Japanese HOF Project

[Rickyy]

Originally Posted by nat

Tsuneo Horiuchi pitched for the Giants from 1966 to 1983. This was exactly the right time to be a Giant - he got in right at the start of their nine consecutive Japan Series wins. He broke in at 18 and was great immediately. In his rookie year he won both the Rookie of the Year Award and the Sawamura Award. As might be expected from a teenager who was suddenly a huge star, Horiuchi was a bit cocky and immature. Tetsuharu Kawakami, the Giants manager who sailed a famously tight ship, sent him to the minors to teach him a lesson, even though he was the reigning Sawamura winner. (source) The exile didn't last long. As a 19 year old Horiuchi was 12-2 in 149 IP. It was a hard pace to keep up: his last really good year was 1974 (when he was 26), he pitched his last full season at 30, and hung around until 35. This is a problem faced by any professional athlete, but it's got to be hard to retire at 35 and then have to figure out what you're going to do with the rest of your life.

Anyway, Horiuchi did better with that than most. After retirement he was a coach with the Giants for years, and briefly their manager. And that's only the beginning. In 2010 he ran for parliament. Japan has a proportional representation system (like almost every democracy except the US): you vote for your party of choice, and then if, say, your party get 10% of the vote then they get 10% of the seats in the legislature. Horiuchi's party won 12 seats, but he was listed 13th on the party list. So he just missed out on getting a seat in parliament. BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE! Hirohiko Nakamura, one of the members of his party who did win a seat, died while in office, and Horiuchi was named as his replacement. So he got a seat in parliament after all.

Here is a neat video of a game from 1966, Horiuchi's rookie year. He comes in as a relief pitcher at about 1:55, he's the guy wearing #21.

The card is from the 1973 Calbee set. This was their first foray into baseball cards. In Japan 1991 marks the line between vintage and modern cards, so 1973 is much longer-ago for the Japanese hobby (such as it is) than it is for American card collectors. Calbee almost had a monopoly on baseball cards through the 70s and 80s - and they're still making cards today. This is the set where it all began, the 52 Topps of Japan, if you will.

Thanks for posting this. Great looking card of a key member of those great Giants teams!

Ricky Y

[nat]

Yoshio Yoshida played shortstop for the Tigers from 1953 to 1969. He had good speed but limited power, and was known for defense and bunting. About what you expect from a shortstop. Given his speed, the Tigers usually used him as a lead-off hitter. He finished with around 1800 hits, and offensive records that are… okay. But his hitting isn’t the main reason that he was on the team. A comparable American player might be someone like Willie Randolph, positional differences aside. He was better-appreciated in his time than Randolph was, however, as he was a 9x best-nine selection. (SABR types sometimes say that Randolph should probably be given a closer look by the HOF, but that’s a much more tepid endorsement than being named the league’s best SS nine times.)

Yoshida came from a poor family, and was orphaned while he was still young. (He was raised by his older brother after his parents died.) Unable to afford tuition he didn’t plan on attending college, until his baseball prowess gained the attention of recruiters and he was offered a scholarship. He was scouted by the Braves, but a large offer from the Tigers convinced him to drop out of school and go pro.

The really interesting thing about Yoshida, however, isn’t what he did on the baseball diamond. After he retired he managed the Tigers on-and-off, but he also went to France to develop a baseball program. Yes, France. He said that when he arrived in France the level of play was abysmal, comparable to high school ball in Japan. But under Yoshida’s influence the French national team now participates in the World Baseball Classic, the European Baseball Cup, and other international competitions. In fact, France hosts an international competition (open apparently by invitation to a few European nations and Japan) called the “Yoshida Challenge”. Yoshida is an honorary member of the French Baseball and Softball Federation. He recently (c. 2014) arranged to have some French players train with Hanshin. The French national baseball team is now ranked 23rd in the world. Which might not sound very impressive, but it’s a lot better than high school ball.

As you might expect, thehanshintigers.com has a very good biography of Yoshida. Much better than what I’ve got here. You might want to go read it.

I'm not sure what set the card belongs to. It resembles JBR 17 and JBR 29. But it has a border. It could be from a related but uncatalogued set.

[nat]

Jiro Noguchi pitched for a few teams from 1939 to 1943 (the Japanese Wikipedia page seems to indicate just two teams that changed their names, but I'm not super confident about how I'm reading it), and for Hankyu from 1946 to 1952. The beginning of his career was the best part. As a rookie he posted a 2.04 ERA (against a league average of 2.50), and then proceeded to post sub-1 ERAs for the next two seasons (at ages 20 and 21). Pitching for Taiyo in 1942 he had his most remarkable season. Noguchi pitched 527 innings (!) and notched a 40-17 record. But his 1.19 ERA was only fifth in the league. At one point in 1942 he pitched a 28 inning complete game. In 1944 he was drafted and went to war. He wouldn’t have had an opportunity to pitch in 1945 even if he wasn’t enlisted, as the season was simply canceled. After the war he was still good, but declined quickly. Although he hung on for a couple years afterwards, he was essentially done at age 30.

