Japanese HOF Project

[nat]

Most Japanese hall of famers have relatively little written about them in English. Some of them don’t have their own (English) Wikipedia pages. A few of them have almost no internet presence (in English) at all, short of a page of stats at Baseball-Reference and a line of commentary by Jim Albright. Wally Yonamine is an exception to this rule. A huge, glaring exception. Rob Fitts wrote an entire biography of the man. A book. In English.

I haven’t read it.

I will, I swear. But I haven’t. And time constraints being what they are, I don’t know when I will. Rumor has it that you get to read for pleasure when you’re retired.

The point of this series of posts – for me at any rate – is that they give me an excuse to learn about Japanese baseball while collecting the cards. I can say at least something interesting and/or informative about the players that I’ve written up. But I also have cards of players for whom I haven’t done a post yet, and I don’t know much of anything about these guys. What team they’re on. What position they play. That’s about it. So it seems advisable to do an entry for Yonamine now, rather than wait until I’ve read Fitts’ book. Mostly because otherwise I wouldn’t invest the time necessary to learn something about him (albeit less time than reading a book). So I researched this post the same way that I researched the other ones: digging through the nether regions of Google searches, reading Whiting’s articles for the Japan Times, stuff like that. To those that have read Fitts’ book: I apologize in advance. You will probably learn nothing from this post, and might want to skip it. Although if you want to correct me on something, or elaborate on something that I don’t know enough about to address well, please go for it.

We’ll start with this. Wally Yonamine played halfback for the San Francisco 49ers in 1947. That was the extent of his pro-football career. He totaled 114 yards in 12 games (just three starts). I don’t have any idea if that is good or not. I am the (perhaps rare) baseball fanatic who doesn’t care at all about any other sport. If the ball is going towards the other guys’ endzone, that’s good, if not, not. That’s all I know about football. But anyway, Yonamine was a latter day Jim Thorpe, or a forerunner to Bo Jackson. Which is to say, he played both professional baseball and professional football.

His football “career” followed a brief stint in the army. After his discharge he chose to go pro immediately rather than accept a scholarship to Ohio State. A broken wrist following the 1947 season ended his time with the 49ers and dramatically changed the course of his life.

As stories about Japan, and America, and baseball, are wont to do, this one features Lefty O’Doul. At the time he was managing the San Francisco Seals, a top minor league team. Yonamine had returned to his native Hawaii, where O’Doul apparently saw him playing baseball and signed him to a contract. He wasn’t assigned to the Seals though, they farmed him out to Salt Lake City in a class C league. Bottom of the totem pole. He hit .335 in a league that hit .269; I don’t have Yonamine’s other rate stats, but I think it’s safe to say that he utterly dominated the Pioneer League.

O’Doul, of course, had many contacts in Japanese baseball, and recommended Yonamine to Matsutaro Shoriki of the Yomiuri Giants. Yonamine would spend the next 11 seasons playing baseball in Japan, nine of them with the Giants, the last two with the Chunichi Dragons. He was a fearsome baseball player. To modern eyes his stats look like those of an above-average leadoff hitter. And he was a leadoff hitter. But he was also, for his day, a terrific slugger. In 1956 (to pick one season almost at random) the Central League hit 225/274/321. Yonamine hit 338/420/487. That’s 50% higher than average in batting average, 53% higher in on-base percentage, and 66% better in slugging. To do that in the American League in 2018 you would need to hit 375/486/692. Those are a pretty good match for Babe Ruth’s career rates. Of course Ruth did this over a whole career, not just one season, so I’m not saying that Yonamine hit like Babe Ruth. He didn’t. But he did hit really damn well. And he, unlike most big sluggers, was also a fleet-of-foot outfielder. In 1956, the same year he was putting up Ruth’s career batting line, Yonamine tied for third in the league in stolen bases.

Americans are prone to think about Japanese baseball in relation to their own brand of the game. Accordingly Americans tend to remember Yonamine for two things: re-introducing American players into the Japanese game after WWII, and introducing American style play to Japan. I don’t know if this is how he is remember in Japan. My guess is that seven consecutive best-nines and eleven all-star appearances feature more prominently in the Japanese recollections of Yonamine. Nevertheless, no less an authority than Doug Glanville (of Philadelphia Phillies fame) says that Yonamine had the blessing of the allied command to help build understanding between the Japanese and the Americans after the war. One would think that, after the American bombing campaign, there was some building to do. The firebombing of Tokyo killed about 100,000 people, mostly civilians. The bombs that were used were tested on mock-ups of houses. Not military installations, not factories, houses. Killing civilians was the point. Nevertheless, Yonamine says that he experienced relatively little hostility due to being an American. It was more problematic, he said, to play for the always successful, and so much resented, Giants. (I don't know if this was a joke or not. He did get some abuse early on, but he says that, despite occasional comparisons to Jackie Robinson, he didn't go through anything like what Robinson went through.)

