Japanese HOF Project

[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.