RIP Nobuhiro Takashiro

As I mentioned yesterday, former Nippon-Ham Fighter Nobuhiro Takashiro passed away last week from esophageal cancer at age 71.  Takashiro had a stellar collegiate career at Hosei University, winning four Best 9 awards and hitting .500 in the fall 1975 season.  He joined Toshiba of the corporate leagues after graduating and played well enough for them in his first season of 1977 that he was named to the "Amateur Baseball Best 9" team and was selected for the Japanese team for the 3rd IBAF Intercontinental Cup (they came in third).  Toshiba made the Intercity Baseball Tournament that year but they were eliminated in the second round.  In 1978, however, they not only made the tournament again but they won it for the first time.  

Around this time, the Takashiro family's chopstick factory was having financial difficulties due to the ongoing oil crisis and he decided to turn professional to raise money to help the family.  Luckily, his role in leading Toshiba to victory paid off for him when the Fighters took him as their first round pick in that fall's draft (although only after they lost the lottery for Shigekazu Mori to the Lions). 

He immediately became the starting shortstop for the Fighters and ended up winning a Diamond Glove (as the Golden Glove award was called at the time) in his rookie season of 1979.  He was the first rookie ever to win the award as well as being the first player other than Yutaka Ohashi to win the PL award for shortstop.  He also made the All Star team that year.  He followed that up in 1980 with another All Star team selection and a Best 9 award.

A dislocated ankle kept him out of 40 games in 1981 but he still made some noise by hitting two grand slams that season, becoming only the fourth player in Fighters history to hit two in one season.  He was healthy enough to play in the Nippon Series that season against the Giants although he only hit .227 as the Fighters lost in six games.

Takashiro remained the Fighter's starting shortstop for four of the next five seasons, missing time in 1984 due to injury and losing his starting role to Takayuki Iwai.  He changed his registered name to Shinya Takashiro in 1985.

The emergence of Yukio Tanaka in 1987 pushed him to a back up role at both shortstop and third base (behind Hideo Furuya).  His lack of playing time continued the following year, when he was banished to the farm team in mid-May and was expected to retire and the end of the season.  Instead, he was dealt to the Hiroshima Toyo Carp for Mitsunori Takiguchi and Michio Nabeya.  Now you might be surprised that a guy who was so obviously at the end of his career could get dealt for TWO players but it turned out that 1989 would be the final season for all three players.  Neither Takiguchi and Nabeya made any appearances with the top team but Takashiro (who went back to his original registered name of Nobuhiro Takashiro) played in 24 games with the ichi-gun Carp.

After retiring as an active player, Takashiro embarked on an coaching odyssey that would last 31 years and see him don the uniform of half the teams in NPB as well as the National Team and a Korean team.  He coached for the Carp from 1990 to 1998, the Dragons from 1999 to 2001 and rejoined the Fighters for the 2002 season.  He would be interim manager for two games for Nippon-Ham that season, filling in when Yasunori Ohshima was suspended for "violent conduct toward an umpire".  The team went 2-0 in those games.

He moved on to the Marines in 2003 before moving back the Dragons for five seasons the following year.  He coached for the Japanese WBC team in 2009 and the Hanwha Eagles in 2010 before spending two seasons with Orix.  In 2013 he was again a coach for the Japanese WBC team and he finished his coaching career with a seven year stint with the Hanshin Tigers from 2014 to 2020.

He had a great reputation for good judgement as a third base coach.  Thanks to him, the Dragons only had one player thrown out at home during the 2006 season.  Katsuya Nomura dubbed him "Japan's Best Third Base Coach". 

Since he left the Tigers, he did some TV commentary as well as coaching for the Osaka University of Economics baseball team.  He had also done TV commentary in 2009 after the WBC ended (don't know if he did the same in 2013).

