George Arias

2002 BBM 2nd Version #612

For a while now I've been wanting to talk to a former NPB player about their experiences playing in Japan and what they knew about their Japanese baseball cards but I've never been able to pull it off.  I kind of chickened out when I had the opportunity to talk with Masanori Murakami and while I'm grateful to Warren Cromartie for taking the time to answer the questions that John E. Gibson forwarded to him on my behalf, I was unable to ask any follow up questions.

Recently, however, Justin of Charm City Autographs presented me with an opportunity.  He had discovered that former Orix BlueWave, Hanshin Tiger and Yomiuri Giant George Arias was runs two baseball Academies in Tucson, Arizona - the Centerfield Baseball & Softball Academy (a for-profit one) and the Tucson Champs Academy (a non-profit one).  Justin had stopped by to get some cards autographed (one of which he sent me).  Justin mentioned that George would be willing to do an interview with me if I was interested.  I was definitely interested.  Justin gave me George's contact information and after a couple of cancelations and rescheduling due to both his job and my job, we finally were able to connect for an interview a few weeks ago.

George Arias was a seventh round pick of the then-California Angels in the June 1993 draft out of the University of Arizona in his hometown of Tucson.  He worked his way through the Angels organization quickly, playing with Cedar Rapids of the Class A Midwest League in 1993, Lake Elsinore of the High-A California League in 1994 and Midland of the Double-A Texas League in 1995.  He made his big league debut on Opening Day in 1996, playing third and batting seventh against the Milwaukee Brewers.  He singled off of Ricky Bones in his first at bat and ultimately went 2-3 in the game with an RBI before being lifted for a pinch hitter late in the game.  The guy who pinch hit for him was Jack Howell, who was playing in his first MLB game after spending the previous four seasons with the Swallows and Giants in Japan.  He's now an instructor at one of George's Academies.

The first suggestion to him that he consider playing in Japan came from an unlikely source - teammate Shigetoshi Hasegawa, who was in his first season with the Angels.  "He was telling me...'Arias, my team, Orix, wants you to go play...they really, really like you.  [Manager Akira] Ohgi-san like you.'"  He wasn't very receptive to Hasegawa's suggestion though.  "At that time I was 'Heck, no, I'm trying to play in the big leagues.'"

After splitting 1996 between Anaheim and Triple-A Vancouver, George spent most of the first few months of the 1997 season back at Triple-A.  On August 19th, he was sent to the San Diego Padres as the "player to be named later" to complete a deal the teams had made a week earlier that saw future Hall Of Famer Rickey Henderson join the Angels.  He had a great season with Triple-A Las Vegas in 1998, hitting .308 with 36 home runs and 119 RBIs but he was only able to play in 20 games with San Diego (although he did get an at bat in the NLDS that year against Houston).  1999 was more of the same, playing 55 games with San Diego and 26 with Las Vegas.  The shuttle between the levels was starting to get old.  "Being a 4-A player, going up and going back down to Triple-A...it's kind of troubling, it gets frustrating to do that."

The Padres released him following the 1999 season.  "My agent said 'Hey, Japan's calling...It's really good money, it's more than you're making here, it's guaranteed...let's give it a shot!'  I said 'Alright!'"

He joined the Orix BlueWave on a two year contract.  Like every other American going to Japan, he made adjustments.  "At first it's tough because you're trying to adjust to the mentality.  You're trying to adjust to their culture and their style.  And it's very difficult if you sit there as an American and don't adjust to everything.  What you're going to learn real fast when you go to Japan, they're going to say 'This is Japanese style' and what they're referring to is 'This is how it is and we're not going to change because you're American' so you have to change your knowledge and all the information that you have, you're going to have to change it to adapt to theirs.  And sure enough, the guys that struggle in Japan are the guys that are stubborn and don't want to change.  They don't like that style."

George learned that the pitching styles were different in Japan.  "It's two different types of mentality when you're facing pitchers in Japan or coming to the States.  In Japan...these are technicians, they're going to get you out with forkballs and on any count, they'll throw it 0-0, 1-0.  You come to the States, they're pounding...When you're in the hitter's count, they're going to come at you with fastballs, they're going to challenge you.  In Japan in the hitter's count, they're going to throw a forkball, change up or curveball or a slider."  He also discovered that his opportunities to discuss the opposing pitching during games was limited - "There's only four foreigners per team so sometimes [I'm] the only hitter with three pitchers...there's not much conversation going on in the dugout."

