Japanese HOF Project

[nat]

Here's the next batch of pictures of the magazine. As near as I can tell, this is an article about the big sluggers of the day. Several of the pictures are of Kawakami, and one of the cartoons mentions Oshita.

I didn't post all of the pages to the article. Some of them are just text, and I figured those would be of limited interest. But if someone around here who reads Japanese (Sean, Jeff, somebody?) wants to give me a rough idea of what the article is about, that would be great. (I've included close ups of small sections of the text.) And if anyone is interested in reading the whole thing, I'd be happy to give them (or post, or link to) larger images of the entire article.

On another note: I've considered hunting for R5 and uncatalogued menkos. Given that there are so many uncatalogued sets, do you think that there would be any point to this? If there is a limited supply of uncatalogued sets, a type card from any one of them is special. But if a whole bunch of sets are uncatalogued, is the fact that any given one of them is super rare interesting any more? (There is also the issue that this would be an even more niche project than collecting Japanese hall of famers, but that's another matter.)

Next time I'll post the article about the Red Sox.

[nat]

Since there doesn't seem to be any interest in reading the magazine, I'll just post some of the pictorial highlights. We've got some Japanese players - including Fumio Fujimura and somebody who looks like Eiji Sawamura to me. But we've also got some Americans. Tris Speaker is not who I expected to show up in a Japanese magazine from the 1940s. The article also features Ted Williams, complete with his batting statistics.

[seanofjapan]

Originally Posted by nat

Here's the next batch of pictures of the magazine. As near as I can tell, this is an article about the big sluggers of the day. Several of the pictures are of Kawakami, and one of the cartoons mentions Oshita.

I didn't post all of the pages to the article. Some of them are just text, and I figured those would be of limited interest. But if someone around here who reads Japanese (Sean, Jeff, somebody?) wants to give me a rough idea of what the article is about, that would be great. (I've included close ups of small sections of the text.) And if anyone is interested in reading the whole thing, I'd be happy to give them (or post, or link to) larger images of the entire article.

On another note: I've considered hunting for R5 and uncatalogued menkos. Given that there are so many uncatalogued sets, do you think that there would be any point to this? If there is a limited supply of uncatalogued sets, a type card from any one of them is special. But if a whole bunch of sets are uncatalogued, is the fact that any given one of them is super rare interesting any more? (There is also the issue that this would be an even more niche project than collecting Japanese hall of famers, but that's another matter.)

Next time I'll post the article about the Red Sox.

The first article (on the left) is written by Kyouichi Nitta, who played for Keio University in the late 1910s and faced a University of Chicago team that visited Japan. After graduating he studied design in New York, and became a somewhat prominent golfer in Japan in the 1920s. He returned to baseball after the war and served as a coach and manager for a few NPB teams in the 1950s. The article is about the Japanese/American ("Nichibei") way of hitting, so I guess he's talking about American style hitting, though the article is a bit hard to read.

About collecting R5 and uncatalogued menko, that is a cool idea! But I'm not sure how easy it will be in the US to do that, even in Japan they are hard to track down (though Prestige collectibles auctions do get a lot). I'm not sure how many sets are uncatalogued at this point, I've found some but not many (relative to the number that are catalogued). Actually most of hte uncatalogues menko I have are from sets that are in the catalogue, but the specific card isn't.

[Jeff Alcorn]

Sorry to answer so late, but I do have IDs on the players that you are missing:

Flyers L-R: Giichiro Shiraki P, Hisanori Karita Mgr.-2B, Hiroshi Oshita OF
Pacific: Juzo Sanada P
Nankai: Takehiko Bessho P
Chubu Nippon: Hideo Shimizu P
Braves: L- Rentaro Imanishi, R- Yoshio Tenpo
Tigers (above Ted Williams): Henry (Bozo) Wakabayashi

The Flyers were Tokyu in 1947, then Kyuei in 1948, then back to Tokyu in 1949-53.

Hope this helps,

Jeff

[nat]

Since I posted most of the rest of it, I might as well finish posting the magazine. These pages don't have any illustrations (except the back cover), but I did manage to work out what's going on here. These are lists of award winners, league leaders, and the like. You'll notice the stars of the day get mentioned a lot - Kawakami (川上), Oshita (大下), Yamamoto (山本), Starffin (スターフィン). Match up their names with the years in which they won awards, led the league in various things, and so on, and you can figure out what each list is talking about.

[nat]

The Japanese hall of fame announces its selections at approximately the same time that the American hall does.

And today's the day. (Americans have to wait I think until the 26th.)

The selections were Katsuji Kawashima and Kazuo Sayama. Kawashima was the manager of the silver-medal-winning Japanese team at the 1996 Olympics. His professional baseball career had been in the industrial leagues. Sayama is an author who writes about baseball.

No players were elected. Shingo Takatsu came very close, Masa Yamamoto got 68%, and Alex Ramirez got 65%. Just like the American hall, it takes 75% of the vote to be elected. So that means that I've got no cards to add to my hall of fame collection this year.

[nat]

I found a copy of a Hamasaki card for sale, and decided to add him to my list. He’s in the hall of fame as a manager, and he had a short career, so I wasn’t after one of his cards originally. But he’s too interesting to pass up.

Shinji Hamasaki made his debut as a NPB pitcher in 1947, at the age of 45. He also pitched for Hankyu (mostly in relief) in 1948 and 1950, which means that his last appearance as a professional player was during his age 48 season. Prior to joining the Braves he (along with his younger brother Tadaharu) pitched for an industrial league team in Manchukuo, a Japanese puppet state in mainland China prior to WWII. Before that, Hamasaki played for Keio, and was a notable figure in pre-professional Japanese baseball. That said, he didn’t fare well when he played against Ruth and the other visiting Americans. He was the losing pitcher in the November 17 game of the American players’ 1934 tour, gave up six runs in a relief outing in the November 24 game, and lost again two days later.

These days, what he’s most remember for holding the record for the oldest pitcher a win game, that would stand until Masahiro Yamamoto surpassed him, in 2014. However, he still holds the record of being the oldest player to collect a hit, a single, a double, a triple, and to steal a base.

He was really a manager though, helming the Braves from 1947 through 1953, then taking the helm during the inaugural year of the short-lived Takahashi/Tombo Unions. The team was terrible and only lasted through the 1956 season. Anyways, Hamasaki was with the Unions for only their first two seasons, he then sat out a few years before taking over the top spot with Kokutetsu in 1963. In all, his teams were pretty bad. Only the 47 and 49 Braves finished with a winning record. Hamasaki himself blamed Hankyu’s poor showing on ownership’s miserly ways. The more things change…

Japanese teams once had a prohibition on foreign players (and still have limitations on the number that can be employed), but once the prohibition was lifted (in 1952) Hamasaki recruited a pair of players from the American Negro Leagues – John Britton and Jimmy Newberry. Britton made the all-star team in 1952 and appears in a few Japanese card sets. When the owner of the team said that he wasn’t sure that recruiting Black players was a good idea, Hamasaki threatened to quit if the owner vetoed the signings.

After his last managerial gig he coached for various teams, and served as a commentator.

Hamasaki was born in 1901 in Kure. His parents owned a rice shop that was damaged in rice riots in 1918.

Rumor has it that he was the shortest player in the history of Japanese baseball.

JRM 48a. This set isn't listed in the edition of Engel's book that I've got, so I don't know the year on it.