JMC 2003

Last week when I did my memorial post for Toshio Kanbe, I included a card that I thought was probably Kanbe from what I described as a set "of uncataloged, blank backed cards from around 1975".  I got curious about these cards since I don't think I'd ever paid a whole lot of attention to them since I got them.  What really surprised me is that I must not have made much of an effort to identify the players on them - although in my defense, I probably got them before I was aware of some of the uniform number references on line and before I could use the Google Translate app on my phone to translate text on baseball cards.  I have 20 cards from this set (assuming they're all from the same set) and I had only identified maybe half of the people appearing on the cards.  I sat down and worked through the cards again and was able to increase the number of identifications.

It then occurred to me that I should check to see if this was still an uncataloged set.  After all, Gary Engel has published several updates to the Vintage Edition of his "Japanese Baseball Cards Checklist and Price Guide" since I got these cards (not that I remember when I got them but it was a while ago).  As it turns out, these cards are most likely from a set that Gary has dubbed "JMC 2003:  1976 Blank Backs".  Gary has identified 29 cards but acknowledges that there are likely more cards.  The JMC 2003 cards are 2" x 2 3/4" in size which match the cards I have.  The set has a scarcity rating of "R3", meaning there's "between 11 and 99 copies known of most cards."

Gary's description of the set is "Pure cards with white borders. Blank backed. Several picture-in-picture cards. A few cards have text in the background that is cut-off in the middle of phrases. Most likely, these cards used pictures cropped from various sources without license".  As we'll see in a minute, that description definitely applies to the cards that I have as well.  I think about half the cards I have are in Gary's list.

I had given these cards a date of 1975 but it's entirely possible that they are really from 1976.  Or it's possible they're from both years - I suspect that these cards were being randomly printed up by some outfit somewhere in Japan and they probably weren't concerned with making sure the cards made any sense to collectors 50 years later.

OK, enough back story.  Let's look at the cards.

 This first card shows a right handed hitter for the Dragons.  I have no idea who it is.

Based on the uniform number, I'm pretty certain that this is Takashi Yamaguchi of the Hankyu Braves

This is the first card I've shown that I think appears in Gary's list of cards for the set.  He lists a card for "Toshiharu Ueda wearing Braves jacket".  It does look like Ueda to me, who was the Braves manager at the time.

I'm pretty confident that both of these cards are Koichi Tabuchi of the Tigers.  Gary lists both cards with the top one being described as "full body/mid swing" and the lower one being "head & shoulders".  I'm not sure which ballpark he's superimposed on in the top card - I don't think it's Koshien.

This is one of the cards that I had not previously identified but I should have been able to.  For one thing, it looks like the player's uniform number is #8.  For another, while the text on the right is cut off a little, the top four kanji characters are still pretty obviously "山本 浩二" which is Koji Yamamoto (who wore #8 for the Carp).  Gary lists this card as well as "Koji Yamamoto - Ca RHB swinging"

Another Carp player but I don't know who it is.  Gary doesn't have anything listed that matches it.

This is the card of Toshio Kanbe that kicked this whole thing off.  Gary does not list this card either.

This is a very intriguing card.  I don't know the left handed Lotte Orions pitcher is, but given the mix of uniforms in the background, I suspect the photo was taken at an All Star game.  I think there's a Nankai Hawk to the left of the player and that may be Yutaka Fukumoto of the Braves (#7) to the immediate right.  If it IS from an All Star game, and one of the 1975 All Star games and the player is, in fact, a pitcher, then it's most likely Norihiro Mizutani who was the only left handed pitcher from Lotte on the 1975 Pacific League All Stars.

The inset photo is also interesting.  Just looking at it, I was pretty sure the guy on the left was Hiroshi Arakawa, who was managing the Swallows at this time.  But who's the guy on the right?  The text running down the side of the photo may give a clue as it says "Chatting with my mentor, coach Arakawa" (translation from Google translate so it might not be fully accurate).  Given who Arakawa's most famous pupil was, it's not unreasonable to assume the guy on the right is Sadaharu Oh.  

