Long time scout and former Kintetsu Buffalo and Nankai Hawk Jack Bloomfield passed away this past week at an age of at least 92*. Bloomfield had spent parts of six seasons in the minor league organizations of the Milwaukee Braves, Cincinnati Reds, Pittsburgh Pirates and Kansas City A's before joining the Kintetsu Buffalo (the name was singular until 1962) in the middle of the 1960 season.
*The linked Newsweek article says he was 95, his Wikipedia page says he was 94 (born on August 7, 1930) and his Baseball-Reference page says he was 92 (born on August 7, 1932). I'm inclined to believe Baseball-Reference.
Bloomfield would lead the Pacific League in batting in 1962 and 1963 but he first made headlines in Japan due to an unfortunate incident during the 1961 season. The Buffalo were playing the Braves in Nishinomiya when a fan stuck his head into Kintetsu's dugout and yelled "Yankee go home!" to Bloomfield. Bloomfield went into the stands after the fan and punched him. He was subsequently fined 50,000 yen and suspended for a week.
After four and a half seasons with Kintetsu, Bloomfield transferred to the Buffaloes cross-town rivals the Nankai Hawks in spring of 1965. He stayed with Nankai for two season before they replaced him with Don Blasingame. After retiring as a player, he spent a lot of time as a scout in several organizations and coached for the Padres in 1974 and the Cubs from 1975 to 1978 (partly under Jim Marshall, who played in Japan at the same time Bloomfield did).
Bloomfield's career NPB batting average was .315 and he was a five time all star (1961-64, 1966). He won Best 9 awards each season that he lead the PL in batting.
As you might imagine, Bloomfield doesn't have a lot of NPB cards. The new Vintage Edition of Engel lists eight - three menko cards, three bromide cards, a gum card and a game card. All except two of the menko cards are pretty rare. As far as I can tell, he's only appeared in one modern card set - the 2009 BBM Kintetsu Anniversary set. Here are the cards I have for him:
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| 1964 Marukami JCM 14g |
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| 2009 BBM Kintetsu Annivesary #13 |
Bloomfield joined Nankai in 1965, just as NPB baseball cards were entering the dead zone - there were very few cards produced between 1965 and 1972. As a result, there are no known cards of Bloomfield as a Hawk. However, his photo in the foreign player registry in Wayne Graczyk's annual "Japan Pro Baseball Handbooks" shows him with Nankai:
(H/T NPB Reddit)
