Japanese HOF Project

[nat]

My policy is that I get a copy of a player's card for each collection that he's a part of. Hall of fame collection =/= meikyukai collection, so I need a second card for each player who is a member of both.

Hence today's post.

Masaji Hiramatsu was a great pitcher for the Whales. I said rather more about him in the piece just linked than I will say here.

Hiramatsu was elected to the hall of fame by the experts committee - which has jurisdiction over players who have been retired for at least 21 years. Sounds a lot like the Veteran's Committee here. There is also a player's committee, which is basically a guy's first shot at election, and special committees that elect umpires, guys who published baseball's rule book (I'm not kidding, check out Mirei Suzuki), and so on.

Japanese starters have always pitched more in relief than American starters do, but here's a fun fact about Hiramatsu: he has almost exactly the same number of complete games as games finished. 145/146, respectively.

One thing that I find curious about Japanese baseball is how seriously they take the Koshien tournament. It's the high school baseball championship, and it's a huge deal. This comes to mind at the moment because Hiramatsu's team won the tournament, and whenever someone is writing about him that fact always gets mentioned right next to the fact that he won the Sawamura Award, which, to an American mind, would seem to be a much bigger deal.

Meikyukai: Yes - Hall of fame: Yes

Round menkos are best known for dominating the early post-war menko scene. Basically, menko cards from the late 1940s to early 1950s are either round or relatively narrow pillars. There are many sets of each, but the round sets tend, in my observation, to be more common. Round menko cards (of baseball players at least) then disappeared for a couple decades. There was a sort of mini-revival in the 1970s. This card is from the JRM 10 set, issued in 1976. It's a common and inexpensive set (I paid more for shipping on this card than I did for the card itself).