Japanese HOF Project

nat · #1 05-15-2019, 08:26 PM

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 · #2 06-04-2019, 11:07 AM

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 · #3 06-04-2019, 08:08 PM

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 · #4 06-04-2019, 09:05 PM

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 · #5 06-04-2019, 10:33 PM

Quote:

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 · #6 06-05-2019, 12:41 AM

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?

nat · #7 06-05-2019, 08:36 PM

The other player must be Kawakami. He's wearing a Giants hat, and Kawakami is the only Giant that Engel lists as being in the set. (And Engel definitely knows about this card: it's the one that he uses to illustrate the set.)

Now, the kanji for 'Kawakami' is 川上. If you sort of squint you can kind of make the second character on the card look like 'kami'. The first character looks like the hiragana for 'i', but I guess if it's super stylized it sort of maybe could possibly be 川?

Anyways, the Giants hat is what seals the deal. The baseball players in the set are Nishizawa (whom you've got), Kawakami, Kaoru Betto - who was on the Mainichi Orions at the time, and Fumio Fujimura, who spent his whole career with Osaka. So just by process of elimination it must be Kawakami.

And yeah, I like a Hershiser/Lasorda hybrid as a match for Hoshino. In fact, it works on all sorts of levels. The Dodgers have traditionally been the American Giants' nemesis. Heck, the Dragons' uniforms even look like Dodger blue!

Northviewcats · #8 06-06-2019, 05:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nat

The other player must be Kawakami. He's wearing a Giants hat, and Kawakami is the only Giant that Engel lists as being in the set. (And Engel definitely knows about this card: it's the one that he uses to illustrate the set.)

Now, the kanji for 'Kawakami' is 川上. If you sort of squint you can kind of make the second character on the card look like 'kami'. The first character looks like the hiragana for 'i', but I guess if it's super stylized it sort of maybe could possibly be 川?

Anyways, the Giants hat is what seals the deal. The baseball players in the set are Nishizawa (whom you've got), Kawakami, Kaoru Betto - who was on the Mainichi Orions at the time, and Fumio Fujimura, who spent his whole career with Osaka. So just by process of elimination it must be Kawakami.

And yeah, I like a Hershiser/Lasorda hybrid as a match for Hoshino. In fact, it works on all sorts of levels. The Dodgers have traditionally been the American Giants' nemesis. Heck, the Dragons' uniforms even look like Dodger blue!

Thanks for the information. I appreciate it. You really have a passion for Japanese cards. Here are scans of four other cards that I received in the lot. Huggins and Scott listed them as 1958 JCM23 Playing Card Backs. Not sure if this is correct. The cards are thicker than the other cards and have a glossy finish. I didn't find any matching listings on eBay. Any help identifying the players is appreciated.

Best regards,

Joe

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