2000 BBM #90

He adjusted pretty well that first season, hitting .250 with 26 home runs and 61 RBIs in 116 games.  "I could have been more disciplined at the plate and hit for more average.  But I think the fans wanted to see home runs and me drive in runs."

George's first year with Orix coincided with Ichiro's last year with the team.  I asked him what it was like having Ichiro as a teammate:  "It was fun.  He had the best hand-eye coordination I've ever seen....He just made it look so easy which was kind of frustrating on my end.  He made hitting look so easy with his style...Such great timing...You could see he was going to be phenomenal...You have great players and then you have really, really great players...It was definitely a blessing to watch him play every day...They'd throw a ball [that would] bounce in the dirt and he'd hit it, kept it fair, for a double."

2001 Upper Deck #104

His numbers improved in his second season in Japan in 2001, hitting .262 with 38 home runs and 97 RBIs but he was unable to reach a deal with Orix when his contract was up at the end of the year.  He got a recommendation from Greg Hansell, a former teammate who was with the Hanshin Tigers.  "We had the same agent, we're having dinner, he goes 'Hey, why don't you come play for us?'"  He ended up signing a two year contract with the Tigers.

Playing for the Tigers was quite a different experience than playing for the BlueWave.  "I don't want to downplay Orix because I'm grateful for the opportunity but when you play in front of 55 thousand fans every single game with Hanshin...they're the number one fans in the country and they're loyal to you...they'll follow you.  Sometime we had more fans than a opposing team did at their home stadium."

Besides the difference in the fans, George also had to adjust to a difference in managers.  Senichi Hoshino, his new manager with the Tigers, had a different temperament than Akira Ohgi, his manager at Orix.  "Two different style of managers.  Ohgi-san more calm and collected.  Very highly respectable, very, very nice guy...Hoshino-san, he'll kick you in your head!  We used to call him a field goal kicker, me and my teammate Derrick White, because he'd be sitting in the second row and when something goes wrong, he'd kick the chair in front of him.  Very intelligent manager, very well respected, got you to play the game.  And did a great job."

2003 BBM All Stars #A65

George started his time with the Tigers in 2002 on a high note, homering on Opening Day against the Giants in Tokyo.  It was the prelude to another fine season as he hit .258 with 32 home runs and 82 RBIs.  He made the All Star team for the first time and went 2-4 with a solo home run in the first All Star game which won him MVP honors in the Central League's 4-1 victory.  

2003 BBM 2nd Version #548

2003 ended up being a special year for a number of reasons.  He had his best season at the plate in Japan that year, hitting .265 with 38 home runs and 107 RBIs.  Even more importantly the Tigers were winning.  They won the Central League pennant for the first time since 1985 and faced the Fukuoka Daiei Hawks in the Nippon Series.  They lost in seven games however George took home some hardware after the season was over as he won both the Best 9 and Golden Glove awards for his play at first base.  "Winning makes things fun.  I don't care who you are, it's just that simple.  It's just memorable because when you're winning, you got a bunch of guys on the team having fun...it becomes that much more memorable.  When you're losing, losing sucks obviously.  Fingers are always pointed.  But that year, 2003, was very memorable."

2003 BBM Nippon Series #46

2004 BBM 1st Version #GG13

He signed another contract with Hanshin for the 2004 season but it wasn't as much fun as the previous year.  While he still put up good numbers, hitting .272 with 25 home runs and 84 RBIs and making the All Star team for the third straight year despite missing some time with a back injury, the team finished the year in fourth place.  After the season, he and the team parted ways.

2004 BBM 1st Version #206

George returned to the US and signed a minor league deal with the Nationals but was cut at the end of spring training.  He spent the 2005 season with the Tijuana Colts of the Mexican League, hitting .303 with 23 home runs and 81 RBIs in 89 games.  He was back in Tijuana for 2006, hitting .272 with 19 home runs and 71 RBIs after 80 games when the Yomiuri Giants came calling.  He returned to Japan to play for the Giants but there was a catch - they wanted him be a left fielder.  He had never played the outfield before having mostly been a corner infielder.  He spent his time "Begging hitters not to hit me the ball."  He only played in 17 games with the ichi-gun team (15 of which were at third, filling in for the injured Hiroki Kokubo), hitting just 167 with 2 home runs.  He finished the season with the farm team and decided to retire as a player.

