Card Of The Week December 10

After the 1980 season, Gary Thomasson of the Dodgers signed a three year, $1.2 million contract with the Yomiuri Giants, making him the highest paid player in NPB history.  There was a lot of pressure on him and not just because of the size of the contract - he was expected to replace Sadaharu Oh who had just retired.

Thomasson hit .261 with 20 home runs and 50 RBIs in 1981.  He was second on the team in home runs and fourth in RBIs.  The Giants ended up winning the Nippon Series that year, making him and teammate Roy White the third and fourth players to win both a World Series and Nippon Series championships (both had been teammates on the 1978 Yankees).  But Thomasson also struck out a near record 132 times - only his benching late in the season prevented him from breaking Lee Stanton's then-record of 136, earning him an unflattering nickname that I've seen reported as "Electric Fan", "Giant Human Fan" and "Import Fan".

1981 didn't go any better for him.  He hit .187 in 47 games, didn't get along at all with manager Motoshi Fujita and had shoulder and knee injuries that ultimately ended his career.

His two year stint with Yomiuri made his name in the art world, however, although I'm sure it's an honor he could have done with out.  Japanese artist Genpei Akasegawa had been noticing an interesting phenomenon in architecture when some feature had been rendered obsolete by a change in the building but the feature was still being maintained.  For example, Akasegawa first noticed this with a staircase on a building that used to lead to a doorway but the doorway no longer existed.  The stairway railing had recently been repaired however.  

While Akasegawa had first taken note of such objects in 1972, it wasn't until 1982 that he had a name for them.  Inspired by Gary Thomasson's performance with the Yomiuri He (and his students at the Bigakkō art school) came up with the name "Hyperart Thomasson" to describe "a useless relic or structure that has been preserved as part of a building or the built environment, which has become a piece of art in itself".  Akasegawa published a book of Thomassons in 1985 which was translated to English in 2009:

Here's a card of Thomasson from the 1981 Calbee set (#312):