Stuff on Cards: Sadaharu Oh Giving Flowers

 

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.”

The Emperor is Watching

 

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.  

Japan's Greatest Pitcher's only Calbee Card isn't even his own Card

 

I picked up this card on Yahoo Auctions this week.  Its Shigeo Nagashima's manager card from one of the 1977 Calbee sets.

Nagashima appears on a ton of 1970s Calbee cards as a manager.  The other guy, who is not mentioned anywhere in the text of the card front or back, is what makes this card way more interesting.  

That is Masaichi Kaneda, arguably Japan's all time greatest pitcher who racked up 400 career wins.

Kaneda retired as a pitcher after the 1969 season, which was four years before Calbee started making baseball cards and thus he doesn't have any Calbee cards from his playing days.  He started managing the Orions in 1973, the same year as Calbee's debut, but owing to the legendary Calbee/Lotte feud Calbee didn't produce any cards of Orions players until 1985.

Thus Calbee never produced a card featuring Japan's all time wins leader.  Except this one.  Its only a cameo appearance, but its a prominent enough one to I think describe this as a Nagashima/Kaneda card rather than just a Nagashima card.  

Dave picked up a copy of this card a couple of years ago on his trip to Japan and it intrigued me, so I am glad to add it to the collection.  In addition to Kaneda, this is one of the very few cards to feature anything related to the Lotte Orions in a Calbee set from the 70s so its interesting on that account to.

This 1977 set is kind of the "main" one from that year, featuring 216 cards.  With this one I have about 60 of them, so I'm mulling over whether to add this to my list of sets to start actively trying to complete.  Its a nice one.  

Stuff on Cards: Players Modelling Bad Behavior for Kids

 

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:

Beer

Destroyers

Kimonos

Vintage Cars

Oden Shops

Missing Noses, Chins, Eyebrows and Foreheads: The Worst Baseball Card Photo Cropping in History

 

I recently added the above card, #177 from the 1975 NST set featuring Shigeo Nagashima, to my collection.  

Its notable for the fact that although it depicts Shigeo Nagashima it does not depict all of Shigeo Nagashima's nose.  Or his left eye.  Or his left eyebrow.  Or the top and back of his hair.

You can really see those beads of sweat running down his face though.

This is the 1970s Japanese baseball card paradox.  On the one hand they feature some of the best photography in baseball card history and completely blow away the boring posed spring training shots that appeared on most Topps cards in the US from that period.  They are loaded with interesting shots, some candid, some in action, almost all taken during the regular season during games in the player's home stadium.

On the other hand they also feature some of the worst photos ever, mostly due to really bad photo cropping like the one above.  For all its faults, I've never seen a Topps card which cut the tip of the depicted player's nose off.

I have a small type collection of these on the go now.  They include:

Card: 1977 Calbee #17

You wouldn't know it but this card features all time home run leader Sadaharu Oh and all time hit leader Isao Harimoto singing a victory song after winning the pennant.  You can't see the top half of Oh and Harimoto's head.  They cropped it out in order to create more space at the bottom of the card for.....the backs of some photographers.

Card: 1976 Calbee #646

This card features 1975 PL MVP award winner Hideji Kato.  All of him except the top of his head.

Card: 1987 Calbee Tatsuo Komatsu

Ever wondered what former Dragons' pitcher Tatsuo Komatsu's chin looks like?  To this day I still don't know.  

Are there any examples out there of American cards (or other Japanese cards) cropped this badly?

Stuff on Cards: Oden Shops and Wood Shoes

 

I've decided to make "Stuff on cards" a regular series on my blog, highlighting odd things that have appeared on Japanese baseball cards over the years.  Today's post: Oden shops.

This is card 55 from the 1975 NST set.  NST issued a few sets between 1975 and 1983.  Their sets were intended to be glued into albums (sold separately) so they are printed on thinner card stock than normal cards and the backs just have the card number and instructions on how to paste them into the albums, which contained more info about the player.  Dave has a good write up with more info about the sets here.

One thing I like about the NST sets is that they have a lot of  interesting photos.  Probably about 80% feature in game action, while the remainder feature random candid shots, often of players off the field in oddball situations which you almost never see in sets from the 70s (or other decades).  

This one featuring Shigeo Nagashima is one of my favorites.  He is just walking out of an oden shop.  If you've never been to Japan, this is what oden is (photo courtesy of the Wikipedia page for Oden):

I have  strong dislike for oden.  Everything in there just runs afoul of too many of my "I won't eat that" red lines - texture, taste, smell, appearance - nope, nope, nope and nope.  But its very popular here. 7-11s and other convenience stores in Japan don't have Slurpee machines, but they do have oden vats very similar to the one pictured above where you can scoop out whatever you want.

