RIP Glenn Mickens

Former Kintetsu Buffaloes pitcher Glenn Mickens passed away last week at age 88.  Mickens spent 9 years in the Dodgers organization from 1950 to 1958 (including getting into four games with Brooklyn in 1953) before joining the Buffaloes in the spring of 1959.  He was among the first former MLB players to play in Japan.  He spent the next five seasons in Osaka, going 45-51 with an ERA of 2.55 for a very bad Kintetsu team (the Buffaloes went 249-427 during his time with them, finishing last every season except 1963).  He made the All Star team in both 1960 and 1961 and got the win in the third All Star game in 1960.

According to his Japanese Wikipedia page, he's apparently responsible for something called Micken's Rule that looks like it's something to do with how earned runs are charged to a pitcher.  I think the rule change brought NPB more in line with how MLB handled earned/unearned runs.

There are 11 cataloged cards for Mickens in the most recent Engel guide, five of which are "tobacco" menko cards.  I only have one card of him, from the "JCM 43e: 1960 Marusan Simple Back
Black & White Menko" set:

As far as I know he did not have any modern cards from either BBM or Epoch.  It is somewhat baffling to me that BBM has done very few cards featuring the foreign players of the 1950's and 1960's.  It's not like Mickens dropped off the face of the earth - Rob Fitts interviewed him in the early 00's for "Remembering Japanese Baseball:  An Oral History Of The Game".