RIP Frank Howard

Frank Howard, famed slugger for the Dodgers and Senators in the 1960's and manager for the Padres and Mets in the 1980's, has passed away at age 87.  You may be asking yourself "what has that got to do with Japanese baseball?"  It turns out that Frank Howard ended his playing career in 1974 in Japan as a member of the Taihieyo Club Lions.  

Howard signed with the Lions as part of the team's attempt to build attendance by signing former major league players.  Howard's 382 home runs and 1,119 RBIs in the majors were the most ever by a foreign player entering NPB and would remain so for almost 40 years until Andruw Jones joined the Eagles in 2013 (Jones had 434 home runs and 1,289 RBIs).  The problem, however, is that Howard also brought with him a bad knee which got worse during spring training that year.  By the time Opening Day rolled around Howard was in so much pain he could barely stand.  He was in the lineup for Opening Day against the Nippon-Ham Fighters* but went 0-2 with a walk before being removed from the game.  Howard ended up not playing in anymore games and returned to the US in May.  He was eventually replaced on the Lions roster by another former MLB star - Matty Alou.

*This was the team's first game under this name as the former Nittaku Home Flyers had been sold to Nippon-Ham that winter and renamed the Fighters.

Howard only has a handful of Japanese baseball cards.  He had two cards in the 1974-75 Calbee set - #70 and #127.  Both of these are relatively rare and expensive.  I don't have either of them but I do have images of them that swiped years ago off Yahoo! Japan Auctions for an earlier post:

1974-75 Calbee #70

1974-75 Calbee #127

Luckily, Howard had a couple cards in two BBM sets from the last 15 years or so.  He had two cards in the 2010 BBM Lions 60th Anniversary set.  A large part of that set dealt with the four years of the Taiheiyo Club era in Lions history and Howard's photo is on the card commemorating the 1974 season.  He also had a "regular" card in the set:

2010 BBM Lions 60th Anniversary #79

2010 BBM Lions 60th Anniversary #83

He also appeared in the 2013 BBM Deep Impact (aka Legendary Foreigners 2) set.  The photo on the card looks like it could have been taken around the same time the photo on one of the Calbee cards was taken.

2013 BBM Deep Impact #02