Japanese HOF Project

[nat]

Here's another player that I've written about before. Tokuji Iida was a power hitting first baseman.

This card is an uncatalogued menko. It's a pillar-style card, however, so it's pretty easy to guess about an issue date: late 40s or maybe 1950 or so. The art is weird. It makes him look like a lizard wearing blush.

Iida played for Nankai from 1947 through 1956, and Kokutestu for the rest of his career. Wondering what happened for him to change teams, I went through the roster of the 1956 Kokutetsu and 1957 Nankai teams, trying to find the player that he was traded for. But no one played for both of those teams. Anyone know what happened such that players changed teams in the 1950s, or, even better, what Iida's story is?

It's true that in the early days the reserve clause wasn't a formal part of player contracts, but after a scandal involving Takehiko Bessho it was included in the standard player contract starting in 1951. So Iida couldn't have just declared himself a free agent the way that Bessho did. I tried looking him up on Japanese Wikipedia but - probably due to my poor Japanese - couldn't find any information.

[nat]

For your baseball-card-observing enjoyment today, I have a new Hiroshi Oshita card. I’ve written about him before. Oshita was a star player in the 40s and 50s. He was Kawakami’s big rival and famous for batting with a blue bat.

I bought this card for two bad reasons and one good one. Bad reasons first. To begin with, my only other Oshita card is a part of an uncut sheet and I wanted an Oshita to put in my binder. The second reason is that I was swayed by auction copy. I was eagerly awaiting the most recent Prestige Collectibles auction, hoping to pick up an interesting pre-war hall of fame menko. They had some, but they were either of hall of famers that I’m not interested in (i.e., managers) and/or out of my price range for Japanese cards.

They did, however, have a copy of this Oshita card. Here is what Prestige says about this card: “Cards from the JBR 109 set are rarely seen. In fact, this is only the second example of this Hiroshi Oshita card that we have ever encountered. The unusual design coupled with extreme rarity makes this an especially desirable second year card of Oshita.” Reading that, my interest was piqued. Just not enough to place the minimum bid. I did not buy my card from Prestige. But I found another copy for sale at exactly the same time as the Prestige auction was running, and I got it for less than half of what their copy sold for. (Although it’s worth noting that their copy is in better shape than mine.) If this card is as rare as they say, it’s got to be an amazing coincidence that two copies came up for sale at the same time.

Now for the good reason to buy it. This is just a really nice card. There are many bromide issues that are just a more-or-less random picture with a caption thrown onto it. But some serious design work went into this one. I especially like the background. Oshita is depicted as a giant standing in the middle of a baseball stadium, with a couple fielders standing behind him. It’s the same idea as on DeLong cards, but it works for DeLong cards (the DeLong Gehrig might just be the greatest baseball card of all time) and it works with this set too. This one has the best design of any of my Japanese cards, and is among my favorite one all around.

The set is JBR 109. I have the old edition of Engel’s vintage card guide (the one distributed as a spiral bound book, not the one on flash drive) and it is not listed there. Given that Prestige only knows of two copies of this card, I assume that it’s an R5.

I made the first post to this thread one year (plus two days) ago, so this sounds like a good time to take stock. I’ve added a few players to my want list that were not originally on it (they are guys that I had characterized as managers but who were inducted as players), so my project is currently 89% complete. (Backsliding a bit because of the added players.) I’ve got cards of 82 hall of famers (and duplicates of several). That works out to about one card every four and a half days. Not bad. Keeping the mailman busy.

[nat]

For the sake of completeness, I thought that I'd post my third (and last) card from the JGA16 set. This is Kazuto Yamamoto (also known as Kazuto Tsuruoka). I've written about him before. He was an infielder for Nankai in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and a manager for many years after that. This card is from 1949; he was Nankai's regular third baseman and a player/manager that year. They decided to list him as a manager on this card.

[Northviewcats]

I have enjoyed reading this thread about Japanese baseball cards. So I picked up a bunch of Japanese cards in the recent Huggins and Scott auction. Several different types and years from 1948 Menkos to 1975-76 Calbees.

I've tried to identify the players by comparing them with advertisements on eBay and sites on the Internet. I thought that I would post a few pictures here to see if anyone can help me identify the players that I cannot find.

I will start with the 1948 JCM2 Baseball Backs. I believe the first card is Takeshi Doigaki, the second Torao Ooka, and the third Sanada ? The other 5 cards I cannot find anything.

Also does anyone know the significance of the numbers on the back of the cards?

I appreciate any help.

Best regards,

Joe

[nat]

The fourth player down is Takehiko Bessho, hall of famer and star pitcher for the Giants.

As near as I can tell the guy below him his Michinori Tsubochi, a hall of fame middle infielder. I'm not 100% sure on this one though.

I think the next guy down is named 'Shibata'. There have been a bunch of Japanese players with that name, but none of them look like a match for a late 1940s pitcher. I might have mis-translated this one.

The next guy is Hideo Shimizu. He was a pitcher, mostly playing for the Dragons. Sometimes he was good, sometimes he wasn't.

The last player is Testuharu Kawakami. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Japanese baseball. He was a star first baseman (nicknamed "The God of Batting") for the Giants, from 1938 to 1958. Probably the second or third greatest Japanese first baseman of all time. After that he became Japan's most successful manager, and the most notable advocate of the extremely harsh training and disciplinary program that Japanese baseball is famous for.

