October 14, 1974 was the last day that Shigeo Nagashima played a baseball game. The Calbee set that year produced a few cards in the Oh/Nagashima (ON) series which commemorated the occasion since it also marked the end of Sadahauru Oh and Nagashima appearing in the same lineup. The end on an era.
Card 426 in the set is one of the more interesting ones. It shows Oh presenting flowers to Nagashima at the end of the game (the Dragons Yasunori Oshima is on the right, having also given Nagashima some flowers) Its a kind of neat picture, with all those 70s photographers in the background.
The back of the card says;
“At last the time for Mister to put down his bat. Everyone knew that this day would come, but hoped that it would last another year or two. At the end of the game on October 14, 1974 at Korakuen, Oh presented him with flowers on behalf of the Giants, Oshima on behalf of the Dragons.”
Very cool image. Thanks for sharing it--and for translating the back.
ReplyDeleteThanks!
DeleteThe Nagashima and Oh tandem is so fascinating. They played so many years together... and won all of those titles. Very cool card capturing such a historic event.
ReplyDeleteYeah, they were a historic pair, kind of like the Japanese version of Ruth and Gehrig!
DeleteI can only imagine the things that would be said on the social media sites if a retiring player today was publically given flowers by a teammate.
ReplyDeleteIn Japan its still a custom and happens all the time on big occasions. Here is a more recent, random example: https://www.sankei.com/article/20210813-46ELK4QXAVMUJDM7YQAPYQEGBQ/?outputType=theme_tokyo2020
DeleteI have had this card for years and never noticed Oshima was on it too.
ReplyDeleteYeah, its kind of odd. I wouldn't have noticed from the photo either since he is barely visible, but his name is on both the front and back as though he was one of the main subjects of the card.
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