Japanese HOF Project

[nat]

Morimichi Takagi had a 21 year career playing for the Dragons. He was a second baseman with some power and some speed, but no on-base skills. Takagi started out as a lead-off type hitter, stealing 50 bases as a 21 year old in 1963, but over time his speed dropped off and power developed. (This is pretty normal as players age.) But he never did develop a lot of power, topping 20 HRs in a season only twice. Seven times he was selected for the best-nine, which is a record (shared with Chiba, more on him in a future post) for second basemen.

After retiring he managed the Dragons on-and-off, posting a total winning percentage of .524, and retiring for (I assume) the last time in 2013.

Here is some video of Takagi. It's been ages since I took Japanese, so I don't know what they're saying (beyond the occasional 'so desu ne', which is a kind of positive-but-non-committal thing you can say), but the Dragons player wearing #1 is Takagi. (The caption underneath the video says that it's about Takagi and somebody else.)

The card is an uncatalogued menko. It has the same size and shape as the "pillar" menkos that were popular in the late 1940s, but this card is obviously much newer than that. (Not least because Takagi didn't start playing until 1960.) The guy I bought it from thinks it's from the 60s; I suppose that's a good guess, if for no other reason than not many baseball menko sets were made in the 1970s.

[steve B]

I really have to scan mine. I have all of one baseball player menko, the rest of the handful are non-sports. I'd really like to be able to at least name the subjects.

I think they're late 50's. I found the baseball player at one point a few years back, but have forgotten who he is. Got to remember to write it down next time I find out.

[Jeff Alcorn]

Hi,

I have enjoyed following this series very much, and have a few notes that might be helpful (I hope)-

1973 were not Calbee's first cards, they actually produced some in the early 1950s that are quite difficult to get (I don't have any).

On Keith's Katsuya Nomura card from 1958, the other player wearing #5 that is greeting Nomura at home plate is not Katsuya (that is Nomura's first name) but outfielder Yoshio Anabuki. Anabuki later managed the Hawks and he also appears in the 1967 Kabaya-Leaf set.

Isao Harimoto played his entire career in the Tokyo area with the Flyers/Fighters, Giants, and Orions. The Flyers/Fighters were always in Tokyo until moving to the Sapporo Dome on Hokkaido in recent years, and the Orions were in Kawasaki which is in the Tokyo area.

The Koji Yamamoto card is from the 1976 All-Star Series and shows him scoring for the Central League with Pacific League catcher Katsuya Nomura in the background.

The Morimichi Takagi card cannot be from the 1960s since the Dragons first wore the uniform with the shoulder and side blue stripes in their pennant winning year of 1974. There are a number of anonymous menko issues from the mid-70s, and many of them were made using pirated Calbee photos that had already been issued as Calbee cards. The photos will usually lack clarity since they are photos of photos and will never have a printer's name on them.

Finally, I would like to make a comment about the cutting of menko cards. These cards that were issued from the mid to late 1950s through 1964 were not released as singles but came in uncut form in various amounts- 2, 4, 6, cards etc. The cutting was done by the purchaser, and some can still be found in uncut form. The cover of Gary Engel's 6th edition guide shows a display of uncut cards as they would have been available in a shop.

As an obvious result, the cards have various dimensions and can be found with wider borders on the sides or top, angled cuts, etc. As a general rule, the cards that were not imported to the USA in the 1960s tend to have less uniform dimensions and the cuts can range all over the place. However, the sets that were imported in the 1960s were carefully cut and are much more standardized in size and overall condition. They were sold in set form to collectors here and many remained together as sets for decades and were never played with by Japanese children.

The collectors that brought these menko cards here at the time they were released in Japan, along with the 1964 Morinaga Top Star cards, Fujiya Gum cards and the 1967 Kabaya-Leaf cards, were Bud Ackerman and Mel Bailey. Bud was responsible for the menkos that came here and Mel brought the Morinaga, Fujiya, and Kabaya-Leaf.

