Japanese HOF Project

[nat]

Time for another Dragon.

Kenichi Yazawa was a Waseda product who played OF-1B for Chunichi from 1970 to 1986. He joined the Meikyukai in 1985, returned for an encore in 86, and then hung them up, finishing with 2062 hits. Offensively, he looks to have been a strong player, posting a career batting line of 302/368/481. If you just look at his raw numbers it will look like he got better as he got older (something that you almost never see), but he didn’t really. The Central League became more offense-heavy as his career went on. I picked an early and late year from his career at random: in 1974 the league-wide slugging percentage in the Central League was 392, in 1984 it was 425. League OBP also went up (albeit by not quite as much). In baseball, a rising tide lifts most boats, and so it was with Yazawa. That said, he did age well; he lost some batting average towards the end, and missed a number of games, but he was still a productive player when he was on the field. He had started coaching part-time for the Dragons while he was still a player, and there are rumors that Senichi Hoshino, who took over as manager in 1987, was not happy with this arrangement and forced his retirement as a player.

In total, Yazawa was a rookie of the year winner, an 11-time all-star, and two-time batting champion. (He won in 1976 with a 355 mark, and 1980, when he hit 369.)

Post-retirement, Yazawa has kept busy. He was a radio commentator and batting coach for a number of years, and then in the late 1990s he earned a masters degree from Waseda in international business administration. He’s currently a visiting professor at Waseda, teaching “sports theory” (that’s how Google Translate translates it, don’t know what it actually is), and he works with the University’s baseball team. He also seems to be involved in professional baseball (his Japanese Wikipedia page says that he founded a team), although obviously not top-tier pro ball. Maybe there’s Indy ball in Japan?

Here’s (what I assume is) his Instagram.

Allen has a nice interview with Yazawa about sign-stealing in Japan. Apparently it’s a big thing. He dishes dirt on the Carp and cops to it himself.


Meikyukai: Yes – Hall of Fame: No

1978 Yamakatsu. These are nice cards. Like Calbees, there’s no boarder, but unlike Calbees there isn’t any text on the front. Just a full-bleed photo.

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Alex Ramirez played 135 MLB games, about two thirds with the Indians and a few with the Pirates. A teenage amateur free agent from Venezuela, Ramirez showed early power but poor strike zone judgment. After some promise in the Appalachian League as an 18 year old, he struggled in the Sally league at 19, and posted a healthy batting average but otherwise had an unexciting year in Bakersfield at age 20. It was the following season that made him into a real prospect and probably gave him a shot at the majors. As a 21 year old he hit 329/353/519 in AA. Still not much of a walk rate, but if you can hit well over 300, you can made do. At this point he had a sort of poor man’s Vlad Guerrero look to him. The following year he was basically stalled in Buffalo, but he came on strong in 1998, hitting around 300 with a 566 slugging percentage. After that the Indians gave him a shot in the big leagues.

And it didn’t go well. His career batting line is 259/293/437, and he hit a total of 12 home runs. That’s one win below replacement level for his career.

The second act of his career was more successful than the first. Following the 2000 season he signed with Yakult and hit a respectable 280/320/496. Still a bit light on walks, but that’s respectable. Ramirez would play with Yakult through 2007, after which he signed with Yomiuri, and he finished up his career with a couple seasons with Yokohama, and retired in 2013. While in Japan he hit 380 home runs, and posted a career slash line of 301/336/523. It’s hard to identify his best year, as he had a few that were pretty similar, but I’m going to go with 2008. In his first year with the Giants Ramirez hit 45 home runs and drove in 125, to go with a 317/373/617 line.

Ramirez won a pair of MVP awards and was a best-nine selection several times. He is the first (and so far only) Western player to join the Meikyukai, and, in fact, was the second fastest (in terms of games played) to reach 2000 hits. Throughout his career he was frequently among the league leaders in most offensive categories. He is only the third players to manage to collect 200 hits in a season.

Japan has limitations on the number of foreign players that are permitted to appear on a roster and in a single game. (I think the latter is four. Less sure of the former.) After a player accrues eight years of service time, however, they are not counted against this limit, and Ramirez is one of the few Westerners to have reached this milestone, and since retiring he has become a naturalized Japanese citizen. There was apparently some difficulty in this. Naturalizing in Japan involves creating an entry in the Japanese Family Registry, which requires getting official documentation of things like marriages and births for those in the family of the person who is naturalizing. Venezuela is not exactly a well-functioning nation at the moment, so it’s no surprise that there might be some delay in getting paperwork done. But anyway, he did sort it out, and is a Japanese citizen as of 2019.

Ramirez had offers to return to MLB, but declined, saying that he’d rather spend the rest of his career in Japan. He’s probably not the greatest Western Japanese player (I suppose my nomination goes to Tuffy Rhodes, although I admit I haven’t put too much thought into it), but he’s certainly up there. He was a great player, and he really found a home in Japan as well.

He’s managing the BayStars now, and apparently having some success with it. Tatsunari Hara, the hall of fame manager for the Giants, said just before his induction into the hall of fame that he was impressed with Ramirez’ unconventional use of his pitchers, and thinks that Ramirez was doing things as a manager that he would not have been capable of. Ramirez also opened a Puerto Rican restaurant in Tokyo. It seems not to have lasted long, but it’s an interesting idea.

He is known as ‘Rami-chan’. ‘-chan’ is an affectionate suffix usually reserved for girlfriends, little kids, and, apparently, popular athletes.

Here’s his Instagram. Looks like he advertises fancy water, lifts massive weights, and spends lots of time with his kids. (I love the one where they all have matching pajamas.) Granted, what I know about him I learned exclusively from one afternoon on the internet, but he seems like a thoughtful, interesting, and nice guy. I think I'm a fan.