Gary lists a card of Arakawa as "H. Arakawa - Sw w/unknown Lotte LHP" which could be this card but it might not be.

This is Katsuya Nomura of the Hawks.  Gary has a card listed as "Katsuya Nomura - Ha #18[sic] at bat" that I assume is this one.

This is Isao Harimoto of the Nippon-Ham Fighters.  Gary has a card of Harimoto listed but he says he's with the Giants.  Harimoto was traded from the Fighters to the Giants after the 1975 season which is why I tagged these cards as a 1975 set.  I'm sure the card of Harimoto with the Giants is why Gary tagged the set as being from 1976.

This is another card that I didn't identify before but, through the wonders of Google translate, I can now tell is Swallows pitcher Hiromu Matsuoka.  The text on the left side of the card says something like "pitcher Hiromu Matsuoka's blazing fastball!".  Gary has this card listed as well (with a description of "RHP full body EOD [end of delivery]"

I'm fairly confident that this is Tsuneo Horiuchi of the Giants.  The number is obscured but Horiuchi wore #18 and that's possibly the number.  Other possibilities would be Takaaki Taniyama (#12) and Shigeru Kobayashi (#19) but Horiuchi was the biggest name of those three at the time (or pretty much anytime, really, although Kobayashi had a few good seasons with the Giants a little later than this before being dealt to the Tigers in the Suguru Egawa affair).  That's coach Yukinori Miyata (#83) in the background.  Engel does not list this card.

These are both Shigeo Nagashima, who was in his first two seasons managing the Giants in 1975-76.  Engel lists one Nagashima card which he describes as "portrait".  That could describe either one of these.

This is Shoji Sadaoka who was the Giants first round draft pick in the 1974 draft.  Gary has a card of Sadaoka listed that's simply described as "pitching" which may or not correspond to this card.

I'm pretty confident the guy on the right is Masaichi Kaneda who was managing Lotte at this time.  I don't know who the Swallows player on the left is (could also be a coach although I'm pretty sure it's not manager Arakawa).  Once again, this may be from an All Star game (since there was no interleague play in 1975).  The light standard in the background looks like the ones at Koshien which hosted Game One of the All Star series that year.  IF that's the case, the only Swallows on the Central League team that year were pitchers Matsuoka and Takeshi Yasuda, catcher Akihiro Oya and outfielder Tsutomu Wakamatsu.  Engel lists a card for Kaneda with the description "arm out to the right" which doesn't really fit this card.

This is obviously two Giants players but I don't know who they are.  If the orange text on the guy on the left's sleeve is his uniform number - it looks like #11 - then he's Yoshimasa Takahashi.  But that might not be a uniform number.  Gary lists a card with both Sadaoka and Horiuchi on it which might be this one but, then again, it might not be.  I could buy that that's Sadaoka on the left and Horiuchi on the right though.

This is another intriguing card.  I'm fairly certain that the guy on the left is Senichi Hoshino but I don't know who the guy on the right is.  Gary lists a card that shows both Hoshino and Wally Yonamine, who was the Dragons manager at the time.  While I'd love for this to be that card, I'm kind of skeptical that the guy on the right of this card is Yonamine, simply because I haven't seen any photos of Yonamine as Chunichi manager where he's not wearing glasses.

This last card is not listed in Engel but the players are easy to identify.  From left to right are Masakatsu Tsuchiya (#16) of the Dragons, Kazuhiko Kudo (#19) of the Tigers and Sadaoka (#20).  The three players were the top high school picks for each team in the 1974 draft with Tsuchiya and Sadaoka both being first round picks - Kudo was the Tigers second pick after Masaaki Koga (who ultimately didn't sign with the Tigers).  I suspect this photo was from the farm team All Star game (now called the "Fresh All Star Game" but was then called the "Junior All Star Game") that was held at Koshien in 1975 although I don't have any rosters from the game so I can't confirm that.

If anyone has any idea who the handful of guys that I haven't identified are, I'd be happy to hear suggestions.