The Shinichi Eto card shown in the graded holder has the stamped number 9 on the back. Bud and his family cut these cards and stamped a number on the back of each card. When they sold the sets a numbered checklist that corresponded to the stamped number on each card was provided to the purchaser. Anytime one of these cards is found with the stamped number on the back it went straight from the shop to the Ackerman's house where it was cut, stamped, and bundled into sets of 40 different and sold to collectors in the USA that way.

The result is ,of course, that the imported menkos, Kabaya-Leaf cards, Morinaga Top Star and Fujiya Gum cards are usually in pretty good condition since they were never owned by the general public but were bought by Bud Ackerman or Mel Bailey from shops in Japan or direct from the producer (in the case of most of the Kabaya-Leaf cards). There should be no fear that this card was cut down from a ragged form to get a grade. All of the imported menko cards I have are in the same condition, and the cuts are quite uniform with only a few variances. This should also account for why the cards found by Steve at a flea market were cut so well- if they were some of the imported cards brought in by Bud or Mel in the 1960s.

I hope that this information is of interest, and please continue this great series, I love seeing cards I do not have and reading everyone's contributions.

Jeff

[steve B]

Very interesting Jeff.

I only have a few Japanese cards, less than 10 baseball for sure. But they're interesting and I like learning more about them.

I'm guessing mine were brought in, as they're cut well enough I'd always thought they were factory done.

[seanofjapan]

Great post Jeff, that is particularly interesting about Bud Ackerman and Mel Bailey.

[nat]

Hi Jeff - Thanks for all the info! So my Takagi card is a mid 70s rip-off from Calbee? That's pretty interesting (and late for a baseball menko). Thank you also for the information about the Eto card. I knew that some sets were imported in bulk, but I usually buy cards directly from Japan so it didn't occur to me to check to see if this set was one of the ones that was imported. (Guess I should do that when buying cards from Americans.) Cards sold directly to Hobbyists is still too capital-H Hobby for my tastes, but I'm glad that it wasn't cut down for grading purposes.

Today's card is of the newest hall of famer. Tatsunori Hara was inducted just this year. Hara played 15 seasons (1981 to 1995) for the Giants. He was a third baseman - a contemporary of, and with basically the same offensive profile as, George Brett. Like Brett, he was a 1x MVP and many-time all-star (11x in Hara's case).* Despite a career that eventually landed him in the Hall of Fame, Hara was considered something of a disappointment. He was one of the hottest prospects ever, and was expected to replace the production of the recently-retired Oh. He was good (and won the rookie of the year award his first year), but, come on, he wasn't that good.

*The Brett comparison is the first one that came to mind, but Brett was actually the better player. Hara couldn't manage the kinds of batting average that Brett could, and unlike Brett he struck out more than he walked.

Post playing days, he became a manager, holding the reins for the Giants for ten seasons, as well as managing Japan in the World Baseball Classic.

Hara's production as a player was not quite enough to get him into the hall. In his final year of eligibility he topped out at 73% of the vote - just missing the cut off for induction. He was elected by Japan's version of the veteran's committee, which is allowed to consider his accomplishments as a manager in addition to his performance on the field. Hara himself downplayed his own accomplishments as a player:

"As a little boy, I loved baseball," Hara said. "And naturally, I dreamed of being a pro. But even in my wildest dreams I didn't imagine this. I was nothing special as a player, but I think the managing may have had something to do with this."

And here's a video of Hara from 1992, batting against Akimitsu Ito of the Swallows.

The card is from the 1985 Calbee set.

[nat]

Tokuji Iida was a Hawk and a Swallow over a 17 year career, from 1947 to 1963. He just missed collecting 2000 hits (no Golden Player Club for you, not that it existed when he retired). Iida was a slugging first baseman who played through Japan's deadball era. His raw home run totals don't look impressive (after 1955 he never even made it into double digits), but no one at the time was hitting home runs, or much of anything else. For example, in 1957 he slugged .417 against a league average of .329. Last year the National League slugged .423. Iida's slugging percentage was 88 points better than league average; you would have to slug .511 to top last year's average by 88 points. That's, basically, Anthony Rizzo. But raw comparison's aren't really the way to do this. In 1957 (a year in which he hit 9 home runs) Iida had a slugging percentage that was 27% higher than league average. To match that in last year's National League you would need to slug .537, exactly what Kris Bryant did. So one way to think about Iida is that, even in the years in which he was hitting home runs in the singe-digits, he was, in context, hitting as well as Kris Bryant.

