Japanese HOF Project

[nat]

The Hall of Fame collection is done, but the Meikyukai collection isn’t. So here’s another card.

Motonobu Tanishige was a catcher for Taiyo/Yokohama and Chunichi from 1989 to 2015. That’s 27 years. He appeared in 2843 games as a catcher (and one at 1B). That would best the MLB record pretty easily, as Ivan Rodriguez holds the record with 2427. Impressive, especially considering that the Japanese season is shorter. Once you include a couple hundred games for which B-R doesn’t have positional information (presumably he was a pinch hitter), he set a record for most appearances in Japanese history.

Offensively, eh, some years he was better than average, some years he was worse. But what do you expect, he was a catcher. He had a power spike in his late 20s-early 30s, but most years was in the single digits for home runs. For his career he managed 229 home runs, mostly on the strength of a really long career. Career batting line: 240/333/368. The offense was really just a bonus though, as he was primarily a defensive specialist. Evidence: he set a record for recording 1708 consecutive error-free chances. Probably due to his lack of offense, he was selected to only one best-nine, but he was a 12x all-star, and won a bunch of gold glove awards. The Dragons made him player-manager in 2014, but he retired from playing the following year, and was relieved of managerial duties as well in 2016.

Tanishige’s teams won the Japan Series twice. Here he is hitting a grand slam in 2004.

Meikyukai - Yes : Hall of Fame - No UPDATE: Tanishige was elected to the hall of fame in 2024.

Today's card says it's from the 1993 BBM set. I suppose it's from a gold subset. It's an unusually thick card, with some 3D elements to it.