Former Tokyo/Lotte Orion and Hanshin Tiger George Altman has passed away at age 92. Altman's first professional baseball experience was when he joined the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro American League in 1955 after graduating from Tennessee A&I State University (later renamed Tennessee State University). He only spent three months with Kansas City, though, before his manager Buck O'Neil, recommended that the Cubs sign him. He spent the 1956 and 1958 seasons in the Cubs farm system and 1957 in the US Army before making the major league club in 1959.
He spent four seasons in Chicago, making the All Star team in 1961 and 1962, but the Cubs dealt him to the Cardinals following the 1962 season and St Louis flipped him to the Mets for the 1964 season. He was traded back to the Cubs in early 1965 and spent another three seasons with them.
He joined the Tokyo Orions for the 1968 season and was immediately impressive. He hit .320 with 34 home runs and a Pacific League leading 100 RBIs. He slumped a bit in 1969, the first year after Lotte bought the team, but still hit 21 home runs with 82 RBIs. He bounced back in 1970, hitting .319 with 30 home runs and 77 RBIs to help lead Lotte to a Pacific League pennant. They played the Giants in the Nippon Series that year and Yomiuri wanted no part of Altman early in the Series. They walked him four times in Game One (three times intentionally), once in Game Two and twice in Game Three. The Giants ultimately won the Series in five games, the sixth of their V9 championships.
Altman continued his stellar play the next few seasons, hitting .320 with 39 home runs and 103 RBIs in 1971. .328 with 21 home runs and 90 RBIs in 1972 and .307 with 27 home runs and 80 RBIs in 1973. He was off to great start in 1974, tying the PL record by hitting home runs in six consecutive games in June and posting a high batting average. What he didn't know, however, was that he had colon cancer. He thought that his fatigue and bloody stool was a result of hemorrhoids and it wasn't until he collapsed during a game against Nankai in August that he was correctly diagnosed. He was treated (with either surgery or chemotherapy or both) and recovered but he was unable to complete the 1974 season or play for Lotte in that year's Nippon Series (in which they defeated the Chunichi Dragons). He ended the season with .351 batting average and 21 home runs in only 85 games.
That offseason, both Altman and the Orions were unsure if he would be able to continue to perform at the levels that he had before his cancer treatment. Not to mention that he'd be 42 years old going into the 1975 season. The Orions manager Masaichi Kaneda wanted to sign another American player and make Altman a coach, which would have cut Altman's salary considerably. Ultimately, he and Lotte parted ways and he signed with the Hanshin Tigers.
The Tigers made a first baseman out of him - he had mostly played outfield with the Orions - and plugged him into the fifth spot in the lineup, behind clean up hitter Koichi Tabuchi. He didn't have a great year - hitting .274 with 12 home runs and 57 RBIs - but his presence in the lineup is credited with Tabuchi seeing a lot more pitches to hit that season. As a result, Tabuchi had probably the best year of his career, hitting .303 along with 43 home runs. Those 43 home runs led the Central League, making Tabuchi the first player not named Sadaharu Oh to lead the league in 14 years.
Altman called it quits at the end of the 1975 season. He ended his NPB career with 205 home runs and was the first foreign player to reach 200 home runs. His record was short-lived, however, as Clarence Jones would pass him in 1976. He won three Best 9 awards (1968, 1970 and 1971) and made four All Star teams (1970, 1971, 1973 and 1974).
I was a little surprised when I started looking for baseball cards of his that all of his Japanese cards from his playing career were from when he was with the Tigers but when I thought about it for a minute, it makes sense. There were almost no baseball cards produced in Japan between 1965 and 1972. Calbee started producing card sets in 1973 but Lotte prevented their rival snack company from including Orions players in their card sets (an embargo that continued until 1985). So it wasn't until Altman joined the Tigers in 1975 that he could have any cards. He had three cards in the 1974/75 Calbee set along with a card in the 1975 NST set. He also appeared in one of the home brew sets from Ed Broder as well as a game set included in the July, 1976 issue of "Elementary School 3rd Year" magazine (JGA 154). He has appeared as a member of the Orions in a couple of OB sets from BBM in past 20 years. I have four of his six vintage Tigers cards and both of his BBM Orion cards:
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| 1974/75 Calbee #787 |
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| 1974/75 Calbee #827a |
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| 1975 NST #134 |
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| 1975 Broder JA 5 |
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| 2008 BBM Lotte 40th Anniversary #16 |
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| 2013 BBM Legendary Foreigners #06 |
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