The Mets Tour Japan

50 years ago this month, the New York Mets embarked on an 18 game, 12 city tour of Japan that lasted almost four weeks.  In fact, 50 years ago this evening they were playing in their second game of the tour, a 10 inning 4-4 tie against the Yomiuri Giants at Korakuen Stadium in Tokyo.  They played five games at Korakuen on the tour with the remaining games being in Sapporo, Sendai, Koriyama, Niigata, Toyama, Osaka (2 games), Matsuyama, Hiroshima, Fukuoka, Kokura, Nagoya and Shizuoka.  The Mets would go 9-7-2 in Japan, putting up a 3-0 record against an "All Japan" all star team, a 3-1 record against teams that combined the Yomiuri Giants' roster with another teams (the Hawks in Osaka, the Carp in Hiroshima, the Lions in Fukuoka and the Dragons in Nagoya) but only 3-6-2 against Yomiuri.

You can read all the details about the series in Henry Tran's article on it in "Nichibei Yakyu: US Tours Of Japan 1960-2019 (Volume 2)" which was my primary source of information for this post.  There's a couple pieces of trivia that I found interesting:

• These were the final games that Shigeo Nagashima ever played in as he had retired less than two weeks before the Mets arrived
• These were the final games that Tetsuharu Kawakami managed as he announced his retirement at the end of the tour
• Joe Torre had been traded to the Mets about ten days before the tour started but insisted on coming with the team
• There was a home run hitting contest between Henry Aaron and Sadaharu Oh held before the sixth game on November 2nd at Korakuen.  Aaron won 10-9.  This was commemorated on a Calbee card from the 1977 "Oh Series" (#93):
  

Speaking of baseball cards, the really interesting thing about the Mets tour is that there's a baseball card set for it!  Ed Broder was stationed in Japan with the US Air Force in the 1970's and he published and sold six somewhat primitive sets of NPB baseball cards.  These were all obviously unlicensed, home brew cards but, as Gary Engel has pointed out, "most pre-1973 Japanese cards of all types are unlicensed" so these cards don't carry the same sort of stigma as some of the more recent ones. 

Broder's first set was a 20 card one for the Mets tour.  It featured nine player cards for the Mets (including manager Yogi Berra), eight player cards for the Yomiuri Giants and three cards featuring multiple players.  All the photos are in black and white and the card stock is pretty thin, more like a thick piece of paper than a baseball card.  The cards are all about 1 7/8 inches wide and three inches high.  

Meet the Mets:

Yogi Berra

Wayne Garrett

Ron Hodges

Jerry Koosman

Jon Matlack

Felix Millan

John Milner

Tom Seaver

George Theodore

The other members of the Mets who did not have cards include Torre, Ed Kranepool, Benny Ayala, Bruce Boisclair, Ike Hampton, Ted Martinez, Bob Apodaca, Harry Parker and Jack Aker, although Torre and Kranepool are on the multiple player cards.  Some of the Mets more famous players at the time like Rusty Staub, Tug McGraw, Jerry Grote, Bud Harrelson and Cleon Jones had decided not to make the trip.

Here are the cards for the Giants:

Tsuneo Horiuchi

Kazumasa Kono

Shigeo Nagashima

Sadaharu Oh

Shitoshi Sekimoto

Toshimitsu Suetsugu

Kazumi Takahashi

Yoshimasa Takahashi

Some of the Giants players are misidentified on the backs of the cards.  For example, Suetsugu is identified as "Tamio Suetsugu" on his card.

Here are the three multi-player cards:

Kazuyoshi Yamamoto & Joe Torre

Kazuyoshi Yamamoto & Tetsuharu Kawakami

Ed Kranepool, John Milner, Sachio Kinugasa & Joe Torre

Here's what the backs of the cards look like.  As you can see, they're pretty primitive as well with the team logo having that "photo copier" reproduction quality that I was familiar with as a kid when I copied a photo from a book in the Xerox copier at the library:

Four members of the Mets would eventually play in Japan.  Millan played for the Yokohama Taiyo Whales from 1978 to 1980; Garrett played for the Chunichi Dragons in 1979 and 1980 (his brother Adrian played for the Carp from 1977 to 1979); Boisclair played for the Hanshin Tigers in 1980 and Hampton played for the Kintetsu Buffaloes in 1981.  I do not know of any Japanese baseball cards for Boisclair or Hampton but both Millan and Garrett have Calbee and Takara cards.  The only NPB cards I have for either of them, however, is from another unlicensed set made by Americans - the 1979 TCMA set:

1979 TCMA #77

1979 TCMA #52