Card Of The Week August 23

My favorite NPB player is slugger Takeya Nakamura of the Saitama Seibu Lions.  I had been tracking him as the NPB player most likely to reach 500 home runs for some time, although unfortunately it's become quite apparent now that he's probably not going to get there.  He turned 43 just over a week ago and his production has diminished quite a bit over the past few seasons.  He had 481 career home runs coming into this season and had spent much of the year on the Lions' farm team.

Friday, however, he hit his first home run of the season with the top team and it came at an excellent time.  The Lions were beating the Eagles 2-1 going into the bottom of the ninth up in Sendai but Rakuten managed to score a run off of Hiroshi Kaino to tie it up.  The game remained knotted until the top of the eleventh when the Lions loaded the bases and sent Nakamura up as a pinch hitter.  He hit a grand slam, the 23rd of his career (which extended his NPB record, eight more now than Sadaharu Oh's 15), to put the Lions up 6-2.  They needed most of those runs too, as the Eagles rallied to score two runs in the bottom of the eleventh before Wataru Matsumoto closed the 6-4 victory out.  Nakamura now has hit at least one home run in every season since 2004, 23 straight seasons.

Here's a card of Nakamura from Sports Card Magazine #52, published in July of 2005:

2005 SCM #54

RIP Toshio Kanbe

Former Kintetsu Buffaloes and Yakult Swallows pitcher Toshio Kanbe passed away at age 83 about a week ago.  Kanbe's path to professional baseball was kind of circuitous as he signed on with the Mitsubishi Paper Mills team in Japan's corporate leagues after graduating from high school in I'm guessing around 1962 as he was born in 1943.  He switched jobs in 1965 and went to "work" for Fuji Steel Hirohata.  He was loaned to Sumitomo Metal for the 1966 Intercity Tournament and threw a shutout in the semifinal game against Daishowa Paper to put the team into the finals against Kumagai Gumi (although he took the loss in relief in the final game when he gave up the winning run in the bottom of the tenth).

He was taken by the Yomiuri Giants in the third round of the 1966 draft but he refused to sign, remaining with Fuji Steel Hirohata.  He was the Hashido Award winner - basically the MVP - of the 1968 Intercity Tournament when he helped Fuji Steel win their first ever corporate league championship.  He again pitched in the 1969 tournament, winning his first two starts before losing in the third round against Nippon Life.

He was the second round pick by the Buffaloes in the 1969 draft and this time he signed.  He was a 27 year old rookie when he made his professional baseball debut on April 14th, 1970, getting the win in relief against the Toei Flyers.  Kintetsu used him as both a starter and a reliever during his stint with them and he was a steady member of the rotation.  He got into a league leading 51 games in 1971 and led the league in shutouts with 4 in 1974.  He was named to the Pacific League All Star team three times - in 1972, 1974 and 1975.  The highlight of his time in Osaka was undoubtably the no-hitter he threw against the Hankyu Braves in 1975.

The Buffaloes traded him away after the 1978 season.  He, along with Takehide Sato and Yoshitaka Terada were dealt to the Yakult Swallows for Charlie Manuel and Yasunori Nagao.  The timing couldn't have been worse for the three former Buffaloes.  The Swallows had just won the Nippon Series and would not win again until 1993 while Kintetsu would play in the next two Nippon Series (although they'd lose both to the Carp).  Yakult used him as a starter for his first couple seasons with them.  He gave up Sadaharu Oh's 868th and final home run on October 12th, 1980.  He took over the closer role in 198, notching 10 saves and was expected to continue in that role the following year.  He injured his elbow during spring training, however, and was unable to pitch at all in 1982.  While he had originally planned on playing until he was 40, he retired at the end of that season one year short of that.

He spent the next three seasons as the pitching coach for the Swallows farm team before moving back to Kintetsu in 1986 to perform the same role.  He was promoted to be the ichi-gun team's pitching coach when Akira Ohgi took over as manager in 1988 and remained there until Ohgi was dismissed after the 1992 season.  He was demoted back to the farm team under Keishi Suzuki and was there for another four years.  

