Japanese HOF Project

nat · #1 06-18-2020, 01:03 PM

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 · #2 06-25-2020, 10:16 PM

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 · #3 07-03-2020, 05:47 PM

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 · #4 07-16-2020, 10:24 PM

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.

nat · #5 07-23-2020, 09:41 PM

Here's the next batch of pictures of the magazine. As near as I can tell, this is an article about the big sluggers of the day. Several of the pictures are of Kawakami, and one of the cartoons mentions Oshita.

I didn't post all of the pages to the article. Some of them are just text, and I figured those would be of limited interest. But if someone around here who reads Japanese (Sean, Jeff, somebody?) wants to give me a rough idea of what the article is about, that would be great. (I've included close ups of small sections of the text.) And if anyone is interested in reading the whole thing, I'd be happy to give them (or post, or link to) larger images of the entire article.

On another note: I've considered hunting for R5 and uncatalogued menkos. Given that there are so many uncatalogued sets, do you think that there would be any point to this? If there is a limited supply of uncatalogued sets, a type card from any one of them is special. But if a whole bunch of sets are uncatalogued, is the fact that any given one of them is super rare interesting any more? (There is also the issue that this would be an even more niche project than collecting Japanese hall of famers, but that's another matter.)

Next time I'll post the article about the Red Sox.

nat · #6 07-31-2020, 10:14 PM

Since there doesn't seem to be any interest in reading the magazine, I'll just post some of the pictorial highlights. We've got some Japanese players - including Fumio Fujimura and somebody who looks like Eiji Sawamura to me. But we've also got some Americans. Tris Speaker is not who I expected to show up in a Japanese magazine from the 1940s. The article also features Ted Williams, complete with his batting statistics.

seanofjapan · #7 08-03-2020, 10:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nat

Here's the next batch of pictures of the magazine. As near as I can tell, this is an article about the big sluggers of the day. Several of the pictures are of Kawakami, and one of the cartoons mentions Oshita.

I didn't post all of the pages to the article. Some of them are just text, and I figured those would be of limited interest. But if someone around here who reads Japanese (Sean, Jeff, somebody?) wants to give me a rough idea of what the article is about, that would be great. (I've included close ups of small sections of the text.) And if anyone is interested in reading the whole thing, I'd be happy to give them (or post, or link to) larger images of the entire article.

On another note: I've considered hunting for R5 and uncatalogued menkos. Given that there are so many uncatalogued sets, do you think that there would be any point to this? If there is a limited supply of uncatalogued sets, a type card from any one of them is special. But if a whole bunch of sets are uncatalogued, is the fact that any given one of them is super rare interesting any more? (There is also the issue that this would be an even more niche project than collecting Japanese hall of famers, but that's another matter.)

Next time I'll post the article about the Red Sox.

The first article (on the left) is written by Kyouichi Nitta, who played for Keio University in the late 1910s and faced a University of Chicago team that visited Japan. After graduating he studied design in New York, and became a somewhat prominent golfer in Japan in the 1920s. He returned to baseball after the war and served as a coach and manager for a few NPB teams in the 1950s. The article is about the Japanese/American ("Nichibei") way of hitting, so I guess he's talking about American style hitting, though the article is a bit hard to read.

About collecting R5 and uncatalogued menko, that is a cool idea! But I'm not sure how easy it will be in the US to do that, even in Japan they are hard to track down (though Prestige collectibles auctions do get a lot). I'm not sure how many sets are uncatalogued at this point, I've found some but not many (relative to the number that are catalogued). Actually most of hte uncatalogues menko I have are from sets that are in the catalogue, but the specific card isn't.

Jeff Alcorn · #8 08-05-2020, 03:08 AM

Sorry to answer so late, but I do have IDs on the players that you are missing:

Flyers L-R: Giichiro Shiraki P, Hisanori Karita Mgr.-2B, Hiroshi Oshita OF
Pacific: Juzo Sanada P
Nankai: Takehiko Bessho P
Chubu Nippon: Hideo Shimizu P
Braves: L- Rentaro Imanishi, R- Yoshio Tenpo
Tigers (above Ted Williams): Henry (Bozo) Wakabayashi

The Flyers were Tokyu in 1947, then Kyuei in 1948, then back to Tokyu in 1949-53.

Hope this helps,

Jeff

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