Card Of The Week July 26

I was looking at the all time leaders for grand slams in NPB that Yakyu Baka published the other day due to Takeya Nakamura tying Sadaharu Oh for the lead and there was a name that stuck out at me as being an odd one on the list.  I'll reproduce the list here:

Player	GS
Oh, Sadaharu	15
Nakamura, Takeya	15
Fujii, Yasuo	14
Nakamura, Norihiro	14
Komada, Norihiro	13
Eto, Akira	13
Kokubo, Hiroki	13
Eto, Shinichi	12
Nomura, Katsuya	12
Iguchi, Tadahito	12

Maybe it's not obvious - let's do the list again with each player's career home run totals:

Player	GS	HRs
Oh, Sadaharu	15	868
Nakamura, Takeya	15	301
Fujii, Yasuo	14	282
Nakamura, Norihiro	14	404
Komada, Norihiro	13	195
Eto, Akira	13	364
Kokubo, Hiroki	13	413
Eto, Shinichi	12	367
Nomura, Katsuya	12	657
Iguchi, Tadahito	12	241

What surprised me is that Norihiro Komada is tied for fifth on the list despite having hit less than 200 home runs in his career.  Komada's grand slams account for almost 7% of all his home runs - that number is 5% or less for everyone else.  He only hit more than 20 home runs in a season twice in his 18 year career.  That's just a crazy number of grand slams for that few home runs.

Looking into this a little deeper, I learned that Komada was the first player in Japan to hit a grand slam in his first at bat in NPB.  His nickname was "Manrui Otoko" or "Grand Slam Man".

Here's a 1994 Kanebo card of Komada (#027).  Komada left the Giants as a free agent following the 1993 season and signed with the Baystars - I assume this picture is from the press conference announcing the signing.