Japanese HOF Project

[nat]

Kazahiro Yamauchi is a guy to whom I was unfair in my first write-up. I compared him to Duke Snider. And, while being compared to a legitimate hall of famer isn't very harsh criticism, Yamauchi was, in his game, a greater player than was Snider. Superficially their statistics look pretty similar, but in context they're not.

Yamauchi was a 13x all-star (that's from baseball-reference, his Japanese Wikipedia page says 16x), 10x best-nine, and the 1960 MVP. He was the first Japanese player to reach 300 home runs, and the second to get to 2000 hits. When he retired he was the all-time leader in doubles. (Since he was the first to 300 home runs, he must have been the all-time home run leader at some point.) He still ranks in the top ten in some offensive categories, and top twenty in many.

As near as I can tell, he led the league in doubles four times and home runs twice. Looks like he was also a 4x RBI leader, took home one batting title, led the league in OBP 4x, and slugging 3x.

Yeah, so the Duke Snider comp was wrong. He's more like Frank Robinson.

Meikyukai: Yes - Hall of Fame: Yes

This is my first gum card. Engel calls the set "Lili" gum. The guy that I bought it from (who is Japanese) calls it "Lilly" gum. Now, I don't doubt that 'Lili' is the correct transliteration of the Japanese symbols, but I wonder how it's pronounced. Is it supposed to be an importation of the English word for the flower (even if it's not spelled that way)? On the back it gives the name of the company as リリー. The former symbols have a 'ri' sound. The latter extends a vowel (if I remember my high school Japanese classes).

The card itself is tiny. It's printed on thick cardboard, but it's less than one inch on a side. Maybe packaged with a single piece of gum? It's got a designation of R3 - meaning you aren't likely to run into very many of them. Now, it may just be the very limited number of suppliers that I've got to buy Japanese cards from, but in my experience gum cards are much harder to find than menko cards of corresponding rarities. The guy that I bought this from had several Lili cards for sale, but that was the first (and so far only) time that I've ever encountered them.