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!

1979 Calbees?

 

I picked up a pile of 1979 Calbees the other day which has got me thinking about whether they might be a realistic set build. I have, with these new ones, more than a hundred 1979s which is usually about the point at which I make the move from dabbling to set building.

There are two things that have held me back on committing to this set. The first is that it is confusing as hell. It was released in 12 series of differing sizes, and none of the cards are numbered so keeping track of them is a nightmare.  The card fronts all look the same too, just having a photo and nothing else, which adds to the confusion. Having organized them into a binder I've figured out how to distinguish them from the card backs, but the lack of numbers is a real pain in the ass when it comes to searching  for cards you need.

The other stumbling block is that two of the series (Red Helmets and CL Championship Series) are short printed and quite expensive. I think they were only released in Hiroshima, though I'm not certain. I don't have any cards from either and they only occasionally come up for sale on Yahoo Auctions, always at high prices.

Another minor point against them is that the photos on most cards are a bit more boring than the ones from other 1970s Calbee sets. Its not as bad as contemporary sets, but there are way more boring posed shots and head and shoulders profiles in this one, which makes it less interesting to me.

On the other hand, this set was issued in an interesting way that has always intrigued me. Most of the series (and most of the cards I have) feature players who received the most votes in a given month from fans. So one series would have the top vote getters from April, another from May, etc etc. Its kind of cool.

I think this one belongs in my "soft" set in progress category - I'll pick up cards I need for it when I find a deal and don't have anything else exciting to spend my monthly card budget on, but otherwise its on the backburner.

1979's King Above Heaven

 In addition to Charlie Manuel, my recently acquired 1979 Calbee lot also contained this gem.

This card is awesome on many levels.  The player, whose name I'll get to shortly, has the perfect 70s tinted cop glasses/moustache combo I have ever seen on a card.  He kind of reminds me of Father Guido Sarducci, just with slightly shorter hair and in a baseball uniform.

The best part of this card though is the player's name. In 1979 Calbee didn't put any writing on the front of a lot of cards, making them look very similar to the 1978 Yamakatsu set.  On the back though you can find out the name of the player and this guy is:

王　天上, outfielder.

Wait...what?

This took me aback a bit.  The guy looks like a foreigner.  And 王　天上 isn't really a Japanese name either, but it is written in kanji.  It means "King above heaven".  The 王 character is the same as Sadaharu Oh's last name, which is not commonly used in names in Japan.

Looking at the fine print lower down on the card clears up the mystery though.  This is Frank Ortenzio of course!  (Incidentally, the perfect name for a guy with the perfect 70s cop glasses/moustache combo too).

His kanji name 王　天上 is actually a play on his last name - it is read Ou Ten Jo, which if you say it fast sounds like "Ortenzio". He is probably the only foreign ballplayer to use a kanji name rather than having his regular name spelled out in katakana like everyone else.  According to his wikipedia entry this is also how he was referred to on scoreboards, and the team used it as his offical name.  

It also made its way onto at least one baseball card of him! Probably the only one showing a foreign player's name rendered in kanji (except of course for those from China or other countries where kanji are used).  

Ortenzio, who had breifly played in the majors for Kansas City, only played two years with the Nankai Hawks, 1979 and 1980. 1979 was his best season, hitting 23 home runs.

The card notes that he had another nickname, "Moose", which was the same as Katsuya Nomura (then playing with the Lions).  

There is an interesting recent interview with Ortenzio here, most of it is about his minor league career but about 1 hour into it he talks about his time in Japan.  Some interesting tidbits:

1. The team gave him his odd nickname and he went with it (also, he definitely doesn't speak Japanese, he calls katakana "katakani" which is kind of endearing)

2. He likes the movie Mr. Baseball a lot and thinks everything in it is accurate except the idea of dating the manager's daughter.

3. He felt awkward playing in Japan due to the conflicting expectations placed on foreigners to both help the team win but at the same time not play so well that you show up the Japanese players (which seems to be a common complaint).

4. One frustrating incident happened in a game in which he saved the team's 1 run lead in a game by throwing out a runner at home plate (from the outfield).  After the game he was called into the manager's office expecting to be complimented for saving the game, but was instead chewed out for throwing home instead of to the cutoff man.  This was one of the experiences that made him feel like he didn't want to play in Japan anymore.

5. His wife was injured in an accident and moved back to the US to get treatment with their young daughter, which was a big factor in him deciding to retire mid way through the 1980 season.

6. His interpreter cried when he announced his decision to leave Japan.

7. He appeared on the cover of a Japanese sports magazine eating sushi.  He doesn't like sushi.

8. He had converted to Christianity before going to Japan and became a minister after going back to the US.

My Favorite Comeback in Baseball History on one Card

 Charlie Manuel's legendary stint as Philadephia's manager is nowhere near to being his most impressive achievement.

If you haven't read Robert Whiting's You Gotta Have Wa, then get your hands on a copy, its the best book on Japanese baseball told mostly from the perspective of foreign players out there, even if it is almost 30 years old.  Manuel's story features prominently in it and always struck me as the most memorable.

After barely making a dent in a brief stint in MLB, he exploded with 42 home runs in his first season with the Yakult Swallows in 1977 and then one upped himself the next year by bashing another 39 and leading the team to a Nippon Series Championship victory.

The Swallows management, idiots, got rid of him after that season and he went to play for the Kintetsu Buffaloes in the 1979 season, where he got off to another monstrous start.

