Japanese HOF Project

[nat]

Norihiro Komada played 1B/OF for the Giants and Bay Stars from 1983 to 2000. He got a slow start – looks to have been mostly a pinch hitter for his first few seasons, but was a starter at 24 and thereafter missed very few games. Offensively he had good but rarely great power, decent on base skills, and no speed. Although he was a six-time all-star, 1x best-nine, and 10x gold glove winner, and qualified for the Meikyukai, the highlight of his career was probably his very first at bat. He hit a grand slam on April 10, 1983, on his first trip to the plate. The first Japanese player to accomplish that feat.

Komada was drafted out of high school, and although he hit .490 in high school, he was selected by the Giants as a pitcher. That didn’t last. Motoshi Fujita, managing the Giants at the time, moved him to first base before he saw any big league action on the mound.

He left the Giants after 1993 in order to make room for Hiromitsu Ochiai, who was to take over at first base. During the 1980s the Lions were the dominant team in Japan, but Komada managed to win the Japan Series with Yomiuri once. After heading to the Bay Stars, he got another chance, taking home the championship in 1998. The Bay Stars were known as the “machine gun offense” because of the regularity with which they delivered hits. The machine gun offense was led by second baseman Bobby Rose, who hit 325 with 19 home runs. Komada, despite being the first baseman, was one of the worst-hitting regulars on the team.

If you just take his offense, Komada looks like a minor star. Somebody like Shawn Green. But the ten gold gloves tell a different story. If his defense really was that good, his American counterpart is more like Keith Hernandez.

Meikyukai: Yes – Hall of Fame: No

1998 Calbee

[nat]

It’s easy to think of the Meikyukai’s 2000 hit qualification as analogous to the MLB 3000 hit club. But it’s not. The seasons are much closer in length than that. To get something analogous the qualification for the Meikyukai would need to be closer to 2400 hits. And if it was, a LOT of the players in the Meikyukai would not qualify.

Case in point: Hiromasa Arai. He hung on through a truly dreadful age 40 season to eclipse the 2000 hit mark, and retired at the end of the year. Plenty of other guys retired basically immediately after reaching 2000, but their teams were willing to let them continue to chase it even if they eat up an otherwise valuable roster spot. If the line were 2400 obviously there would still be guys doing this, but there would be a lot less of it, and the players doing it would generally be of a higher quality.

Anyways, Arai spent 18 seasons playing ichi-gun ball in Japan. From 1975 to 1985 he was with Nankai, and the balance of his career with Kintetsu. That’s the Hawks and the Buffaloes. Arai was an outfielder with basically no power and relatively little speed. He topped ten homers in a season twice, and while he often got into double digits in steals, that’s about all that you can say WRT his speed. That said, he was a good player. But his game was putting the ball where fielders can’t reach it. Basically all of his offensive value was tied to his batting average. He did walk more than he struck out, but he didn’t really do much of either. I’m imaging a guy with amazing bat control, but who never saw a pitch that he didn’t like. His best season came, surprisingly, as a 35 year old. He posted an on base percentage that was well above average, to go along with a healthy slugging percentage. But, as usual, both were driven by his batting average, in this case a career-high 366. For his career Arai sported a 291/342/395 batting line.

He was a product of the baseball powerhouse high school PL Gakuen, but did not go pro immediately. The Buffaloes selected him in the ninth round of the draft out of high school, but he was apparently not well thought of at the time (he says they didn’t even send a scout out to see him). So instead of signing he attended Hosei University and later joined the Hawks. By my count he was selected to the best nine three times, but never won an MVP award. The Buffaloes went to the Japan Series in 1989 (his only chance at a flag). And while the Buffaloes lost the Series, the Fighting Spirit Award (basically the MVP for the losing team) went to Arai.

Since retiring Arai has spent some time coaching, and has also been doing goodwill work with the Meikyukai. As of 2013 he was helping develop a baseball program in Cambodia. Two of his daughters won a Miss Japan beauty contest. One of them has athletic ambitions – she was doing something with tennis in Cambodia, and more recently worked with something called the Three Hearts Foundation to help build the popularity of baseball in Singapore. Arai and Hideo Nomo also took part in the Singaporean outreach program. Currently he is a coach with SoftBank.

Meikyukai: Yes - Hall of Fame: No

1990 Calbee

[nat]

I don't have the time to do a proper write-up for anybody at the moment, even though I've got a bunch of new cards that need them. But I also don't want to leave this thread dormant for too long, so I'll show off a new card that doesn't need an accompanying biography.

