Who?

I was scrolling through BlueSky the other day and I came across a post (skeet?) from someone who's son was going to Japan to participate in the JET program.  They'd included a picture showing a bunch of baseball cards of Americans who'd played in Japan like Davey Johnson, Charlie Manuel, Roger Repoz, Warren Cromartie and Miles Mikolas.  I was taken aback by the inclusion of John Werhas, who'd spent a couple seasons with the Dodgers in the 1960's and also played for the Taiyo Whales in 1971.  I'd never heard of this guy and I was kind of surprised.  I guess I had an unrealistic assumption that I'd heard of every Westerner to play in Japan.  

I was disabused of this notion when I checked out the list of gaijin from one of the late Wayne Graczyk's annual "Japan Pro Baseball Fan Handbook & Media Guides".  When I looked up Werhas, I saw a whole bunch of other names I'd never heard of either - Jarvis Tatum, Thad Tillotson, Elijah Johnson, Terry Hankins and Bill Sorrell, for example, who were all on the same page in the guide as Werhas:

I consoled myself by thinking that, well, none of these guys had baseball cards because they played in Japan before Calbee started doing cards, so why would I have heard of them?  And these guys were all playing before I got interested in baseball in the mid-70's so it's not surprising that I hadn't heard of them.

Then I went on Ebay and found listings for Japanese cards of two more gaijin that I'd never heard of.  Both cards were from the 1980's so I theoretically could have heard of either player but I really hadn't.  I picked up both cards and they arrived in the mail yesterday.

The first player is Art Gardner, who played in the Astros, Giants and Expos organization in the 1970's, including 86 games at the major league level over three seasons with Houston and San Francisco.  He spent 1981 and 1982 in Japan with the Carp.  It's not really surprising that I hadn't heard of him as he wasn't in any Topps sets in the 70's.  Here's his 1981 Calbee card:

1981 Calbee #90

He only had one Calbee card in 1981 but he had three in 1982.  He also appeared in the Takara Carp set for both seasons.

The second player was Richard (or Rich) Duran who spent part of 1984 with the Kintetsu Buffaloes.  He had a surprisingly short minor league career so it's very odd that he ended up in Japan.  He had signed with the Brewers organization as a undrafted free agent in 1979 where he split time between Double-A Holyoke and Single-A Stockton.  He apparently didn't play in 1980 but returned to Stockton in 1981.  He spent 1982 and 1983 in Mexico with Ciudad Juarez, hitting what I think was a league leading .377 in 1983.  He parlayed that average into a contract with the Buffaloes for 1984 but it didn't go well.  He was only hitting .188 in mid-May when he decided to follow Kintetsu's other foreign player - Don Money - back to the US, forcing the team to replace them with Dick Davis and Mark Corey (who, like Money,  I had actually heard of).  Here's Duran's 1984 Takara Kids card:

1984 Takara Kids Buffaloes #44

Duran only had three baseball cards and two of them are Takara issues from Japan.  The other card is a 1979 TCMA Holyoke Millers card which I actually had owned when I was in high school, although I think I can be forgiven for not remembering everyone in a set I owned 40 years ago.