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. 

Matty Alou Calbee Card

Matty Alou is arguably one of the best foreign players to ever come to Japan, though for some reason he isn`t often mentioned in most lists of the greats of his generation to make the trip like Frank Howard, Clete Boyer or Willie Davis.  He had a long and successful MLB career that included an NL batting crown, a couple of all star selections and the fame that went along with being a member of arguably the most talented baseball family in history.

He played for three years with Taiheiyo in the mid 70s at the tail end of his career, and he appears in the monster 1975-76 Calbee set.  I finally picked up one of his cards from that set, #542, which features him batting against a Hankyu pitcher named Ashikaga on April 28, 1976 in Nishinomiya Stadium (the runner on second is Masahiro Doi, who appears on another card from that set which I have written about before). 

Frustratingly the back of the card, while telling us that Taiheiyo won a come from behind victory, doesn`t actually tell us what the outcome of this at bat was, though it might be inferred that Alou drove the runner in.  Its kind of a cool in-game picture, with the funky Taiheiyo uniforms and Nishinomiya Stadium looking characteristically under-packed - you can count exactly 3 people sitting in the stands in right field.  The all dirt infield looks cool, I wish more stadiums today had them.

1950s Baseball Menko are Neat

 I noticed the other day that I have been blogging about Japanese baseball cards for 3 years now without once having done a post about the most charming type of Japanese baseball cards: menko.  So I thought this would be a good time to remedy that oversight.

I love vintage menko, they are so colorful and child-like it is hard not to be charmed by them.  They are also one of those things that clearly distinguish the history of Japanese baseball cards from that of cards in the United States where no similar item ever existed. 

While most of them are rectangular and look a bit like baseball cards, some are given unique shapes (especially the beautiful early sumo cards). 

This particular set is the favorite of my current collection.  It dates from the 1950s and features likenesses of some of the top players of the era (from top left: Betto, Sugiura, Noguchi, Aoda, Beshho, Kawakami, Uchihori, Doi, Chiba and Yamamoto). 

The artwork is extremely crude but in a really appealing way - the players are easily recognizable and their uniforms are so colorful - look at Kaoru Betto`s Tigers uniform and tell me you don`t think those stripes are awesome!

1956 Brooklyn Dodgers Good Will Tour of Japan Schedule

 This is my third post in a row covering a piece of memorabilia from a US team`s goodwill tour of Japan. You can probably tell from that how I have been focusing my recent shopping/collecting activity!

I hadn`t been aware of it until I found this, but in October and November of1956 the Brooklyn Dodgers made a goodwill tour to Japan in which they played 11 games against four different teams (the Giants, an "All Japan" team, a Central League team (I assume this was an all star squad), and an "All Kanto" team).  This is a schedule featuring team rosters from that tour.

According to this detailed write up on Walter O`Malley`s (spits on ground in disgust at mention of name) website about the tour, the Dodgers were invited by Yomiuri owner Matsutaro Shoriki and O`Malley (spits on ground again) accepted.  They played to huge crowds everywhere they went and the same site has some cool photos of the tour (I like this one, I think that is Carl Furillo in the foreground and you can see Jackie Robinson next to the photographer, check out the rest at their site, which also has some amazing looking posters from the tour that probably sell for a billion dollars these days):

My schedule/ roster doesn`t have any interesting artwork on it, but it does have the 1956 Dodgers` roster with each player`s name written in katakana, which is pretty cool.  Most of the big names like Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Duke Snider, Pee Wee Reese and Gil Hodges made the trip.  A young Don Drysdale, who I guess would have been in his rookie season that year also appeared, though the Dodgers other future ace Sandy Koufax doesn`t seem to have tagged along.  If I recall correctly I think he was a university student at Columbia at the time when he wasn`t pitching and maybe he didn`t want to miss class or something.

The other four team`s lineups are also included:

 And in the centre is the schedule.  They opened against the Giants on October 19 at Korakuen, and closed it up on November 11 against the All Japan team, also at Korakuen.

Anyway, this is a kind of cool thing to stumble upon so I`m glad to add it to the collection :)

1934 Yomiuri Shinbun American All Star Tour of Japan Photo Insert

 Recently I have been getting into the vintage stuff a lot and last week I picked up a really cool centerpiece for my pre-war collection.  It is a 1934 newspaper bonus insert featuring a picture of the members of the American and Japanese teams that played in the American League all star tour of Japan that year.

It is so awesome.

Its a pretty good sized picture, about the size of a B4 sheet of paper, and printed on cardstock.  According to the text along the bottom edge it was taken at Jingu Stadium on November 25, 1934.  It was distributed by the Yomiuri Shinbun, the paper that organized the tour and shortly shortly thereafter would form the first NPB team, the Giants.

  The American team is full of big name Hall of Famers, including Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmy Foxx and Connie Mack. 

The photo features facsimile autographs of each player.  Interestingly there is currently an auction for the same photo up on Yahoo Auctions here which rather dishonestly suggests that the autographs are real, but they are clearly not.  Bidding on that one is up over 54,000 Yen as I write this (about $500 US) with 4 days remaining, whoever wins it will likely be disappointed when they actually have it in their hands. As I have mentioned before, Yahoo Auctions Japan is a bit of a haven for rip off artists selling fake autographs, though at least in this case the photo itself appears to be genuine.  Its an amazing piece and definitely worth something, but nowhere near as much as a photo actually signed by all those guys (one copy, which formed the basis for this photo, must exist somewhere out there assuming it wasn`t burned in the war....wow, what a find that would be).

