Japanese HOF Project

[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!

[Northviewcats]

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

[seanofjapan]

The players are:

Masaichi Kaneda
Yoshio Yoshida
Kazuhiro Yamauchi
Shigeo Nagashima

All four are hall of famers!

[nat]

Tsunemi Tsuda pitched for the Hiroshima Carp from 1982 to 1991. Early in his career he was a starting pitcher. As a 21 year old rookie he pitched 166 innings and was not good exactly, but good enough to take home the rookie of the year award. The following year he appeared in 19 games (17 starts) and was actually quite good. In his third year he made ten starts and four relief appearances, totaling only 54 innings, and he went back to being bad. After that he was converted into a relief pitcher. The Japanese Hall of Fame says that his conversion was necessitated by a ‘disrupture of blood in the middle finger’. I don’t have any idea what that is. But anyway, his first season out of the bullpen, 1985, did not go as planned. Tsuda was terrible: 50% worse than league average. His ERA that year was 6.64, and league-wide scoring was about the same as in 2018’s American League, so that doesn’t require any adjustment. His fame really rests on three of the following four seasons. In 1986, 87, and 89 he was terrific.

But then tragedy struck.

In the spring of 1990 he needed surgery because he was suffering from cerebral edema. That is, excess fluid built up in his brain. Cerebral edema can result from traumatic injury, but it can also result from cancer. In Tsuda’s case, it was the latter. He pitched six innings in 1990, one in 1991, and then he died of brain cancer.

The man nicknamed “the flaming stopper” remains as popular as ever. His son wanted to build a museum to his father, and crowd sourced funds for it. His goal was to raise four million yen (something like $40,000) to renovate Tsuda’s old house. The Yomiuri Shimbun (the newspaper that owns the Giants) reports that he hit his initial target in five hours, and eventually raised twenty-six million yen, for a much nicer museum.

The American hall of fame has been known to cut some slack for players who died suddenly and tragically. Ross Youngs comes to mind. Addie Joss didn’t even meet the 10 year requirement, but they put him in anyway. The Japanese voters did the same for Tsuda, but on the merits he’s even less deserving than Youngs or Joss. Joss was legitimately an all-time great, even if his career was short. (For what it’s worth, and yes he was a deadball pitcher, but he still holds the all-time record for WHIP.) Youngs, eh, had half of a hall of fame career. If he’d lived he probably wouldn’t have made it, but he might have. Tsuda is a different animal. Imagine if, instead of retiring at 32, Eric Gagne had died. That would be the American version of Tsuda.

This is a 1987 Calbee card.

[seanofjapan]

Originally Posted by nat

Tsunemi Tsuda pitched for the Hiroshima Carp from 1982 to 1991. Early in his career he was a starting pitcher. As a 21 year old rookie he pitched 166 innings and was not good exactly, but good enough to take home the rookie of the year award. The following year he appeared in 19 games (17 starts) and was actually quite good. In his third year he made ten starts and four relief appearances, totaling only 54 innings, and he went back to being bad. After that he was converted into a relief pitcher. The Japanese Hall of Fame says that his conversion was necessitated by a ‘disrupture of blood in the middle finger’. I don’t have any idea what that is. But anyway, his first season out of the bullpen, 1985, did not go as planned. Tsuda was terrible: 50% worse than league average. His ERA that year was 6.64, and league-wide scoring was about the same as in 2018’s American League, so that doesn’t require any adjustment. His fame really rests on three of the following four seasons. In 1986, 87, and 89 he was terrific.

But then tragedy struck.

In the spring of 1990 he needed surgery because he was suffering from cerebral edema. That is, excess fluid built up in his brain. Cerebral edema can result from traumatic injury, but it can also result from cancer. In Tsuda’s case, it was the latter. He pitched six innings in 1990, one in 1991, and then he died of brain cancer.

The man nicknamed “the flaming stopper” remains as popular as ever. His son wanted to build a museum to his father, and crowd sourced funds for it. His goal was to raise four million yen (something like $40,000) to renovate Tsuda’s old house. The Yomiuri Shimbun (the newspaper that owns the Giants) reports that he hit his initial target in five hours, and eventually raised twenty-six million yen, for a much nicer museum.

