My Sadaharu Oh Autograph

 

I was going through some boxes the other day and pulled out something I had almost forgotten that I had. Its card number 7 from the 1973 Calbee set featuring Sadaharu Oh. Its one of his first Calbee cards and, with him silhouetted against the blue sky, pairs up nicely with the first card in the set featuring Shigeo Nagashima.

Mine is autographed.

I didn’t get the autograph in person, rather this was something I bought on impulse several years ago. I don’t often buy autographed cards since I’m not good at detecting forgeries, but this one had a pretty decent provenance. I bought it from Biblio, a famous store in the Jinbocho neighborhood in Tokyo that is probably the leading dealer of vintage baseball memorabilia in Japan. The owner is known in Japan as one of the leading experts on baseball autographs and has appeared on a TV show that I watch every Tuesday called Nandemo Kanteidan, which is kind of a Japanese version of Antiques Roadshow. Regular people bring their antiques and experts tell them if they are valuable authentic pieces or worthless fakes. 

So if I see something from them, and it looks good to my amateur eyes, I figure its probably good. I didn’t go to the store in person (Dave has visited twice and has written about what the actual store was like, including a complaint on his last visit), but rather picked it up from their online store.

I bought it before the pandemic hit and the price of vintage stuff, and especially Sadaharu Oh vintage stuff, took off so I didn’t pay that much for it. I rather like autographed vintage cards and couldn’t resist this one in particular. It got kind of mixed up with some other stuff after I got it, something that often happens with oddball items in my collection that I don’t have a “category” in my rudimentary sorting system for. I was happy to find it.

The 1990 Dodgers Starting Rotation was Unusually Kind to me that Year

In the summer of 1990 my family spent a lot of time in the small village of Rawdon, Quebec which is where my family comes from and my grandmother, aunt and cousins lived.  Being less than an hour drive from Montreal my dad took us to a few Expos games that year at the Big Owe.  We saw the Expos play games against the Dodgers, Giants and Padres that summer and at each of them I brought along a stack of baseball cards (mostly 1990 Donruss) to try and get some player autographs.

I found the autograph collection I put together that summer while on my recent trip o my parents' house and thought I'd devote a few posts to it, this one being about the Dodgers.

For some reason during most of those games I spent more time huddled around the visiting team's dugout than the Expos.  Probably this was because I knew I only had one chance with the visiting team but always had the feeling I could get the Expos player autographs some other time and thus gave them lower priority.  The result is that I have way more autographs of players from other teams than of Expos players.

When the Dodgers came to town I seem to have been unusually succesful at getting their staring pitchers to sign for me, I don't have any autographs of their position players that year but have three of their top starters (only missing Fernando really).

Its hard to remember but there was a time when Ramon Martinez was by far the most famous of the Martinez brothers and 1990 was his peak - he won 20 games that season, was named to the All Star team and came close to winning the NL Cy Young award.  I remember being totally blown away when I got his autograph, he was like a god at that time.

I also got Mike Morgan that day.  He was nowhere near the same level of star as Ramon was, but he was having a good season with the Dodgers (he pitched 4 shutouts that year).  The next year he had his best season, being named to the All Star team, and I remember being quite excited about that since I had gotten his autograph the previous season.

The real big name though was of course Orel.  He was even bigger than Ramon - a bona fide superstar who looked like a lock for Cooperstown.  I remember he was injured at the time and wasn't in uniform when he came onto the field (he was wearing some sort of generic sports clothing) but the throng of kids I was standing in immediately recognized him and started begging him for his autograph way more than we had for the other players.  "Mr. Hershiser!!!!!"

He was a total class act.  He walked past us (we were huddled along the wall of the walkway players entered and exited the field from) then stopped as soon as he reached the astroturf.  He turned around and said to us "I'll come back later and get you" and then walked onto the field to talk to some players and do some stretches.

I remember the group of us random kids being crestfallen at having missed his autograph and thinking we had been given the brush off.  But then true to his word about 10 minutes later he made a point of walking right back to us.  We all thronged to him and he told us to relax, promising he would sign for everyone.  And he did.  I remember giving him my card and pen and thinking "Holy crap!  Orel Hershiser is right in front of me signing my card!!!!!"  That instantly became the most treasured card in my collection, one I would show to all my friends that summer and totally embellish my interaction ("Me and Orel?  Oh yeah, we go way back.")

Someday I'm going to have to track down Fernando Valenzuela and Tim Belcher and get them to sign their 1990 Donruss cards so I'll have a full Dodgers pitching rotation signed.  For now though I'll settle for the memories these bring back.

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)