[Frankish]

Beginning with Page 19, the album is devoted to the players of Japan’s greatest sports rivals, the Tigers and the Giants. And this era of play (the Japanese Baseball League) was one of the rivalry’s most exciting periods. Over the JBL’s history (from 1936-49 with 1945 having no season due to the war), the Giants won 8 championships and the Tigers 5. In only two of the league’s seasons did another team win (Kinki Great Ring in 1946 and the Nankai Hawks in 1948), and in both those years the Giants and Tigers came in second and third. You may have noticed that there were more champions than years…in each of 1937 and 1938 the league had two seasons (Spring and Fall).

The cards on this page (and the next several following) are from the end of the Japanese Baseball League era. After the 1949 season, Japanese professional baseball was reorganized into Nippon Professional Baseball, which was divided into the Central and Pacific leagues.

The three bromides of the top row (as well as the bottom right card) are of the famous Tigers player and manager Tadashi Wakabayashi. Wakabayashi joined the Tigers at the founding of the JBL in 1936 and played for them until the league’s reorganization in 1949 (after that he played three seasons for the Mainichi Orions). He was an ace pitcher with a career W-L record of 237-144 and a lifetime ERA of 1.99.

The cards of the second row are all of another strong Tigers pitcher, Tadayoshi Kajioka. 1947 was his rookie year, and I believe that is the season pictured here. He played all nine of his professional seasons for the Tigers.

I believed the final bromide (bottom left) to be pitcher Takao Misono. The front doesn’t show any text, but the picture closely resembles another I have seen of the player. Misono spent all seventeen of his professional seasons (starting in 1936 and finishing in 1951) with the Tigers.


Wakabayashi - Wakabayashi - Wakabayashi
Kajioka - Kajioka - Kajioka
Misono? - Wakabayashi