Japanese Baseball Cards: Study Abroad - Fall Instructional Leagues in the 1960's

Friday, July 7, 2017

Study Abroad - Fall Instructional Leagues in the 1960's

Sometimes there's an odd path to discovering something. I was up early on Monday of this week and tuned into the Lions/Fighters game in time to see the first pitch ceremony (well actually it was a first pitch ceremony - they'd had a Star Wars themed one that I tuned in too late to see). The ceremony featured Isao Harimoto in the same throwback Toei Flyers uniform that the Fighters were wearing for the game and another gentleman in a Hanshin Tigers uniform that I didn't immediately recognize. For some reason I was thinking it was Masaaki Koyama but I wasn't really sure. Then Pacific League TV sent out this tweet:

So OK, that's a clue. I know Harimoto had 3085 hits but off hand I didn't know how many wins Koyama had. So I did a quick search for Koyama on Baseball-Reference and did a double-take:

"Last played for DET"? Wait...what?

Clicking on Koyama's page revealed (in addition to confirming that Koyama had 320 wins) that Koyama had pitched 3 innings in one game for the Detroit Tigers Florida Instructional League team in the fall of 1967. A little more research revealed that there were three other Japanese players on that team as well.

Now I had known that there were Japanese players with a couple of the Giants Arizona Instructional League teams in the 1960's but I hadn't realized that there were other teams who hosted NPB players as well. So I started going through all the teams that Baseball-Reference had data for in both Florida and Arizona and came up with a few more. The Washington Senators hosted three Chunichi Dragons in the fall of 1965 with their Florida team. In 1966 there were three teams with NPB players - the Dodgers in Arizona had three players from the Yomiuri Giants while in Florida the White Sox had two players from the Sankei Atoms and the Tigers had two players from Chunichi. The Tigers hosted four players (including Koyama) from the Tokyo Orions in 1967 and four players from two different teams (the Orions and the Nishitetsu Lions) in 1968.

Here's a table with all the players

Year	League	Team	Player	NPB Teams	Notes
1965	Florida	Senators	Tatsuhiko Kimata	Chunichi 1964-82	All Star 1970-71, 1974-75, 1977-80; Best 9 1969-71, 1977, 1979
1965	Florida	Senators	Morimichi Takagi	Chunichi 1960-80	CL Stolen Base Leader 1963, 1965, 1973; All Star 1966-67, 1973, 1979; Best 9 1963-67, 1974, 1977; Golden Glove 1974, 1977, 1979; HOF 2006; Meikyukai member, managed Chunichi 1986, 1992-95, 2012-13
1965	Florida	Senators	Tatsumi Yamanaka	Chunichi 1962-70	CL Winning Percentage 1963, 1965; All Star 1966
1966	Arizona	Dodgers	Chiyosaku Hayashi	Yomiuri 1966-69
1966	Arizona	Dodgers	Takeshi Ueda	Yomiuri 1964-78
1966	Arizona	Dodgers	Takashi Yoshida	Yomiuri 1964-84	All Star 1976-77
1966	Florida	White Sox	Tadakatsu Takayama	Kokutetsu/Sankei/Yakult 1963-70, Hanshin 1971
1966	Florida	White Sox	Kunimitsu Yanoura	Kintetsu 1960-65, Sankei 1966-67, Yomiuri 1968	All Star 1963-64, 1966; Played for Tokyo Dragons of the Global League in 1969
1966	Florida	Tigers	Isao Hirono	Chunichi 1966-67, Nishitetsu 1968-70, Yomiuri 1971-73, Chunichi 1974	All Star 1969
1966	Florida	Tigers	Hiroshi Shintaku	Chunichi 1966-78	All Star 1967
1967	Florida	Tigers	Reiji Iishi	Tokyo/Lotte 1965-71, Hiroshima 1972-73	All Star 1966
1967	Florida	Tigers	Takenori Ikebe	Daimai/Tokyo/Lotte 1962-1974, Hanshin 1975-78, Kintetsu 1979	All Star 1967, 1969-71; Golden Glove 1972, 1976
1967	Florida	Tigers	Masaaki Koyama	Osaka/Hanshin 1953-63, Tokyo/Lotte 1964-72, Taiyo 1973	CL Leader Wins 1964, Winning Percentage 1962, Strikeouts 1962; All Star 1957-60, 1962-67, 1970; Sawamura Award 1962; HOF 2001, Meikyukai Member
1967	Florida	Tigers	Hiroyuki Yamazaki	Tokyo/Lotte 1965-78, Seibu 1979-84	All Star 1969-70, 1972-77, 1980-81, 1983; Best 9 1969-71, 1974, 1980; Golden Glove 1977, 1980-81; Meikyukai member
1968	Florida	Tigers	Masayoshi Higashida	Nishitetsu/Taiheiyo Club 1968-74, Nippon Ham 1975, Hanshin 1976-77	All Star 1971-72
1968	Florida	Tigers	Kazuto Kawabata	Tokyo/Lotte 1967-70, Chunichi 1970, Hiroshima 1974-76, Hankyu 1977-78
1968	Florida	Tigers	Mitsuo Motoi	Nishitetsu/Taiheiyo Club/Crown Lighter 1967-78, Taiyo 1979-84	All Star 1968, 1971-73, 1977, 1980; Best 9 1972, 1980; Golden Glove 1980
1968	Florida	Tigers	Yasuo Otsuka	Tokyo/Lotte 1966-72	Listed in Baseball-Reference's page for the team as "Yashsheo Otsuka"

This is a pretty impressive list of players. Out of 18 players, 13 were All Stars at least once. There's also two Hall Of Famers and three Meikyukai members (which includes the two Hall Of Famers).

As you would probably guess there are no known baseball cards of any of these guys while they were with their respective Instructional League team. Most of them have had baseball cards in Japan - I have cards of 12 of them: