Japanese HOF Project

[nat]

Shosei Go had a long career, mostly in the outfield, for the Giants, Tigers, and Mainichi Orions. He broke in in 1937 and played until 1957. Oddly, after playing the thirties and early forties as an outfielder, he spent a considerable part of 1946 pitching. And then he went right back to being an outfielder. Especially when he was young, Go was a really terrific player. What stands out immediately is that he was fast. For example, he stole 54 bases in 84 games in 1943. That’s pretty amazing. To American eyes his stat line looks like that of a speedy leadoff hitter with good on-base skills, but given the environment in which he played (e.g., one with absolutely zero offense), he was actually terrific at every offensive aspect of the game. He had great on-base skills, to go with lots of power. He was hitting .300 in leagues that collectively had batting averages below .200. Even if you’re not hitting lots of home runs (and he wasn’t), that’s going to give you a lot more power than most of the people in the league. For that all-around skill set in a very weak league, it’s tempting to compare him to Ty Cobb. On the other hand, Cobb is a top-5 player all-time, and Go isn’t that. But they were both really fast, with really high batting averages (in context), and high slugging percentages that are due more to high batting averages than to lots of home runs. Other people you might compare him to have severe deficiencies in their cases. “A faster Kirby Puckett” came to mind as a comp, but Go was better at getting on base than Puckett was. Maybe “Rod Carew with more power” would give you the right idea, but none of these comps are really very good ones.

Despite his power (or because of his speed) he was a leadoff hitter. He recorded a pair of batting titles, and led the league in stolen bases once. In addition, he was the 1943 MVP.

As a pitcher he was above average. But he didn’t spend much time doing it. He was a more-or-less full-time pitcher in 1946, but he appeared in only four other games as a pitcher throughout the rest of his career. A casual perusal of the internet fails to yield an explanation as to why one of the game’s top position players would temporarily become a pitcher.

His nickname was ‘The Human Locomotive’, and hails from Taiwan originally. If you count him as foreign-born he leads all foreign-born Japanese players in stolen bases. But considering that Taiwan was a Japanese colony when he was born, it’s something of a fraught issue. Albright regards him as the 45th greatest player in Japanese history, and the greatest outfielder of the one-league era (that is, before 1950).

Finding a Go card took some patience. For whatever reason (maybe none?) I’d been looking for a Go card in particular for quite a while. The first one that I saw was a round menko, but it was being sold as part of a large lot that I didn’t want. This is only the second one that I’ve ever found; since I bought this one I’ve located one other, but didn’t need it any more. Part of the (apparent) scarcity of Go cards is due to the fact that he retired right as they started producing tobacco-style menko cards, which, in my experience, are far more common than other kinds of vintage Japanese cards. Engel has only one set listed from 1956, and only a couple from 1957. So he’s not in any of the really common sets. But there were plenty of pre-tobacco-style sets that he could have appeared in, so it may just be random variation that accounts for the fact that I’ve encountered relatively few Go cards. There aren’t many Japanese cards for sale period, so it wouldn’t take much to have an unrepresentative sample. In any case, this card is a bromide, from JBR 2. It was issued in 1950. At this point Go had a couple outstanding seasons left, but he was getting older and starting into a late career slide. Not that he ended up being bad exactly, he just declined from excellent to good.

My apologies for the time between posts. Part of it is that I’ve been busy, and the last couple days I blame the World Series. I’ve also burned through most of my backlog of cards – I’ve got just a couple other hall of famers in hand that I haven’t written up yet – so pretty soon posts are going to have to wait until more mail from Japan arrives.

[nat]

There is a peculiar gift to making the familiar seem unfamiliar. J.K. Rowling’s platform 9 ¾ did it well (at least for those who frequent King’s Cross). Disaster movies play on this all the time: world famous streets, usually teeming with life, completely empty, famous landmarks toppled over.

I don’t know if I’ve got what it takes, but I’m going to try.