Now, I’ll admit to being a little confused by this ground-breaking role for Yonamine. Tadashi Wakabayashi was also Hawaiian, and was playing in Japan immediately after the war. Yonamine wouldn’t arrive for another five years. Of course he’d been playing in Japan since 1936 – maybe Yonamine was the first American to start his Japanese career after the war. Maybe Wakabayashi didn't count since he'd been living there for so long? Anyway, it’s not like there weren’t any other Americans around in pro ball.

As for introducing American-style ball to Japan, it sure seems that he should get credit (or debit, depending on who you talk to) for this. Prior to going over Japanese batters didn’t run out sac bunts, didn’t try to break up double plays. In general, they didn’t play aggressively. Yonamine did, and it worked. And he was soon copied. This didn’t sit well with the old guard (especially Kawakami, Yonamine’s teammate and the man who became his manager and engineered his trade to the Dragons). I wonder what happened the first time he took out an infielder turning a double play. When I played baseball, we ran drills to do that. Shortstops and second basemen also ran drills on how to avoid incoming runners who would go well out of their way to slide into them. Now, one day, shortly after I got old and started playing slow pitch softball, I was on first base when the batter hit a ground ball to the short stop. My old baseball training kicked in, and I executed a perfect take-out slide, smashing into the second baseman. This … didn’t go over well. There was shock and anger and much yelling. And a great deal of spilled beer. I like to imagine it was like that, some day in April of 1951, when Yonamine took out a Tiger second baseman.

After retiring from baseball Yonamine spent many years as a scout, and a few managing the Dragons. He also started a business dealing pearls.

Here’s a very 1980s video biography of Yonamine.

My card is from the JCM 41 set, issued in 1959. I like this card because whoever did the background got carried away with the airbrush and erased his right hand.

[nat]

Minoru Murayama pitched for the Tigers from 1959 to 1972. He compiled a 222-147 record to go with a 2.09 ERA in just over 3000 innings. Although mostly a starter, he also made about 150 relief appearances. Offense was still low in the 1960s, but some of Murayama’s performances nevertheless stand out. As a rookie he posted a 1.19 ERA, and had ERAs below two in four other seasons. Towards the end of his career he was a player/manager, and he took over the Tigers again for a couple seasons in the late 80s. It is, of course, hard to tell which managers are good ones and which are bad ones (isolating their contribution from those of the players is really hard), but suffice it to say that the teams that he managed were unsuccessful.

I always find it curious that league-wide strikeout rates don’t correlate very well with league-wide scoring trends. League ERA in 1962 was 2.63. Taking out errors inflate scoring, but it’s still low (RA9 is 3.09). But the league-wide K/9 figure is just 5.6. Murayama was well above that, but still striking out fewer than seven batters per nine innings. You see the same thing in America. Strikeout rates during the deadball era were very low. Intuitively you’d think that low run scoring environments would have high strikeout rates, since a strikeout can’t do anything to help a team score a run. The answer to this riddle is probably that what makes these environments low scoring ones is that batters are choking up and just putting the ball in play without trying to drive it. If you make sure that you put the ball in play you’re not going to strike out, but you likely will ground out to the shortstop. Anyway, Murayama was better than average at striking out batters, but his numbers, good in context, would be pathetic by today’s standards.

Murayama won the college baseball championship (playing for Kansai). One must feel for players who faced him in college. While pitching for Kansai he posted an ERA of 0.91. When he went pro he was an immediate success. As noted, he had a 1.19 ERA as a rookie, and he also took home the first of three Sawamura Awards. Although Kaneda was clearly the better pitcher overall, at his best Murayama was his rival, and he tied Kaneda’s record of three Sawamura awards. (Although Murayama had to share one. In 1966 he and Tsuneo Horiuchi were declared co-winners.) Oddly, the year in which Murayama won his MVP award (1962) was not one of the years in which he took home a Sawamura (1959, 65, 66).

His 2.09 career ERA mark is a Central League record, as is his career WHIP. The 0.784 WHIP that he posted in 1959 is an all-time single season record, which must have mightily impressed Japanese fantasy baseball players in the late 50s.

Unfortunately, despite being a great pitcher the most famous moment in Murayama’s career was one of failure. In 1959 the Emperor of Japan attended his first baseball game. This was a Big Deal. The Tigers faced off against the Yomiuri Giants. Masaaki Koyama was the Tigers’ starting pitcher, but he was pulled in the seventh. Murayama was brought in to pitch in relief. In the bottom of the ninth, shortly before the Emperor was due to leave the game, Shigeo Nagashima hit one of Murayama’s pitches for a game winning, walk-off home run. He was a rookie, and would go on to have an extremely successful career. But, here’s an indication of how much of a Big Deal this was: sixty years later an American is devoting an entire paragraph to it in a short biography of Murayama. For the record, Murayama claimed that the ball was foul.

