Manabu Kitabeppu, the Hall Of Fame pitcher from the Hiroshima Toyo Carp, passed away last week at age 65 after a lengthy battle with leukemia. Kitabeppu was the team's first round pick in 1975 out of Miyakonojo Agricultural High School in Miyazaki prefecture. He became part of the starting rotation for the Carp as a 19 year old in 1977 and pretty much remained there until he retired following the 1994 season. His best season was probably 1982, when he went 20-8 with a 2.42 ERA. He won 213 games in his career, the most by any Carp pitcher. He also gave up 380 home runs, the most by any Central League pitcher although it's 180 shy of the all time record of 560 given up by Keishi Suzuki. He won two Sawamura Awards (1982 & 1986), a Central League MVP award (1986), two Best 9 awards (1982 & 1986) and a Golden Glove award (1986). He led the CL in wins twice (1982 & 1986) and ERA once (1986). He was a seven time All Star (1979-83, 1988 & 1992) and pitched in five Nippon Series (1979-80, 1984, 1986 & 1991). Despite the Carp winning three of the Series he played in, he was winless in eleven starts, going 0-5 with a 3.21 ERA.
After retiring as a player he was mostly a TV commentator although he was Hiroshima's pitching coach from 2001 to 2004. He also a member of the Sawamura Award selection committee and was a director for the Meikyukai.
Kitabeppu was fairly well represented by baseball cards during his career, appearing in major sets from Takara, Calbee, BBM, Yamakatsu and Lotte. The earliest card of him that I'm aware of was from the 1978 Takara Carp set. His first Calbee card appears to be from the 1979 August Best set. He also appears in the first four BBM flagship sets from 1991 to 1994. Here's a bunch of his cards:
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| 1979 Yamakatsu JY8 #41 |
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| 1984 Takara Carp #20 |
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| 1986 Calbee #211 |
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| 1989 Mermaid Data Sticker #11 |
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| 1990 Lotte #82 |
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| 1991 BBM Nippon Series #S33 |
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| 1992 BBM All Stars #A5 |
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| 1994 BBM #132 |
He's frequently appeared in various OB sets and subset from BBM, Epoch and others over the past 20 years or so:
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| 2002 BBM All Time Heroes #073 |
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| 2013 Front Runner Carp Stars & Legends #23 |
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| 2015 Epoch Red Helmet 40th Anniversary #40 |
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| 2020 BBM Carp History #34 |
I have to say my favorite card of him is from the 2008 BBM Hiroshima Memorial set which celebrated the closing of Hiroshima Municipal Stadium. The card commemorates him getting his 198th victory to pass Ryohei Hasegawa for most career wins for the Carp and depicts both him and Hasegawa:
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| 2008 BBM Hiroshima Memorial #19 |
2 comments:
That is a shame, I didn't know he was sick. He has a ton of Calbee cards from the 80s which I quite like.
He has a lot of Calbees from the 80's but bizarrely that 1986 one is the only one I have. He had a LOT of OB cards over the last 20 years of so though - he's apparently another one of these guys who never met an OB set he didn't like.
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