1964 Japanese Olympic Baseball Team(s)

I did a series of posts a few years ago on the Japanese Olympic Baseball teams from the 1984 to 2008 Olympiads.  I knew at the time that baseball had included as a "demonstration sport" in the 1964 Tokyo games but I pretty much ignored it because it wasn't an actual tournament of between several nations.  Instead I had read that it was a single game between a US team made up of college players (managed by legendary USC coach Rod Dedeaux who would also manage the 1984 US Olympic baseball team) against what was described as "a Japanese amateur all-star team".  The game was played at Meiji Jingu Stadium on October 11th, 1964 in front of 50,000 fans and was won by the US team by a score of 6-2.  The US team included eight future MLB players - Mike Epstein, Gary Sutherland, Chuck Dobson, Alan Closter, Dick Joyce, Jim Hibbs, Ken Suarez and Shaun Fitzmaurice.  Fitzmaurice hit a home run on the first pitch of the game.

Or so the English Wikipedia article said.  However, when I decided to try to find out who was on that "Japanese amateur all-star team" by checking the Japanese version of that Wikipedia article, I discovered something interesting.

That story's not true.

To be fair, a lot of the story is true.  There was baseball played at Meiji Jingu Stadium on October 11th and the US collegiate All Star team was involved.  But Team USA actually played TWO games that day - one against a team of Japanese collegiate players and one against a team of Japanese corporate league players.  I don't think either Japanese team should really be considered an "All Star" team.  The collegiate team was essentiallythe  Komazawa University team (which had just won the All Japan University Baseball Championship four months earlier) which was fortified with seven players from other colleges in Tokyo.  Similarly the corporate league team was the Nippon Express team (which had won the Intercity Baseball Tournament two and a half months earlier) that was bolstered by seven players from other teams.

The first game was between Team USA and the collegiate team which ended in a 2-2 tie.  I haven't seen any play-by-play for this game but I have seen a line score which shows that Team USA scored a run in the top of the first so the account of Fitzmaurice homering on the first pitch of the game may very well be true.  Team USA shut out the corporate league team 3-0 in the second game of the day.

I'm also not sure about the claim of 50,000 fans in attendance.  If I'm correctly reading the Google translation of  "Japan National Team Uniform Catalog", a mook published by BBM a couple years ago that was one of the sources for the Japanese Wikipedia article, attendance was somewhere between 30,000 and 40,000 with the outfield lawn seats completely full.  (Tbis mook is the source of the photos used in this post.)  Jingu Stadium currently only seats around 31,000 but it used to have a capacity of 58,000 (according to the ballpark's Japanese Wikipedia page) so it is physically possible that they really did have 50,000.

I'm curious about how the story of this event got garbled.  It kind of looks like the two scores got mashed together - the two Japanese teams combined to score two runs but Team USA had five total runs, not six.  I think the primary source for the English language Wikipedia article is this monograph by Pete Cava (which also appeared in the 1992 edition of the SABR publication "The National Pastime"), specifically the following paragraph:

More than 50,000 fans turned out of the game with a Japanese amateur all-star team on 11 October. Dedeaux positioned himself in the third base coaching box, wondering how his team would fare.“Shaun Fitzmaurice was the leadoff hitter,” Dedeaux told Loel Schrader. “He hit the first pitch of the game for a home run over the left-centerfield fence.” The  U.S. was en route to yet another Olympic victory, this one a 6-2 triumph.

I don't know what Mr. Cava's sources were as he didn't list them in the monograph and I can't ask him because unfortunately he passed away a few years ago.  I don't mean to criticize Mr. Cava here.  It's easy sometimes to forget just how much information is available at our fingertips now.  

What's kind of odd is that one of the other sources referenced in the Wikipedia article - an article from the October 26th edition of the Lincoln (Nebraska) Star entitled "U.S. Ends Tour On Sour Note" - states "In their Olympic exhibition doubleheader at Tokyo's Meiji Stadium Oct. 11, the Americans tied a Japan College All-Star team 2-2 and beat a non-pro Japanese team 3-0." so there's a contemporary English source confirming the Japanese Wikipedia version.

The collegiate team (seen above with Team USA) had 18 players - 11 from Komazawa, two from Chuo, two from Hosei, two from Keio and one from Rikkio.  Twelve of these players would go on to play professionally.  Here's the roster:

Position	Player	Team	NPB Career
Infielder	Doi, Shozo	Rikkio	Giants 1965-78
Outfielder	Fujita, Toshihiko	Komazawa
Infielder	Goto, Kazuaki	Komazawa	Tigers 1969-75, Fighters 1976
Infielder	Hirono, Isao	Keio	Dragons 1966-67, Lions 1968-70, Giants 1971-73, Dragons 1974
Pitcher	Ito, Hisatoshi	Komazawa	Dragons 1967-74, Lions 1975
Pitcher	Kihara, Yoshitaka	Hosei	Buffaloes 1965-67, Whales 1968-69, Carp 1970-74, Lions 1975-76
Pitcher	Morita, Masahiko	Komazawa
Outfielder	Nagaike, Tokuji (Atsushi)	Hosei	Braves 1966-79
Infielder	Ohshita, Tsuyoshi	Komazawa	Flyers/Fighters 1967-74, Carp 1975-78
Outfielder	Ohta, Takao	Komazawa
Catcher	Sato, Fumio	Komazawa
Infielder	Shimizu, Takeo	Komazawa
Catcher	Shintaku, Hiroshi	Komazawa	Dragons 1966-78
Infielder	Shintani, Shigezo	Komazawa
Outfielder	Suetsugu, Toshimitsu	Chuo	Giants 1965-77
Infielder	Takegami, Shiro	Chuo	Atoms/Swallows 1967-75
Outfielder	Takeno, Yoshiro	Komazawa	Carp 1966-71
Pitcher	Watanabe, Taisuke	Keio	Hawks 1965-72