The entire Noguchi clan was athletic. His older brother Akira was a star baseball player: he made four all-star teams and had one best-nine selection. Younger brothers Noboru and Wataru made brief appearances as professional ball players as well. To be fair, though, Noboru didn’t get much of a chance. He was drafted into the Army and died in the Philippines in 1945. Apparently someone made a television special about the family.

Jiro enrolled in Hosei University (one of the notable University teams in early baseball; maybe not equal to Waseda or Keio, but good). He did not finish his studies, however, as he was lured away by the Tokyo Senators. The Japanese Wikipedia page says that he was nicknamed “Astro Arm”. (I’m not 100% confident on this. I ran the Japanese Wikipedia page through Google Translate. It transliterated the hiragana, and then I ran the transliteration through Google Translate again. So who knows what it actually says. Unfortunately Noguchi doesn’t have an English Wikipedia page.)

In addition to being one of Japan’s great pitchers, Noguchi was a good hitter for a pitcher. Some seasons he was simply a good hitter, no “for a pitcher” required. For instance, in 1946 he posted a .708 OPS against a league average of .676. In fact, he was fourth in his team in OPS, among those who had a significant number of at bats.

The card is an early post-war menko card. It’s from the JCM 22 set, issued in 1947. This was the first year after the war that any baseball cards were issued. And it has definitely seen some play: the edges, especially at the top, are kind of squashed. It looks like it flipped over a fair number of cards in its day.

[nat]

Tsutomu Wakamatsu was an outfielder (switching between left and center) for the Yakult Swallows from 1971 to 1989. He had moderate power but high batting averages and a good walk/K rate. His career line is 319/375/481. If memory serves, that .319 batting average is tied for second best all-time in Japan. And he did it over an impressive 7500 plate appearances. He could steal a base, but that wasn’t his game exactly. Offensively he’s the same sort of player that Derek Jeter was. (Of course defensively there’s a position difference to consider.) Wakamatsu was a consistently excellent player. He made the all-star team 11 times, and was named to 10 best nines. Which is really good; it indicates that those all-star selections weren’t of the “well, we need to fill out the team, so why not this guy?” variety. Like Jeter he was a multi-gold glove winner (although only 2 in his case), although Jeter didn’t really deserve his hardware. And unlike Jeter, he won an MVP award.

Albright ranks Wakamatsu 35th all-time amongst Japanese players, and tells us that his nickname was “little big bat”, in reference to his size (5’6”) and his batting average (which was the opposite of low). The Jeter comparison is supposed to be “in-context”, so, like:

Jeter:American Baseball :: Wakamatsu:Japanese Baseball

At least in so far as their on-field production goes. I’m fairly sure that Jeter’s cultural impact was larger than Wakamatsu’s, at least given that Wakamatsu doesn’t even have a Japanese Wikipedia page. Albright tried to come up with something like MLE’s for Japanese baseball.* Given those, he lists Enos Slaughter, Tim Raines, Jose Cruz, Griffey Sr., Bill Buckner, Buddy Bell, and some other non-exciting players as comparables.

As with many great players, Wakamatsu went into coaching and managing after his retirement as an active player. He served several years in the minor leagues; managing the Swallows for seven years he posted a W/L record slightly above .500.

*MLE = major league equivalent. It’s one of the tools that we use to evaluate minor league players. Basically, MLEs try to determine what a player who does X in league Y would do if they were in the big leagues. It must be nightmarishly difficult to do this for Japanese players, given the dearth of data points.

Here is a video the Swallows played at the stadium during their “Wakamatsu Day” following his retirement.

My Wakamatsu card is from the 1974/75 Calbee set.

[nat]

Another poster showed some Starfin cards earlier in the thread, but I’ve got one now so I’m going to give him a full write-up.

Victor Starfin was a pitcher from 1936 to 1955. He was the second greatest pitcher in Japanese history, and Walter Johnson is, in a number of ways, a good American analogue for him. Before the war he played for the Kyojin – I assume that this is the same team now known as the ‘Giants’. After the war he moved around a bit but spent the better part of his time playing for the Stars. Starfin was the first Japanese player to win 300 games (retiring with 303), he had a career ERA of 2.09 (in an admittedly low-scoring environment), and he still holds the all-time record for shutouts in Japan. At the height of his career he was pitching an insane number of innings: 458 in 1939 (the first year in which the season was not split in two) and 436 in 1940. In the latter year he recorded an ERA of 0.97. He won consecutive MVP awards. Take that Bob Gibson.