Meikyukai: Yes
Hall of Fame: No, but he might yet make it. He debuted on the 2019 ballot with 40% of the vote. UPDATE: as of 20023, he is a hall of famer.

2006 BBM

[seanofjapan]

I like Ramirez, he's seems like an all round good guy that its easy to cheer for.

The biggest obstacle to naturalizing is not so much the family register as it is giving up your other citizenship. Japan doesn't allow dual citizenship so Ramirez had to give up being Venezualan to become Japanese.

I meet the qualifications to naturalize too, and I'm already recorded on a family register (my wife's), but there is no way I'd ever be interested in giving up my citizenship to become Japanese (much though I like living here). I think only a handful of ballplayers have ever done so.

[nat]

Hideji Kato was a man who knew what to do with a baseball bat. Or, rather, he still is, although he probably does less of it now, considering that he’s 72. But from age 21 to age 39 he played first base in NPB. Most of his career he spent with Hankyu, and then he hopped around for a little while at the end. Although he was a strong batter for the first two thirds of his career, his age 31 season (1979) really stands out. He posted career highs in, well, everything, including 34 home runs and a slash line of 364/437/679. League-wide offense was pretty similar to current MLB, so mentally you don’t really need to adjust those figures. Now, that was his best season, but he was posting OPSs in the 900s through his early 30s. But he aged pretty quickly, dropping into below-average territory by his mid-30s (except for a nice rebound in 1985).

Kato was an 11-time all-star and 5-time member of the best nine at first base. He won his only MVP award in 1974, a championship year for the Braves. Japanese MVP awards, even more than American ones, tend to go to players on championship teams. The Braves would repeat as champions the next season, but Kato would not repeat as MVP winner, despite leading the league in several offensive categories and taking home a gold glove award.

Since retiring Kato has worked as an announcer, and has been coaching for the Fighters. Allen ranks him as Japan’s 40th greatest player. He’s not in the hall of fame, but he wouldn’t be out of place if he were to be elected.

Meikyukai: Yes – Hall of Fame: No

1976 Calbee

[seanofjapan]

Good write up about Kato, I've wondered why he isn't in the HOF already.

This is my favorite card of his, from the same set. For some reason they went with a photograph that cuts half his head off.

[nat]

Kazuyoshi Tatsunami was a fixture on the Dragons from 1988 to 2009. He came up as a shortstop, but switched to second base at age 22. Although he spent time at third and in the outfield also, the vast majority of his time was spent at second base. Offensively, he seems to have been a contact hitter with good control of the strike zone, but he had no other real offensive skills. Limited power: career high of 16 home runs, and was often in the single digits. But his lack of power was not offset of blinding speed or anything; as a rookie he stole 22 bases, but was usually in the single digits there too.

Although he in fact moved around in the line-up a fair bit, he really profiles as a #2 hitter. Managers usually want more speed from the leadoff position than he had, and he clearly didn’t have enough power to hit in the middle of the lineup. But his bat-to-ball skills were quite good, and that’s traditionally something that you look for from the second guy in the order. (Of course Mike Trout hits second, and “limited power” isn’t how I’d describe him, but I think that this is more a reflection of old ways changing than anything.)

Because Tatsunami is also in the hall of fame, this is my second post about him. The first can be found here.

Meikyukai: Yes – Hall of Fame: Yes

1998 Calbee. There are plenty of Calbee’s from 98 and later floating around, cards from 97 and before are harder to find. My impression is that it's even get Calbee cards from the 1970s than from the 80s or early 90s.

[nat]

For what is probably the first time in more than two years, I don't have any cards to post. It's weird not having a stack of cards waiting.

Anyways, that doesn't mean that I have nothing to post.

I picked up a late 1940s copy of Baseball Magazine. (For some reason I strongly believe that it's 1948, but it shows members of the Flyers wearing uniforms that say "Tokyu", a name that they went by in 1947. So maybe my memory is off.) The first few pages are mostly photographs - they're what I've posted today. I've worked out a bit of what it says, so I'll tell you what I know.

The cover has a picture of Mr. Tigers himself, Fumio Fujimura. Someone wrote on it - I can pick out the names of the Giants and the Chunichi Dragons pretty easily, so I'm guessing that all of the graffiti is the names of teams.

The inside cover has ads for sporting equipment.

On page number one we've got three guys from the Tokyu Flyers on the top, and Testuharu Kawakami, Giants first baseman and one of the biggest stars of the day, below. The text says that one of the Flyers is Hiroshi Oshita. I'm not good with faces, but I think it's the guy on the right. Oshita was Japan's premier slugger and Kawakami's main rival. For one of the other guys, it gives the name of a player that I don't recognize (that is, I recognize neither the name nor the player) and says that he's a pitcher. His name consists of two Kanji symbols, the latter is definitely 'moto'. Google Translate tells me that his name should be 'Shiromoto', but near as I can tell no one with that name ever played Japanese ball. But, anyways, he was a pitcher. I don't know who the other Flyer is.

The next page has a portrait of someone that I don't recognize, and then the start of a two-page spread showing Oshita's swing in action.

The following page has another portrait that I don't recognize, and a continuation of the Oshita swing.

Finally, we've got a guy wearing a Chubu Nippon uniform, and a pair of pitchers from the Hankyu Braves. One of them is Rentaro Imanishi. Imanishi was the 22 year old Hankyu ace in 1947. He'd win 21 games with a 1.91 ERA, but it wasn't going to last. His final season as a full-time player was 1949; he's hang around for several much-shortened seasons (one imagines that he was injured), before retiring in 1955. I don't know who the other player is.

Other pages in the magazine have articles (including one about the Boston Red Sox!). I'll post those later.