Japanese Baseball Cards: RIP Hiroaki Inoue

Monday, December 15, 2025

RIP Hiroaki Inoue

Two retired NPB players passed away last week - Hiroaki Inoue on Tuesday and Nobuhiro Takashiro on Wednesday. Despite there being an ten year ago difference between the two of them (ten years and six days to be exact), there's some superficial similarities in their careers. Both players spent a few years playing in the corporate leagues before being drafted in the first round. Both players played for the Carp (Inoue's first team and Takashiro's last) and both players played for the Fighters - they were teammates for four years starting in 1981. Both players also coached for the Dragons. The similarities kind of end there and, as I said, they were pretty superficial but I found it interesting that two members of the 1981 Pacific League Champion Fighters passed away on consecutive days. I'll do a post for Takashiro tomorrow (hopefully) while I'll talk about Inoue today.

Inoue passed away last week at age 81 from hypovolemic shock after being in poor health for the last month or so. He had joined Telecommunications Kinki in the corporate leagues after graduating from Hokuyo High School in Osaka. He played in the Intercity Baseball Tournament in both 1965 and 1966 and was named to the "Amateur Baseball Best 9" team in 1966, the first year such a team was selected. He was drafted in the first round of the 1967 draft by the Hiroshima Carp. The Carp only played him sparingly in his first season as he only got into 35 games and hit .224. He became a regular in 1969 though, first as an outfielder and then as a third baseman. He didn't hit much, though. After hitting .252 in 1969, he dropped to .209 in 1970 and .216 in 1971. His performance didn't improve in 1972 and he ended up getting benched, finishing the season hitting .186.

A change of scenery was in order and the Carp traded him to the Dragons for pitcher Kazuto Kawabata. His batting average improved considerably in Nagoya, reaching .271 in 1973 and .290 in 1974. He had the best year of his career in 1975, making the All Star team for the first time and hitting a career high 18 home runs (he had also hit 18 in 1974). He and Koji Yamamoto of the Carp were fighting for the batting crown late in the season and a couple unfortunate things happened to keep him from beating out his former teammate. In the next to last game of the season on October 19th, he came in as a pinch hitter in the third inning against the Carp with the bases loaded. He was intentionally walked to drive in a run and deny him an opportunity to pass Yamamoto. The Dragons were already up 4-0 so it didn't make a whole lot of sense strategically (the Carp did come back to win the game 11-5). Then in the Dragons' final game of the year two days later against the Tigers, Inoue still had a shot at passing Yamamoto - it was the first time in NPB history that a batting race had come down to the last game of the season. Inoue went one for three but was hit by a pitch in his last plate appearance in the game and the season, leaving him with an average of .318, one point behind Yamamoto's .319. Inoue did lead the Central League in hits that year with 149 (although it wasn't an official category at the time) and won a Best 9 award as well.

He slumped somewhat in 1976 but bounced back the following season. He repeated this pattern again in 1978 and 1979, making the All Star team for the second time in 1979. Injuries and the arrival of Seisuke Toyoda (who was 12 years younger than the 36 year old Inoue) cut his playing time in 1980 to only 58 games. The Dragons sent him to the Fighters in a trade for Masaru Tomita and Hideaki Oshima. As I mentioned, he spent four seasons with Nippon-Ham, mostly as a bench player. Probably the highlight of his years with them was his pinch hit, walk off single in the bottom of the ninth of Game One of the 1981 Nippon Series. He retired following the 1984 season and was hired by Tatsuro Hirooka, the manager of the Seibu Lions and a former Carp coach during Inoue's time there, to be the team's defensive and base running coach. However, due to the retirements the previous year of Koichi Tabuchi* and Hiroyuki Yamazaki, the Lions were a bit light on right-handed pinch hitters so Inoue ended up getting pressed into service for ten games. He retired for good after that.

* Yamamoto, Tomita and Tabuchi were teammates at Hosei University in the late 1960's and collectively were known as the "Hosei Three Crows". I'm kind of amused that Inoue had a link (albeit a somewhat tenuous one in Tabuchi's case) to each one of them - battling Yamamoto for the batting crown, being traded for Tomita and (barely) replacing Tabuchi as a bench player for the Lions

Following his retirement, Inoue was a TV commentator although he did coach for the Dragons for two seasons (1993-94) under his former teammate Morimichi Takagi.

Inoue's nickname was "Popeye" due to his somewhat sturdy build. His 137 career hit-by-pitches was third all time in NPB when he retired but he has since fallen to tenth.

Inoue appeared fairly regularly in various card sets between 1974 and 1984. He has cards in Calbee, NST, Nippon-Ham, Takara and some of the more obscure mid-70's menko and game cards. I don't believe there are any cards of him with the Carp and the only card I know of showing him as a Lion is from the 2020 BBM Time Travel 1985 set. He showed up in a handful of OB sets from the last 25 years or so, especially the various Dragons Anniversary sets. Here's a bunch of his cards: