The 1977 Oh Series

 

One of the hardest Calbee sets from the 70s to find is the 96 card set dedicated entirely to Sadaharu Oh on the occasion of him passing Hank Aaron's 755 career home run total.  

I only have 2 cards from this set, number 38 and 42.  The card above (#42) features a photo taken at exactly 7:10 PM (and 7 seconds!) on September 3, 1977 as the text on the card front tells us.  It shows him high fiving Giants coach Akira Kunimatsu while rounding the bases after hitting #756.

The back of the card is kind of interesting.  It shows some stats on each of his milestone home runs over his career that you don't often see.  For each, in addition to the date, it also tells you how many other players had hit that many (at the time),  the pitcher he hit it off and the number of games it took to get there.  So we can see for example that when he hit his 100th career home run on July 28, 1963 off a Hiroshima pitcher named Ooishi there were only 32 other players in the NPB "100 home run club". When he hit #200 a mere 2 years later there were only 12 other players with as many.  Two years later he joined the 300 home run club, which only consisted of 3 players.  And when he clobbered #550  five years after that he was in a club all by himself.  There seems to be an error in the last two entries of the number of games played column, it seems highly unlikely that it took him 2318 career games to reach 715 home runs, but didn't reach #755 until career game 10,145 (which would take about 70 seasons).  

Card #39 is also pretty neat.  It shows him on August 31, 1977 being interviewed after tying Aaron with his 755th home run.

The back of this card is also pretty cool, it shows a side by side comparison of the careers of Oh and Aaron from 1954 to 1977. The first few years are blank for Oh since he didn't play his first game until 1959, while 1977 is blank for Aaron since he retired after the 1976 season.  Its actually quite impressive that Oh accomplished his feat in four fewer seasons than Aaron, especially given the shorter season in NPB.  

The most famous, and valuable, card from this set is #93, which features Oh with Hank Aaron on the front.  I don't have that card, its pretty expensive (Engel lists it for $750 and I think that is about right, there is a graded copy in EM condition with a BIN price of 78,000 Yen available right now).  Even the regular Oh cards like these two cost a fair bit. Engel lists them at $200 which also seems to be in the right ballpark for the cards in high grade.  Some seem to sell for more, card #29 (which just features Oh, no Aaron) is currently the subject of a bidding war on Yahoo Auctions which currently stands at 36,000 Yen (about $350 US) with 3 days to go.   As you can see from the scans, mine have some condition issues which made them affordable enough to be in my price range!

Hank Aaron: Approaching his Excellency in 1992 (and hating every minute of it)

Setting: Summer of 1992.  Baseball card show at Toronto's Skydome.

His holiness enters from stage right, followed by the King's Hand two paces behind and to his left, and a lowly squire, 4 paces behind and to his right, carrying the Imperial Regalia and a box of glossy photos.

"His excellency Mr. Aaron is holding Court" a page announces, "Let all those who would obtain his signature pay the 25$ levy and form an orderly and silent qeue to the left."

He sits behind sheets of luxurious blue satin, the squire taking his scepter and crown and placing them under the table.  The King's Hand, adorned in the traditional garb of vertically striped collared shirt and green golf slacks, takes his place standing next to the throne.

"Those that shall approach His Excellency shall do so in silence" he bellows to the huddled masses clutching various items worthy of signing.  "Eye contact shall not be made, remind thyselves of thy mortality in His presence.  His Excellency shall enter a state of complete meditation for the duration of this session in which he must not EVER be made aware of the presence of any of you.  I need not remind you of the presence of the Praetorian Guard who shall severely deal with those who fail to heed this rule and seek to have any sort of interaction with Him." (Sound of clanging armor reverberates through the Skydome as members of the Guard stand to attention, autograph seekers nervously exchange glances).

"So it is spoken, so let the Signing begin!"  Gong crashes, signaling the beginning of the signing.