Hideki Matsui is one of the all-time greats. He is a fearsome slugger, who also posted on-base percentages north of 400 for seven years running. He broke into baseball as a raw 19 year old in 1993, slugging a modest 451. By the time he was 28 his slugging percentage was just shy of 700. That year he hit 50 home runs and he walked more than he struck out. In fact, look at this slash line: 334/461/692. Mike Trout has never matched any of those numbers, much less put them all up in the same year. To be fair, he was only one point off on OBP this year, but he’s never been particularly close to either of the other marks. And of course he’s never hit 50 home runs either. I don’t know whether Matsui got nicknamed ‘Godzilla’ before or after leaving Japan, but it’s apt. Throughout his 20s he was a monster, smashing his way through Tokyo. Or at least the Tokyo Dome.

Matsui is a line-drive hitter, who has power to his pull side. A natural right hander, he nevertheless bats lefthanded. (This is surprisingly common. I guess it’s a good idea if you can manage it, but I can’t even imagine batting left handed.) His reputation as a tremendous player predates his professional career. He appeared in Koshien tournament four times, once drawing five (!) intentional walks in a single game.

Statistically, the American player that he most reminds me of is Sammy Sosa. Matsui’s own transition to American did not go quite as well as expected – this is why “Hideki Matsui, all-time great” might seem odd to American audiences. Davenport suggested that >90% of his production would carry over to his new environs. That didn’t happen. It’s not that he was bad or anything. On the contrary, he’s got a World Series MVP trophy to show off. But he hit a total of 16 home runs in his first season (162 games!) in MLB, and his annual output topped out at 31. In Japan he was Sammy Sosa, in America he was, well, Hideki Matsui. After his age 38 season he hung up his spikes for the last time. In Japan he played for the Giants, in America he spent most of his time with the Yankees (and brief stints with the A’s, Angels, and Rays). The Golden Player’s Club counts production in MLB, provided that a player began his career in Japan prior to coming over, so Matsui gets credit for what he did on this side of the Pacific. Consequently, he is a member of both of Japan’s halls of fame. Post-retirement he has stayed in the US. He has a house in Connecticut, and is a roving minor-league hitting instructor for the Yankees.

He's a clip of Matsui in action.

My card is from the 1997 BBM set. Pretty much in the middle of his career in Japan. I’ll free this card from its case eventually. The case is cracked (and is BCCG anyway). I just haven’t gotten around to it.

[nolemmings]

I appreciate the thread--I think. Didn't own any Japanese cards until a few days ago, until I won the three below-- an Oh rookie with two Starffins. Now I find myself searching through even more cards on Ebay.

[nat]

Nice way to start a Japanese collection! An Oh rookie is always nice, and I really like that bromide. Much though I adore menko cards, in some ways I like the black and white photography on bromides even more.

When you said that you were new to collecting Japanese cards, my first thought was to direct you to Prestige Collectibles. But I see that that's not really necessary!

[nat]

Kazuhiro Yamauchi was a righthanded slugger who played for three franchises between 1952 and 1970. The bulk of his career, including all of the seasons in which he was a real star, were spent with the Mainichi/Daimai Orions. In 1964 he joined Hanshin, and the last three years of his career he spent with the Carp down in Hiroshima. Yamauchi’s best season was probably 1957 when, as a 25 year old, he put up a slash line of 331/451/621 over 126 games. The late 50s were not a super low offense era, like early Japanese baseball had been, but it was still a pitcher’s era. League-wide OPS that year was more than 400 points below Yamauchi’s mark. To match his 1957 production (relative to league average) in 2018’s NL, you would need an OPS of about 1200. That would rank 20th all-time in MLB, tied with Jeff Bagwell’s 1994.

As for a comparable American player, I’d nominate a second-tier slugging hall of fame outfielder. Someone like Duke Snider. They’re both good power hitters with a little bit of speed. Snider struck out more than Yamauchi did though. In fact, Yamauchi walked more times than he struck out, which is quite an accomplishment for someone who was obviously swinging from his heels pretty often. Actually, if you ignore the positional difference, Bagwell isn’t that bad of a comp.