Here is what looks to me like a video retrospective on his career. The voice-over is in Japanese, and so are the subtitles, so some guessing is involved on my part. It looks like it include Nagashima’s home run, and then it’s got Murayama striking out Nagashima several times, and a much older Murayama striking out Oh to finish the clip.

My card is from JCM 138, issued in 1960. It's unusual for its era in that it's not standard tobacco-menko sized. Pillar shaped menko were popular in the late 40s to early 50s, but had largely dropped out of the scene (except for this set) by 1960.

[nat]

Yasumitsu Toyoda spent 17 years playing shortstop for Nishitetsu (the Lions) and Kokutetsu/Sankei (the Swallows/Atoms), from 1953 to 1969. He was a power hitter who also had good speed when he was in his early 20s. Superficially he looks like a fast version of Cal Ripken (without the streak), but in context he was actually a better offensive player. He was one hell of a batter, slugging around .500 in leagues that averaged around .300. For a comparable American player I guess I’d go with someone like Alex Rodriguez. Unfortunately, he didn’t last as long as Rodriguez. Although he played until he was 34, Toyoda was basically done as a full-time player at age 29. The last few seasons of his career he played sparingly, apparently often appearing as a pinch hitter, if his game and at bat totals are to be believed. Given the propensity of Japanese stars to go on to have managerial careers, you might think that he few appearances were a result of transitioning into management. But no, Toyoda never managed even a single game. He did serve as a coach in 1968 and 69. Perhaps that accounts for his low number of games played in those seasons. Albright ranks him as Japan’s greatest shortstop, the Lions’ second-greatest player (behind Inao), and the fifteenth greatest Japanese player ever.

There is one area in which the comparison with Rodriguez breaks down rather dramatically: fielding. When he was young Rodriguez was an excellent fielder. (It was a terrible waste of resources for the Yankees to move him to third. Jeter had slow reactions times but good speed. They should have kept Rodriguez at short and moved Jeter to centerfield to take advantage of his greatest strength and hide his greatest weakness. Bernie wasn’t such a great fielder that it would have been much of a loss to move him to left.) Toyoda, on the other hand, was an atrocious fielder. Tokuji Kawasaki, a pitcher for his team, reportedly tried to induce batters to hit the ball anywhere but to short. Nevertheless, he was selected to the best-nine six times, and made the all-star team nine times.

During Toyoda’s time with them the Lions were extraordinarily successful. They won the Japan Series each year from 1956 to 1958, and Toyoda captured the Japan Series MVP in 56.

After retiring Toyoda served as a TV and radio commentator. Word on the internet is that he’s also an author, although I have had trouble finding anything that he wrote. One book comes up on the English Amazon page for him, but the title doesn’t suggest anything about baseball, so I may have the wrong “Yasumitsu Toyoda”. The Japanese Amazon page, as near as I can tell, also doesn’t have any likely hits for either ‘Yasumitsu Toyoda’ or for ‘やすみつ とよだ’. He does appear to have made a cameo in a couple baseball movies, in 1957 and 1977. Not sure of his role (he’s credited as “Batter Toyoda” and “Coach Toyoda”), but he’s got his own IMDB page. And it is the same “Yasumitsu Toyoda”, I checked their birthdays.

The card is a menko from the JCM 69 set. Released in 1959. Someone wrote what looks to me like the hiragana symbol for ‘ya’ on the back. No idea why.

[seanofjapan]

Originally Posted by nat

After retiring Toyoda served as a TV and radio commentator. Word on the internet is that he’s also an author, although I have had trouble finding anything that he wrote.

I don't think he wrote any books, but he had a regular column in the magazine Shukan Baseball and also in the Nihon Keizai Newspaper until 2013, which is probably what that is in reference to.

[nat]

Tetsuharu Kawakami was a first baseman (and briefly a pitcher) for several incarnations of the Giants from 1938 to 1958. Appropriately nicknamed ‘The God of Batting’, Kawakami was a devastating offensive force. In 1939, at the age of 19, he hit .338 in a league that hit .224. That’s 51% better than average, for those keeping score at home. His OBP was 27% better than average, and slugging 71% better. To pull that off in the 2018 American League you would need to hit 377/403/713. (Look at that slugging percentage!) Kawakami’s career rate stats are excellent, his counting totals are good. He cleared 2000 hits comfortably, but managed only 181 home runs. Some years he was hitting nearly 30, others he was in single digits. He seems to have been injured in 1951 (during what would have been his best year) and his power never came back. I wonder if he had a back or wrist injury, something notorious for sapping power and not healing quite right. Albright says that the change resulted from a conversation with Ted Williams, in which Williams suggested aiming for more line drives instead of selling out for so much power. The conversation reportedly happened during 1950, however, and in 51 he was the same power hitter that he had been the previous few years. It wasn’t until after his abbreviated 1951 season that his output changed. During the war (1943-45) Kawakami served in the military, spending his time as a drill sergeant in the Imperial Army. He did not see battle.