Takashiro didn't have a lot of baseball cards during his career.  Engel only lists 14 - 10 Takara cards, three Calbee cards and a somewhat obscure game card.  He's appeared in a handful of OB sets over the past quarter century although probably not as many as you'd expect - most likely due to the lack of any good OB team sets for the Fighters.  And considering how many teams he coached for, it's kind of surprising there's only one card of him as a coach.  Here's almost all the cards I have of him:

1987 Takara Fighters #2

1989 Takara Carp #5

2002 BBM All Time Heroes #150

2003 BBM Fighters #119

2007 BBM Dragons #D004

2009 BBM Back To The 80's #046

2009 BBM The Premium Malts #29

2019 BBM Time Travel 1979 #50

2020 BBM Time Travel 1985 #64

A couple notes about these cards:

• The only other card I have of his is his 1988 Takara card which is very similar to his 1987 one
• Two of these cards identify him as "Shinya Takashiro".  One of them is obviously the 2020 Time Travel 1985 cards but the 1987 Takara card lists him as "高代 慎也" which is the kanji for that name.  The 1989 card has him as "高代 延博" which is "Nobuhiro Takashiro"
• That 2002 BBM All Time Heroes card is one of my favorites but I almost always forget about it.  Which is surprising since that mascot (Gyorotan) is kind of nightmare fuel
• I'm guessing that him not having a coaching gig in 2009 after the WBC was over allowed him to play in the Premium Malts game as it was the only time he appeared in one of the sets.

RIP Hiroaki Inoue

Two retired NPB players passed away last week - Hiroaki Inoue on Tuesday and Nobuhiro Takashiro on Wednesday.  Despite there being an ten year ago difference between the two of them (ten years and six days to be exact), there's some superficial similarities in their careers.  Both players spent a few years playing in the corporate leagues before being drafted in the first round.  Both players played for the Carp (Inoue's first team and Takashiro's last) and both players played for the Fighters - they were teammates for four years starting in 1981.  Both players also coached for the Dragons.  The similarities kind of end there and, as I said, they were pretty superficial but I found it interesting that two members of the 1981 Pacific League Champion Fighters passed away on consecutive days.  I'll do a post for Takashiro tomorrow (hopefully) while I'll talk about Inoue today.

Inoue passed away last week at age 81 from hypovolemic shock after being in poor health for the last month or so.  He had joined Telecommunications Kinki in the corporate leagues after graduating from Hokuyo High School in Osaka.  He played in the Intercity Baseball Tournament in both 1965 and 1966 and was named to the "Amateur Baseball Best 9" team in 1966, the first year such a team was selected.  He was drafted in the first round of the 1967 draft by the Hiroshima Carp.  The Carp only played him sparingly in his first season as he only got into 35 games and hit .224.  He became a regular in 1969 though, first as an outfielder and then as a third baseman.  He didn't hit much, though.  After hitting .252 in 1969, he dropped to .209 in 1970 and .216 in 1971.  His performance didn't improve in 1972 and he ended up getting benched, finishing the season hitting .186.

A change of scenery was in order and the Carp traded him to the Dragons for pitcher Kazuto Kawabata.  His batting average improved considerably in Nagoya, reaching .271 in 1973 and .290 in 1974.  He had the best year of his career in 1975, making the All Star team for the first time and hitting a career high 18 home runs (he had also hit 18 in 1974).  He and Koji Yamamoto of the Carp were fighting for the batting crown late in the season and a couple unfortunate things happened to keep him from beating out his former teammate.  In the next to last game of the season on October 19th, he came in as a pinch hitter in the third inning against the Carp with the bases loaded.  He was intentionally walked to drive in a run and deny him an opportunity to pass Yamamoto.  The Dragons were already up 4-0 so it didn't make a whole lot of sense strategically (the Carp did come back to win the game 11-5).  Then in the Dragons' final game of the year two days later against the Tigers, Inoue still had a shot at passing Yamamoto - it was the first time in NPB history that a batting race had come down to the last game of the season.  Inoue went one for three but was hit by a pitch in his last plate appearance in the game and the season, leaving him with an average of .318, one point behind Yamamoto's .319.  Inoue did lead the Central League in hits that year with 149 (although it wasn't an official category at the time) and won a Best 9 award as well.

He slumped somewhat in 1976 but bounced back the following season.  He repeated this pattern again in 1978 and 1979, making the All Star team for the second time in 1979.  Injuries and the arrival of Seisuke Toyoda (who was 12 years younger than the 36 year old Inoue) cut his playing time in 1980 to only 58 games.  The Dragons sent him to the Fighters in a trade for Masaru Tomita and Hideaki Oshima.  As I mentioned, he spent four seasons with Nippon-Ham, mostly as a bench player.  Probably the highlight of his years with them was his pinch hit, walk off single in the bottom of the ninth of Game One of the 1981 Nippon Series.  He retired following the 1984 season and was hired by Tatsuro Hirooka, the manager of the Seibu Lions and a former Carp coach during Inoue's time there, to be the team's defensive and base running coach.  However, due to the retirements the previous year of Koichi Tabuchi* and Hiroyuki Yamazaki, the Lions were a bit light on right-handed pinch hitters so Inoue ended up getting pressed into service for ten games.  He retired for good after that.

