Wes Westrum In Tokyo

I came across an interesting item on Ebay recently - a set of seven photographs of Wes Westrum in Tokyo.  Westrum had been a catcher for the New York Giants from the late 40's to the late 50's and then had coached for them for a few years after they moved to San Francisco.  He then moved to the Mets and took over as manager after Casey Stengel, the Mets' original manager, broke his hip.  After the Mets dismissed him a few years later, he returned to the Giants, working as both a coach and a scout (not sure if he did that at the same time).  He had a second shot at being a manager when the Giants had him replace Charlie Fox in the middle of the 1974 season but his tenure only lasted until the end of 1975.

So what was Westrum doing in Tokyo?  He was a coach with the Giants when the team spent part of March, 1970, in Japan as the spring training guests of the Lotte Orions.  It was not a particularly good experience for the team as they experienced a packed schedule spread across Japan (nine games in nine days from Shimonoseki at the western end of Honshu along with Osaka, Nagoya and Tokyo) and bad weather (including snow in Osaka).  The Giants went 3-6 on their trip and started the regular season back in the States poorly enough that they fired manager Clyde King in late May.  (Lotte, on the other hand, won the Pacific League pennant that season before falling to the Yomiuri Giants in the Series - becoming the sixth of the Giants' nine vanquished teams on their V9 run.)

Six of the seven photos in the auction appear to have been taken at Tokyo Stadium, the then-home of the Orions.  The remaining one was taken at a dinner somewhere - it's not entirely clear that the photo was from the Japan trip.  These are among the very few color photos I've ever seen of Tokyo Stadium.

I will confess to feeling a little guilty that I've swiped the images from the auction but the asking price of $100 is a bit steep.  I'm feeling less guilty by at least including the link to the auction above.

I thought I'd take a shot at trying to identify everyone in the photos but, to be honest, I don't think I've done a very good job.

The "70" on the sleeve of the guy on the right indicates that Westrum is posing with Hall of Famer Hiroshi Nakao, who was the Giants' farm team manager that year.

I'm guessing that this is Orions' manager Wataru Nonin with Westrum.  I've only been able to track down one photo of Nonin (from a 2014 Baseball Magazine mook about NPB managers) but I think it's him:

Their relative heights support this guess.  Westrum was 5-11 while Nonin was 5-6.  I can buy that there's five inches between the tops of their heads.

It's kind of amazing how there can be ten players in a photo and almost all of them are positioned in just the right way that their uniform numbers and faces can't be seen.  The one exception is the guy on the right side who's partially obscured by the guy in street clothes.  It looks like the name on the uniform starts with "Sato" and his uniform number starts with "3".  I think this is Susumu Satomi, a back up catcher who wore number 39.  There were two players on the team with the surname "Sato" - both pitchers - but Motohiko wore #17 and Keiji wore #41 so I don't think it's either of them.

The catcher on the left appears to have a name that ends in "A" and a uniform number that ends in "6".  Not positive but I think he's Yasuo Otsuka who wore number 26.

That's clearly Otsuka on the far right.  Not sure who anyone else in the photo (other than Westrum and Nonin) are.

Of the ten players visible or at least partially visible in this photo, there's only one whose uniform number is visible.  Problem is that there's no #83 on the roster for the team on Japanese Wikipedia and the listing for #83 for Lotte at the "Player Number History" website starts with a pitcher named Masao Nara in 1971, a year after this.  I'm going to guess that this was a batting practice pitcher but I don't know who it is - especially since there doesn't appear to be a name on the back of the uniform.  It's also entirely possible that someone decided to change their number during spring training.

Of a little more interest is who the guy next to Nonin is.  I'm guessing it's one of the coaches for the team as opposed to a player.  If I have to pick someone, I'd go with Hall of Famer Sadao Kondo, who was the Orion's pitching coach.  He wore glasses and was almost as tall as Westrum (5-9).

Of course, I could be wrong about any of these identifications.  If anyone has any better guesses, let me know.