Ohgi had become manager of the Orix BlueWave in 1994 and he asked Kanbe to rejoin him in 1997.  Kanbe was the pitching coach for the BlueWave for five years, leaving when Ohgi was let go after the 2001 season.  He was a commentator for J SPORTS for the 2003 season and returned to Orix in 2005 when Ohgi was named manager of the newly merged Orix Buffaloes.  He remained as coach after Ohgi's untimely passing at the end of 2005, staying with the team through 2007.  He spent 2008 and 2009 in Korea as the pitching coach of the Kia Tigers.  His final coaching job was as a training camp instructor with the KBO's Hanwha Eagles in 2013.

Kanbe's baseball cards fall into three categories - the cards he had as a player, the cards he had as a coach and the cards he had in BBM's OB card sets.  Engel lists 13 cards for him while TCDB has 23 although four of those are autographed cards.  As usual, there is some overlap but by my count he has 21 base set cards.

His first known card is from an oddball menko set that Engel refers to as "JCM 15a: c. 1972 Kankan Menko".  He shares the card with Minoru Murayama of the Tigers - Murayama appears in the foreground and Kanbe is in the background.  He also had eight Calbee cards - two in the 1974/75 set and six in the 1975/76/77 set (including one of the multi-player cards).  His remaining cards from his playing days are in the 1977 NST set and the 1979-82 Takara Swallows sets.  I only have the Kankan Menko and the 1975/76/77 Calbee multi-player cards:

1972 Kankan Menko JCM 15a

1975/76/77 Calbee #464

Kanbe is the rightmost player on the top row (#27).

I have what I think is an additional card of Kanbe.  I have a handful of uncataloged, blank backed cards from around 1975.  There's no identification of the players on the cards but I think this one is Kanbe - the uniform number appears to be #27:

Kanbe also has a cameo appearance on Yoshito Oda's card from the 1976 Yamakatsu JY1a set:

Kanbe appeared as a coach in two of BBM's Orix Buffaloes team sets - 2005 and 2007.  I do not have either of these cards.  I have the complete 2006 Orix team set but BBM didn't include coach cards that year.

Finally, Kanbe has appeared in five of BBM's OB sets over the past 20 years or so.  I have all five of these cards:

2008 BBM Back To The 70's #032

2009 BBM Kintetsu Anniversary #25

2011 BBM Legend Of The Bs #56

2012 BBM No-Hitters #59

2017 BBM Time Travel 1975 #15

RIP Baek In-chun

Former baseball player Baek In-chun passed away late last week at the age of 82 in Cheonan, South Korea.  Baek had a 20 year career in NPB under the name "Jinten Haku" and then played in the KBO's first three seasons.  I'm not entirely sure but I believe that Baek was the first "native" Korean to play in Japan - I put quotes around "native" as he was actually born in China.  There were other Koreans who played in NPB before him such as Masaichi Kaneda and Isao Harimoto, but I think they were all from the Korean communities in Japan (Kaneda was from Aichi prefecture while Harimoto was from Hiroshima).

As I mentioned, Baek was born in Wuxi in Jiangsu province in China on September 27, 1942.  I'm not sure why the family was living there but they moved "back" to Korea following the country's liberation from the Japanese occupation at the end of the Pacific War.  The family initially moved back to his father's home of Cholsan County in the northern part of the country, not far from the Chinese border.  Before the Korean War broke out, however, the family moved south to Seoul and Baek grew up there, attending Kyungdong High School.  He was a baseball star in high school, winning the Lee Young-min award in 1959, an award named for a pioneering Korean baseball player*.  He homered in a game played in Japan at Meiji Jingu Stadium in 1960, becoming only the second high school player to hit one at Jingu in the postwar period.  

*Who played for the the All Nippon team that took on the All American All Stars in 1934 under the name Eibin Ri - my thanks to Rob Fitts for confirming that Lee was Eibin Ri.

