Japanese HOF Project

[nat]

Tokuji Iida was a Hawk and a Swallow over a 17 year career, from 1947 to 1963. He just missed collecting 2000 hits (no Golden Player Club for you, not that it existed when he retired). Iida was a slugging first baseman who played through Japan's deadball era. His raw home run totals don't look impressive (after 1955 he never even made it into double digits), but no one at the time was hitting home runs, or much of anything else. For example, in 1957 he slugged .417 against a league average of .329. Last year the National League slugged .423. Iida's slugging percentage was 88 points better than league average; you would have to slug .511 to top last year's average by 88 points. That's, basically, Anthony Rizzo. But raw comparison's aren't really the way to do this. In 1957 (a year in which he hit 9 home runs) Iida had a slugging percentage that was 27% higher than league average. To match that in last year's National League you would need to slug .537, exactly what Kris Bryant did. So one way to think about Iida is that, even in the years in which he was hitting home runs in the singe-digits, he was, in context, hitting as well as Kris Bryant.

Lest you think that maybe he was a one-dimensional power hitter (like, e.g., Rob Deer), note that his on-base percentage was 25% better than league average that year as well. Which is, again, a perfect match for Bryant.

So, basically, Iida was Kris Bryant, albeit at 1B rather than 3B, for 17 years. He won the 1955 MVP award, but he does not seem to be well-remembered. He doesn't even have his own Wikipedia page. People who follow Japanese baseball apparently regard him highly though - thehanshintigers.com ranks him as one of the Hawks' five best players, and Jim Allen ranks him as the second best defensive first baseman of all time. (Although seventy year old defensive statistics should always be taken with a pretty good spoonful of salt.) Allen also ranks him as the 60th greatest player of all time. He was famous for a long consecutive-game streak (this is basically the only thing that the Japanese Hall of Fame website says about him), but he missed a bunch of games late in his career, presumably with injuries. Maybe a day off now and then would have been a good idea.

I like to find video of the players that I write about, but youtube has nothing for Iida. If you search "Tokuji Iida" on youtube the only hit you get is from an old Japanese movie called "The Burden of Life", which sounds a bit heavy for a baseball message board.

The Iida card is from the JCM 31b (type II) set. I forgot to take a picture of the back, but I think you folks can deal with just a photo of the front.

Also, it's time to report some progress. I'm now 51% of the way to my goal! On June 1st I was at 25%, so I've picked up another quarter of the hall of fame (at least, those who are in as pro players, and so for whom there are probably cards) in the past 41 days. I'll call that progress. Surely it helps that most of my cards are low grade, but this remains a (relatively) inexpensive project. I still have a couple American cards that cost more than my entire Japanese collection.