The queue begins to move, the seekers approach.  To each a eunuch is assigned to whisper into the ear of the supplicant:

"Memento Homo, Memento Homo. Remember that you are only a man, Remember that you are only a man."

Upon arrival at the head of the queue, the supplicant parts ways with his  eunuch and provides to the squire, adorned in an unbuttoned Braves jersey, the item to be presented to Him.

A fifteen year old boy with a baseball thus appears before Him.  The boy dare not speak nor gaze directly upon Him, lest he break the meditation that was so vital for Him to carry out his task.  And He likewise does not look up or in any way acknowledge the existence of the boy before him, as was the way since time immemorial.  Nay, as per custom, he signs the ball that the squire passed to him and places it on the table before him, that it may be removed by some unknown force, while the squire was already handing him the ball of the next supplicant.

The boy, picking up the ball, retreats posthaste lest he incur the wrath of the King's Hand, who looks on from his McDonald's Big Mac set with suspicion. Once a safe distance away, back with the common people and no longer posing a threat to disturb the aura surrounding Him, the boy looks at the ball and did on reading the signature proclaim:

"Who the hell is Stan Aaron???"

Thus endeth the story.

Postscript 2019

Among the things I found at my parent's house on my recent trip were these photos that my dad took of me getting Hank Aaron's autograph at a show in Toronto in 1992.  I mainly remember it being an absolutely miserable experience, driving 5 hours to get there, shelling out 25$ that was a massive amount of money for me at the time and then Aaron not even so much as looking up at me when I got to the front of the line to get his autograph.  I couldn't even hand my ball directly to him, everyone had to give it to the guy sitting next to him, who would hand it to Aaron, so as to avoid him having any sort of interaction with any fans whatsoever.  I get the fact that he is a big star and probably gets swamped by fans all the time and wants to avoid that as much as possible, but at the same time I couldn't help but thinking that if he is putting himself out there and charging that much for an in person autograph the least he could do was maybe say hi or do something to acknowledge the person standing in front of him who had travelled for hours for the privilege. 2 seconds of kindness from him would last a lifetime for the person on the receiving end, but nah, its more comfortable and profitable to completely de-personalize the operation so screw that.

Two other points really drove this sense of having been ripped off by Aaron home for me.  One was the fact that Brooks Robinson was also signing at that show, I think he only charged 5 or 10$ per autograph.  My experience with him was the polar opposite of Aaron.  My friend Mike and I got his autograph together and he greeted us with a big smile, shook our hands, chatted a bit and invited us behind the table to get a picture together:

Brooks Robinson has basically been my favorite player from the 60s since that day, Hank Aaron is now way down the list.

The other thing that annoyed Mike and I at the time was looking at Aaron's autograph afterwards and noticing that he wrote his first name in a way that looked like "Stan" instead of Hank or Henry.  It was just a lousy autograph (again, compared to Brooks Robinson's which reads "Brooks Robinson" and is really nice and polished.  Brooks also personalized  mine "To Sean" which was cool).

And 27 years later, to add injury to insult, I fished the Hank Aaron ball out of storage at my parents' place and noticed that he had used a crap pen to sign the ball, so the ink has faded a ton over the years and is now barely legible (despite not having been exposed to sunlight, etc):

So the moral of the story is, if you are ever in Toronto in 1992, don't bother getting Hank Aaron's autograph.

Opinion: What Hank Aaron and Sadaharu Oh tell us about the Ichiro vs. Pete Rose Debate

Here is an interesting piece of baseball trivia.  In 1977 Sadaharu Oh hit his 756^th career home run in NPB, surpassing Hank Aaron`s recently set MLB record of 755.  Aaron was gracious enough to send this message to Oh to mark the occasion:

I would have loved to have been there tonight to put a crown on top of his head because he is quite a gentleman and the people of Japan have a lot to be proud of...I want to wish (Oh) the best luck in the world. I know he's capable of hitting a lot more home runs." (source)

Oh and Aaron became friends after that and together have played a pretty big, and positive, role in promoting baseball ties between their respective countries.

