[Frankish]

Long before the team I will always think of as the Osaka-based Nankai Hawks (which it technically was from 1947-1988) became the Fukuoka Daiei and then Fukoka SoftBank Hawks, the team had one of the great names in all of baseball history: Kinki Great Ring. I mention this because several of the bromides on this page picture players in their Kinki Great Ring uniforms (presumably from the 1946 season?). It is most easily distinguishable by the cap emblem that looks like a wedding ring. It’s also worth noting that Kinki Great Ring, in what I believe to be its only full season by that name, won the 1946 Japanese Baseball League championship!

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the original owner of this album (my best guess is in around 1949) glued the cards into the notebook pages largely by team. So with Page 16 the Hawks section begins. From the 1940s through the 60s, the Hawks were a very successful franchise. In fact, it was the Hawks that would eventually send Masanori Murakami to the US to be the first Japanese player in MLB.

A key figure in the Hawks’ success in the 40s and 50s was ace pitcher Takehiko Bessho, who played for the team from 1942-48 (with a break for the war) before joining the Yomiuri Giants (1949-1960) in something of a scandal (head-hunting star players was apparently prohibited at the time). The top row of bromides are all Bessho cards. In the first two, he appears in his 1947 season Hawks uniform, while in the upper right card he appears in his 1946 Kinki Great Ring uniform. Bessho is also shown mid-windup in the far right card of the middle row.

The remaining Hawks players proved more difficult to identify. The middle left card appears to be long-time Haws catcher Keizo Tsutsui on a card with pretty cool graphics. To his right is a pitcher that I keep trying to translate as Yuzuki but is probably Susumu Yuki, who only played for nine seasons (all with the Hawks) but put together an impressive 123-64 W/L record.

The bottom left and center cards aren’t that obvious to me but I am venturing that they are of second baseman Naofumi Yasui, with whom I was unfamiliar before this project.

The final card (bottom right) introduces Tokuji Iida, one of the great first basemen in Japanese baseball history. This photo and bromide both appear to be from the 1947, his rookie season.

PS: The bonus photo is my one and only Murakami card. PSA here displays its ass-hat “Trading Card” policy for those that don’t want to wait 12 months for them to identify an obvious issue. Good thing they didn’t go out on a limb and identify it as a “Baseball Card.” /rant