Japanese HOF Project

[nat]

Shigeru Sugishita was a pitcher for the Dragons from 1949 to 1958, and then for the Orions in 1961. He was a high-peak short-career pitcher, winning the Sawamura award three times, and in 1954 (a year in which he went 32-12 with a 1.39 ERA) he also won the MVP award and the Japan Series MVP award. Unlike many pitchers with this career shape (e.g. Koufax) he wasn't felled by injury: he just wanted to do something else. He retired from pitching after the 1958 season to manage the Dragons, when that didn't go well he pitched one more year before getting another managing gig (which also didn't go well), and then moved into broadcasting.

Despite having been a great pitcher, Sugishita is most famous for popularizing the forkball in Japan. (It's a kind of changeup where you mash the ball between your index and middle finger.) It's a pitch that isn't thrown much in America, but is popular over there. (Hideo Nomo made his name throwing it.)

Jim Albright ranks Sugishita as the seventh greatest Japanese pitcher of all time, and the 26th greatest player over all. I don't know what his methodology is (he crunched some numbers for this, it's not just personal opinion), so I don't know if I agree or not, but that's some indication of his standing. He also ranks him as the greatest member of the Dragons of all time. (Others may have been greater players, but spent smaller portions of their career with the Dragons.)

The card is a curious one. The front of the card is identical to the Sugishita card in the JCM 26 set, but the back of my card is blank. The JCM 26 set has a rock-paper-scissors symbol, a pillar with some writing, and a menko number at the bottom. Maybe my card is from the JCM 26 set but didn't get printed on the back? Maybe it's from a related set that's not catalogued? Hard to say.