Sunday, April 19, 2009

Card Of The Week April 19

One of the cool things about old menko cards is that they would sometimes come in blocks of 4, 8 or 16 cards, suitable for framing. Here's a 16 card block of 1964 Marukami "Bat On Right" menko:


Top Row(L to R): Kazuhiro Yamauchi, Takao Katsuragi, Masahiro Doi, Isao Harimoto
2nd Row: unknown, Takeshi Kato, Jim Marshall, Masuho Maeda
3rd Row: Katsuya Nomura, Kent Hadley, Akira Ishii, Joe Stanka
Last Row: Hachiro Yamamoto, Masaaki Koyama, Etsui Nakai, Toshiaki Tokuhisa

The Tokyo Orions player on the far left in the second row is identified in Gary Engel's "Japanese Baseball Card Checklist and Price Guide" simply as "Ando". I've checked Japan Baseball Daily's Data Warehouse, however, and I can't find an "Ando" who played for the Orions in 1964 (or the early 60's for that matter). Curiously, the back of the card says his uniform number is "23", but his helmet says "8". So I don't know who this really is.

Update: Using the information available in the Data Warehouse, I've been able to figure out that #23 on the 1964 Tokyo Orions was Kazuhiro Ishiguro. I think Kazuyoshi Nishiyama wore #8 (he's listed as wearing both #8 and #9 in his three years with the Orions). But I'm also pretty sure that the kanji on the card says "Ando". So I'm very confused...

1 comment:

Deanna said...

That's really weird. It definitely says Andoh, infielder, Tokyo. Can you scan the back of it so we can get a better idea? I looked around and the best I found was a pitcher for the Flyers/Giants around that time period named Motohiro Andoh, but that doesn't make any sense.