The numbers on the back are menko numbers. They don't mean anything. These are menko cards; it's a game (sort of like pogs) where kids throw their cards at piles of other cards on the ground and tried to flip them over. Keeping ones that they managed to flip over. Menko cards often have stuff on them that they thought kids would like: cartoons, rock-paper-scissors symbols, math problems (apparently menko card makers were a bit optimistic about kids' tastes), and really big numbers.

What menko numbers are useful for, from the perspective of a collector, is that in most sets card backs and card fronts are paired, so if you know which menko number corresponds to which player (Gary Engel's book will tell you for a lot of sets) you can identify players based on their menko numbers. For example, Engel says that the card whose back you displayed is "Kyuei Player (generic)".

Given that you've got one of them, it's worth mentioning that some menko cards - especially early ones - don't have specific players on them, but have representative images of a player on a team.

Thanks for sharing these cards, I'd love to see the rest of the lot that you got!

[nat]

I’ve got a couple more players to write up. Thanks to Sean for this one: I sent him a few spare Calbees and he hooked me up with a couple missing hall of famers. My first baseball card trade since I was ~13, and by far my longest-distance trade.

Senichi Hoshino pitched for the Dragons from 1969 to 1982. He compiled a 146-121 W/L record to go with a 3.60 career ERA. Of his 500 career appearances, slightly more than half of them were in relief. It was fairly common for Japanese starters to pitch out of the bullpen on some of their days off, but this is pretty extreme. In fact, there were some years in which he was almost entirely (or just entirely entirely) a relief pitcher. I’d say that 1974 (the year he took home the Sawamura award) and 1975 were his best years. He posted ERAs of 2.84 and 2.77 in those seasons, against league averages of about 3.50 and 3.30, respectively. That’s not Sandy Koufax exactly, but it’s pretty good. In addition, he was a pretty good hitter. Sort of an all-or-nothing guy at the plate, but there were a few years in which he had a better-than-league-average slugging percentage.

Probably as important to his hall of fame case as his pitching was his career as a manager. Hoshino managed Chunichi from 1987 through 1991, and then again from 1996 through 2001. After that he jumped ship, helming the Tigers for two years. Following his retirement from professional managing he took over the Japanese team in the Asian games (at which they were victorious) and the 2008 Olympics, at which they finished in fourth place. In 2011 he returned to the professional leagues, leading Ratuken through 2014. His teams made it to the Japan Series four times, but only won once. His career record is .529 – good, but not exceptional – but the raw number of wins puts him up amongst the winningest managers in Japanese history. As a manager he was… intense. He was known to beat his players and occasionally hit an umpire.

During his career Hoshino was known as the “Giant Killer”. Probably in part because the Dragons finally stopped the ON-Cannon’s run at nine consecutive championships, but also because he was a vocal critic of the Giants. (Apparently they had agreed to draft him after he graduated from Meiji and they went back on the deal.) The feelings seemed to be mutual: "I also held a burning desire to hit when I faced him because of that spirit of his”, Nagashima is reported to have said.

Finding a comparable American player it tough, if only because so few successful pitchers become managers. Maybe this is the way to do it: imagine a pitcher sort of like Orel Hershiser, and then also make him a reasonably successful manager. Still not perfect, because Hoshino spent so much time in the bullpen and Hershiser’s stretch of dominance was longer. But that’s as close as I’m going to get.

The card is a 1976 Calbee.

[Northviewcats]

Originally Posted by nat

The fourth player down is Takehiko Bessho, hall of famer and star pitcher for the Giants.

As near as I can tell the guy below him his Michinori Tsubochi, a hall of fame middle infielder. I'm not 100% sure on this one though.

I think the next guy down is named 'Shibata'. There have been a bunch of Japanese players with that name, but none of them look like a match for a late 1940s pitcher. I might have mis-translated this one.

The next guy is Hideo Shimizu. He was a pitcher, mostly playing for the Dragons. Sometimes he was good, sometimes he wasn't.

The last player is Testuharu Kawakami. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Japanese baseball. He was a star first baseman (nicknamed "The God of Batting") for the Giants, from 1938 to 1958. Probably the second or third greatest Japanese first baseman of all time. After that he became Japan's most successful manager, and the most notable advocate of the extremely harsh training and disciplinary program that Japanese baseball is famous for.

The numbers on the back are menko numbers. They don't mean anything. These are menko cards; it's a game (sort of like pogs) where kids throw their cards at piles of other cards on the ground and tried to flip them over. Keeping ones that they managed to flip over. Menko cards often have stuff on them that they thought kids would like: cartoons, rock-paper-scissors symbols, math problems (apparently menko card makers were a bit optimistic about kids' tastes), and really big numbers.

What menko numbers are useful for, from the perspective of a collector, is that in most sets card backs and card fronts are paired, so if you know which menko number corresponds to which player (Gary Engel's book will tell you for a lot of sets) you can identify players based on their menko numbers. For example, Engel says that the card whose back you displayed is "Kyuei Player (generic)".

Given that you've got one of them, it's worth mentioning that some menko cards - especially early ones - don't have specific players on them, but have representative images of a player on a team.

Thanks for sharing these cards, I'd love to see the rest of the lot that you got!

Thanks. I really appreciate your help and all of the information. Here are a couple of JCM8 Red Border strip cards. I believe from 1952. The first card is Micho Nishizawa, I don't know the player in the second card.

I will try to post some more of the cards in the lot tomorrow.

Best regards,

Joe

[seanofjapan]

Glad to see the Hoshino made it safe and sound into your collection! As an anti-Giant myself I've always had a soft spot for him and felt bad when he passed on last year.

Maybe he is the equivalent of Orel Hersheiser and Tommy Lasorda combined?