1970s Collisions at the plate with Shiro Mizunuma

 

It has been almost a year since my last post, which is a record setting hiatus for me.  When I'm busy and the Dragons are doing terribly the combination of the two usually depresses my blogging output.  Its been a banner year for both of these factors so far in 2026. 

I picked up a few 1970s Calbees recently that have given me a bit of motivation to start posting again, so I'm dusting the blog off for them.  These are two of them, both featuring Hiroshima Carp catcher Shiro Mizunuma defending home plate.  The one above is from the 1978 set and features him about to catch a tardy throw to the plate in an early season game against the Swallows.  The one below is from the 1979 set and shows him about to get knocked over during the Nippon Series against Kintetsu, which the Carp would go on to win that year.

I bought both of these mainly for the neat action photos, which modern Calbee cards just don't have.  I didn't even notice that Mizunuma was in both of them until after buying them.  He was a kind of journeyman catcher who played for the Carp throughout the 70s but was never an All Star or anything.  His main claim to fame is that he caught all 7 games in the above 1979 Nippon Series for them.  And that after retirement he opened a restaurant in Hiroshima which I think might still be open (?)

These were the first cards I've bought this year, with the exception of a few from bags of Calbee chips I've bought as snacks at work.  My kids aren't as interested in collecting them with me as they were in previous years, and the fact that the sets are just brutally awful (and now cost more) has turned me off trying to seriously put this year's together for the first time in many years.  But having these 70s cards in hand has got me a bit more enthusiastic about working on those sets, particularly the monster 1975-76 set that I'm getting tantalizingly close to finishing, so I'll probably try to set aside some more time for the collection for the rest of the season even as the Dragons continue to suck and I continue to be busy with  other things!