Mystery Kids

 

I’ve been focusing a bit of my recent collecting attention on the 1975-76-77 monster Calbee set’s slightly smaller but equally appealing older cousin, the 1974-75 Calbee set. I’ll devote a more elaborate post to it at a later date, but I thought I’d do a post about card #754 from it which I picked up a few days ago.

It features a scene from the opening day game between the Giants and Whales played on April 5, 1975. What I love about the card is that the pitcher and catcher are both Elementary School kids. According to the card back, the two kids were chosen to throw out the first pitch. This is pretty common at games, but rare to see on a regular baseball card.

What I find really intriguing s the question of who those kids are and if they ever knew that they appeared on a baseball card. The card itself doesn’t name them or their school and I don’t know if anyone would have told them. The Calbee photographer might have just been snapping photos all day and weeks later some guy at Calbee might have just grabbed this one to make a card out of, not knowing who the kids were.

Or maybe they were told right away that they would be on a card, who knows? 

If its the former though….man, I couldn’t imagine anything more exciting than being a ten year old who got to be on a baseball card. To have done that and never known about it is  just…..hard to get your head around.

Those kids must be about 60 years old now, I’m deeply curious about who they are and whether they know that half a century ago they made it onto a baseball card.

The Calbee Regionals Part 2: Tokai

 In this post we'll take a look at the Calbee regionals that were issued here in the Tokai region. Starting here makes sense both because I live in the Tokai region and because a lot of regional series were released by Calbee here over the years.

The Region

Tokai is centred on the city of Nagoya, home of the Chunichi Dragons.  With about 10 million people living in Nagoya and its suburbs its Japan's third largest urban area.

The city has kind of a bad wrap as an ugly, grey industrial blight on the landscape.  Actually its a fairly well earned wrap.  This for example is the type of scenery that accompanies your typical Nagoya wedding hall.

Its not all bad though.  The Osu area has some cool side streets with lots of neat shops that are fun to stroll through

The TV Tower is kind of a neat landmark too:

It was actually destroyed by Godzilla in 1964, a fact which very few landmarks can boast of:

Its also got a castle and the tallest train station in the world.  Its hard to believe but this city actually has a long history which has unfortunately mostly been bulldozed out of existence.  But the same can be said of pretty much any Japanese city so I wouldn't hold it against Nagoya too much. 

It is also the location where most of Mr. Baseball was filmed.  So Tom Selleck spent a bit of time here shortly after Magnum P.I. ended, which is sort of neat if you think about it.

The Calbee Tokai Series

As far as I can tell, Calbee released six series between 1973 and 1984 exclusively in the Tokai region.  Some of these are extremely hard to find.

1973 Calbee

Cards #210 to 236 of the 1973 Calbee set were only released in the Tokai area.  They feature Dragons players including Hall of Famers Morimichi Takagi and Senichi Hoshino.  It also features a manager card of Wally Yonomine, which I think is the only Calbee cards of his ever produced.

This is one of the hardest series from one of the hardest sets out there to collect.  There are probably only a few dozen copies of each card still in existence and since this is probably the most popular set among vintage Calbee collectors, prices are quite high - even the common cards are worth over $100 each.  There is a copy of the Yonamine card for 56,500 Yen (about $500 US) on Yahoo auctions right now.

The high prices have kept me from going after the cards from this series, but they are pretty cool.

1974-75 Calbee

The 1974-75 Calbee set is one I don't write about too much since I'm not actively pursuing it, but I do have a small collection of them on the go which I add to from time to time.  Its a 935 card set so quite big, and two of the series in it were only issued in the Tokai area.

The first (which came out in 1974) runs from card #73 to 90, featuring Dragons players including Tagaki, Hoshino and Yazawa.  These are pretty rare too.  There are only two cards from this series available on Yahoo Auctions right now, which is even fewer than for the 1973 series.  But prices are way cheaper, singles seem to go for between $10 and $20 each or so.  I'm guessing the lower price is probably attributable to fewer collectors trying to piece this set together.