In addition to playing baseball, he was also a speed skater and won the 1500 meter event at the Winter Sports Games held in January, 1961 with a time of 2 minutes and 49.18 seconds.

After he graduated from high school, Yoshiro Shimaoka, the legendary coach of Meiji University's baseball team, approached him about studying abroad.  It wasn't possible, however, due to Japan and South Korea not having established a diplomatic relationship following the war and Baek not having fulfilled his military obligation.  Instead, he joined the Korea Agricultural Bank corporate league team as their catcher.  He was selected for the South Korean team for the 1962 Asian Baseball Championship which was held in Taiwan in January of that year.  He homered in the team's final game against the Philippines, helping Korea to a 5-1 victory and a second place finish in the tournament (tied with Taiwan).  It was the only home run hit in the entire tournament and the first one hit by a foreigner at Taipei Municipal Baseball Stadium.

He stopped off in Tokyo while returning to Korea and created a bit of an international incident by signing a provisional contract with the Toei Flyers.  The Korea Baseball Association was not happy, believing that it was better for the future of Korean baseball for their best players to stay in Korea.  The South Korean government, ruled at the time by a military junta that had seized power in the May 16 coup in 1961, felt differently, perhaps due to their need for funds from Japan to help rebuild the economy, and ultimately Baek was allowed to join the Flyers.

I'm not entirely sure when and why he started playing under the name Jinten Haku but it appears to be when he joined Toei.  He spent his first year and a half with the Flyers' farm team, not getting called up until a series of injuries sidelined several of the catchers on the ichi-gun squad.  He made his first team debut on June 26, 1963, in the seventh inning of a game against Nankai.  He reportedly felt like he was dreaming when he got behind the plate and caught his first pitch but instead of pinching himself, he kicked the home plate umpire's leg.  When the umpire yelled "Ouch! What are you doing?", he felt that he had confirmed to himself that he wasn't dreaming.

He ultimately only got into 20 games in 1963 but he ended up replacing Junzo Ando as the team's starting catcher during the second half of 1964.  The Flyers had him hit clean up and he was part of the core of the team's lineup, along with Isao Harimoto and Katsuo Ohsugi.  By 1966, the Flyers had moved him to the outfield and he was an All Star for the first time in 1967.  

He had a boneheaded play that season, though, as he hit what looked like a game winning three run home run against Kintetsu but was called out for passing the base runner in front of him.  The game was instead tied and the Flyers ended up losing the game in extra innings.

Haku became embroiled in an unfortunate incident in 1970 when, enraged by a called strike three, he got into a fist fight with home plate umpire Motoya Tsuyuzaki, a former boxer.   He not only was ejected from the game, but was criminally charged with assault and battery.  Ultimately a settlement was made several days later but not before Haku went to Tsuyuzaki's home to apologize.  He found that the umpire was not there, having left to go to the police station to swear out the complaint against Haku.  The incident doesn't appear to have disrupted his season too much though as he played in 127 of the Flyers' 130 games that year, made the All Star team for the second time and led the league in doubles with 30.

Later that same year, Toei made a request at the South Korean Embassy in Japan that Haku be exempted from his mandatory military service.  The Korean government refused and ordered Haku to return to Korea, which he did, leaving his wife and kids behind in Japan.  He didn't return to them and the Flyers until the beginning of May, 1971.  It turns out, however, that he didn't actually serve in the military - he instead helped out on the ranch his father had purchased and took care of his sick mother.  The South Korean government had arranged the whole thing to counter criticism they were getting for allowing Haku to play baseball instead of being in the military and the delay in his return to Japan was to make it realistically look like he'd served.  He ultimately never served his military obligation.

He had what was probably his best season with the Flyers in 1972, reaching career highs in home runs and RBIs with totals of 19 and 80 respectively.  His .315 average, best of his career to date, was third best in the league.  He made the All Star team for the third time.  

