Former Hiroshima Toyo Carp and Hankyu Brave Jitsuo Mizutani has passed away from heart failure in Nishinomiya after several months of poor health. He was 77.
Mizutani was the ace pitcher at Miyazaki Shogyo High School and played in the Summer Koshien tournament in both 1963 and 1964. The team made it to the semi-finals in 1964 before losing to Kochi High School, the eventual champions. He was taken in the fourth round of the 1965 NPB draft (the first one ever) by the Carp. He suffered from kidney disease which caused him to miss training camp in 1966 and I think played a role in him switching to being a position player. He made his ichi-gun debut late in the 1966 season, striking out in his only at bat - a pinch hitting appearance.
He spent most of the next three seasons on the farm before making the top team for good in 1970 and becoming one of the Carp's starting outfielders the following year. He made the All Star team and won a Best 9 award in 1971, the only time he did either of those things in his career. He was a solid outfielder for the team for the next few years before being moved to first base in 1977.
He led the Central League in batting with a .348 average in 1978 and helped the Carp win the Central League pennant in 1975, 1979 and 1980. He had two home runs in the 1979 Series against the Kintetsu Buffaloes and won an Outstanding Player award.
He was traded to the Hankyu Braves for Hideji Kato following the 1982 season and had a career year in his first season in Nishinomiya, hitting 36 home runs with a league leading 114 RBIs, both career highs. On Opening Day of 1984, however, he was hit in the head with a pitch, fracturing his skull. He never really recovered, getting into only 63 games in 1984 and hitting .181 and only 23 games in 1985, hitting just .083. He suffered from the effects of the beaning for the rest of his life.
He retired following the 1985 season and embarked on a somewhat long career as a coach, working for Hankyu (1987-88), Hiroshima (1989-93), Kintetsu (1994-95), Fukuoka (1996-97), Chunichi (1998-2001) and Hanshin (2003-06, 2013). He was interim manager for the Buffaloes in 1995, taking over the team after Keishi Suzuki was dismissed and leading the team to a 16-25 record.
He had done some baseball commentary on both TV and the newspaper Daily Sports. He also ran a chicken shop in Nishinomiya between his coaching stints with Hanshin.
Mizutani's first known baseball card was #296 in the 1973-74 Calbee set. He had a number of cards in various Calbee, Yamakatsu, Takara and other sets during his career and appeared fairly regularly in OB sets from both BBM and Epoch since 2002. Here's a handful of his cards:
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| 1975-76-77 Calbee #299 |
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| 1979 TCMA #30 |
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| 1979 Yamakatsu JY8 #58 |
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| 2002 BBM All Time Heroes #081 |
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| 2013 BBM The Trade Stories #36 |
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| 2017 BBM Time Travel 1975 #53 |
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| 2020 BBM Time Travel 1985 #81 |
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| 2020 BBM Carp History 1950-2020 #19 |
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| 2021 Buffaloes History 1936-2021 #38 |
1 comment:
I have quite a few of his cards but never knew about his career ending beaning before, that is quite a sad way to end a career. Great post though.
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