Anyway, back to the photo.  Moe Berg`s signature stands out among the Americans since he signed his in English and Japanese katakana, which is kind of neat.  Despite being a relatively minor player, his exploits on the tour are best known since he engaged in some spying for the US government while there, taking some photos that would be useful during the War a few years later.

At some point I`ll try to make a list of the Japanese players.  Unfortunately their signatures are pretty difficult to read so I am having trouble identifying the individuals based on that alone.

I should add that this doesn`t seem to have been a stand-alone insert.  I actually bought it as part of a 3 piece collection of Yomiuri Shinbun inserts. One of these features the cabinet of then Prime Minister of Japan Keisuke Okada.  Okada is a really interesting figure in pre-war Japan and his inclusion in a set with the American all stars is kind of fitting.  He was staunchly opposed to any war with the United States and the rising militarism of Japan at the time.  He was the subject of numerous assassination attempts as a result, one of which killed his brother in law and led to his resigning from office in 1936.  He retained this position even after the war began and was part of the faction that wanted to negotiate peace with the US.

The other photo is a bit less fitting, featuring military leaders some of whom probably led the fight against the Americans during the war!

I`m probably going to have the baseball photo framed at some point, its size makes it perfect for a display piece.

Lefty O`Doul and the 1949 San Francisco Seals Good Will Tour of Japan

 I made another interesting find on Yahoo Auctions the other day.  It is  an uncut sheet of playing cards featuring players from the 1949 Goodwill tour of Japan by the San Francisco Seals.

The tour was led by Lefty O`Doul, who had also organized the more famous pre-war tours by American all stars like Gehrig and Ruth in the 1930s.  The 1949 tour is considered quite important in Japan though since it was the first such tour after the war and in fact occurred while General MacArthur was still in charge of the country.

The Seals played 11 games, including exhibition games, during the tour against a variety of teams including the Giants, an all star team from pro yakyuu, American military teams and college all star teams, winning all but one game.  The games were played in Tokyo, Nagoya and the Kansai region in Korakuen stadium (Tokyo), Koshien Stadium (Kansai), Jingu Stadium (Tokyo), Chunichi Stadium (Nagoya) and Nishinomiya Stadium (Kansai). The cards in this set feature players from the Seals and the Giants, who played only one game against each other during the tour (on October 15, 1949, won by the Seals 13-4).

Each player has two cards, one featuring a fairly crude likeness of the player and the other some random close up of the player`s uniform, glove, bat, throwing arm, etc.  Below are the two cards of each team`s manager, Osamu Mihara of the Giants (upper row, two cards with yellow background) and O`Doul (next to Mihara, two cards with blue background). 

Another interesting fact about the above image is the card on the lower left, featuring the scoreboard.  The inning numbers don`t make any sense, they run 7-7-8-9-6-1.  I can`t figure out any interpretation of that order which makes sense, I assume the person who did the artwork probably wasn`t a baseball fan.  Also the Seals` pitcher Dempsey, featured on the cards immediately below O`Doul, is rendered as having a fairly hideous looking 3 fingered set of claws for a pitching hand. 

Its hard to find lineup information for these games on the internet (at least from my 15 minutes of Googling, which turned up lots of generic articles about the series but none that offered any details).  The Japanese Wikipedia page does offer some more information though, so I thought I`d try to translate the lineup of each team featured just so that it would exist in English on the internet somewhere (my transcription of the Seals player names is probably wrong in a few places, its hard to convert katakana accurately back into the original language. If anyone can, please correct these. The Japanese player names I am confident in).

Seals:
1. Tobin
2. Holder
3. Briskey
4. Steinhower
5. Shoffner
6. Roddijohnny (definitely I am getting that name wrong)
 (pinch hitter: O`Doul, replaced at second by Morin)
7. Westlake
8. Jarvis
9.Dempsey
(pinch hitter:O`Teague, replaced as pitcher by Wall)

Giants:
1. Chiba
2. Shiraishi
3. Aoda
4. Kawakami
5. Hirayama
6. Akihara
(pinch hitter: Yamakawa, replaced in right field by Komatsubara)
7. Tetsuka
8. Fujiwara
(pinch hitter: Nagashima, replaced at catcher by Takemiya
9. Kawasaki
(pinch hitter: Bessho, replaced as pitcher by Fujimoto)

Dempsey got the win for the Seals, while Kawasaki took the loss for the Giants.  Westlake and Bessho each connected for a home run.  The game was played in front of a crowd of 45,000 at Korakuen Stadium. 

Sadaharu Oh 700 Home Run Subset

One of the cooler subsets from the 1975-76 Calbee set is the Sadharu Oh 700th home run cards.  Each card commemorates one of his home runs in the lead up to hitting #700, a feat he accomplished in 1976.  I have several of the cards from this subset, but they don`t appear to be sequentially numbered as some fall in the 700s, 800s and 900s.

The series culminates with the above card, #927 in the set which commemorates home run #700, the back noting that he joins Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron as the only two in the 700 club.  Its a kind of cool scene, Oh getting interviewed while holding the typical bouquet of flowers.

These are a few of the other 700 Home Run cards of Oh.  I particularly like the one on the lower right, with him swinging away with all his might, eyes closed (card #800 in the set).  It is from a 2 home run game in which he hit his 12th and 13th of the season against Taiyo on May 22, 1976.