Sean needed a copy of the Takagi card from the "Monsters and Robots" set, so I sent my copy to him and got this one in return. It's a Takagi from the 1975 Pepsi menko set. I like it because it's seriously thick, this card is like a hockey puck. A lot of menko sets are really menko sets in name only - they're actually too thin to flip over. Not this guy.

Other posts on Takagi here and here.

[seanofjapan]

Yeah, that Takagi is rock solid alright!

I really like that set.

I got the Monsters and Robots one you sent me, thanks a lot!

[nat]

I’m way behind in keeping this thread updated. Two reasons. Mostly, I’ve got lots of deadlines pressing and really shouldn’t be spending time writing about Japanese baseball. (This post included…) And, secondly, I’ve been working on other parts of my collection lately. But anyways, I’ve got a bunch of cards on-hand that need a write-up, including today’s featured player.

Just like the American hall, there are two doors to the Japanese hall. The front door is induction via the Player’s Division. The committee responsible for this group has as its purview recently retired players. The back door is induction via the Expert’s Division vote; players retired for at least 21 years are eligible. This past year no one was elected on the Player’s Division ballot, although Shingo Takatsu fell just short at 73%. Meanwhile, Koichi “home run artist” Tabuchi was named on 80% of the Expert’s Division ballots (voted on by living hall of famers), and therefore elected to the hall of fame. He was the only player selected. (The Japanese hall also elects a large number of executives and other non-players.) The big problem with collecting the hall of fame is that it’s always getting larger. So I expect that I’ll be picking up a Japanese card or two each year.

Tabuchi was a power hitting catcher who played for Hanshin and Seibu from 1969 to 1984. It’s really a surprise that he wasn’t elected earlier than this, and that he had to wait for the Japanese equivalent of the Vet’s committee. (Or whatever they’re calling it these days. I guess it’s been replaced by the various Era Committees.) He didn’t manage Meikyukai membership, but the man is a catcher so a certain amount of leeway ought to be granted. Nearly 1/3 of his career hits went for home runs, and he hit 474 of them in total. Three times he cleared 40 homers in a season: 1974-75 and 1980. At his peak he was walking more than he struck out, but that pretty clearly reflects the fact that pitchers were terrified of him, rather than an especially keen batting eye. For his career he posted a 260/361/535 batting line. That would be okay for a first baseman, for a catcher it’s crazy pants. It also tells you what kind of batter he must have been. A 260 batting average with a 535 slugging percentage means that he swings from his heels. A fair number of walks gave him a respectable on base percentage, but I’m still imagining a gigantic upper cut.

That supposition is supported by what is probably the most striking thing about his stat line. Despite being one of the better home run hitters in Japanese history, he hit very few doubles. Often he was in the single digits, and he managed just 167 of them for his career. The only way you manage that is if the balls that you hit are towering moon shots. If he had been a line-drive hitter more of those balls would have bounced off the top of the wall and he would have had a lower HR/2B ratio. Compare him to Ted Williams, the paradigm line-drive hitter. Despite clearing 500 HR for his career, Williams had more doubles than homers. (I write that then I go to read the B-R bullpen entry and it notes the HR/2B disparity in the very first paragraph.)

It’s possible that I’m forgetting someone, but I think that Tabuchi was the greatest catcher of the 1970s. Katsuya Nomura played the entire decade, but he was really a man of the 60s. Great though he was in the 70s, Tabuchi was better. Tabuchi was named to the best-nine five times, and was an 11-time all-star. Although his game was offense, he doesn’t seem to have been a defensive slouch, winning the gold glove (well, diamond glove, but you know what I mean) twice. But regarding that offense: it was he who broke Oh’s streak of 14 consecutive years leading the league in home runs, and he once hit home runs in seven consecutive at bats.

The deal from Hanshin to Seibu was a big one. It was Tabuchi with Kenji Furusawa for Akinobu Mayumi, Masafumi Takeda, Masashi Takenouchi, Yoshiharu Wakana, and cash. Let’s look at this deal. Furusawa was a 30 year old pitcher who had been pretty good but was starting to slip. Seibu would turn him into a reliever. Mayumi was a 24 yo SS who had spent many years playing part time, but would go on to be a star for the Tigers. If the Lions hadn’t been so stingy with playing time when he was young he almost certainly would have made the Meikyukai. Takeda was a bad relief pitcher who pitched five innings for Hanshin before retiring. Takenouchi was an older first baseman who had one good year left. Wakana was evidently intended to be Tabuchi’s replacement, but he was a defense-first catcher who couldn’t hit at all. This was a questionable deal for the Tigers at the time, but it ended up working out pretty well. Mayumi had a long and successful career, and played for Hanshin into his 40s. On the other hand, it’s not like the Lions got burned: Tabuchi was still a star, and he his 43 home runs in his first season playing for them. That’s pretty good.