You can tell Nagashima is leaving an oden shop because the noren curtain he is emerging from says "Oden", as does the writing on the chalkboard to his left.  So I guess Shigeo Nagashima likes oden, which is not surprising since, as I said, its popular here.

Also though you have to kind of scratch your head about this photo - when was this taken?  They don't have oden shops like that in stadiums, this looks like a shop on some random street.  But he is in uniform and ready to play....except.... look at his feet!  He isn't wearing cleats, he is wearing geta (a traditional type of sandal that is made of wood)!  How is this allowed?  The manager of the Giants is not properly dressed in his uniform!

I mean, when he went into the oden shop he likely would have had to remove his shoes, but normally he'd just put them back on again when he left.  Geta are not something you have to wear to an oden shop or anything so its really odd.  Maybe he forgot his cleats, or a fan stole them and he had to borrow these?  Or there was some special event going on which for some reason involved both visiting an oden shop, wearing his uniform and wearing geta.  But I can't imagine what that would have been. This is just odd all around!

Previous Stuff On Cards:

Beer

Girls in Kimonos

Vintage Cars

American Professional Wrestlers

These are a fortune. Literally.

 I made a neat new "discovery purchase" the other day: Baseball pull fortunes (Yakyu Hikuji)..

I got a big pile of them, display backing and all!

This are a type of product that doesn't exist in North America but has a long history in Japan. Each of these packs contains ten strips of thin paper which stick out at the bottom (in the above photo the black and white player head shots at the bottom are the parts of the paper that sticks out).  Each strip has a fortune written on it, like you would find in a fortune cookie.  The best one you can get is "Daikichi" which is really good luck.  The worst is "Hazure" which means you are a loser.  And there are a few in between.  So each kid would get one of these packs, then with their friends they would each pull one of the strips out and see who would get good luck and who would get bad.

 If you ever visit a shinto shrine in Japan you'll probably come across something very similar as they sell similar fortunes there. The ones sold at shrines are called "Omikuji" and come in folded pieces of paper rather than being pulled off of tabs like these baseball ones are.

These are a couple that my wife and I got at the Hakozaki shrine in Fukuoka many years ago (the chocolate banana was also purchased there, it was a festival day).


My baseball ones feature colorful wrappers with six different players on them: Senichi Hoshino, Sadaharu Oh, Masahiro Doi (I think), Shigeo Nagashima, Koichi Tabuchi and Koji Yamamoto.   The players whose head shots are featured on the ten strips peaking out at the bottom don't necessarily match the player on the wrapper (The one with Senichi Hoshino for example has a picture of Isao Harimoto on the strips.  Though most of the others do match).

 The backs of the wrappers have some cool color images of various players.

Judging from the fact that Isao Harimoto is featured as a Giant and Masahiro Doi is featured in a Taiheiyo uniform I would date these to 1976.

 I decided to try my luck and pull one of them.  Instead of tearing them off as they were designed I decided to just unwind the wire at the top holding the bundle together so I could put it back without damaging it.  This is what I got:

"Losing pitcher with a 5-10 record, so sad!"  "HAZURE"

Oh no, I got the loser one!

Back in the day these sold for 10 Yen each.  Looking around the internet it seems these "pull fortunes" were pretty popular back in the 1970s as there were similar bundles with various anime characters also sold from around that time.  These seem to have been the only baseball ones made and they are pretty hard to find.  Or at least I think they are, these were the first I've ever seen though I hadn't even known they were something I should be looking for in the first place until I found them!

Kind of a neat thing to add to my collection, they have a strong "Showa retro" look to them which I find appealing!

Shigeo Nagashima Menko Find

 I picked up this menko recently.  Its not in the best of shape but it features Giants star Shigeo Nagashima (the centering isn't as bad as it looks, my scanner cut off the left edge for some reason).

The card is a bit of a mystery to me.  I haven't been able to find a set that looks like this in Engel.  The back has a picture of a gun wielding hero, with "General" written on it, a rock/paper/scissors symbol and a long menko number.  I've never seen baseball menko with the same back:

I bought it from a seller as a single along with menko from two other sets (JCM 138 and 139) which were issued in 1960 and 1962.  The size and general look and feel of this card is very similar to the cards from those sets, and those years fall in the right ballpark given how young Nagashima looks on this one.  So I guess this is an uncatalogued early 60s menko of his. It might come from a set that featured non-sports subjects as well, the seller seemed to have a big pile of random menko and only the three that I bought featured baseball players.

More Morinagas! With Ghosts.