In context, however, Yamauchi was probably a bigger star than either of those guys. He made 13 consecutive all-star games (and ten best nines). Bagwell was selected for the all-star game a shockingly low number of times for as great of a player as he was, and Snider, despite being a deserving hall of famer, was obviously overshadowed by the other two centerfielders in New York at the time. Yamauchi is top 20 in many offensive categories, and is top ten in doubles. Albright probably thinks that my Snider/Bagwell comparisons are hilariously wrong: he’s got Yamauchi ranked as Japan’s 8th greatest player of all time and the best outfielder of the 1950s. That’s more Ted Williams than Duke Snider.

He did win an MVP award, although not for his best year. He missed out in 1957, but took home the hardware in 1960. Three years later he was dealt to the Tigers in a blockbuster challenge trade. The Orions got pitcher Maasaki Koyama out of the deal. Trades like this are fun but super rare: superstars being traded for each other. Usually when a superstar gets dealt, there are prospects or some larger package involved. Colavito for Kuenn, Frisch for Hornsby, that sort of thing.

Post retirement Yamauchi spent a few years managing and many years coaching. He also has a company that sells sports equipment.

The card is from the JCM 12d set, issued in 1961. It’s a pretty standard tobacco-style menko card.

[nat]

I decided to upgrade (?) my Kaneda card. Really, I have no confidence that this card is an upgrade, in any value or rarity sense, over my other one, but I like it better. Actually, I'm pretty sure it's a downgrade value-wise, as I paid more for the other one than I did for this one.

Until picking up this card I'd resisted duplicating any players who I've already got. This keeps costs down, and keeps the collection focused. But I've also passed on a number of cards that I would have liked to have. Now that I've crossed this bridge, however, who knows if my self control will hold.

It's from the JCM 69 set, from 1959. At this point Kaneda was 25 years old, in his 10th season, he'd won 31 games the previous year, and was right in the middle of the most impressive run of pitching in Japanese history.

[nat]

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.

[dictoresno]

Originally Posted by nolemmings

I appreciate the thread--I think. Didn't own any Japanese cards until a few days ago, until I won the three below-- an Oh rookie with two Starffins. Now I find myself searching through even more cards on Ebay.

What set is that middle one from? My buddy has a card with the same back and can’t figure out what year, set or player it is.

[Frankish]

Originally Posted by dictoresno

What set is that middle one from? My buddy has a card with the same back and can’t figure out what year, set or player it is.

Those cards are from the 1950 Kagome set, often called the "Flying Bat" cards for obvious reasons. Its catalog number is JCM 5.

[nat]

Frank: here are my spare vintage cards.

The menkos are Bettoh, Oshita, Bessho and Nakanishi, Iida, and Kawakami.

The bromides are Minagawa (but not the famous one) sliding home, and Kajimoto.

The Calbies are Hara and a pair of Kadotas on the top row. The bottom row is Shibata, Yamada, and a common.

[nat]

The results of the voting of the Japanese hall of fame were announced a few days ago. And, unlike last year, they actually elected a player this year. Two players, in fact. Both were recent players, so no cool old menko are coming your way. But a couple new posts are. First up: Masahiro Yamamoto got the call.

Yamamoto is already in the mekyukai, so this will be my second post about him. First one here.

He retired in 2015, so I think this was his second year of eligibility for the hall. Which isn’t bad. The Japanese hall, even more than the American one, likes to make players wait for induction.

Yamamoto was occasionally a great pitcher, and was a pitcher, of one sort of another, for an exceptionally long time. He pitched his first two-thirds of an inning with the Dragons at age 20, in 1986, and made his last appearance for them in 2015, at age 50. My last post about him covered the high points of his career, so what I want to do with this post is compare him to some American players.

