NPB Gaijin In The SPBA

Once upon a time there was something called the Senior Professional Baseball Association.  It was the brain child of Jim Morley, who was inspired by the Senior Professional Golf Association and figured that having a league of "old timers" play in Florida during the off season would be very popular.  The league kicked off in November of 1989 with eight teams split into two divisions.  The Northern Division had the Bradenton Explorers, the Orlando Juice, the St Petersburg Pelicans and the Winter Haven Super Sox.  The Southern Division featured the Fort Myers Sun Sox, the Gold Coast Suns, the St. Lucie Legends and the West Palm Beach Tropics.

The minimum age for a player in the league was 35 (32 for catchers).  A number of star players from the 1970's and 80's played in the league - Rollie Fingers, Fergie Jenkins, Luis Tiant, Graig Nettles, Bobby Bonds, Bill Madlock, Bert Campaneris, George Foster, Dan Driessen, Jose Cruz and Toby Harrah all made appearances in the inaugural season.  Earl Weaver managed Gold Coast while Dick Williams managed the Tropics.  The St Petersburg Pelicans won the championship for that first season but the league did not prove as popular as Morley and the team owners had hoped and everyone lost a lot of money.

The second season saw a bunch of changes for the league.  Four of the teams folded (Orlando, Winter Haven, Gold Coast and St. Lucie)  while the Explorers moved from Bradenton to Daytona Beach and the Tropics ended up without a home park after they had a dispute with West Palm Beach.   The league added two expansion teams outside of Florida - the Sun City Rays (in Phoenix) and the San Bernardino Pride.  The league picked up another big name when Jim Rice signed with St Petersburg.  But things didn't improve much financially and the league finally folded right around Christmas of 1990.

Morley had hoped to resurrect the league the following year with a different focus.  In addition to the "senior" players, Major League Baseball would provide both prospects and major league players rehabbing from injury.  This would make the league more of a rival to the Latin American winter leagues.  (I remember talking to someone in the league office back in the spring of 1991 when I was ordering some hats and yearbooks and them saying something along the lines that a major league team would probably prefer to have a top prospect sitting next to Fergie Jenkins rather than playing in Venezuela all winter.)  Even more interesting was the idea that Morley floated in Peter Golenbock's book about the league "The Forever Boys" where he wanted to get Japanese teams involved as well:  "The perfect roster will have ten senior players, five or six major leaguers and five or six Japanese players".  But it was not to be - the league never returned.

There were four different card sets that were issued for the league's inaugural season.  The largest one (at 220 cards) was issued by Pacific Trading Cards. This was the only set issued in packs.  The other three were all box sets issued by T&M (121 cards), Topps (132 cards) and Elite (126 cards).  IIRC the Elite cards included a logo magnet for one of the teams.  Pacific was the only manufacturer to issue cards for the second season - they did a 165 card set that was again issued in packs.

So what does all this have to do with Japanese baseball?  I had reread the two books published about the league a year or so ago ("Extra Innings" by David Whitford and the previously mentioned Peter Golenbock book) and realized that a number of the players that they talked about had spent time in Japan during the 1980's.  I decided to attempt to make a list of all the SPBA players and managers who had played, coached or managed in Japan.  This ended up being a bit harder than I thought - there's no complete statistical record for the league anywhere I could find.  I thought I had one somewhere in my office - I had bought a publication from SABR years ago called "The Senior Professional Baseball Association" by Edward M. Hathaway that I thought had the complete stats but when I finally found the booklet last weekend I discovered that it only had the qualifiers for the batting and pitching leaders - and there were a lot of guys who played in the league who didn't get enough at bats or innings pitched to qualify for the batting crown or ERA lead.  Luckily I still had all the card sets so I was able to go through them.  And I had to go through every one of them because each of the four sets for the inaugural season has players that the other three don't have.  I cam up with a list of 36 players and managers total.  33 of these players played in Japan prior to playing in the SPBA.  One player (Bert Campaneris) coached for the Seibu Lions in 1987 and 1988.  Another player (Lenn Sakata) would later coach for the Chiba Lotte Marines on two separate occasions (1995-98 and 2008-09).  And lastly one player would go on to manager the Lotte Giants in the KBO in 2008-09 - Jerry Royster.  There may be other players with a KBO connection but I don't have a list of foreign players in Korea during the 1980's.  And I could have missed other NPB players.  But here's the list I came up with.  For each player I'll show an SPBA card for each season the player was in the league and a Japanese card for the player if I have one.