Fortunately my recent decision to put a 1000 Yen cap on my baseball card purchases has not actually prevented me from buying stuff.  Yesterday's mail included two cards from the 1964 Morinaga Top Star set which, it seems, I have decided to try to complete.

Its a 12 card set and I already had two of them, so now I'm up to four!  These set me back 500 Yen each, so combined they just squeaked under my self-imposed spending limit!

And the card on the left is Shigeo Nagashima , an A-list Hall of Famer if there ever was one, so it was a good purchase even though both are in a bit lower condition than my previous two.  The one on the right is Isao Shibata.

One odd thing I noticed is that the cards are slightly different color, the Nagashima card is a lot darker than the Shibata.  This is noticable on the border on the card fronts and especially on the card backs.  This isn't the result of anything getting spilled on the Nagashima, I think they've just aged differently.

A much weirder and spookier thing I noticed is that if you look in the background of the Shibata card, there seems to be a ghost sitting in the stands:

I'm pretty sure this was an actual person sitting there which for some reason Morinaga decided to obscure.  They chose a very odd way of doing so, the dots they use really do make it look like a ghostly apparition, or some sort of alien super hero.

The Nagashima card also has a couple of spots that look like this, but its not as pronounced. I'm going to give my other Morinagas a check to see if they have ghosts too.

While the addition of Nagashima to the cards of Sadaharu Oh and Katsuya Nomura which I already had gives me most of the key stars in the set, according to Engel there are two short printed cards (Shigeru Mizuhara and Yasumitsu Toyoda) which are way harder to find than the rest and way more expensive (like 300$ expensive).  So for the time being I might satisfy myself with trying to complete the 10 cards of the set that weren't short printed!

The "Really Long Number" set

 There is a really cool set of menko issued in 1960 which Engel calls the "Many Digit" set (JRM 53).

The name comes from the really long eleven digit numbers on each card. While understandable, its kind of a shame. I really like the artwork on these ones, which have realistic caricatures of the players' faces on them.  Unfortunately that doesn't translate into an easy to understand set name, so "Many Digit" makes more sense.

I have two cards from the set.  The one on top of this post is of Hall of Famer Kazuhisa Inao, a pitcher for the Nishitetsu Lions.  He was one of the most dominant pitchers of the late 1950s and early 1960s and set the single season record with 42 wins in his 1961 campaign (to go with a 1.69 ERA).

The second card I have is Shigeo Nagashima, who I guess needs no introduction.

Engel lists three cards in this set, the two I have plus one of Futoshi Nakanishi.  They are really rare (R4, less than 10 copies of each known) so there might be more out there waiting to be discovered.

In the meantime I just have to track down a copy of the Nakanishi to complete my set of the known ones :)

Holy Rocket Robots!

 I am just two cards shy of completing the "Rocket Robots" set, which is undoubtedly one of the best named sets of baseball cards ever produced.

Its an 8 card menko set released in 1975 (JCM 165 in Engel).  The cards are quite small, a bit smaller than a tobacco card from the T206 set.

Engel seems to have named the set owing to the fact that the backs of most feature pictures of robots (or possibly aliens or Kamen Rider characters?) and the names of various types of rockets printed at the top (though not all, only 3 of the ones I have do, the others say things like "Captain", "M4 Tank" and "Red Cross", which is a bit eclectic).

Interestingly 3 of the 8 cards feature members of the Chunichi Dragons (Senichi Hoshino, Morimichi Takagi and Takamasa Suzuki), which sort of continues an odd theme of the Dragons being over-represented in menko sets of the mid to late 70s (contrasted with the Giants being way over represented in the conventional card sets like Calbee of the same era).

The Sadaharu Oh card from this set is one of his most striking (and that is saying something, he is on a LOT of cards from the 70s).  The background artwork makes it look like he has a halo.  Saint Oh, guardian angel of the long ball or something like that.  The others are a bit more subdued but still cool.  Koichi Tabuchi shares his card with Isao Harimoto in the background.

Its kind of a neat set and one thing I love about 8 card sets is that you can fit them almost perfectly into a single binder page (a 9 card set would, of course, fit absolutely perfectly but they are a bit harder to come by).  So I've got two pockets waiting for the two I need (Takagi and a Koji Yamamoto/Sadaharu Oh combo card)!

The Rarest Sadaharu Oh Cards

Going through my Engel guide I can only find four cards of Sadaharu Oh that are ranked as "R5" on the rarity scale, meaning less than 5 copies of each are known to exist.

One is his card in the 1959 Maruten Black and white Menko set JCM 135, which is a very hard one to find.  The other is a variation of his 1959 Yamakatsu card (JRM 33e) which they say has darker color than his regular 1959 Yamakatsu card, which is less scarce.