Toei sold the Flyers to the real estate company Nittaku Home in February of 1973.  Haku had a poor season for the newly renamed Nittaku Home Flyers, hitting just .247, his lowest average since he'd become a regular.  The team didn't play particularly well either - finishing fifth in the first half of the season and fourth in the second half - and Nittaku Home sold the team to Nippon-Ham in November of that year, after just nine months of ownership.  

Haku bounced back somewhat in 1974, bringing his average up to .261, but the now Nippon-Ham Fighters were abysmal, finishing last in both halves of the season with an overall record of 49-75-6.  At the end of the season, the new ownership decided that it was time to part ways with many of the key Toei players who were still with the team.  Katsuo Ohsugi was dealt to the Yakult Swallows, Tsuyoshi Oshita was dispatched to the Hiroshima Toyo Carp and Haku was traded to the Taihieyo Club Lions in exchange for Masayoshi Higashida.  (Isao Harimoto would be dispatched to the Yomiuri Giants a year later.)

Haku responded to the trade by winning the Pacific League batting crown with a .319 average.  He became the first batter to win the crown with exactly the required number of plate appearances as he'd fought several injuries during the season including a sprained ankle and a fractured ring finger (caused when his left hand was hit by a pitch).  Oddly enough, he didn't make the All Star team that year but he was named to the post-season Best 9 squad for the only time in his career.

After two seasons in Fukuoka, he was on the move again.  The Lions traded him along with pitcher Shoji Yasuki to the Lotte Orions for Kazuo Hasegawa and Akira Kuramochi.  His second year back in Kanto, 1978, did not go well.  He clashed with manager Masaichi Kaneda and played in just 58 games, his fewest since 1963.  He planned on retiring following the season but was convinced to stay on by Kazuhiro Yamauchi who replaced Kaneda as manager that off season.  He ended up with one of his best seasons in 1979, hitting .340 which was by far the highest batting average of his career and, once again, good for third place in the league.  He had 18 home runs and 71 RBIs and made the All Star team for the fourth and final time.  He fell hard in 1980 (despite being reunited with Harimoto), hitting just .216 in 76 games.  He was sent to the Kintetsu Buffaloes that offseason and ended up hitting .227 in 84 games in 1981.

He and Kintetsu parted ways after the season and Haku set his sights on returning to South Korea for the inaugural season of the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO), the first professional baseball league in South Korea.  He was named player-manager of the MBC Blue Dragons and led the fledgling league in batting with an astounding .412 average.  It is still the highest average in KBO history and is the only .400 season ever recorded in the league.  MBC finished third for the season and Haku - or Baek as he was now using his Korean name again - was set to return as manager for 1983.  A few weeks into the season, however, MBC let him go after he was arrested for adultery.  His wife had filed a complaint against him for having an affair with another woman.  Baek was out of baseball for a few months while the two of them divorced.  He signed on with the Sammi Superstars as a player-coach late in the 1983 season but hit only .190 in 35 games.  He played even less in 1984, getting into only 10 games with Sammi while hitting .281.  He retired at the end of the season, bringing his 23 year playing career (1962-84) to a finish.

He ran a golf equipment business for several years after his playing days ended but he returned to the dugout to again manage the MBC Blue Dragons in 1989, leading the team to a sixth place, just barely (a half game) better than the last place Lotte Giants.  That offseason, the team was bought by LG and renamed the Twins, making Baek both the first and last manager of the Blue Dragons.  The team had quite a turnaround in 1990, finishing first and sweeping the Samsung Lions in the Korea Series.  It would be the only championship of either his playing or managerial career.  He was named the league's Manager Of The Year.  The Twins dropped back to sixth place in 1991 and Baek was fired at the end of the season.  

Five years later he was hired to manage the Samsung Lions.  His time with the Lions was marked by his falling out with star shortstop Kang Ki-woong.  Kang had suffered an ankle injury in May of 1995 after colliding with rookie first baseman Lee Seung-yeop and his performance had declined significantly.  Baek felt that Kang had a poor attitude towards practice and ended up trading him to the Hyundai Unicorns after the 1996 season.  Kang refused the trade and ultimately retired in early 1997 at age 33.  