And the Lions were the team to be on in the 1980s. He was only around for the beginning of their great run, but Tabuchi won the Japan series with them twice.

After retiring Tabuchi coached for a while and did some TV commentary, but now seems mostly to be retired.

As usual with great Tigers, The Hanshin Tigers has a nice biography of him.

Meikyukai: No – Hall of Fame: Yes

JCM 15a. This is another satisfyingly thick menko card. It's late for a menko card, but they knew how to make menko in the 70s. Tabuchi is the guy with the portrait in front. The batter (#12) in the back is, Engel says, unknown.

[nat]

Mutsuo Minagawa was a Nankai great. He pitched from 1954 to 1971, totaling a bit over 3000 innings, with a career ERA of 2.42. The early years of his career were a pretty low-offense environment, but even by their standards he was quite good. In 1958 he pitched 230 innings and posted a 1.83 ERA, which was exactly one run better than league average. Given that the league had a 2.83 ERA that year, his mark was only 65% of league average. That would be 2.92 in the 2019 MLB. He finished second in ERA that year, behind Inao.

But his most noteworthy season was at the other end of his career. In 1968 he threw 350 innings and had an ERA of only 1.61. Given the league average in 1968, that would be like putting up a 2.00 ERA in today’s MLB. (Or, well, 2019’s MLB. Who knows when or if we’re going to have a 2020 MLB.) It’s curious that, until 1968, he managed to avoid the abusive workloads so common at the time (he was often below 200 innings pitched). It’s also worth noting that after throwing 350 innings in a season, his innings pitched dropped off dramatically, he became increasingly ineffective, and his career was over three years later. But still, he did get one hell of a year out of those 350 innings. He led the league in ERA, wins (with 31; he was the last 30 game winner in Japan), and most other pitching categories. He was selected to the best nine, but took home neither the MVP (which went to another pitcher) nor the Sawamura award. The Sawamura award went to Yutaka Enatsu, who set a record with 401 strikeouts that year.

During his time with them, the Hawks were good. The won the Japan Series in 1959 and 1964, and lost it in 1961, 1965, and 1966.

Rather than blazing speed, Minagawa was known for his wide assortment of off-speed pitches. Word is that his best pitch was a screwball (or shoot ball). He had a side-arm delivery, which seems to be much more common in Japan than in the US. Minagawa didn’t live to see his induction into the hall of fame, but his wife and his long-time battery-mate, Katsuya Nomura, gave speeches on his behalf. Nomura said that he was the first pitcher to throw “cut balls” (apparently a kind of slider) and that they first tried the pitch out in an exhibition game against Oh, inducing him to pop out to the second baseman. Thereafter Minagawa worked the pitch into his repertoire.

This card is from the Kabaya-Leaf set of 1967. This set is very popular among American collectors, at least as these things go. It was jointly a product of a Japanese gum manufacturer, and the Leaf company familiar to American baseball card collectors. That probably explains why it has a fairly standard-for-the-US layout. It was originally distributed with chocolates and gum, but apparently the cards failed to move the product and quite a few cards were left over. Mel Bailey, who imported a bunch of Japanese cards into the US, bought the remaining stock and sold sets to American collectors. It is reportedly now easier to find in the US than in Japan. Strangely enough, my card comes from Japan (thanks Sean!), but also has writing on the back in romanji. PSA has a nice article about the set.

As you can see, this particular card has scrapbook residue on the back. I don’t know if Kabaya-Leaf cards can be soaked. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if no one has ever tried it.

>>>

And that’s that. Mutsuo Minagawa completes my Japanese Hall of Fame collection. Not, that is, that I have all of the hall of famers. But I have everyone on my list: all of the post-war hall of fame players, all of the post-war hall of fame managers who also had substantial playing careers, and a (fairly arbitrary) assortment of post-war managers who did not have substantial playing careers. I’ll keep my eyes out for pre-war players, but they’re expensive and few-and-far-between, so I’m going to regard getting their cards as supererogatory rather than an essential part of the collection.