The American hall of fame has been known to cut some slack for players who died suddenly and tragically. Ross Youngs comes to mind. Addie Joss didn’t even meet the 10 year requirement, but they put him in anyway. The Japanese voters did the same for Tsuda, but on the merits he’s even less deserving than Youngs or Joss. Joss was legitimately an all-time great, even if his career was short. (For what it’s worth, and yes he was a deadball pitcher, but he still holds the all-time record for WHIP.) Youngs, eh, had half of a hall of fame career. If he’d lived he probably wouldn’t have made it, but he might have. Tsuda is a different animal. Imagine if, instead of retiring at 32, Eric Gagne had died. That would be the American version of Tsuda.

This is a 1987 Calbee card.

Yeah, he really is one of the oddest HOF inclusions based on career stats and accomplishments, he isn't really even a Hall of Very Gooder by most standards.

His tragic story really drives interest in him. Even his cards sell for the same prices as super stars with way more impressive resumes.

[nat]

Hiroshi Gondo pitched for the Chunichi from 1961 to 1964, transitioned to a position player for a few seasons, and tried to make a comeback on the mound in 1968. To say that he was abused by the Dragons doesn’t even begin to cover it. As a 22 year old rookie he pitched 429 innings, starting 44 games (including 32 complete games) and finishing 24 games. He appeared in 69 games that season, so I guess he pitched in middle relief once. It was an amazing year. He won 35 games with an ERA of 1.70 against a league mark of 2.68. That would be like having a 2.69 ERA in last year’s American League. So, a good ERA over an unthinkably large number of innings. That year he took home both the rookie of the year award and the Sawamura Award, and led the Central League in practically everything. The following year he won 30 games over 362 innings (with a 2.33 ERA), and then things started going downhill. In 1963 Gondo’s ERA jumped a run-and-a-half while his innings pitched declined by about 1/3. In 1964 his ERA was over four and he only pitched about 100 innings. And that was that.

After blowing out his arm, Gondo stuck around for a few years playing SS and 3B. I don’t know what his defense was like, but, as befits a pitcher, he was not a good batter. The Dragons didn’t give him a starting gig; from his stats it looks like he was a bench player, the kind of guy who pinch hits and fills in when a regular is injured.

Although he had a relatively short playing career, he spent a long time as a coach and baseball analyst. Many years after retiring, he got a managerial spot, leading the Yokohama Bay Stars (1998-2000). They won the Japan Series under his guidance, but his managerial career lasted only those three seasons. In 2017 he was the pitching coach for Japan’s entry in the World Baseball Classic, and cautioned against over use of his pitchers. One wonders why.

Gondo was elected by the “expert” division of the player’s committee. It has purview over managers, coaches, and players who have been retired for a long time. Gondo had a short career as a player, but a long career as a coach and baseball analyst. Presumably that’s what he got elected for, as his pitching career, though notable, was extremely brief. Comparable American players are people like Herb Score and Mark Prior. Exciting young pitchers, good too, but no where near qualified for the hall on the basis of their playing careers.

The card is from the JCM 55 menko set, released in 1962. It was probably one of the most desirable cards in the set when it was released.

[nat]

I estimate that there is only a 46% change that today’s entry features a hall of famer. Even so, it’s worth writing about.

There have been several distinct eras in the history of Japanese baseball cards:

• Early 20th century – Postcards, usually featuring university teams and/or visiting American teams. Menko cards from this era are very rare.

• 1930s – First time that menkos and bromides featuring baseball players were widely available. Relatively few of these cards survive (I don’t have any), but you can still find them sometimes.

• WWII – no cards issued

• 1947 through early 1950s – golden age of baseball bromides. Round and pillar menkos common.

• Late 1950s through mid-1960s – “tobacco” menkos common. Throughout the postwar period game cards and cards packaged with candy and gum can be found. The former are common, the latter are not. (I own several game cards despite generally disliking them. I have only a single candy card.)

• 1973 through 1990 – Calbee era. Calbee cards are distributed 1-to-a-pack with potato chips. A few other companies produced cards during this period, but most were short-lived. Calbee was king.

• 1991 – current. BBM era. BBM cards are basically typical American-style baseball cards. Calbee still makes cards, and other companies sometimes put out a set, but BBM fundamentally changed the Japanese baseball card market.


