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.”
I decided to pull the trigger on one of the most famous Calbee cards from the 1970s this week.
Actually, that isn't quite accurate. It would be more accurate to say that I put a bid on a card that was way out of my normal budget expecting the bidding to go way higher, and then it didn't and I ended up accidentally winning the card.
The card is #433 from the 1974 Calbee set and features Shigeo Nagashima at the plate having just connected for what would be a game winning sayonara home run in a game against the Tigers that was played on June 25th, 1959.
You'll note that Nagashima is oddly framed in the photo, appearing as a little figure at the bottom while most of the photo is taken up by people sitting in the stands at Korakuen Stadium.
The reason for this is the people sitting in the box seats at the very top of the card. One of them is the Emperor of Japan.
This is from one of the most famous games in pro Japanese baseball history, the "Tenranshiai" ("Game the Emperor Watched" - my inelegant translation). Japanese Emperors had previously viewed Sumo tournaments and some amateur sporting events, but had never attended a pro baseball game until that day. Getting the proverbial imperial seal of approval was a pretty big endorsement for NPB and so everyone has made a huge deal about it ever since over here. The fact that it was actually a good, close game that ended very dramatically with Shigeo Nagashima, in his second season, hitting a sayonara home run contributed to making it a legendary game. You can see highlights of it on this contemporary news clip.
I'm not a huge fan of royalty but I can still appreciate the importance of the game and Nagashima's home run.
Of course I have to say that now that I own an expensive card featuring it.
This card is from the "famous scenes" series in the 1974 Calbee set which is somewhat hard to come by. Its the only card that commemorates this event (or at least the only vintage card that commemorates it, I would be surprised if BBM hasn't produced a ton of cards based on it over the years) so it is one of those cards that is very highly sought after by Japanese collectors, though probably of a bit less interest to international ones.
I've been vaguely interested in it for a long time, but because copies usually sell for high prices (over 100$ US usually) I had never put a serious bid on one. But its also one of those cards that every decent 1970s Calbee collection needs so I've been entering kind of teaser bids on copies over the years which never came close to winning until I ended up unexpectedly winning this one. Which is cool, its a nice addition to my collection.
The above is card #480 from the 1974 Calbee set. Its from the "ON" series which features various pictures of Sadaharu Oh and Shigeo Nagashima.
According to the back, the photo is not from 1974 but rather from 1960, early on in both player's careers.
This one came up for auction last week and I put a few bids on it but got totally blown out of the water, it ended up selling for 36,501 Yen (about $350 US), way over my budget. This is further evidence that the price of cards has exploded here like they have in the US, a couple of years ago this would probably have been a $50 card.
I really just wanted it for my "weird stuff on cards" collection because this one is a doozy. I mean this is pretty in your face stuff in terms of having a card blatantly depict players modelling bad behavior for children on a product that was meant for children. Hey kids, look at how cool Shigeo Nagashima is when he smokes cigarettes! I mean, I get that this card is old and views about smoking have changed a lot over the past 50 years but I think even in 1974 it should have been obvious that maybe this wasn't a great image to be showing kids. It makes me wonder if Calbee had been producing cards during the PED era if they would have made a topical subset showing candid behind the scenes images of players injecting each other with human growth hormone or something like that.
The card is interesting also because it makes Sadaharu Oh look pretty subservient. It reminds me of a quote by Hiromitsu Ochiai, who was a bit of a renegade player (that I talked about in my previous post). Early in his playing days he quit his university team because he hated the way that junior players were expected to light the cigarettes of senior players and basically dote on them. As he explained: "If I'd wanted to be a nightclub hostess, I'd have gone to work on the Ginza" (quoted in You Gotta Have Wa). Oh came up a year after Nagashima and it would seem from this card that he was expected to perform nightclub hostess related activities for Nagashima as a result, despite not working in Ginza. Ochiai wouldn't have gone for that at all.
Out of curiousity, does anyone know of any other examples of cards (in the US, or anywhere, any sport) depicting players modelling bad behavior for kids?
For reference, here is some other oddball stuff that has appeared on vintage Japanese cards:
One of the more interesting cards from the 1974 Calbee set is this one (#405) which shows Sadaharu Oh practicing his swing before a game in front of a mirror.
According to the back of the card, when Oh switched to using his famous one legged batting stance on July 1, 1962, Shigeo Nagashima expressed doubt as to whether he could hit using it. But it notes that Oh persevered and (of course) developed it well (it uses a metaphor about blooming flowers that sounds pretty hackneyed when translated into English so I'll just leave it at that).
Anyway, its one of those cool cards that shows an element of Oh's legendary attention to detail in his swing.
One card that I have been hunting for a while is #416 from the 1974 Calbee set. It first caught my eye when I saw it in an auction a few months ago. I put a bid on it that was a lot higher than what the then current bid was, and then went to bed. And woke up in the morning to discover someone had sniped me on it. I've never felt so much regret about losing a card in an auction (admittedly this is not a major thing in life to feel regret about, but it was still noticable).
In the months since I have been regularly checking to see if one came up, but I had to wait until last week for another one to appear. When one finally did, with a 1000 Yen start bid, I put a much higher bid on it this time...and won!