In total I spent $553.39 for the cards in the collection. It took me almost two years. There are 90 cards in this collection, so I paid an average of about $6 each for them, but that figure is somewhat misleading, as I have a bunch of BBM cards that cost only a buck, and I got a number of Calbee cards in trade, which pulls the average down. The average of the vintage cards was more than $6. The single most expensive card was the Wally Yonamine. I was tired of losing auctions for Yonamine cards, so I found one that I like and put in a big that would definitely win. It, um, it did. (The postcards were yet more expensive, but they don’t feature any hall of famers, so they’re not a part of this particular collection.)

Here’s the breakdown of the rarities of the cards in my collection:

BBM________11
NS Menko____2
R1 Menko____9
R2 Menko____10
R3 Menko____11
UNC Menko___7
Upper Deck___1
Calbee_______17
R2 Food/Gum__1
R3 Food/Gum__1
R4 Game______3
Yamakatsu_____2
R2 Bromide____3
R3 Bromide____2
R4 Bromide____1
R5 Bromide____1
UNC Bromide___8

All three game cards that I own are super rare. As are two of my bromides. I have many uncatalogued cards, both menko and bromide. It stands to reason that most of these are also quite rare, although that’s not certain. On Engel’s classification, R4 cards have fewer than ten copies known, and R5 cards have (IIRC) no more than three. I think that this can be regarded as only a guess, but that’s the ballpark that we’re talking about. You’ll notice that I have few “not-scarce” menko, and quite a few more of higher rarities. That’s mostly because I was attracted to the rarer ones, if you picked up menko cards at random you wouldn’t get that distribution.

I’ve never completed a collecting project before. Indeed, this is just my second one ever. As a kid I set out to get one playing-days card of every MLB hall of fame player; I started working on that project again a few years ago, but it's clearly a very long-term project. Ever completing it seems doubtful. The cards in my Japanese collection are displayed in a single binder – one on each page, with a 3x5 card cut down as backing (so you can’t see the card behind it). Each player gets his own little moment in the sun (as it were), as you flip through the binder.