The cards that have been posted to this thread have all been post war. (That’s why this thread is on this side of the board.) Time to change that. I recently picked up a couple early postcards. Today I’ll post the first one, and I’ll do a write-up for the other one later.


In 1872 an American teacher named Horace Wilson introduced Japan to baseball. In 1878 the first formal team was founded. By the turn of the century it was a popular sport in Japanese universities, and a handful of prominent universities had notable baseball teams. In the early days, Keio and Waseda Universities were the stand-outs. Baseball was, of course, already quite popular in the United States, and throughout the first few decades of the 20th century a number of American universities sent baseball teams to play their Japanese counterparts. Off hand, I know that Washington University, the University of Chicago, and the University of Wisconsin sent teams across the Pacific.

The postcard below commemorates the 1909 University of Wisconsin tour. The inscription on the bottom of the card reads: “Scene of the fierce match between between United States, The baseball team of the University of Wisconsin & Keio University”.

The first game of the tour Keio won by a score of 3-2 in 11 innings on the 22nd of September. The two teams would have a rematch on the 26th, that Keio won 2-1 in 19 innings. Two days later Wisconsin trounced the Tokyo American Club 10-0, on the 29th they beat the Tokyo City Team 8-7. They beat Waseda 7-4 on Oct. 2, lost to Keio 5-4 on the 4th, beat Waseda 5-0 on the 7th, lost to Waseda 3-0 two days later, and beat Keio 8-0 on the 12th before returning to America.

Which game is pictured here? The postmark reads “26th September, Meiji 42”. The Japanese calendar tracks years since the beginning of the current emperor’s reign. 9/26 Meiji 42 = 9/26/1909. Given that the second game of the tour was played on the 26th, that must mean that the match pictured here was the inaugural game of the 22nd. (It must also mean that these postcards were printed in a hurry. The game pictured was played on four days before this card was mailed.)

One amazing thing about this tour, from the perspective of a (very) amateur historian studying it more than 100 years later, is that The Badger, a publication of the University of Wisconsin (it looks like a yearbook) recorded a detailed record of their trip. I will post the relevant pages from The Badger in the next post, but I will give some information from them here.

One Genkwan Shibata, class of 1909, arranged the trip and served as translator. Shibata had a local contact. Professor Matsuoka was a 1906 Wisconsin alum, and helped arrange the trip on the Japanese side. Matsuoka conscripted several hundred Keio students to act as designated Wisconsin fans during the tour. Keio put up $4000 to help fund the Americans’ visit. There are all sorts of problems with inflation calculators, but that’s something in the neighborhood of $100,000 today. Despite their hospitality, Keio wanted to win. As soon as the plans for the trip were finalized, the players from the Keio squad were sequestered away to spend six hours a day in training.

The Wisconsin team consisted of 13 players. They took a train to Seattle, where they spent a week practicing, and then about two weeks aboard ship headed to Japan. The Wisconsin players report that crowds of about 20,000 attended their games. They traveled to the first game by rickshaw. Although the American were impressed with the reception that they received, they also allege bias from the umpires, claiming that it cost them three games against Keio. Nobody ever likes an umpire. They note that there are not yet any professional players in Japan, but predict that there will be some. And of course they were right, although it would take another 27 years.

Now, who is pictured on this card? It’s hard to say, but I’ll give it my best shot. You can’t tell which team is at bat from the names on the uniforms. Even under 60x magnification I couldn’t even get a hint as to what it says on the jerseys.

That said, the batter is wearing white, and the catcher is wearing a light grey. Now, traditionally the home team wears white and the visitors wear grey or some other darker pattern. If the Japanese and American teams were both adhering to this tradition, then the Japanese team is at bat and the Americans are in the field. I have seen a number of other postcards commemorating this trip. Some of them seem to confirm this conjecture.

There is one other factor that favors it. In the background of my postcard is what looks like a scoreboard. It’s very grainy, and no writing on it is visible, but it sure looks like a scoreboard to me. It contains many black rectangles on the right, and a few white rectangles on the left. My guess: the black rectangles are blank boxes reflecting innings yet to be played. The white boxes are placards displaying the runs scored in innings that have already been played. There are more white boxes on the top row than on the bottom. Usually the visiting team is displayed at the top of the scoreboard (they bat first). If that’s right, and I’m counting right, that would indicate that this photo is of the bottom of the fourth inning of the first game between Keio and Wisconsin, September 22nd, 1909.