The other two are from the 1965 Giants Furikake Menko sets (JRM 39a and 39b), which are basically identical except one is slightly larger than the other.

I now have both of those 1965 Giants Furikake cards, pictured above!

These were part of a 6 card lot featuring three cards from each set

As you can see I also scored Shigeo Nagashima, two cards of Kunio Jonouchi and Akira Takahashi.

Both the "big" and "small" ones are on the small size, about the size of a quarter for the small ones and a bit bigger for the larger ones.  The  backs of the cards are baseballs with the players number in the middle, name underneath and "Giants Furikake" written across the top.

Furikake is a kind of seasoning that you sprinkle on rice to give it some flavor.  I have some in my house, my kids both demand it whenever they eat rice. It seems this was some sort of promotional giveaway with furikake back in the 1960s.  I did a Google search and discovered that there is today a product called "Giants Furikake" which you can buy on Amazon:

I'm not sure if this is the descendant of the original Giants Furikake from the 60s that these menko came with, though it certainly seems to be a possibility!  The cards are about the right size and shape to have fit into the bottle cap, so I wonder if that might be how they were originally distributed (possibly one set in smaller bottles, the other in bigger ones?)

Anyway, I'm really psyched that I can now say that my collection has not one but two of the rarest vintage Sadaharu Oh cards ever made in it.  Also I'm glad that Japanese collectors don't seem to value this sort of thing at all since I paid almost nothing for them (well, relative to what they are anyway, they cost about what a PSA 10 1976 Topps common or something like that would cost in the US, which also puts the insanity of the US card market into focus).

Some Extremely Colorful 1958 Uncut Sheets of Menko

I just picked up a couple of sheets of very colorful menko!

The above are two sheets of 8 cards each from the 1958 Mitsuwa set (JCM 129) which, as you can see, have a pretty distinctive look to them.  

I like these a lot.  The set has 16 cards and I thought I would get the whole set when I first saw the two sheets for sale, but actually there are three cards which are duplicated on both sheets.  Strangely the duplicate cards appear at completely different positions with completely different neighboring cards on each sheet so I'm not sure how they organized the printing of these, but its an interesting observation.

The card backs have both a playing card and a military themed image on them.  According to Engel the ink used to print the backs varied and as you can see, my two sheets use different shades of brown.

The key cards in the set are two featuring Giants slugger Shigeo Nagashima and Tigers hall of famer Yoshio Yoshida.  A lot of the cards in the set feature odd pairings of players from different teams like this.  Being issued in 1958 these cards would count among Nagashima's rookie cards (though I'm not sure what Yoshida being on them might do to that status).  Luckily for me one of them is among the three cards that were duplicated across both sheets, so I have doubles of a Shigeo Nagashima rookie card now!

400 game winner Masaichi Kaneda also appears on a couple of cards. One of them is his alone, the other he shares with Dragons pitcher Tsutomu Ina.

All in all a very colorful and neat set.  I need three more cards to complete it and I'm hoping to find them in an uncut sheet someday since it would be kind of awkward to have most of the set in uncut sheets and the rest in singles, though we'll see how that works out!

The oddest of oddball sets

I picked up a really odd set the other day: the JRM 38 1960 Oh and Nagashima Menko set.

This is a picture of the entire set - at just four cards its not a hard one to complete even though it is a bit scarce (in my case I got all four in one go).  It features two cards each of Sadaharu Oh and Shigeo Nagashima.  According to Engel they were able to date the set thanks to the uniform Nagashima is wearing on the biggest one, which was the Giants' 1960 uniform.  On the other three they are all wearing uniforms from 1959.

 What really makes this set odd though is that none of the cards are the same size as each other.  They get progressively bigger, with Nagashima being on both the smallest and the largest, while Oh is on two that fall in the middle, but aren't the same size.

I don't know of any other card set out there where this is the case.  Even in the bizarre world of Japanese cards from the 50s and 60s, while there are a number of sets which have cards of differing sizes in most of those there are several cards that share the same size (like my good old JRM 8s). I think this is the only set where each single card is of a unique size.

Having acquired the set I now have to figure out what to do with it.  How in god's name are we meant to store these things?  Can't put them in binder pages, can't put them in regular card boxes, can't put them in holders (except the two smallest ones, the larger ones are too big).  I do have a folder for my oversized cards, so they'll probably be temporarily housed in there, but it isn't the best in terms of displaying the cards so I will need to work on that.

Storage issues aside I do really like these cards, they all have pretty good images of Oh and Nagashima on them, with striking background colors.  So its a cool set to have!