I'm not going to do mini-biographies of the players like I did for the other Olympic team rosters but I will make some comments about some of the players.  Atsushi Nagaike is the biggest name here - he won two Pacific League MVP awards (1969 & 1971) and led the league in home runs and RBIs three times each.  Shozo Doi and Toshimitsu Suetsugu were key members of the V9 Giants.  Doi managed the Orix BlueWave in the early 1990's and is most famous (infamous?) for saying that Ichiro Suzuki would never be able to hit with that batting stance.   Taisuke Watanabe's claim to fame was throwing the first perfect game in Tokyo Big Six history.

I have cards of nine of the twelve players to play in NPB, including cards of five of them as collegiate players from either the 2011 BBM Tohto 80th Memorial set or the 2011 BBM Legend Of Tokyo Big Six set.  Here's cards of these players.  For anyone I have both a collegiate card for and an NPB card, I'll show the collegiate card first:

2011 BBM Legend Of Tokyo Big Six #068

1973 Calbee #23 (Shozo Doi)

2013 BBM Greatest Games 10-22 1973 #18

2011 BBM Legend Of Tokyo Big Six #024

1967 Kabaya-Leaf #63 (Isao Hirono)

2011 BBM Legend Of Tokyo Big Six #050

1974/75 Calbee #768 (Atsushi Nagaike)

1975/76/77 Calbee #31 (Tsuyoshi Ohshita)

2021 BBM Dragons History 1936-2021 #13

2011 BBM Tohto 80th Memorial #21

1978 NST #212 (Toshimitsu Suetsugu)

1968 Shonen Book (Shiro Takegami)

2011 BBM Legend Of Tokyo Big Six #023

The corporate league team (seen above with Team USA) also had 18 members - 11 from Nippon Express, two from Nippon Oil, two from Nippon Steel Pipe, and one each from Sumitomo Metal, Nippon Columbia and Kanekalon Kaneka.  Only three of these players would have professional careers.  Here's their roster:

Number	Position	Player	Team	NPB Career
26	Catcher	Arai, Masataka	Nippon Express
21	Outfielder	Edamatsu, Michiteru	Nippon Oil
23	Catcher	Hirose, Koji	Nippon Oil
16	Pitcher	Kiyosawa, Tadahiko	Sumitomo Metal
20	Outfielder	Kobori, Shuji	Nippon Express
5	Infielder	Kondo, Ryosuke	Nippon Express
19	Pitcher	Kondo, Shigeo	Nippon Columbia	Orions 1972-74
2	Infielder	Miyawaki, Yoshiaka	Kanekalon Kaneka
3	Infielder	Muraki, Hiroshi	Nippon Express
9	Infielder	Nagano, Takao	Nippon Express
18	Pitcher	Sato, Akira	Nippon Express
23	Outfielder	Sato, Shoji	Nippon Steel Pipe
25	Outfielder	Takeda, Hiroshi	Nippon Express
6	Infielder	Takenouchi, Masafumi	Nippon Express	Lions 1968-78, Tigers 1979-82
17	Pitcher	Tanaka, Akira	Nippon Express	Giants 1969-70, Lions 1971-75, Whales 1976-77
7	Infielder	Taura, Masaaki	Nippon Steel Pipe
22	Outfielder	Totsuka, Hiroshi	Nippon Express
4	Infielder	Yongdo, Yongsan	Nippon Express

I only have cards for two of the three players who went on to play in NPB and I kind of found the one I didn't have cards for to be the most interesting.  Shigeo Kondo spent eleven or so years playing in the industrial leagues before putting himself up for the 1971 NPB draft.  At 29 years and one month, he was the oldest player ever drafted at the time when he was chosen by Lotte in the sixth round.  His record would stand for eleven years before 30 years and five months old Norio Ichimura was taken by the Dragons in the third round of the 1982 draft.  Here's cards of the other two future NPB players:

1979 TCMA #82

2010 BBM Lions 60th Anniversary #64

The US team was not considered part of the official US Olympic team - they were actually on a tour of Japan and South Korea where they played a total of 14 games (including the Olympic games) - nine in Japan and five in Korea.  As such the team was not quartered in the Olympic Village and not allowed to take part in the Opening Ceremony.  I'd be curious to know how they felt looking beyond the left field stands of Jingu Stadium and seeing the Olympic torch burning in the Olympic Stadium a short distance away.  You can see the torch in the background of this photo of the pre-game lineup from one of the games (it's also visible in the background of the two team photos):