During the postwar period Kawakami was Oshita’s rival. Oshita used a bat painted blue. Kawakami painted his red.

As a young man Kawakami was a pitcher. The 1939 Kyojin had a pitching staff that was something else. The old man of the staff, 23 year old Victor Starfin, threw 458 innings. Fellow hall of famer (and 19 year old) Hiroshi Nakao threw 224 innings. Kawakami (also 19 years old) threw about 100. Yasuo Kusunoki filled out the staff, pitching 70 innings at a respectable 2.17 ERA. That’s three hall of famers and a guy with an ERA just a nose above two.

Kawakami is one of the rare men who has two separate compelling cases for the hall of fame. In addition to being a great player, he was the manager of the ON Cannon Yomiuri Giants who won the Japan Series nine consecutive times (and 11 total). He spent fourteen years at the helm of the Giants, from 1961 to 1974. During that time the Giants compiled an astounding .591 winning percentage. By way of comparison, that’s in the same neighborhood as Joe Torre’s winning percentage as manager of the Yankees (.605 over 12 seasons) and Bobby Cox’s winning percentage with the Braves (.576, admittedly over a longer period of time). Kawakami’s managerial style was notoriously brutal, and serves as an embodiment of the traditional Japanese style of training that some recent stars (most notably Hiromitsu Ochiai) rebelled against. Robert Whiting describes Kawakami’s managerial philosophy as combining “Zen Buddhist principles with Machiavellian tactics”. The reference to Zen Buddhism is meant in all seriousness, Kawakami was a devoted practitioner, crediting its influence with his extremely well-developed ability to concentrate (most notably on the ball), and eventually his success as a player. As a manager he demanded that his players be dedicated to their craft with the same intensity that he was dedicated to his.

Kawakami seems to have been a traditionalist in a number of ways. He was one of the chief proponents of the restrained style of ball that dominated the early years of professional Japanese baseball (and, I assume, pre-war amateur baseball as well), and ended up clashing with his teammate, Wally Yonamine, on this issue. When Kawakami finally took over managerial duties, he engineered a trade of Yonamine to the Dragons, but the damage (as he saw it) had been done. Kawakami’s managerial style, and practice regimen, had followers long after he retired* but his style of actually playing baseball did not.

*From an ESPN story about Ichiro Suzuki:
“When Ichiro was 3, [his father Nobuyuki] bought him his first glove, made of shiny leather. It cost two weeks' salary. Nobuyuki taught his son to clean and polish it carefully. It wasn't a toy, he said. It was a tool. ... They went to a nearby park, every day the same: 50 pitches, 200 soft-toss swings and 50 fungo drills. At night, they went to a batting cage near the Nagoya airport and Ichiro would take 250 to 300 swings on a pitching machine. They did this 365 days a year. Sometimes it got so cold that young Ichiro couldn't button his shirt, his fingers too stiff to work.” (Wright Thompson, ESPN the Magazine, April 2018)

I wonder if his nickname is a play on his real name. ‘God’ in Japanese is ‘kami’ (so much I remember from my high school Japanese class). The kanji for ‘Kawakami’ is ‘川上’. The latter symbol means ‘up’, and makes up a part of the word for heaven, superior, and, according to Google, supreme being. Maybe he was nicknamed ‘The God of Batting’ because his name (when pronounced) has the word ‘God’ in it, and (when written) has a part of it? For what it’s worth Wikipedia says that his nickname was spelled ‘打撃の神様’. But anyway, his nickname is a pretty good one in English, it might be even more clever in Japanese.

For a much better biography of Kawakami, see the Japan Times article by Robert Whiting linked above.

This clip is only four seconds long, but here’s Kawakami taking a swing.

As for the card, I don’t know what set it’s from. On the front it looks like lots of “tobacco style” menkos, but it’s blank on the back. Some sets are sort of hybrid menko/bromides. This card probably belongs to one of those. The front has a familiar menko design, and it’s printed on menko-style card stock (my bromides tend to be noticeably thinner). But it doesn’t have a menko number, nor a rock-paper-scissors symbol. So I guess it leans closer to the bromide end of things than the menko end. Anyways, I like it for the solid red background.