Finally, here’s a list of the cards in the collection:
AKIYAMA, Koji ---------- BBM 93
AKIYAMA, Noboru ------ JCM 28a
Amachi, Shinichi -------- JGA16
AOTA, Noboru ----------- JCM 75
ARAMAKI, Atsushi ------- JCM 129
BESSHO, Takehiko ------- JGA16
BETTO, Kaoru ------------ UNC menko
CHIBA, Shigeru ---------- UNC menko
ENOMOTO, Kihachi ------ JF 23
ETOH, Shin-ichi ---------- JCM 13c
FUJIMURA, Fumio -------- UNC Bromide
FUJITA, Motoshi ---------- JCM 31e
FUKUMOTO, Yutaka ------ Calbee
FURUTA, Atsuya ---------- BBM
GO, Shosei --------------- UNC Bromide
Gondoh, Hiroshi ---------- JCM 55
HARA, Tatsunori ---------- Calbee
HARIMOTO, Isao --------- Calbee
HASEGAWA, Ryohei ------ JCM 33e
HIGASHIO, Osamu ------- Calbee
HIRAMATSU,Masaji ------- Yamakatsu
HIROOKA, Tatsuro -------- JCM 39
HIROSE, Yoshinori -------- JCM 13a
HORIUCHI, Tsuneo ------- Calbee
Hoshino, Senichi --------- Calbee
IIDA, Tokuji -------------- JCM 31b Type II
INAO, Kazuhisa ---------- JCM41
ITOH, Tsutomu ----------- BBM 93
IWAMOTO, Yoshiyuki ----- JBR 9
KADOTA, Hiromitsu ------- Calbee
KAJIMOTO, Takao --------- JBR 16
KANEDA, Masaichi -------- JCM 69
KANEMOTO, Tomoaki ----- Upper Deck
KARITA, Hisanori ---------- JRM 24
KAWAKAMI, Tetsuharu ---- UNC menko
KINUGASA, Sachio -------- Calbee
KITABEPPU, Manabu ------ BBM 91
Koba, Takeshi -------------- JCM 14c
Koichi, Tabuchi ------------- JCM 15a
Kondo, Sadao -------------- UNC Bromide
KOYAMA, Masaaki ---------- JCM 43a
KOZURU, Makoto ----------- unc menko
KUDO, Kimiyasu ----------- BBM 93
MATSUI, Hideki ------------ BBM
Mihara, Osamu ------------ UNC Bromide
MINAGAWA,Mutsuo ------- JF 4
Mizuhara, Shigeru --------- JBR 41
Mori, Masaaki -------------- JCM 39
MURATA, Choji ------------- Calbee
MURAYAMA,Minoru --------- JCM 138
NAGASHIMA, Shigeo ------- JCM 54
NAKAGAMI, Hideo ---------- JBR 73
NAKAJIMA, Haruyasu ------- uncatalogued bromide
NAKANISHI, Futoshi -------- JCM 12? 43?
NAKAO, Hiroshi ------------- JGA 19
NISHIZAWA, Michio -------- JDM 21
NOGUCHI, Jiro ------------- JCM 22
NOMO, Hideo --------------- BBM
NOMURA, Katsuya ---------- JCM 14g
OCHIAI,Hiromitsu ---------- BBM 91
O'DOUL, Frank ------------- JRM 7
OH, Sadaharu -------------- Calbee
OHNO, Yutaka--------------- BBM 93
OSHITA, Hiroshi ------------- JBR 109
OSUGI,Katsuo --------------- Yamakatsu
SAITOH, Masaki ------------- BBM 93
SANADA,Juzo --------------- JCM 124
SASAKI, Kazuhiro ----------- BBM
SEKINE, Junzo -------------- JCM 123
SHIRAISHI, Katsum --------- JBR 75
SOTOKOBA, Yoshiro --------- Calbee
STARFFIN, Victor ------------ JBR 53
SUGISHITA, Shigeru -------- UNC Bromide
SUGIURA,Tadashi ----------- UNC menko
SUZUKI, Keishi -------------- Calbee
TAKAGI, Morimichi ---------- JCM 71
TAMIYA, Kenjiro ------------- unc menko
Tatsunami, Kazuyoshi ------- Calbee
TOYODA, Yasumitsu --------- JCM 69
TSUBOUCHI,Michinori ------- unc bromide
Tsuda, Tsunemi -------------- Calbee
WAKABAYASHI, Tadashi ----- JCM 75
WAKAMATSU, Tsutomu ------ Calbee
YAMADA, Hisashi ------------- Calbee
Yamamoto, Kazuto ----------- unc menko
YAMAMOTO, Koji -------------- Calbee
YAMAUCHI, Kazuhiro---------- JCM 12d
YONAMINE, Kaname ---------- JCM 41
YONEDA, Tetsuya ------------- JCM 12e
YOSHIDA, Yoshio ------------- unc bromide

Now, I’ve still got a Meikyukai collection to work on. I started it to keep myself busy when the pace of hall of fame acquisitions dropped off, but I might as well finish it. So I’m not done with this thread (and of course they induct new hall of famers each year), but the main purpose for it has been completed.

[nat]

The Hall of Fame collection is done, but the Meikyukai collection isn’t. So here’s another card.

Motonobu Tanishige was a catcher for Taiyo/Yokohama and Chunichi from 1989 to 2015. That’s 27 years. He appeared in 2843 games as a catcher (and one at 1B). That would best the MLB record pretty easily, as Ivan Rodriguez holds the record with 2427. Impressive, especially considering that the Japanese season is shorter. Once you include a couple hundred games for which B-R doesn’t have positional information (presumably he was a pinch hitter), he set a record for most appearances in Japanese history.

Offensively, eh, some years he was better than average, some years he was worse. But what do you expect, he was a catcher. He had a power spike in his late 20s-early 30s, but most years was in the single digits for home runs. For his career he managed 229 home runs, mostly on the strength of a really long career. Career batting line: 240/333/368. The offense was really just a bonus though, as he was primarily a defensive specialist. Evidence: he set a record for recording 1708 consecutive error-free chances. Probably due to his lack of offense, he was selected to only one best-nine, but he was a 12x all-star, and won a bunch of gold glove awards. The Dragons made him player-manager in 2014, but he retired from playing the following year, and was relieved of managerial duties as well in 2016.

Tanishige’s teams won the Japan Series twice. Here he is hitting a grand slam in 2004.

Meikyukai - Yes : Hall of Fame - No UPDATE: Tanishige was elected to the hall of fame in 2024.

Today's card says it's from the 1993 BBM set. I suppose it's from a gold subset. It's an unusually thick card, with some 3D elements to it.