The Lions finished in sixth place in Baek's first season at the helm in 1996.  They rose to fourth place the following season and made the playoffs.  They defeated the third place Ssangbangwool Raiders in the first round of the playoffs but lost to the second place LG Twins in the second round.*  By that time, however, Baek was no longer with the team.  He had suffered a stroke during the season and was forced to step down as manager.  Cho Chang-soo finished out the season as interim manager.

*Baseball-Reference incorrectly has Ssangbangwool winning the first round of the playoffs and then falling to LG in the second round.  I got the correct outcome from Korean Wikipedia.

He was a hitting coach for Yonsei University in 1998 and filled the same roll for the Hanwha Eagles in 1999.  He also was a baseball commentator for the SBS network in 1999 and 2000.  At the end of the 1999 season, Samsung dismissed manager Seo Jeong-hwan, who had taken the team over from Cho the previous year and Baek's name was mentioned as a possible replacement.  His exclusive contract with SBS, however, prevented this from happening.  

He started 2002 as a hitting coach for the SK Wyverns but in mid-June, he was named manager of the Lotte Giants.  Lotte was still reeling from the abrupt death of manager Kim Myung-sung the previous July from a heart attack.  Woo Yong-deuk took over the team and led them to a 27-22-1 record during the remainder of the 2001 season but he was dismissed three months into the following year when the team was just 17-1-42.  Acting manager Kim Yong-hee lost the two games he led the team before Baek took over.  

To say it didn't go well would be an understatement.  The team had a worse record under Baek, going 18-53 in the remaining 71 games that season.  Things did not improve in 2003, with the Giants going 23-66-3 in 92 games before Baek was dismissed in early August.

The 2001-07 seasons are referred to as the "dark age" in Lotte Giants history.  Baek's contribution to this was not just in the team's record.  In 2002, he ordered the then-20 year old Lee Dae-ho to lose weight.  The outdated training methods he made Lee do injured his knee cartilage, resulting in him being exiled to the farm team.  Baek also decided to make a power hitter out of leadoff hitter Kim Joo-chan which resulted in Kim's batting average dropping from .313 in 2001 to .220 in 2002.  Finally, he tried to convert star pitcher Son Min-han to a catcher and, when Son refused, attempted to trade him before being overruled by Lotte's front office.  

It probably comes as no surprise that Baek neither managed or coached again after the debacle with Lotte.  He was again a baseball commentator and had a three year contract with SBS when the network got the rights to broadcast the Yomiuri Giants' home games in Korea in 2008.  In later years he suffered both health issues related to his stroke and financial hardships.  

Haku/Baek did not have a lot of baseball cards.  Engel lists 17 cards for him while TCDB lists 16.  There is, of course, some overlap between the two lists and I believe the real count is about 25.  His earliest card is from the 1964 Marukami JCM 14g menko set.  He also appears in the 1967 Kabaya-Leaf set.  Curiously, his only Calbee cards appear to be from the "monster" 1975/76/77 set - he had a total of eight cards in that set although two of them are multi-player cards.  Additionally, he appeared in the 1977 NST, 1979 TCMA and 1981 Takara Buffaloes sets as well as some oddball sets including a very rare "Taiheiyo Club Lions Diecut Standups" set from 1975.  His only known KBO card is from the 1996 Pro Baseball Stickers when he managed Samsung although I would not be surprised to discover he had an earlier card - unfortunately the cards for the KBO before the mid-90's are not well cataloged.  He also appeared in a handful of BBM's OB sets in the 2000's and 2010's.

Here are all the cards I have of him:

1964 Marukami JCM 14g menko

1967 Kabaya-Leaf #408

1975 JCM 58 menko

1975/76/77 Calbee #270

1975/76/77 Calbee #349

1975/76/77 Calbee #392

1977 NST #254

1979 TCMA #2

2008 BBM Lotte 40th Anniversary #31

2010 BBM Lions 60th Anniversary #78

2017 BBM Time Travel 1975 #24

2017 BBM Time Travel 1975 "Titleholder" #PT3

2019 BBM Time Travel 1979 #58

It's kind of odd that his 1977 NST card shows him with the Lions as he was with the Orions when that set was released.  It is very rare for an NPB card to show an active player on a team that he was no longer with.