He has fond feelings towards Japan.  "I went over there...like most people probably for the money but what I didn't realize is that I fell in love with the culture and the way it was...I loved staying there...I loved playing there."

I asked him some questions about his baseball cards.  He said that growing up he'd always hoped to have his own baseball card.  "I remember in '94, I believe that's when my first card came out...my agent got me an autograph signing...I got to see my first card and it was so exciting because it was...a dream come true, something that I wished for when I was very young to actually see...my face on a card.  It's something that a kid always dreams of, like wanting to be in the big leagues.  You get there and it's a really satisfying feeling.  It's awesome to know that you're on a bubble gum card.  You can tell your kids 'Look, there I am!'"  

George uses his baseball cards with his students.  "We try to teach baseball players at my Academy life skills and core values.  Sometimes you get some kids who like to walk and strut themselves and I always kid around with them, saying 'You ain't nothing until you get your face on a card.'"

I asked him about whether he had known he had cards issued for him in Japan when he played there.  He said he hadn't.  "You know how I found out [I had Japanese cards]?  Through fans who would...some would make me a collage of all my baseball cards and put them together, they'd give to me as a gift if I signed their cards.  So I'd be 'Huh, I've never seen this card before' or 'Whoa, where'd this come from?'.  Which was pretty neat so that's why I really enjoyed some of the fans because they'd give these little gifts and those were kind of surprising to me."

2003 Calbee #AS-15

There were a number of cards issued for George during his years in Japan.  He appeared in BBM's flagship sets between 2000 and 2004 as well as BBM's high end sets over the same period of time (Diamond Heroes in 2000-01 and Touch The Game in 2002-04).  He was also in BBM's All Star sets from 2002-04, the 2003 BBM Nippon Series set and their Tigers team sets from 2002-04.  Oddly enough he didn't have any Calbee cards until 2002 and didn't have a "regular" Calbee card until 2004 (his 2002 and 2003 cards were subset cards).  He also appeared in several of Konami's issues between 2000 and 2004 as well as the 2000-01 Future Bee Power League, 2000 Epoch Pro-Baseball sticker and 2001 Upper Deck sets.  Since he signed with the Giants in the middle of the 2006 season, there aren't any cards showing him with Yomiuri.

We got into a discussion of the cards he's had in the OB (retired) player sets since he retired.  I asked him how the card companies contacted him.  "A guy would call me and say 'Hey, we'll pay you $1000 to sign 500 cards for this company.  We'll give you a set.'"  They'd ship him the cards (or stickers) to sign, he'd sign them and send them back.

George has appeared in five BBM OB sets - the 2009 Orix 20th Anniversary, the 2013 "Greatest Games 9-26-2001 Buffaloes vs BlueWave", the 2013 Legendary Foreigners, the 2013 Deep Impact (aka Legendary Foreigners 2) and the 2014 Orix 25th Anniversary sets.  From looking at the last issue of Sports Card Magazine that had checklists for BBM's cards (SCM #116 issued in late March of 2016), I learned that George had signed autographs for the first four of those sets.  SCM didn't list the number of autographs offered with the 2009 set but he signed 97 cards for the "Greatest Games" set, 100 for the first Legendary Foreigner set and 99 for the second one.

One thing I was curious about was how many times George actually signed for BBM.  BBM does sticker autographs as opposed to on card autographs so it's possible they had George sign a bunch of stickers at one time and then used them for multiple sets.  George doesn't remember how many times he's signed for BBM though so that's just speculation on my part.  The only set that either he didn't sign for or BBM ran out of stickers for was the Orix 25th Anniversary set.

2009 BBM Orix 20th Anniversary #31

2013 BBM "Greatest Games 9-26-2001 Buffaloes vs BlueWave" #28

2013 BBM Legendary Foreigners #63

2013 BBM Deep Impact #57

2014 BBM Orix 25th Anniversary

George also appears in a set from Epoch - the 2018 Tigers Stars & Legends set.  From the information about the set on Epoch's website, it looks like he signed a total of 49 cards for this set - 23 of "silver horizontal" ones, 15 of the "gold horizontal" ones, 10 of the "gold vertical" ones and a single "holo vertical" one.  Epoch does on card autographs so George would have signed these actual cards.  I don't have his card from this set although I did swipe a photo of one of the "gold vertical" autograph cards off of Yahoo! Japan Auctions:

I want to thank George for taking the time to talk to me.  I'd also like to thank Justin for setting it up and my wife for proofreading this post for me.