"Our Giants Will Live Forever"

Today (yesterday in Japan now) is the 50th Anniversary of Shigeo Nagashima's retirement games.  The then-38 year old Giants legend had announced his retirement a few days earlier when the Giants were eliminated from the pennant race for the first time in ten years (remember that the Giants won nine straight Central League pennants - and Nippon Series championships - between 1965 and 1973).  The Giants hosted the pennant winning Dragons for a double header on the final day of the season and Korakuen Stadium was packed with fans wishing to see Mr. Giants on the field one last time.  After the games, Nagashima stood on the mound and gave a speech thanking the fans for their support over his 17 year career which included a phrase that went something like "Our Giants Will Live Forever".

I wrote a fairly length post about this day ten years ago for the 40th Anniversary of it so I don't need to recap the day's events again.  I mostly wanted to make sure the anniversary didn't go by unremarked and to show off a handful of cards from the day that I've picked up over the past decade.  

I had mentioned in the original post that there was a 36 card "ON Series" included in Calbee's 1974-75 set that I believed was dedicated to this day.  I not as sure about that now.  I have  several of Sadaharu Oh cards from that series that don't appear to have photos from the day.  However, I have picked up several new Nagashima cards that all feature photos from that day.  Here's two kind of generic photos that if the card didn't say, you'd probably never guess were from October 14th:

1974/75 Calbee #398

1974/75 Calbee #406

I had wondered if another card I have showed him hitting his final home run.  I still don't know for sure but I know this card shows him approaching home plate after hitting that homer.  That's obviously Oh among the players waiting at the plate for him:

1974/75 Calbee #414

This last one is one of my favorite cards ever.  It shows Nagashima crouching on the on-deck circle while Oh bats:

1974/75 Calbee #416

The last card I want to share is yet another one featuring the iconic image of Nagashima giving his retirement speech on the Korakuen Stadium mound with the scoreboard behind him.  This is actually a slightly different image than the standard one as he's standing to the right of the mike stand instead of the left and he's not holding the microphone.  I don't know if the photo was taken before or after he finished speaking:

2016 BBM The Ballpark Stories #006