This week, in contrast, Ichiro Suzuki surpassed Pete Rose`s career MLB hit total with his 4257<sup>th</sup> career hit across both MLB and NPB combined. Rose`s gracious message to Ichiro to mark the occasion (sent indirectly through the media):

“I’m not trying to take anything away from Ichiro, he’s had a Hall of Fame career, but the next thing you know, they’ll be counting his high-school hits.  I don’t think you’re going to find anybody with credibility say that Japanese baseball is equivalent to major-league baseball. There are too many guys that fail here, and then become household names there, like Tuffy Rhodes. How can he not do anything here, and hit 55 home runs (in 2001) over there? It has something to do with the caliber of personnel.”

Despite having done nothing wrong, Rose`s lack of diplomacy has forced Ichiro into adopting an almost apologetic tone when discussing his accomplishment.  Instead of being allowed to celebrate he is evidently being made to felt shame for his mark. 

Rose`s response is unfortunate for two reasons.  First and foremost it displays a shocking lack of class and dignity.  He even manages to denigrate poor old Tuffy Rhodes, who has absolutely nothing to do with Ichiro`s record.  What did Tuffy ever do to Rose to deserve that?  Regardless of what he really thinks, it would have cost nothing to Rose to have simply wished Ichiro the best and then shut up about it.  But Rose being Rose, he had to dump all over what should have been Ichiro`s day in the sun.

More importantly though, judging from what I am reading across the internet Rose`s comments have unfortunately framed the debate on how Ichiro`s accomplishment should be viewed.  This is unfortunate not only because it was rude, but because he frames the debate in a way that deliberately prevents any sort of rational discussion about what Ichiro has done and instead focuses it on largely irrelevant observations which have nothing to do with Ichiro.

Before I get into discussing the substance of what Pete Rose, and a lot of writers, are saying, I`d like to return to the Hank Aaron and Sadaharu Oh story because it offers some interesting insights on what a comparative debate about records achieved in NPB and MLB should look like.  To start with the basic facts, Oh hit 868 home runs to Aaron`s 755 (and Bonds` 762, I focus on Aaron because most of the debate played out when he was the home run champ still and not as an intentional slight to Bonds).  People in the Oh camp who think he should be considered the `king` (ironically, that is what Oh means in Japanese) point to the simple math (868 is more than 755), to the fact that Oh played in shorter seasons than Aaron, and that relative to his nearest NPB rival (Katsuya Nomura who is over 200 home runs behind) Oh`s record is a unique accomplishment.  Aaron supporters on the other hand can point to the fact that playing in NPB gave Oh some advantages that he wouldn`t have had in MLB – playing in stadiums with smaller configurations and using a compressed bat – which strongly suggest that if he had played in MLB like Aaron he would not have hit so many home runs.

Off the bat it is important to note that these arguments are generally made by supporters of Oh and Aaron rather than by the principals themselves – to my knowledge unlike Pete Rose neither one has ever publicly said anything disparaging about the other`s accomplishments. So good for them on that.  More importantly though, the talking points in that debate all focus logically on the individual accomplishments achieved by each.  While they implicitly involve a comparison of NPB and MLB, the points of comparison are connected to what each actually did (such as the fact that NPB`s smaller stadiums meant that some balls Oh hit for home runs there likely would have just been long outs in more spacious MLB parks).

In other words there is a pretty logical framework in that debate which actually seeks to give the accomplishments of each player (particularly Oh since he is effectively viewed as the `challenger` to the previously crowned king) a due hearing.  The debate on Ichiro in the US, on the other hand, has made any similar inquiry largely impossible because of the way Rose has framed it.

Rose raises two points to disparage Ichiro`s mark.  The first is that because NPB is of lower caliber to MLB, his hits there simply shouldn`t count.  I call this the Tuffy Rhodes defence, his argument basically being that any league in which Tuffy (and others like him) can become a star in must not be worth even considering based solely on the fact that Tuffy didn`t put up impressive numbers in his MLB career.