Then, something horrible was done to him.  Orions pitcher Soroku Yagisawa nailed him in the jaw with a fastball that broke the bone in six places.  According to Whiting, this was intentionally done and Yagisawa smirked while Manuel was carried off the field on a stretcher, vowing to kill Yagisawa. The doctors had to insert three metal plates into his head and remove some nerves.  Teammates reported that since he had no feeling in his jaw when he ate food would just fall out of his mouth and he wouldn't be aware of it, not being able to feel it sliding down.

Then one of the most impressive comebacks in baseball history happened.  Immediately after being discharged from the hospital, Manuel rejoined the team against the advice of doctors and family.  He went on a tear and despite missing several weeks while hospitalized won the PL home run title and led the Buffaloes to the Pacific League championship.  

I'm not really doing the story justice here, you should read Whiting's account because it is definitely one of the best feel-good comeback stories in baseball that I've ever read.  He even got the chance to one-up Yagisawa, who appeared at a pre-game event with him and Manuel snubbed his offer of a handshake.

So anyway, let me get to this card.  It is a 1979 Calbee card that was in a lot of 20 1979 Calbees and was the sole reason I bought the lot (I'm not working on that set right now).  For a few days immediately after his comeback, Manuel wore a special batting helmet with a football style chin guard to protect his injured jaw.  This card actually pictures him wearing that helmet!  I think it is the only one of his cards that does, because he only wore it for a few days, discarding it because he found it was obscuring his vision at the plate.  So the photo on this card would have to have been taken right at the time when he had just gotten back, perhaps even his first game back after the injury.

The back of the card even pays tribute to this, noting that despite suffering a serious injury to his jaw, Manual is striving with all his might to lead Kintetsu to victory this year.

And we now know in hindsight that he did.  And would go on, decades later, to lead the Philadelphia Phillies to a World Series Championship.

Yagisawa, on the other hand, would never pitch another game after that season and the last record of him according to Wikipedia had him working as a coach with a semi-pro team in rural Gunma Prefecture.

I love karma.


This is definitely one of my favorite cards in my collection!

More (not) Autographed Bats From the 1979 Calbee Promo!!!

I've had to edit this post a bit. I thought these things were really autographed, but it turns out they are printed signatures on them (see comments). Doh! Still a cool item, but not THAT cool!

Isao Harimoto was the first I acquired and I've already written about it (his is the top one in the above photo). This week I added two more to the collection: hall of famer and former manager of the Chunichi Dragons Morimichi Takagi (middle bat in the above photo) and former Hanshin Tigers all star third baseman Masayuki Kakefu (bottom bat in photo).  All three have come courtesy of Yahoo Auctions, the Takagi from the same guy who sold me the Harimoto and the Kakefu one from a different seller.

The Takagi one is particularly interesting since it isn't in the Calbee collector's collection and thus not on the list of known ones I am compiling, so I can add him to it.  The list of guys who have bats are:

Shoji Sadaoka (Giants)

Shigeru Takada (Giants)

Kiyoshi Nakahata (Giants)

Isao Harimoto (Giants)

Kazumasa Kono (Giants)

Suguru Egawa (Giants)

Sadaharu Oh (Giants)

Masayuki Kakefu (Tigers)

Koji Yamamoto (Carp)

Sachio Kinugasa (Carp)

Akio Saito (Whales)

Yasushi Tao (Dragons)

Morimichi Takagi (Dragons)

Kouichi Tabuchi (Lions)

My enthusiasm for these has waned a bit now that I know they aren’t actually signed, but they are still pretty cool items for the collection!

Calbee was (almost) way ahead of its time: 1979 Calbee (not) Autographed Bats!

The thing I love about collecting Calbee, and vintage Japanese baseball cards in general, is that every time you think you have already found all the awesome old stuff there is to collect you find something new to fall in love with.

In 1979 (and possibly also 1978) Calbee ran what was probably their greatest promotion ever.  If you were lucky enough to find two randomly inserted "Home Run Cards" in packs then if you sent them along with 300 Yen to Calbee you would get an autographed ball of an un-named star player.  I originally thought these were really autographed, but it turns out they are facsimiles. If you only had one Home Run Card you could send that in and get an autographed mascot bat of an also un-named star player.  You can see a picture of a 1979 Home Run card which describes the promo on this post by Ryan.  

I only really became aware of these last week when I was looking up info on the Calbee collector's website and stumbled onto his amazing list of Calbee promo items over the years, which included photos of his awesome collection of balls and bats that were redeemed in 1979.  I knew that I had to get one!!  The bats in particular are so awesome!

So I went auction hunting and found a beautiful one of none other than all time hits leader Isao Harimoto!  It arrived yesterday and is the awesomest-est thing I have in my Calbee collection now.  

According to the Calbee Collector there might have also been the same promotion run in 1978, though I haven't seen any 1978 Home Run Card to confirm that.  

The bats aren't big, I put a card of Harimoto from the 1975-76 Calbee set in the above photo for scale.  There isn't any definitive checklist of players who are in the set there that I know of, but Calbee collector has the following ones so we at least have a partial list. The list is pretty heavily skewed towards Giants players but given the era that is typical.  

Shoji Sadaoka (Giants)

Shigeru Takada (Giants)

Kiyoshi Nakahata (Giants)

Isao Harimoto (Giants)

Kazumasa Kono (Giants)

Suguru Egawa (Giants)

Sadaharu Oh (Giants)

Masayuki Kakefu (Tigers)

Koji Yamamoto (Carp)

Sachio Kinugasa (Carp)

Akio Saito (Whales)

Yasushi Tao (Dragons)

Kouichi Tabuchi (Lions)