Name	89-90 Card	90-91 Card	NPB Experience	NPB Card
Kim Allen	1989-90 Topps #53	1990-91 Pacific #99	Tigers 1982-83
Randy Bass	1989-90 Elite #49		Tigers 1983-88	1984 Calbee #59
Clete Boyer	1989-90 T&M #12	1990-91 Pacific #43	Whales 1972-75	1975/76 Calbee #374
Bert Campaneris	1989-90 Elite #78		Lions 1987-88 (coach)
Mark Corey	1989-90 Pacific #195		Buffaloes 1984
Hector Cruz		1990-91 Pacific #60	Giants 1983
Ron Davis		1990-91 Pacific #115	Swallows 1989
Taylor Duncan	1989-90 Pacific #70		Lions 1980
Mike Easler	1989-90 Elite #19		Fighters 1988-89	1989 Lotte #29
Juan Eichelberger	1989-90 T&M #32	1990-91 Pacific #119	Swallows 1989	2013 BBM Deep Impact #21
Rich Gale	1989-90 Pacific #95	1990-91 Pacific #19	Tigers 1985-86	2013 BBM Greatest Games 10-16-1985 Swallows vs Tigers #10
Wayne Garrett	1989-90 T&M #39		Dragons 1979-80	1979 TCMA #77
Larry Harlow	1989-90 Topps #103	1990-91 Pacific #20	Swallows 1982
Joe Hicks	1989-90 Topps #105		Braves 1985
Dave Hilton	1989-90 Elite #113	1990-91 Pacific #124	Swallows 1978-79, Tigers 1980	1979 Yamakatsu JY8 #16
Tim Ireland	1989-90 Elite #69		Carp 1983-84	1984 Takara Carp #4
Randy Johnson	1989-90 Elite #23		Carp 1987-88	1987 Play Ball #12
Bob Jones	1989-90 Elite #71	1990-91 Pacific #59	Dragons 1979-80	1979 TCMA #78
Mike Kekich	1989-90 T&M #57		Fighters 1974
Pete Lacock	1989-90 Elite #98	1990-91 Pacific #120	Whales 1981
Rick Lancellotti		1990-91 Pacific #122	Carp 1987-88	1987 Calbee #343
Bill Madlock	1989-90 Elite #116		Orions 1988	2013 BBM Deep Impact #18
Jim Marshall		1990-91 Pacific #127	Dragons 1963-65	1963 Marukami JCM 14f
Felix Millan	1989-90 Topps #85		Whales 1978-80	1979 TCMA #52
Jim Nettles	1989-90 Elite #44		Hawks 1975
Steve Ontiveros	1989-90 Elite #117		Lions 1980-85	1984 Calbee #76
Pat Putnam	1989-90 T&M #87		Fighters 1986-87	1987 Takara Fighters #6
Dave Rajsich	1989-90 Pacific #3	1990-91 Pacific #154	Carp 1984	1984 Takara Carp #44
Gary Rajsich	1989-90 Elite #12	1990-91 Pacific #156	Dragons 1986-88	1987 Play Ball #14
Jerry Royster	1989-90 Elite #47		Lotte Giants (KBO) 2008-09 (Mgr)
Lenn Sakata		1990-91 Pacific #91	Marines 1995-98 (Coach), 2008-09 (Coach)
Bobby Tolan	1989-90 Elite #2	1990-91 Pacific #152	Hawks 1978
Jim Tracy		1990-91 Pacific #70	Whales 1983-84	1983 Calbee #169
George Vukovich		1990-91 Pacific #45	Lions 1986-87	2014 BBM Lions Legend #64
Jerry White	1989-90 Elite #32	1990-91 Pacific #3	Lions 1984, Whales 1985
Walt Williams	1989-90 Topps #126		Fighters 1976-77