The Japanese Baseball Hall Of Fame announced its 2019 inductees today. Longtime Chunichi Dragons infielder Kazuyoshi Tatsunami was the sole candidate on the Players Selection Committee to garner enough votes for election while Hiroki Gondoh, a pitcher/infielder for the Dragons in the 1960's and manager of the Yokohama Baystars in the late 90's (including their Nippon Series Championship in 1998) as well as a coach for a number of teams, was the sole inductee from the Expert Division. The Special Division also elected Haruo Wakimura who was involved with high school baseball. The vote tallies can be seen
here.
Here are cards of Tatsunami and Gondoh - pretty sure there aren't any of Wakimura:
Kazuyoshi Tatsunami
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| 1988 Takara Dragons #3 |
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| 1999 Calbee #080 |
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| 2009 BBM 1st Version #306 |
Hiroshi Gondoh
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| 1962 Doyusha JCM 55 |
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| 2006 BBM Nostalgic Stars #105 |
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| 1998 BBM Nippon Series #S1 |
4 comments:
Glad to see Tatsunami get in, its well deserved. I was just looking up his career, hadn't realized he had the record for most career doubles in NPB!
Awesome to see Gondoh in. Kenny send me a care package last month with a Gondoh auto in it!!!
My first ever Hall of Fame signature.
https://sumocards.blogspot.com/2018/11/ive-been-zapped-thanks-kenny-at-torren.html?m=1
Any updates/photos of Tommy Hiroya Tomizawa? He has been nominated to the Hall of Fame in 2018 & 2019. It seems we rarely hear of umpires and given his history and character, it would be great to know more. Please update if you can. Thank you.
There haven't been any cards for NPB umpires in a long time, if ever. I think there might have been some menko cards in the late 1940's but I could be wrong.
Actually let me add a caveat to that - there aren't any cards of umpires as umpires. There are cards of former players who became umpires but those are from when they were players.
I don't know anything about Tomizawa. What's his story?
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