The only American players to have appeared in an MLB game after their 50th birthday are:

Satchel Paige (age 59)
Charlie O’Leary (age 58)
Nick Altrock (57)
Jim O’Rourke (54)
Jack Quinn (50)
And String Bean Williams appeared in a Negro League game at 52 (after being a 50 year old rookie a couple years previously).

Now, some asterisks are involved here. Paige’s age 59 appearance was a publicity stunt arranged by Charlie Finley. His last appearance in MLB on his merits was at the sprightly young age of 46. O’Leary retired after the 1913 season at age 37, and then had a pinch hitting appearance in 1934. (And got a single, not bad for an old man.) But it was just one at bat. Nick Altrock’s chronologically advanced MLB appearances were publicity stunts. Altrock was as famous for his clowning as his playing. I presume he was a fan favorite. Although he appeared in games every few seasons for years, the last time he was on an MLB roster for what he could do to help his team win appears to have been during his age 32 season (which would have been 1909). New hall of famer Minoso’s post-age-50 appearances (1976 and 1980) were also publicity stunts. Fellow hall of famer Orator Jim O’Rourke played one game for the Giants at age 54; he had retired ten years earlier. It was also a publicity stunt. The Giants were about to clinch their first pennant since 1889, and John McGraw gave O’Rourke, a member of that 1889 team, one last MLB appearance.

Jack Quinn was different. He was active continuously from age 34 through age 50 (he broke into the majors at 25, but spent the 1916 and 1917 seasons in the PCL). And he would go on to pitch a few more innings in the minor leagues over the next couple seasons. Quinn and Williams, then, are the only players to appear in a major league game past the age of 50 for any reason besides publicity stunts.

However, Yamamoto’s age 50 season also appears to have been a publicity stunt. It’s true that he was active continuously, he didn’t sit out a year, but he spent almost all of 2015 in the Western League – that is, in the minors. The Dragons promoted their long-time star to pitch two games, totaling one and a third innings. That looks like a publicity stunt to me. That means that his last merited JPL appearance was at age 49.

MLB players to have appeared in a game after their 49th birthday, but before their 50th:

Hoyt Wilhelm
Jimmy Austin
Arlie Latham
Jamie Moyer
Hughie Jennings
Julio Franco

Wilhelm was a great pitcher who was at the end of the line at 49. He pitched 25 non-publicity-stunt innings. Austin played in one game at 49, one at 46, and one at 45. He was a coach with the Browns, and they allowed him to get into a game every once in a while, for old time’s sake. As with O’Rourke, McGraw was instrumental in getting Latham into a game in his geriatric years. Latham was a coach for the Giants, and McGraw put him in a few games. He got a total of two plate appearances. Doesn’t count. Jamie Moyer you know. He was legitimately playing MLB at 49. In fact, I think the Orioles should have given him another chance. They cut him after 16 innings in AAA with a 1.69 ERA. Obviously he wasn’t a building block for the future, but he threw 16 of the more effective innings on the team, and it’s not like the 2012 Orioles really needed to give relief innings to Randy Wolf. Anyways. Hughie Jennings probably needs no introduction to a board dedicated to pre-war baseball. He was the manager of the 1918 team, and put himself into a game. Julio Franco, on the other hand, was legitimately playing big-league ball at 49. After the Mets released him mid-season, the Braves even saw fit to sign him and put him at first base. So, age-wise, that’s the company that Yamamoto is keeping: Hoyt Wilhelm, Jamie Moyer, and Julio Franco.

Comparing Japanese starters to American relievers is going to be difficult. I can’t tell you if Yamamoto or Wilhelm was the greater player. Yamamoto pitched 1000 more innings than did Wilhelm, so I guess that’s what I’d use to make the decision. But he’s obviously better than the other two. Would that I’m able to do my job longer than almost anyone else ever.

Of course, retiring would be nice too.


Meikyukai: YES – Hall of Fame: YES

1992 BBM