Japanese HOF Project

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Kazuto Tsuruoka (neé Yamamoto) was a power hitting star infielder for Osaka. He only played in parts of eight seasons, a few of which were very part time. In 1939 he was a 22 year old third baseman who hit 285/403/407 against a league average of 224/315/288. That would be like hitting 313/407/568 in today’s National League. Pretty good. Imagine if Nolan Arenado had a somewhat higher batting average, and that his power wasn’t partially a product of playing in Colorado. That’s the idea. Yamamoto didn’t appear in another professional game for seven years. One assumes that the war got on the way. When he returned, as a 29 year old in 1946, his power wasn’t quite as good, but he was still a top player. Most of the time he was a third baseman, but he also played a significant amount of second base, and a little bit at first and in the outfield. Despite having a short playing career, Yamamoto was a 3x MVP winner.

All of this, however, is really beside the point. Yamamoto is a special figure in the history of Japanese baseball not because he was a short-lived version of Nolan Arenado, but because he was one of Japan’s great managers. He was player-manager for the Great Ring/Hawks from 1946 through the end of his playing career, and continued to manage them until 1968, when he was 51 years old. His teams went 1773-1140 during his tenure. A 609 winning percentage would be perfectly respectable for one season: that was Yamamoto’s winning percentage over 23 years. Between 1950 and 1966 none of his teams finished below second place. He is the winningest manager in Japanese history. Despite his unparalleled regular season success, however, things did not go so well for Yamamoto during the post season. His teams made it to the post season on many occasions, and tended to lose the Japan Series to the Giants. Unlike Kawakami – whose Giants he would face late in his career – Yamamoto was not an advocate of the traditional (and grueling) Japanese training routine. Word is that he was widely respected by his players, not least by his American players, for whom Kawakami’s approach was not only grueling but also unusual and perhaps unexpected.

1946 was quite a year for him. He returned from the Army, led the league in RBI, became a manager (despite having only one season experience in professional baseball), won the MVP award, and his team won the championship. Albright gives him credit for the time that he missed in the military, and accordingly ranks him as the 63th greatest Japanese player. Without any war credit presumably he wouldn’t make the list at all (his playing career was quite short). Whether to give players credit for time that they missed in the military is a bit of a philosophical question. It’s a question of whether, when ranking greatest players you are recording what they did, how many games they helped their teams win, or whether you’re doing something else. I’m happy to admit that they deserve the credit, but if a ranking of great players is just a record of what happened, then, to quote Clint Eastwood, deserve ain’t got nothing to do with it. But anyways, it’s a common enough practice, and if you follow it then Yamamoto does pretty well. He was a really good infielder.

As a manager Yamamoto was hands-on and innovative. He personally scounted Kastuya Nomura. Let’s call that a success. Jim Allen also credits him with developing specialized roles for starter/relief pitchers. For something like the first twenty years of pro ball Japanese pitchers were being worked like Old Hoss Radbourne. The introduction of relief specialists no doubt saved some careers. (Incidentally, it’s also really effective. Relief pitchers, on average, perform at much higher levels than starting pitchers, even though they have traditionally simply been failed starters. American teams have really picked up on it, which is why few starters go more than ~5 innings anymore.)

The card is a blank-backed uncatalogued menko. Other than the shape (round menkos started to fall out of favor as the 50s progressed) I don’t have any indication of the year in which it was issued.