by the San Francisco Seals. Seals players have 'Seals' written on the back of the card, Japanese players have 'Nippon' (Japan) on the back. I don't know why they decided to include the Japanese players that they did. There are only five of them in the set, so it's not like it's an all-star team that the Seals were playing against or something. Besides Betto it includes:

Takehiko Bessho - an all-time great pitcher
Takeshi Doigaki - a good catcher, but not a hall of famer
Kikuji Hirayama - an outfielder who had been a star before the war, but by 1949 was merely average
Shissho Takesue - a hotshot rookie pitcher who would quickly flame out