I separated out the two multi-player cards from the 1975/76/77 Calbee set that he appears on.  The first is the Lions team card:

1975/76/77 Calbee #455

Haku is on the bottom row, the second player from the right - #6 (right next to Matty Alou - #2).

The other card was for the Pacific League statistical leaders from 1975:

1975/76/77 Calbee #404

Haku's batting crown gives him a prime position on the left of the top row (#6).  I think that it uses the same photo as the Lions team card but not as tightly cropped and tilted just a tad.

A quick note about my sources - I used the Google translations of Baek/Haku's Japanese and Korean Wikipedia pages as a starting point and from there I went to other Wiki pages as well as some of the references on the pages.  I'm reasonably confident about everything I put in this post but it's definitely possible that I misunderstood something.

Naoya Masuda

I'm a little late getting to this since I was out of town for a bit but on August 4th, Naoya Masuda of the Chiba Lotte Marines became the latest member of the Meikyukai or "Golden Players Club" when he notched his 250th save.  Masuda was reported in the press as the "first reliever born in the Heisei Era to make the Meikyukai" which is kind of silly as he's only the second Heisei-born member of the club (after Hideto Asamura).  He's likely to be joined soon by Raidel Martinez (243 saves) and Yasuaki Yamasaki (246 saves). 

Masuda was the Marines' fourth (and last) pick in the 2011 draft out of Kansai International University.  He was an integral part of Lotte's bullpen in 2012, making 72 appearances with a 2-2 record, 41 holds, 1 save and a 1.67 ERA.  He set records for most appearances and most holds in a season by a rookie and was selected as the Pacific League Rookie Of The Year.  He became the team's closer in 2013 and led the PL in saves with 33 but injuries and ineffectiveness caused him to lose and gain the closer role several times over the next few seasons.  It won't be until 2019 that he regained the role for "good" (or at least until last year) and he put up six straight seasons of at least 25 saves, including a league leading 38 in 2021.  He was only seven away from 250 saves before last season but injuries and ineffectiveness again caused him to lose the closing role and he ended the season with only 248 saves.  He worked hard this past off season to get back into shape but Rikuto Yokoyama was pitching well as the closer and save opportunities for the now setup man were hard to come by.  He got save #249 on June 10th but it would take another six weeks or so to get #250.  (H/T Thomas Love Seagull for the details about the past two seasons)

It took Masuda 795 appearances to reach 250 saves, the most of any pitcher in history.  He's also the only one to do it without having at least one start.  He's been a five time All Star (2012-13, 2016, 2021-22).  I'm a bit surprised that the only time he's suited up for Samurai Japan was for the squad that played against Taiwan in November of 2013 (which actually was the first time the National Team was called "Samurai Japan").

Masuda's first baseball card was #045 from the 2012 BBM Rookie Edition set.  He had additional rookie cards in BBM's 1st Version (#162), 2nd Version (#540), Marines (#M32), All Star (#A16) and Genesis (#CB053 from the Cross Blaze subset) sets as well as Calbee's Series Three (#179), Bandai's Owners League 03 (#064) and Konami's Baseball Heroes Black (#B12RB129) sets.  Here's a handful of his cards from over the years - I'll confess that it was somewhat difficult to find cards with interesting photos of him:

2012 BBM Rookie Edition #045

2012 BBM 1st Version #162

2012 Calbee Series Three #179

2013 BBM 1st Version #328

2016 BBM Marines #M29

2018 Epoch NPB #194

2018 BBM 2nd Version #352

2021 Calbee Series One #012

2021 BBM Fusion #TH19

2023 BBM 1st Version #118

2025 Epoch NPB #167

I'm guessing from looking at all his baseball cards that he started using the blue glove in 2018.  The earliest card I've seen with it is his 2018 BBM 2nd Version card that I shared above.