I’ll admit to being somewhat disappointed that it is probably the Americans in the field. The only hall of famer to appear on the Keio squad is catcher Zensuke Shimada. If Keio had been on defense, the would likely be Shimada you see waiting to receive the pitch. Alas, it’s probably not. I’ve decided that I’m 60% confident that it’s the Americans in the field. That gives me a 40% probability that it’s Shimada playing catcher. But there’s also a Keio player at bat. There’s no indication on the card of who it is, but even so there’s an 11% chance that it is, just by luck, Shimada who is batting. 40% + (60% x 11%) = 46%, hence my estimate at the top of this post. (N.B. Niese says that Konosuke Fukada was the Keio catcher. If he’s right, then my estimate is way off.)

If those are the Americans in the field then the catcher is either Elmer Barlow (aka ‘Spike’, class of ’09), or Arthur Kleinpell (aka ‘Moose’, class of ’11). Barlow would go on to have a distinguished law career, eventually serving on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Less is known about Arthur Kleinpell. He graduated in 1911, and then completed a second degree at Wisconsin in 1917. He died in Michigan. The pitcher is Doug Knight. He pitched all 11 innings of the first game, and the first 16 innings of the second, before injuring his arm and sitting out the rest of the tour. Also visible are first baseman Micque Timbers, and either John Messmer or Kenneth “Buck” Fellows at second. Messmer was Wisconsin’s most accomplished athlete. He won nine letters, later became an architect, and was inducted into the University of Wisconsin Athletics Hall of Fame.

If anyone can read the handwritten text on the card, please let me know. I would very much like to know what they were writing about on this card just after the first game of the tour. I've included a photo of the message with the contrast increased to make it easier to read.

Some of the information in this post was drawn from: Niese, Jon 2013. Voyage to the land of the rising sun: The Wisconsin Badger nine’s 1909 trip to Japan. Nine: A journal of baseball history and culture, 22:1, 11-19.

[Northviewcats]

Originally Posted by seanofjapan

The players are:

Masaichi Kaneda
Yoshio Yoshida
Kazuhiro Yamauchi
Shigeo Nagashima

All four are hall of famers!

Thanks Sean and Nat for all of your help identifying the players on my cards. I wish that I could add more to the discussion than just show pictures.

Here are four more thick cardboard cards that were in with a group labeled miscellaneous Japanese cards in the Huggins and Scott lot. I know the first two are of famous Home Run King Sadaharu Oh, but can you tell me anything about the other two players? Also any information on the year of manufacture and type of card?

I love the cheesy artwork on the back of the cards. The little girl in card 3 looks like she is about to murder her mom.

Best regards,

Joe

[nat]

I don't know what set the first Oh card is from, but that's definitely Oh. It looks to me like a later issue; I'd guess 1970s.

The other three cards are from JCM58, which was issued between 1975 and 1976. The first guy is Oh. The second guy is Sumio Hirota. He played 1972 to 1987, mostly for the Lotte Orions. Early in his career he had a couple good seasons, but was mostly a below average hitter. He stole lots of bases though; I'm guessing a good-glove no-hit center fielder. Think of someone like Rajai Davis. The last player is Jinten Haku, also known as In-Cheon Paek. He was a productive hitter: about 15 HRs per year, around the same number of steals. He was named to one best-nine. After retiring from Japanese baseball he went to Korea, and is still the only player to have posted a .400 batting average in the KBO.

As for type of card: these are still menkos. Traditionally menko cards were printed on thick stock, since they were meant to be flipped around and thrown on the ground. That's why these cards are so thick. Some sets are very robust - put a Goudey to shame.

On the other hand, I've noticed that menkos printed immediately post-war are often very thin. Much too thin to actually play menko with. My guess is that a shortage of paper had something to do with that. "Tobacco" menkos from the late 50s and early 60s are better about stock quality, but still pretty thin if you're thinking about using them as game pieces. Presumably paper supply wasn't a problem by that point. Maybe kids were appreciating the cards more as baseball cards than as menko cards in that period, and produces responded by cutting corners? If anyone else knows why the tobacco menkos are relatively thin I'd love to hear about it.