I think one can make the argument that this is the most beautiful baseball card ever made. The photograph is perfect. Shigeo Nagashima crouching in the on-deck circle while Sadaharu Oh takes a mighty swing against a Dragons pitcher. Korakuen Stadium is packed because this was taken on Nagashima's last game. The crowded bleachers, the lights and the billboards make the perfect backdrop. The color of the card is perfectly balanced too, the top half blue sky, the bottom half green walls, grass and dirt infield. I have never been so taken with the photograph in a card before. In some ways it is similar to #404 in the same set, which was taken during the same game and shows Nagashima walking off the same field. I love that card too, but like this one better - its got both Nagashima and Oh in the same picture and is a bit more exciting to look at.
I am kind of a fan of cards featuring Sadaharu Oh's swing and his distinctive stance. Mainly because he used them, usually in combination, to hit a baseball a lot. The above two cards are #418 and #420 from the 1974 Calbee set, both from the "ON Series" (O for Oh, N for Nagashima = ON) which fall into this category.
They are kind of cool because they were obviously taken during the same at-bat - the three photographers visible in the upper background are all in identical positions and poses in each so they likely display different instants in the same swing of the bat. The cards themselves make no mention of this fact, card #420 describes his "flamingo" stance while #418 just says this is Oh taking a full swing. He is in a home uniform but these weren't taken at Korakuen, so I assume they were taken during spring training.
My collection is currently missing the card that numerically falls between these two (#419), I am curious if it features another shot from the same at bat, with his swing about halfway between the two. It would be cool if it did, having a series of cards going through his whole swing would look really neat displayed side by side.
So finding that card is my collecting goal for this month.
Happy 2017 everyone. Its been a hectic few months for me with work and a move, so my blogging activity fell off after October but I am back now so hopefully will keep the posts up as well.
I picked up another cool 1970s Calbee card over the holidays that I thought I'd share, its #404 from the 1974 set (in the ON Series) and features Shigeo Nagashima.
Its a fantastic photo of him, taken on October 14 as he left the field for the last time in his career. The composition is perfect, the way he is looking over his shoulders at the field really drives home the finality of it. The blue sky contrasted against the green grass and brown dirt, with the packed grandstands in between provides a perfect backdrop. I am not a Nagashima fan, but I absolutely love this card.
Another interesting card I picked up recently is this one of Dragons pitcher Takamasa Suzuki from the 1974 Calbee set (#596). It is from the Camp Series and the photo was taken in spring training at Hamamatsu that year.
Suzuki, still a rookie at the time, actually had a pretty decent career, lasting until 1989 with the Dragons and winning more than 100 games. But the real star of this card to my mind is this guy:
Gotta love the way he is just casually dangling those feet over the wall, nonchalantly flaunting that white-socks-on-brown-shoes combination for all to see. He also seems to be remaining consciously aloof of the other two spectators in attendance that day, who chose to perch themselves a bit further up on the grassy hill beyond left field.
These two seem to be sporting matching black jackets/grey pants combos, not sure if that was just coincidence or they planned it that way so as to distinguish themselves from the other guy. Either explanation is equally plausible.
It must have been pretty cool to have lived near a spring training facility that had a policy of allowing passersby to literally dangle their feet over the area of play while the players were warming up. I wonder if they had a staff member who was specifically tasked with going around and telling people to get their feet of the proverbial stage before gametime, or if this was left to the outfielders to take care of when they went out to take their positions.
With the new season underway my enthusiasm for collecting has been taken to a higher level, buoyed in part no doubt by how well the Dragons have been doing so far.
I have made quite a few acquisitions over the past couple of weeks, mostly Calbee cards from the 1970s, and I hope I`ll have the time to do a few posts about them (I have a 6 month old son bouncing on my knee as I try to type this so spare time for blogging is in short supply these days).
Today`s haul was the above card - Frank Howard`s 1974 Calbee #70!
This is by far the most valuable Japanese card in my collection. Or perhaps I should say it is by far the card I have paid the most for, I`m not sure which card I own is the most `valuable` which is something hard to measure when there are so few sales out there to go on.
Anyway, NPB Card Guy did a post about Howard`s two cards from the 1974 set which is partially what got me interested in tracking one down. 1974 Calbee is one of the harder to find sets out there and it is the only one with Frank`s cards in it. The other Howard card,#127, is the more valuable of the two and way out of my price range but this one, which Engel values at $300, was a bit more do-able.
My copy isn`t in the best of shape, which is why I was able to afford it. I picked it up off of Yahoo Auction for about 3500 yen including shipping. The front looks presentable but there is a heavy crease in it which you can notice on the back (which also has some tape remnants on it), which explains why I got it that cheap. I`m not overly fussed about the condition of cards so long as the fronts look OK, so this was perfect for me.
Howard is of course one of the most famous major leaguers to ever play in NPB, having had an all star career in which he hit 382 homers. In contrast, he may have the worst career numbers of any player in NPB history, having exactly one at-bat for the Lions in 1974 in which he struck out. He injured himself while doing so and ended up retiring shortly thereafter.