The second (which came out in 1975) runs from card #792 to 827 and basically has the same player selection.  These seem to be a bit less rare than the lower numbered series since there are more than a dozen singles from it available right now.  The price range is about the same, $10 to $20 each or so.

This is one of the things that makes the 1974-75 Calbee set a bit more do-able than the 1973 one, the regional issues haven't been priced into the stratosphere.

I have a couple of the higher number Tokai series in my collection, but I'm not actively adding them to my collection right now.

1975-76-77 Calbee

The "monster" set has one series from #37 to 72 which was released only in the Tokai region.  This is the only Tokai regional series that I have actually tried to collect since I'm working on the set, and I've written about it here before (here and here). At the moment I am just 14 cards short of finishing it up, and I have 2 of the 3 cards of Senischi Hoshino, which are the most valuable.

The cards from this series are about the same as the ones from 1974-75 in terms of rarity and price.  Actually the price may have gone up a bit as a direct result of me buying them.  When I started I was able to buy them in the $10 each range, but these days its hard to find them for under $20 and I think that is because of me.  When there are only a handful of cards available, one guy buying them up can have an outsized impact on the price.  Maybe when I'm finished the prices will go back down again!

1977 Calbee

In 1977 Calbee released a stand alone set (as opposed to a series within a larger set). This seems to have been released only in Nagoya city itself as opposed to the Tokai region as a whole as each card has the "Na" from "Nagoya" on it.  It is a 36 card set (Engel lists it as JC 5d) and unlike other Tokai area releases it features players from other teams as well as the Dragons.

This set is very rare and very expensive.  Prices on commons start at about $50 and there is a Willie Davis card which is going to set you back a lot (one is available on Yahoo Auctions right now for 30,000 Yen, about $300 US).

I don't have any of these cards and don't think I'll ever make a pass at that set!

1984 Calbee

After 1977 Calbee took a bit of a breather and didn't release another Tokai series until 1984.  That year cards numbered 641 to 690 in its main set were only released in the Tokai area and all feature Dragons players.

These cards are also pretty rare and expensive, there are a few available on Yahoo Auctions right now and the cheapest starting bid of any of them is 4,000 Yen (about $40).

The existence of this series and a significant number of other very expensive short printed series were a major factor in me putting aside my 1984 Calbee project.  I like the set with its distinctive look and I have about 200 cards from it, but there are about 200 or so short printed ones (of which the Tokai regionals represent about 1/4) which would set me back 50-100$ each for and there is no way I'm willing (or able) to spend that kind of money on it.  So I'm kind of debating whether to give it up completely or just go for the non-short printed ones, which are way more affordable.


Anyway, that concludes my summary of the Tokai regional issues.  Basically the ones from the 1974-75 and 1975-76-77 sets remain affordable (despite seeming to be about equally rare) while the ones from the other sets are all insanely expensive.

Cards that look like Renassaince Artwork

The above card is #612 from the 1974-75 Calbee set, in the "Camp Series" subset, which features photos taken from the Giants training camp in Miyazaki.

I like this card because there is a lot going on in that photograph, so much so that it kind of looks like the work of a Renassaince artist.  1970s Calbee cards are the best for stuff like this.  It features the late Giants third baseman Masaru Tomita hitting a punching bag with his bat.  I never played competitive baseball past my high school days so I'm not an expert, but is this an actual training thing?  I've never seen players taking whacks at a punching bag during batting practice, and it seems like kind of a dangerous thing to even try (wouldn't you risk breaking your wrist the second the bat came to a sudden stop when hitting the bag?) so I'm a bit confused about the purpose of it.

Also odd is that if you look closely you'll notice that Tomita is not standing on level ground while he does this, he is on a sloped hillside.  Again, I never played ball professionally but why is he not on a level playing surface?  Surely the Giants must have a bit of flat land in Miyazaki where they train?