My Shigeo Nagashima Rookie Card

 

Shigeo Nagashima has a LOT of rookie cards from his first season in 1958.  This is not surprising since unlike his team mate Sadaharu Oh, Nagashima's career caught on fire pretty much right away - he hit 29 home runs in his first season and cruised to the rookie of the year award.

The two of them do make an interesting comparison from a menko era card perspective though.  Nagashima's rookie cards were issued in the 1958 sets, while Oh's came the following year.  I haven't counted and don't know anyone who has, but each of them has several dozen cards from their respective rookie seasons which count as rookie cards.  I'm guessing Nagashima probably has more, since he had an entire 40 card set (JCM 32b) devoted to him in his rookie year, which Oh never had.  Their presence seems to make the sets from those two years a bit more popular than the ones from subsequent years which lacked debuts of players of similar stature.

Having picked up an Oh Rookie card over the summer, I also set about trying to find a cool Nagashima one.  I settled for this 1958 Doyusha card (JCM 30a) which has a pretty cool image on the front of him heading home after rounding the bases on one of those 29 long balls he hit that year.  I kind of like the borderless look of this set too.

The back is cool too, with Nagashima's name on it and basically the same design as the 1959 Doyusha set which features Oh's rookie card.

Value wise the Nagashima rookie cards are a lot more affordable than the Oh ones, despite Nagashima arguably being the more popular player (in Japan at least).  This probably reflects the purchasing power of American collectors who are way more likely to go after Oh cards than Nagashima ones.  It also probably reflects the fractured collector interest that having dozens of rookie cards creates.  Individually they are all pretty scarce, but collectively there are a lot of them out there without any one being considered a "definitive" card that collectors can focus their attention on with laser like precision.  So if you've got 10-20$ and a bit of patience you can probably score a Nagashima rookie card on Yahoo Auctions when one shows up!

JMC 1 Mr. Baseball NST Cards

I just picked up a lot of cards from the 1975 NST Mr. Baseball set.  This is another one of my forays into oddball sets from the 70s, which I absolutely love.

According to Dave these were part of a 288 card set in honor of Shigeo Nagashima, who had retired a couple years earlier.  I got 14 of the cards, all pictured above.  The cards are about the same size (though a bit narrower) as Calbee cards of the era.  The backs are blank so they are basically just little photo cards with white borders.  They aren't as appealing as the Calbees of the era, at least to me, but they are still kind of neat.  Being blank backed a full set must be a real chore to put together so I think I'll avoid trying that monster for now!

The Greatest Baseball Card of all Time?

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. 

Another Reason 1970s Calbee Cards are the Best that will Ever Be

Above are a few cards from the 1975 Calbee set (not to be confused with the 1975-76 set) that I have.  You have cards of Japan's all time hits leader (Harimoto), its top three home runs leaders (Oh, Nomura and Kadota), its Iron Man (Kinugasa), its most popular player ever (Nagashima) and one of its best pitchers (Yamada).  I didn't have one handy when I scanned these but if I wanted to I could have added its all time stolen base king (Fukumoto) to the group if I had wanted to.

If you think of the concentration of key figures in the Japanese game into one set (in fact, most sets issued that decade) it is really hard to fathom - almost all of the key career record holders in Japanese history are represented here since their careers overlapped (Nagashima admittedly appearing as a manager rather than player in sets after 73, but still there).  Its like having a set with (career contemporary) cards of Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron,Pete Rose, Rickey Henderson, Willie Mays, Walter Johnson, Cal Ripken Jr and Mickey Mantle.


The interesting thing is that no NPB set in the future will ever come close to this because almost all of those records are now effectively unbreakable.  Any player who can collect hits, home runs, wins or stolen bases at the pace necessary to challenge any of them is going to be offered a lucrative contract from MLB years before that happens, so it is hard to imagine any player capable of doing so sticking around long enough.  The current active career home run leader is Shinnosuke Abe, whose career is already winding down and might not even reach the 400 plateau before the end.  Harimoto's hits record would likely have been obliterated by now had Ichiro not gone to the Majors and nobody else is even close.

So the 1970s in NPB are kind of a unique era in the history of any baseball league.  I can't think of any era in MLB history that comes close.  The dead ball era produced some pitching records that are more or less out of reach (Cy Young's 511 wins) and some non-home run batting records that will likely never be matched (Sam Crawford's career triples), while the 1920s and 1950s produced some of its most iconic figures, but the 1970s in NPB is a bit like if the top players in all those eras competed against each other and all the major career records that they set (as opposed to just a few) became impossible for subsequent generations to break. 

1974 Calbee Shigeo Nagashima

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. 

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.