Sad news out of Japan over the weekend - former pitcher Satoshi Iriki was killed in a car accident in his hometown of Miyakonojō. He was 55 years old.
Irki spent a couple years playing for Mitsubishi Motors Mizushima of the industrial leaguge after he graduated from high school and was the sixth pick of Kintetsu Buffaloes in the 1989 draft (the one the Buffaloes took Hideo Nomo in). As a pitcher with Kintetsu, he was a bit of a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none. He was used in a variety of roles - starter, middle relief and closer - but never really excelled at any of them. He was traded to the Carp midway through the 1996 season for Ryo Yoshimoto. This apparently was part of an effort by the Carp to woo Iriki's younger brother Yusaku who was one of the top prospects available in the 1996 draft. The younger Iriki made a pre-draft agreement with the Giants instead and the Carp and Buffaloes reversed their trade with the elder Iriki heading back to Kintetsu in exchange for Yoshimoto.
After two more seasons in Osaka, Iriki was able to join his brother with the Giants when the Buffaloes traded him to Yomiuri for Hiroyuki Satoh after 1998. The Irikis became the first pair of brothers to play for the Giants. It didn't last long though - Satoshi had a 4.15 ERA with a 2-1 record in 22 games in 1999 but spent all of the 2000 season on the farm team before getting released.
He was picked up by the Swallows prior to the 2001 season and posted his best season ever, going 10-3 with an ERA of 2.85 in 21 starts (24 games overall). He made his only All Star game that season and made history when he relieved his brother in the first game of the All Star break. He continued his outstanding season by starting and winning Game Three of the Nippon Series against his old team the Buffaloes. He had a poor season the following year, partly due to an ankle injury, and the Swallows released him at the end of the year. He spent the following two seasons as a Bear - the Doosan variety from the KBO in 2003 and the La New variety from the CPBL in 2004 - before calling it a career.
Iriki's first baseball card is in the 1992 BBM set (#155) 1990 Takara Buffaloes set (#41). He had cards in every BBM flagship from 1992 to 1998 and again in 2002. He's one of only a handful of players to appear in BBM's All Star game set for a particular year but not that year's flagship set. Here's some of his cards (UPDATE - Engel incorrectly lists Iriki as being in the 1990 Takara Buffaloes set so I've removed that card from this post):
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| 1992 BBM #155 |
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| 1994 BBM 224 |
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| 1995 BBM #136 |
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| 1996 BBM #258 |
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| 1999 Calbee #092 |
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| 2001 BBM All Stars #A19 |
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| 2001 BBM Nippon Series #S6 |
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| 2002 BBM 2nd Version #445 |
2 comments:
I've updated TCDB's listing for the 1990 Takara set. #41 is actually Fuminobu Kinoshita.
Thanks! What's funny about this is I checked the uniform number history and according to it, Kinoshita had worn #41 up through 1989, then switched to #34 for the 1990 season. So the Takara set has him with his old number.
I'm kind of embarrassed I didn't catch this. Been doing this for 22 years now and I still can't read much Japanese but I should have noticed the kanji (and birthdate) on the Takara card didn't match the kanji (and birthdate) on the BBM cards.
I need to send an email to Gary Engel about it. I should check the rest of the cards in the set and see if anyone else is misidentified.
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