Friday, November 20th, was the 86th Anniversary of Eiji Sawamura's 1-0 loss against the US team in Shizuoka during the 1934 All American MLB tour. Sawamura held the US team scoreless until the seventh inning - at one point striking out future Hall Of Famers Charlie Gehringer, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Jimmy Foxx in succession - when Gehrig hit a solo home run. This was the high point of the tour for the All Nippon team as they were routinely losing to the All Americans by double digit deficits. For some context, they had lost 21-4 in their previous game two days earlier in Yokohama.
In honor of this anniversary, I thought I'd check into something I had speculated about in a blog post...check notes...ELEVEN YEARS AGO! I had wondered about the number of Eiji Sawamura cards that used the same photos since there don't seem to be that many photos of him. I finally sat down to take a look at this the other night and this is what I figured out.
Let's start by talking about how many baseball cards of Sawamura exist. TradingCardDB.com lists 40 cards of him however a number of these are parallel versions of BBM cards and five are a 2011 "Tristar Obak" card and parallel versions that I'm just going to ignore. This brings the count down to 26 cards. I have 22 Sawamura cards although one of those is a promo version of his 2014 BBM 80th Anniversary Pitchers Edition card from Sports Card Magazine #105 so there's only 21 I'll be sharing. To further confuse the issue, one of the cards I have (2011 BBM Hometown Heroes) is not listed in TCDB which means there are at least six cards of him that I don't have although I did find the images for a couple of them online.
At you might expect, there are no known cards of Sawamura from his playing days. There are no known cards of professional baseball players in Japan that were issued from before 1946 and Sawamura died in combat during the war in 1944. His earliest card is from the 1978 NST set. Almost every other card of his is a BBM issue. Here's the list of the 27 cards I know of:
1978 NST #72
1992 BBM #31
2000 BBM 20th Century Best Nine #1, #121, #241, #361
2001 BBM #532
2002 BBM Giants #G85
2004 BBM Golden Arms #002, "Great Arm" #GA1
2004 BBM Giants 70th Anniversary #001
2005 BBM Glorious Stars #006, "Legend Stars" #LS1
2006 BBM Nostalgic Baseball #004, #067
2011 BBM Hometown Heroes #005
2012 BBM No-hitters #01, #02, #08, #82, "Great No-hitters" #GH1
2013 BBM Great Numbers #134
2013 Bandai Owners League 03 "Premium Legends" #PL001
2014 BBM 80th Anniversary Pitchers Edition #01
2014 BBM Giants 80th Anniversary #7
2015 BBM Memories Of Uniform #001
2020 BBM Giants History 1934-2020 #08
There are at least 12 different photos used on the fronts of these 26 cards. One image appears on five separate cards:
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| 1992 BBM #31 |
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| 2000 BBM 20th Century Best Nine #001 |
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| 2001 BBM #532 |
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| 2002 BBM Giants #G85 |
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| 2011 BBM Hometown Heroes #005 |
The Tristar Obak card appears to use a modified version of this photo.
The 1978 NST card uses an image that is almost the same as this but not quite:
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| 1978 NST #72 |
I'm guessing that this photo was taken at around the same time. It seems kind of odd to me that Sawamura's oldest card uses a photo that's never been reused.
This photo is used on three cards:
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| 2006 BBM Nostalgic Baseball #004 |
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| 2012 BBM No-hitters #82 |
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| 2014 BBM 80th Anniversary #01 |
There's another image that was used on three cards:
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| 2000 BBM 20th Century Best Nine #241 |
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| 2004 BBM 70th Anniversary #001 |
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| 2012 BBM No-hitters #08 |
There are a couple photos that are used on two cards each:
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| 2000 BBM 20th Century Best Nine #121 |
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| 2005 BBM Glorious Stars #006 |
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| 2004 BBM Golden Arms #002 |
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| 2012 BBM No-hitters #02 |
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| 2013 BBM Great Numbers #134 |
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| 2015 BBM Memories Of Uniform #001 |
So at least 17 of his cards use just six photos. The remaining cards I have of his all have unique photos:
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| 2000 BBM 20th Century Best Nine #361 |
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| 2006 BBM Nostalgic Baseball #067 |
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| 2012 BBM No-hitters #01 |
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| 2014 BBM Giants 80th Anniversary #07 |
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| 2020 BBM Giants History 1934-2020 #08 |
I mentioned that there were 12 photos used on the front of the cards. But what about the backs? Most of these cards either don't have a photo on the back or the photo is just a crop of the image used on the front. But there's a 13th image that was used on the back of two of the cards:
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| 2001 BBM #532 |
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| 2002 BBM Giants #G85 |
I think it's interesting the way BBM cropped this photo. They cut off the top of the photo on the 2001 card so you don't see the roof of the dugout and did a close crop on the 2002 card so you don't see the players on either side of him. I'd be curious to know why this photo was never used on the front of a card.
The photo at the top of this post is of the statue of Sawamura outside the ballpark in Shizuoka which is still standing. I stopped by there on my Japan trip last year.
5 comments:
Crazy to hear that there are no professional baseball cards before 1946. Will be a huge deal it sounds like if an early Sawamura card does ever pop up. Nice rundown.
That's why I'm always so curious about the sumo menko you turn up from the late 30's/early 40's. Did the same companies do any baseball cards?
Wow. Striking out the four guys in a row is definitely impressive. Very cool. Sad to hear that he died during the war though.
That is a really interesting post (glad to see you followed up on the 11 year old one!)
I wish someone would make a card of him that looked like a card from the era he played in (like those Helmar cards in the US that look like they were made in the 1930s). Its just really unsatisfying that with the exception of htat 1978 NST card (which isn't a great set), all the cards of Japan's most famous pitching legend from the 30s are glossy modern BBM issues.
A 1930s style menko of him would be awesome.
BBM's been doing a decent job of retro sets with their Time Travel sets the past few years but I can't see them doing any era earlier than the 1970's since it would cut back on the amount of autographed cards of the players. I mean, come on, wouldn't you rather have yet another autographed card of Keishi Suzuki than a retro themed card of Eiji Sawamura?
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