What I like best though is that kid standing there watching.  He looks like he's about 5 or 6 years old and is decked out in a Giants hat and jacket.  His posture, with his hands clasped together in front of him, suggests he is extremely nervous.  Maybe he is worried that Tomita is going to hurt himself with the punching bag thing.  Or maybe he is just shy, my own son is about the same age and looks like that sometimes when he is introduced to grown ups he doesn't know.  Its the sort of detail that adds to that Renassaince artwork feel: the image of that kid perfectly encapsulates the experience of being a little kid in the presence of a heroic grown up figure like a pro ball player. Also note that the kid is perfectly framed, he is almost dead centre in the photo and the bag, the bat and Tomita form a frame around him, drawing the viewers attention to him.

Also the grown up male standing a couple of paces ahead of the kid, partially obscured by the punching bag, is brilliant.  He's probably the kid's father and looks much more confident, his hands in his pockets as he casually watches Tomita in action.  I love the fact that the picture gives you exactly enough of a view of him to get a sense of who he is without showing you all of him.  His left arm is all you need to see to tell how confident and relaxed he is in contrast to his son. You just see one of his eyes and he looks kind of tired.  At the same time, his positioning suggests indifference to his son, giving the photo a kind of melancholic subtext.  He isn't crouching down next to his son and sharing the experience.  He looks like he's completely forgotten that his kid even exists. If anything, taking his kid here might be a chore to him rather than a joy, which might give us new insights on the source of the child's nervousness and make him an even more appealing and sympathetic figure to us.

This is sort of reinforced by the huge 70s collar the guy has, which gives him a vaguely used car salesman aura.

Then there is the other kid, in the blue and white jacket standing further in the background. He looks like he feels somehow left out.

The back of the card doesn't mention the kids, the dad, the punching bag or the non-level playing surface.  Rather it talks about who was going to play 3rd base for Nagashima's Giants that year, noting that Tomita was in the lead for the role.  Unfortunately for Tomita, things didn't work out quite so well as the card back suggests, he only played part time for the Giants that year before being traded to the Nippon Ham Fighters as part of the deal that brought Isao Harimoto to the Giants in 1976.  He did however get an All Star nod while with the Fighters before retiring in 1980.  He passed away in 2015.

Anybody else have any examples of cards with photos that look like the work of Renaissance artists?

Beautiful Cards: 1975 Calbee #714 Kaimaku Series with Shigeo Nagashima getting flowers

I`ve had a big stack of recently acquired 1970s Calbee cards sitting next to my computer/scanner this week so the temptation to do posts about one of them each day has been too great to pass up.  Today`s subject is the above beauty, mainly focused on Giant`s manager Shigeo Nagashima.

The picture in the card was taken on April 5th, 1975 before the opening day (kaimaku) game at Korakuen Stadium between the Giants and Taiyo Whales (whose manager Akiyama can kind of be seen behind Nagashima). Needless to say, as with the Oh card I wrote about yesterday the main subject (Nagashima) is less interesting than the rest of the stuff in the photo, particularly the two women in kimono.

They are presenting the two managers with bouquets of flowers just before the game, which is something that happens a lot in Japanese baseball games (not necessarily always flowers, but some sort of ceremonial gift).  I did get to learn the Japanese term for that from the title on the back of this card (花束贈呈 - bouquet presentation).

Its interesting that the two women presenting the flowers, who totally steal the show on this card, aren`t named or even referred to on the back text.  I wonder if they are even aware that they were featured on it, and that forty years later a foreigner would pick it up, find their images interesting, and write a blog entry about it.  Probably not.  Interesting how life works out sometimes.

The card`s provenance is a bit confusing, since there are actually two seperate Calbee sets from 1975.  This card is from what might more accurately be called the 1974-75 Calbee set since numbers 1 to 504 were issued in 1974 while numbers 505 to 935 were issued in 1975 (this one is #714).  Then after that they began another set starting from card #1, which continued into 1976 and forms the massive 1975-76 set of over 1400 cards.  The two are distinguishable mainly on the back, the 1975-76 set having a border made up of stars and baseballs, while the 1974-75 set to which this one belongs has no border.

Anyway, its kind of a cool card, depicting a scene that is rarely featured on baseball cards.