First off, to my knowledge nobody seriously uses the same line of reasoning when advocating Aaron`s case against Oh.  They cite specific reasons why some of Oh`s home runs wouldn`t have happened in the US and maybe suggest he could have hit 500 if he played in the US but nowhere near 868 (or 755).  What they don`t say is that his career home run total should be considered zero, which is essentially the stance Rose is taking with Ichiro.  More problematic though is the fact that Ichiro has a much stronger case than Oh based on all the evidence we have of his career.  In Oh`s case the assumption is that he would have hit fewer home runs in MLB, which is probably true.  In Ichiro`s case though the evidence we have suggests the opposite – he would probably have had more career hits had he played his NPB years in the US instead.  In all his years in NPB he only had more than 200 hits once.  In the first ten seasons of his career after coming to the US, he never had less than 200 hits.  This is attributable to the shorter season in NPB rather than any weakness in Ichiro as a player when he was in Japan.   

Moreover, nobody has suggested a specific way in which NPB`s lower quality to MLB would have given his hit totals an unfair boost.  Smaller ballparks wouldn`t help Ichiro the way they help a power hitter like Rhodes or Oh, and he didn`t use compressed bats either.  A slightly lower quality of pitching he would have faced is about the only possible theory you might come up with, but if that had been relevant we would have seen his performance decline when he switched to facing higher caliber pitching in the US, which didn`t happen.  My view is that the pitching in NPB at the time (before most of the stars had jumped ship to MLB) was probably only slightly lower than MLB and not different enough to have given Ichiro`s performance an unnatural boost in terms of accumulating hits (at least not enough to overcome the handicap of playing fewer games).

The second argument Rose uses is that his minor league totals should be counted too, which means Ichiro still has a way to go.  This is just arbitrary goal post moving on Rose`s part, but if we take it as valid then there are two responses.  The first is that Rose`s time in the minor leagues was time he spent being considered not good enough to play in the majors.  Ichiro`s time in NPB on the other hand was time he spent at the highest level of professional baseball he was able to play in under the rules in force at the time.  So the two are qualitatively different (not to mention the fact that Rose`s hits came at A level or less, which is commonly agreed to be much inferior to the level of NPB).  The second response is that Ichiro`s NPB totals don`t include his own time in the Japanese minor leagues with Orix` 2 Gun team, where he spent most of his first two seasons. So if you are going to add Rose`s minor league totals it is only fair to add Ichiro`s.  Doing so he still comes up a bit short of Rose`s minor/major league total, but within reach.  If he does cross that line, expect Rose to quietly drop reference to his minor league hit totals and revert to the Tuffy Rhodes defence, which for reasons I`ve outlined above is without merit.

Conclusion

To my mind, its fair to say that Pete Rose still has the MLB record while Ichiro has a new, previously unrecognized record of combined MLB and NPB hits.  People can have legitimate debates about which accomplishment they view as more significant, but to accept Rose`s argument that we can just dismiss Ichiro`s record out of hand simply because NPB is of lower quality to MLB is grossly unfair and, more importantly, probably leads to the wrong conclusion. 

Part of the reason Rose has been able to control the debate is the sheer lack of knowledge on the part of American sportswriters about the Japanese game.  The argument that it’s a lower league and therefore shouldn`t be counted provides an easy out for them that avoids the need to actually sort through the evidence and try to figure out how to evaluate it.  Its telling that experts on Japanese baseball aren`t part of roundtable discussions like this one, which essentially involves a bunch of people who are only familiar with MLB deciding that only MLB hits should count.  Surprise surprise.  I`m not entirely certain myself which record is more impressive, but I am convinced that the way the debate is unfolding is extremely biased against Ichiro in ways that have no rational backing but which overwhelmingly give Pete Rose the benefit of the doubt.  What a long way debate has come from the days of comparing Aaron and Oh…..