Card Of The Week January 7

A week or so ago I was sitting in one of the local brew pubs, nursing a beer and perusing Twitter when I came across a thread from Gaijin Baseball about the Pacific League adopting the Designated Hitter rule in 1975.  He listed the six players who were the first DHs for each Pacific League team.

Now I had thought (and posted on the blog) that the first DH to bat in PL history was Toshizo Sakamoto of the Fighters so I was surprised that he was not listed in the thread.  I almost replied right then that Gaijin Baseball was wrong but I decided I should really check into it a little more first.  I mean, Gaijin Baseball's not some random Twitter idiot mouthing off about something he doesn't know about.  Everything he does is well research so if he's saying Sakamoto was not the first DH, there's probably a good reason for that.  So I decided to wait until I was home and had easier access to more resources than just my phone at a bar.

So the next day I started looking into it.  I went to the website 2689web.com which has a cryptic sounding URL but is the home of "Nippon Professional Baseball Records", the closest thing to Baseball-Reference in Japan.  It's really the only place where I've found box scores for every game in every season in Japan going all the way back to 1936.  I tracked down the box score for the Fighters' game on Opening Day, 1975 (which was on April 5th) and discovered that Sakamoto led off the game for the Fighters as their...second baseman!  The DH in the game was listed as Masayoshi Higashida, who was who Gaijin Baseball had listed.  So he was right and I was wrong.

In my defense, the reason I had thought Sakamoto was the first DH is that's what the Google translation of the Japanese Wikipedia page for DH says: "The first person in Japan to take the turn at bat as a DH was Toshizo Sakamoto of the Nippon-Ham Fighters."  This does explain my surprise when Sakamoto's obituary a few years ago didn't mention him being the first DH though.

So now my curiosity is piqued - if it wasn't Sakamoto (and it wasn't), who WAS the first DH in Pacific League history?  The answer is...I don't know.  Let's go through the candidates.

There were three games played in the PL on Opening Day, 1975 so all six teams were in action.  As far as I know, all three games started at the same time but I don't know if they were day or night games.  I run these down in the same order that Gaijin Baseball did in his thread.

Up in Sendai, the Nankai Hawks were visiting the defending Nippon Series Champion Lotte Orions.  Nankai's DH, batting fifth, was former White Sox and Indian Ron Lolich:

1975 Broder JA 4

Lotte's DH was Takahiro Tokutsu.  He was sixth in the lineup:

2021 BBM Marines History #13

At Heiwadai Stadium in Fukuoka, the Taiheiyo Club Lions were hosting Nippon-Ham Fighters.  The Fighters' DH was Masayoshi Higashida, the fifth hitter in the lineup.  Higashida was playing in his first game with Nippon-Ham after seven seasons with the Lions who had traded him for Jinten Haku.  1975 would be his only season playing for the Fighters.  Gaijin Baseball found a photo of him with the Fighters but the only cards I have of him show him with the Lions:

2010 BBM Lions 60th Anniversary #80

The Lions DH that day was Masashi Takenouchi, batting sixth:

1975/76/77 Calbee #529

And finally, at Hankyu Nishinomiya Stadium, the Kintetsu Buffaloes were playing the Hankyu Braves.  Kintetsu's DH, batting fourth, was ex-Cub Clarence Jones:

1977 NST #223

Hankyu's DH was Tokuji "Atsushi" Nagaike who was also batting clean up:

1974/75 Calbee #599

So which of these six were first?  2689web.com doesn't have play-by-play data for the games so it's impossible to say for sure.  None of the six players were in the top three of their lineup so none of them were guaranteed to have batted in the first inning.  However, the Fighters scored a run in the top of the first inning so they must have sent at least four men to the plate in that inning.  I don't think the run scored on a home run, so it's likely they had sent five (three outs, one runner scored, one batter got a hit to drive in the run and was left on base) - although certainly the run could have scored on a sacrifice fly.  But if they DID send five men to plate, Higashida would have batted in the first inning.  

If Higashida did, does this make him the first DH to bat?  Not necessarily.  Jones batted fourth and if one of the first three Buffaloes got on, he would have batted in the first.  But even if he did, he still could have come up later than Higashida.  I mean, maybe the count went full to all three batters before Jones while the first four Fighters all swung at the first pitch.  It's really impossible to know without the play-by-play data and even then it might be difficult without timestamps on the at bats.  Probably the only way we'll ever know for sure is a contemporaneous news report - which is how we know Ron Blomberg was the first DH to bat in MLB history.

I think Higashida and Jones are the most likely, followed by Nagaike and Lolich.  With Tokutsu and Takenouchi batting sixth for their respective home teams, it would be extremely unlikely that they could have batted before the DH for their opponents since neither of their teams scored in the first inning.  The only way either of them could have batted in the first is if their team had loaded the bases, which would have brought them up with two outs.

I did check the Wikipedia bios for all six players.  None of them say they were the first DH to bat although Higashida's page says he was the first DH to bat in an exhibition game (not that I'm too confident of Wikipedia's accuracy right now).  Nagaike was the first winner of the annual Best 9 award at the DH position.

I did go through all my posts that listed Sakamoto as the first DH and corrected them.