Lest you think that maybe he was a one-dimensional power hitter (like, e.g., Rob Deer), note that his on-base percentage was 25% better than league average that year as well. Which is, again, a perfect match for Bryant.

So, basically, Iida was Kris Bryant, albeit at 1B rather than 3B, for 17 years. He won the 1955 MVP award, but he does not seem to be well-remembered. He doesn't even have his own Wikipedia page. People who follow Japanese baseball apparently regard him highly though - thehanshintigers.com ranks him as one of the Hawks' five best players, and Jim Allen ranks him as the second best defensive first baseman of all time. (Although seventy year old defensive statistics should always be taken with a pretty good spoonful of salt.) Allen also ranks him as the 60th greatest player of all time. He was famous for a long consecutive-game streak (this is basically the only thing that the Japanese Hall of Fame website says about him), but he missed a bunch of games late in his career, presumably with injuries. Maybe a day off now and then would have been a good idea.

I like to find video of the players that I write about, but youtube has nothing for Iida. If you search "Tokuji Iida" on youtube the only hit you get is from an old Japanese movie called "The Burden of Life", which sounds a bit heavy for a baseball message board.

The Iida card is from the JCM 31b (type II) set. I forgot to take a picture of the back, but I think you folks can deal with just a photo of the front.

Also, it's time to report some progress. I'm now 51% of the way to my goal! On June 1st I was at 25%, so I've picked up another quarter of the hall of fame (at least, those who are in as pro players, and so for whom there are probably cards) in the past 41 days. I'll call that progress. Surely it helps that most of my cards are low grade, but this remains a (relatively) inexpensive project. I still have a couple American cards that cost more than my entire Japanese collection.

[nat]

Manabu Kitabeppu pitched for the Carp for 19 seasons, 1976 to 1994. He broke in when he was just 18 years old. It's got to be crazy being that young and playing on the biggest stage. (Then of course there's Joe Nuxhall. I doubt anyone else had eight years between big league appearances.) Kitabeppu won 213 games with a 3.67 career ERA. I don't know of any website that has league ERA for ranges of seasons available; it's possible to calculate it from the data available for individual seasons, but that sounds pretty tedious. Suffice it to say that, looking over a bunch of years during Kitabeppu's career, 3.67 is a bit better than league average, but not super impressive. He's got a weird career shape. He was super good occasionally - he won an MVP award and a pair of Sawamura awards - but he mixed in a bunch of clunkers. Sort of like Zack Greinke, or, to take a much more extreme example, Steve Carlton. He was sent to the minor leagues for the first time in 1989, when he was 31 after a rough patch. He would post two more good years, but he was done at 36. Albright does not list him on his ranking of the top 115 (what a weird number to stop at) Japanese players. In all he's kind of an unexciting hall of famer. The Greinke comparison is probably a good one. They're both fine pitchers, if what's his name who is on the Phillies now hadn't gone bonkers in the second half Greinke would have two Cy Young awards also. But they're not the kind of guys whose starts I make it a point to watch.

On the other hand, Wikipedia says that he was one of the most popular right-handed pitchers ever. Now, it's possible that that was written by his mother, but it's also possible that he was a much more exciting pitcher than his statistics indicate.

YouTube doesn't seem to have any videos of him playing. Which is a surprise, given how recently he retired. It does have a short and boring interview with him from 2012, filmed a charity golf tournament. I'll spare you the link, but basically he tells kids that if they want to be good at baseball they need to practice every day.

The card is from the inaugural 1991 BBM set. Looking at his card I just noticed that the kanji for "strikeout" just means "three", which is commendably to the point. The symbol that they use for "walk" - Nishi - means "west". I guess home plate is to the north?

Eventually I'll probably end up with some more BBM cards, but I've now posted all of those that I've got on hand. It'll be back to menkos and bromides (and a few Calbees) for the near future.