As you might have guessed, Starfin wasn’t Japanese. He was Russian, born into an aristocratic family that sided against the Bolsheviks during the revolution. As the Bolsheviks swept to power, the Starfin family fled before them, first to Siberia, then to China, and eventually settling in Hokkaido. My guess is that he was about two years old when they left Russia and something like seven or eight when they finally arrived in Japan. It seems that his position in Japan was somewhat precarious. The family entered on transit visas, which would probably have made living there long term a dicey legal proposition. Wikipedia reports that the owner of the team (Matsutaro Shoriki) who signed him effectively blackmailed him into going pro, as he could have had the family deported.

Despite his success, Starfin’s story is, in many ways, a very sad one. That he was forced into baseball is just one aspect of it (he had wanted to attend Waseda University). Starfin struggled with depression and alcoholism through much of his life. Xenophobia also took a significant toll on him; he was forced to adopt a Japanese name, and later was confined with other foreign residents during World War II. His alcoholism might have cost him his marriage, and probably cost him his life. (To be clear, he did lose his wife. Some sources say that it was his drinking that drove her away, others that she was looking for a way out of Japan and Alexander Boloviyov offered it.) In any case, Starfin died after running his car into a train in 1957. The details of the accident are not clear, but there is a fair amount of speculation that he was driving drunk and caused the accident. (Apparently baseball-reference hasn’t heard about the accident: it lists him as still alive and 102 years old.)

Starfin named his son ‘George’, after Babe Ruth.

Amazingly there is video of Starfin pitching. Here he is in 1949.

My card is a bromide from the JBR53 set, issued in 1949. Although you can’t really make out the uniform, that would put him on the Stars.

[nat]

Osamu Higashio pitched for various incarnations of the Lions from 1969 to 1988. His career win-loss percentage is uninspiring (251/247) and a career ERA of 3.50 is good but not outstanding. To be fair, though, 251 is a large number of wins, and he pitched a huge number of innings in a league with a short season: 4086. Many of the times that he posted league-leading figures, it was simply due to the large number of innings that he pitched. This is particularly true for the (many) times that he led the league in losses, including losing 25 games (still a Pacific League record) in 1972.

In some ways it makes sense to think of Higashio’s career in two parts. During the first half of his career the Lions were terrible. He frequently led the league in losses, but also made a number of all-star teams and placed among the league leaders in ERA. During the latter half of his career the Lions blossomed (if you’ll excuse an odd metaphor). They won the Japan Series in 1982, and Higashio was named the series MVP. In 1983 they won the Japan Series again, led (again) by Higashio. After leading the league in losses on a bunch of occasions, he led the league in wins this year, and took home the Pacific League MVP award. In 1985 the Lions made it to the Japan Series again, but they lost this time. The disappointment didn’t last long. The next two seasons the Lions again won the Japan Series, with Higashio taking home another Pacific League MVP award in 1987. The following season the Lions won the Japan Series again – although by this point all the innings pitched had taken their toll on Higashio. He was relegated to part-time duty during the season, starting a game and making an appearance as a reliever in the Japan Series.

Higashio was known to pitch inside, and was frequently accused of head-hunting. (He says that 90% of batters that he hit were hit accidentally. Which, of course, leaves the other 10%.) He holds the all-time record for hit batsmen in Japan, and famously received a beating from Richard Davis after hitting him with a pitch. Higashio was not ejected and continued pitching, eventually winning the game. He rubbed many people the wrong way. In part because he hit so many batters (and came so close to hitting others), but also because he is blunt when he speaks, and (by the standards of Japanese baseball) disrespectful of other players.

After retiring Higashio took over managing duties of the Lions. He took them to two more Japan Series’, but they lost both times. He also had a Gameboy baseball game named after him (apparently only released in Japan) in 1991, and he and his daughter Riko (a professional golfer) do promotional work (e.g., for Guam Beer). The gossip pages report that Osamu is unhappy with Riko’s engagement to Junichi Ishida a twice-divorced actor who is 22 years older than she is. I don’t know why people care about this stuff. I mean, I know why Osamu cares about it, I don’t know why other people care that Osamu cares about it. Anyhow, the story that I found about it is 13 years old, so presumably Riko and Junichi are married by now. Hopefully Osamu got over it.

For a comparable American player, I’d point to someone like Tom Glavine. He was a good pitcher on a team that had been miserable but during his tenure became great, and he himself had a few seasons outstanding enough to be recognized with individual awards. (Although Glavine never took home an MVP award.)

My card is from the 1976 Calbee set. Most of the set has a standard Calbee look – full bleed photos with a little text at the bottom – but for some reason (or perhaps for no reason, I don’t know) a few of the cards have a pink frame around them. Including Mr. Higashio.

[seanofjapan]

Loving these posts, you must be 3/4 of the way there by now?


Also a minor correction, Tsutomu Wakamatsu does have a Japanese Wikipedia page:

https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/若松勉

But yes, he is nowhere near as well remembered/influential in Japan as Jeter is in the US. Part of that is because he played for Yakult no doubt....