* Yamamoto, Tomita and Tabuchi were teammates at Hosei University in the late 1960's and collectively were known as the "Hosei Three Crows".  I'm kind of amused that Inoue had a link (albeit a somewhat tenuous one in Tabuchi's case) to each one of them - battling Yamamoto for the batting crown, being traded for Tomita and (barely) replacing Tabuchi as a bench player for the Lions

Following his retirement, Inoue was a TV commentator although he did coach for the Dragons for two seasons (1993-94) under his former teammate Morimichi Takagi.

Inoue's nickname was "Popeye" due to his somewhat sturdy build.  His 137 career hit-by-pitches was third all time in NPB when he retired but he has since fallen to tenth.

Inoue appeared fairly regularly in various card sets between 1974 and 1984.  He has cards in Calbee, NST, Nippon-Ham, Takara and some of the more obscure mid-70's menko and game cards.  I don't believe there are any cards of him with the Carp and the only card I know of showing him as a Lion is from the 2020 BBM Time Travel 1985 set.  He showed up in a handful of OB sets from the last 25 years or so, especially the various Dragons Anniversary sets.  Here's a bunch of his cards:

1974/75 Calbee #502

1975/76/77 Calbee #397

1975/76 Nippon-Ham

2003 BBM Fighters #124

2005 BBM Dragons 70th Anniversary #48

2011 Epoch OB Club 1977 #RP15 (Mini Parallel)

2017 BBM Time Travel 1975 #60

2020 BBM Time Travel 1985 #78

2021 BBM Dragons History 1936-2021 #22

Card Of The Week December 14

The Twins Oosterhout of the Netherlands' Honkbal Hoofdklasse announced this weekend that they had signed former Chiba Lotte Marines pitcher Ayumu Ishikawa to a contract.

Ishikawa was the Marines' first round pick in the 2013 draft out of Tokyo Gas of the corporate leagues.  He won ten games in his first season and was the Pacific League Rookie Of The Year.  He followed that up with two more seasons of double digit victories including a 14-5 season in 2016 in which he also led the PL in ERA.  

His career went into a bit of a roller coaster after he pitched for Samurai Japan in the 2017 World Baseball Classic.  Injuries limited him to just 16 games with the top team that season and he went 3-11.  He bounced back in 2018 to pitch well enough to make the All Star team for the second (and last) time.  Injuries in 2019 caused the Marines to move him to the bullpen temporarily but he was back in the starting rotation in 2020.  He pitched pretty well in 2021 and 2022 when healthy but he was unable to stay healthy in 2023, missing almost the entire season.  He only pitched in three games on the farm team, posting a 7.71 ERA.  The Marines released him at the end of the season and resigned him as a development player.

He performed well enough in 2024 to pitch his way back to the 70 man roster and made his first appearance at the ichi-gun level in two years at the end of June.  He went 3-1 with a 3.70 ERA in five games that year but despite that, the Marines pretty much buried him this past season.  He made no appearances with the top team and went 1-2 with a 4.74 ERA in seven games on the farm team.  The Marines released him at the end of the season and offered him a coaching job if he decided to retire.  He declined, wanting to continue to play.  Which it appears he will be doing in Europe next summer.

Here's a card of him from the "Exciting Scene" subset in the 2015 Calbee Series One set (#ES-04) celebrating his ten wins from his rookie season of 2014:

A Couple Surprises

I was away for work last week when I learned about a couple new items that I hadn't been expecting so here's a quick post to get us all up-to-date...

