Your Hit Parade

2006 BBM Nostalgic Baseball #014

I noticed something interesting recently when I was researching the "Untouchable Records" subset from the 1995 BBM set.  In 1994, Ichiro got 210 hits, shattering Fujio Fujimura's single season hits record of 191 which had stood for 44 years.  I mentioned in the post that the single season hits record had been surpassed twice in the past 30 years, with Matt Murton setting a new record of 214 in 2010 and Shogo Akiyama topping him with 216 in 2015.  But take a guess at how many times Fujimura's total of 191 has been equalled or surpassed since 1994.

Nineteen times!

Fujimura's record was set in 1950 and stood for 44 years.  During those 44 years, only three players even got within 10 hits of the record - Larry Raines with 184 in 1954; Yoshinori Hirose with 187 in 1963; and Isao Harimoto with 182 in 1976.  But since Ichiro passed the mark in 1994, fifteen different players have gotten at least 191 hits during at least one season with Akiyama having done it twice and Norichika Aoki having done it FOUR times.  You can see the list of the top single season hit totals in NPB history here. 

It turns out there's a pretty obvious reason for why Fujimura's record has been passed so many times since 1994* and it's actually part of the reason that the record stood for so long - the number of games in a season.  

*And it's not steroids

The number of games in a season for an NPB team has varied over the years and, especially in the early days of the two league system, it wasn't unusual for a Central League team to play a different number of games in a season than a Pacific League team.  In 1950, Fujimura's Tigers played 140 games, the same as the rest of the Central League teams.  The number of games played per team dropped to 116 in 1951, went to 120 in 1952 and then 130 in 1953.  It remained at 130-ish for the next ten years before going back to 140 for three years (1963-65) and then dropping back into the 130's for the next three years.

Meantime each Pacific League team played only 120 games in 1950, dropped to 104 in 1951, went back to 120-ish for 1952 and 1953 before jumping to 140 in 1954 (when Raines got his 184 hits with Hankyu).  The number of games reached 143 in 1955 and 154 in 1956 before dropping to the 130's again the next few season.  It jumped back up to 140 in 1961, dropped back to 133 in 1962 and then leapt to 150 in 1963 (when Hirose got his 187 hits for Nankai).  It stayed at 150 for 1964, then dropped to 140 for 1965 and into the 130's for the next couple years.  

I think that the two leagues finally stabilized at 130 games for teams in each league starting in 1969.  It remained at that level for the next 28 years, increasing to 135 in 1997 and then to 140 in 2001 and 144 around 2004 or so.  It dropped to 143 ten years ago and has been there ever since (with the exception of the COVID shortened 2020 season).

So the record was set in a season that had an unusually high number of games - more than only a handful of seasons over the next almost 50 years.  Once the number of games a team played was the same or higher than the 140 played in 1950, Fujimura's record was surpassed many times.

2000 BBM 20th Century Best 9 #S-02

This actually makes Ichiro's 1994 performance all the more impressive.  He surpassed Fujimura's record by 19 hits while playing in ten fewer games.  There were two more times that Fujimura's record was topped in fewer games than 140.  Ichiro had 193 hits in 130 games in 1996 and Bobby Rose had 192 hits in 134 games in 1999.  The remaining seventeen times Fujimura's total was equalled or surpassed all happened after 2001 and therefore in at least the same number of games.