RIP Isami Okamoto

I haven't been very diligent in monitoring the list of the dead over at Japanese Wikipedia lately so I didn't realize that former Nankai Hawk infielder Isami Okamoto had passed away on April 15th at the age of 95.

Okamoto had signed with Nankai as a "test player" in 1949 and made his debut with the team in 1950.  By 1952 he had established himself as the Hawks starting second baseman, a role he'd keep for the rest of the decade (with the exception of 1954 which he spent as an outfielder).  His best season was 1953 when he won the Pacific League batting title with a .318 average and the league MVP award.  He was the first player born in the Showa Era to win a batting crown or an MVP award.  He won five Best 9 Awards (1952, 1953, 1955, 1957 and 1959) and made four All Star teams (1953, 1955, 1956 and 1959).  He along with first baseman Tokuji Iida, shortstop Chusuke Kizuka and third baseman Kazuo Kageyama formed what was known as the "Million Dollar Infield" in the mid-50's.

He homered twice off of Hall Of Famer Takehiko Bessho in Game One of the 1959 Nippon Series which was pretty much his last hurrah.  He lost his starting position to Carlton Handa the next season and missed the entire 1961 season due to injury.  He retired as an active player at the end of 1963.  He coached for the Hawks for the following two seasons before switching to the Sankai Atoms for 1966-67.  He returned to Nankai in 1968 and coached for them through 1972.  He switched teams again then, staying in Kansai with the Hanshin Tigers for 1973 and 1974 before becoming a commentator for Fuji TV for the next seven years.

He returned to coaching with the Kintetsu Buffaloes under manager Seiji Sekiguchi in 1982 and took over as manager when Sekiguchi retired after the 1983 season.  Okamoto managed the team for the next four seasons, going 239-242-39.  He led the team to a second place finish in 1986 but was let go when the team finished sixth (and last) in 1987.  He became a baseball commentator again after parting ways with Kintetsu and later was the director of the OB Club (aka the All Japan Baseball Foundation and the Japan Baseball Promotion Association) for a number of years.

Okamoto had a number of cards issued for him during his playing career - Gary Engel's latest "Vintage Edition" of his "Japanese Baseball Card Guide" lists 23 menko, bromide, game and gum cards.  There's a bit of an odd dichotomy in his OB player cards - they're all from BBM until Epoch paired up with the All Japan Baseball Foundation in 2009 to produce sets.  After that, he only had cards from Epoch in sets they did with the organization.  I guess it makes sense since he was their director for a while but it also meant that he only appeared in BBM's set for the Hawks' 70th Anniversary, not the ones for their 75th (in 2013) or 80th (in 2018).  Here's all the cards I have for him:

1958 Yamakatsu JCM 33b

2000 BBM 20th Century Best 9 #051

2000 BBM 20th Century Best 9 #171

2000 BBM 20th Century Best 9 #291

2000 BBM 20th Century Best 9 #411

2002 BBM All Time Heroes #112

2006 BBM Nostalgic Baseball #046

2008 BBM Hawks 80th Anniversary #12

2009 BBM Kintetsu Memorial #48

2009 Epoch All Japan Baseball Foundation 15th Anniversary #45

2011 Epoch All Japan Baseball Foundation Managers #43

In addition to these cards, TCDB lists a couple cards that I don't have - 2003 BBM Sluggers (#14), 2012 Epoch JBPA History Of Best 9 (#28), 2015 Epoch OB Club MVP Of The Year (#13) and 2018 Epoch OB Club Batting Leaders Holographica (#15).

Actually, I'll slightly correct something I said above - Okamoto DOES appear in BBM's 2018 Hawks 80th Anniversary set although he doesn't have a player card in the set.  There's a card in the set dedicated to the "Million Dollar Infield":

2018 BBM Hawks 80th Anniversary #HH3

I'm pretty confident that's him in the upper right part of the card.  I'm assuming the players' positions in the photo reflect their infield positions so that would mean that's Chusuke Kizuka to the left of Okamoto with Kazuo Kageyama in the lower left and Tokuji Iida in the lower right.  I'm going to guess that that's manager Kazuto Tsuruoka in the center but I don't know that for sure.