- Steve, a trading partner from years gone by, sent me an email last week to let me know that Topps had issued Topps Now cards for the Samurai Japan team that played a couple friendlies against Korea a few weeks ago.  There are six cards in all, four from the game on November 15th (Tai Sasaki, Misho Nishikawa, Seishiro Sakamoto and Isami Nomura) and two from November 16th (Yumeto Kanemaru and Kazuma Okamoto).  The cards are each 1485 yen (around $9.50) and will be on sale until December 26th.  It does not appear that Topps will ship these cards to the US.  It would not surprise me a lot if Topps also issued a team set after these cards have sold out.  (I am surprised that Topps is doing Samurai Japan cards since both Epoch and DreamOrder did them earlier this year.)

- Speaking of surprises, Calbee issued a set last week.  This would be the third off season in a row that Calbee has issued a set following the Hawks set in the 2023-24 off season and the "Pro Yakyu Spirits A" video game tie-in set from last year.  The new set is another tie in to the "Pro Yakyu Spirits A" video game but, unlike the set from last January, this set only has 24 cards instead of the 47 that the earlier set had (it was originally planned to be 48 cards but apparently the set was delayed which caused them to have to remove the Roki Sasaki card from the set since he had signed with the Dodgers).  Calbee managed to get this set out before the end of the year which allowed them to not have to pull the Munetaka Murakami from it.  You can see all the cards (including some of the kira parallels) over at Jambalaya - they look very similar to the earlier set, just with a different background.

Card Of The Week December 7

Two now former NPB pitchers signed deals with MLB teams last week.  Cody Ponce, who had three mediocre seasons in Japan with the Fighters (2022-23) and Eagles (2024) before spending last season in Korea, has signed a three year deal with Toronto.  His 2025 KBO season was spectacular - he went 17-1 with a 1.89 ERA and struck out 252 in 180 2/3 innings and won the MVP award.  The highlight of his NPB tenure was the no-hitter he threw against the Hawks back in 2022.  The lowlight was probably the game I saw him pitch in Fukuoka last year where those same Hawks beat his Rakuten Eagles 21-0.  He was tagged with 12(!) earned runs in three plus innings of work which raised his ERA from 4.50 to 7.05.  He didn't bring it down too much the rest of the season as he ended the season with a 6.72 ERA.  (In fairness to him, I saw him pitch well and beat the Hawks in Sendai a week before that.)

The other pitcher is Anthony Kay, who spent two serviceable seasons the past two years with Yokohama, who signed a two year deal with the White Sox.  I don't have a whole lot to say about Kay other than to mention that he won an "Outstanding Player" award in the 2024 Nippon Series when the Baystars won the championship.  I think I'm more optimistic for Kay's chances in MLB than Ponce's as Kay's put up decent numbers in a hitters ballpark (despite NPB being a terrible offensive environment the past few years).  I'm not sure I'd have given Ponce a three year deal but, hey, it's not my money and good for him.

Here's cards of both of them - Ponce's card celebrates his no-hitter:

2022 Epoch One #750

2024 BBM 2nd Version #416

Rich Gossage

I had mentioned a while back that Topps had included autographed cards of Rich Gossage into a couple of their NPB products.  To the best of my knowledge, Gossage, who had spent the 1990 season with the Fukuoka Daiei Hawks, had never had a Japanese baseball card before this.  I got an email from Kenny (aka Zippy Zappy) today in which he sent me an image of Gossage’s card from the Topps NPB Chrome set that he had swiped from an online auction:

I’m a bit curious why they didn’t include the team name on the card but it wouldn’t be Topps if they didn’t do something that makes me scratch my head.

I mock Topps a lot but I’m impressed that they’ve gotten some interesting OB players to sign cards for them.  For example, they’ve had what are pretty much the first NPB cards of Hideo Nomo since 1994.  I’d be more impressed (or at least more interested) if they’d issue base set cards of these guys rather than only rare and expensive autographed cards.

UPDATE - Fuji mentioned in a comment seeing a different autographed Gossage NPB card on Ebay so I took a look and found that he also had cards in both the 2025 Topps NPB and Stadium Club NPB sets.  I swiped the images:

I think both of these are better looking cards (mostly because I don't like the Chrome cards) but it's interesting that neither one identifies the team.

Card Of The Week November 30

Last week, Kenta Maeda officially returned to Japan and NPB after ten seasons in North America playing for the Dodgers, Twins and Tigers as well as the Cubs and Yankees organizations.  He didn't rejoin his original team, the Carp, but instead signed on with the Eagles.

Here's his card from the 2013 BBM 2nd Version set (#502):