Longtime MLB player and manager Dave Johnson passed away this morning at age 82. I don't think it's very well known that Johnson spent two seasons with the Yomiuri Giants in the mid-70's, although the fact that he was the only player to be a teammate of both Hank Aaron and Sadaharu Oh sometimes comes up as a trivia question.
Johnson joined the Giants in mid-April of 1975, after he'd appeared in one game with the Atlanta Braves that season. The signing was significant in a number of ways. Johnson would be the first foreign player on Yomiuri since (I think) Toshio "Andy" Miyamoto in 1962 and the first foreign player for the team who was not of Japanese descent. He would also be the first former Major Leaguer to play for the Giants. He also be replacing Giants legend Shigeo Nagashima at third base, a position he really hadn't played much before. The newly retired Nagashima would be his manager.
If I'm following the chronology in Johnson's Japanese Wikipedia page correctly, he signed with the Giants on April 18th, arrived in Japan on the 20th and made his first appearance in a game on the 22nd. That's a game with the ichi-gun team, not a farm team game to get his feet wet. His first at bat was a pinch hitting appearance against the Dragons and Senichi Hoshino - he struck out. That would be a portent on how the season would go. Johnson would battle injuries and unfamiliarity with both Central League pitchers and the third base position. At one point in June, he struck out in eight straight at bats, a league record. He finished the season with a .197 average with 13 home runs in 91 games. He struck out 71 times. Johnson took some of the blame from the fans for the Giants suffering their first (and only) last place finish in their history.
Things improved in 1976. The Giants made a big trade to bring in Isao Harimoto from the Fighters which took some of the pressure off Johnson. They also moved Johnson to second base, with outfielder Shigeru Takada (who was displaced by Harimoto's arrival) moving to third base. Despite still suffering from some injuries, Johnson responded by hitting .275 with 26 home runs in 108 games, helping the Giants win their first Central League under Nagashima (and first in three years which doesn't sound like a long time but that pennant in 1973 had been the last of nine straight). He was selected for the All Star team but declined, taking advantage of the time off to go back to the States for medical treatment. He won both the Best 9 and Diamond Glove post-season awards for second base.
The season ended on a sour note, however, in the Nippon Series against the Hankyu Braves. In the second half of the season, Johnson had extracted a promise from Nagashima that he wouldn't be pinch hit for or removed from the starting lineup. But after going hitless in eight at bats with four strikeouts in the first two games of the Series - both losses for the Giants, Nagashima replaced him with Shozo Doi for Game Three (which Yomiuri also lost). Johnson decided at that point that he'd leave the team after the Series ended. The Giants would rally, winning Games Four, Five and Six before ultimately losing the Series in seven but Johnson would only start in one more game. He went 0-13 with six strikeouts in the Series.
Negotiations with the Giants for the 1977 season broke down with the Giants insisting on a 30% pay cut and Johnson insisting that Nagashima apologize for breaking his promise. The Kintetsu Buffaloes expressed interest in signing him after he and Yomiuri officially parted ways, but decided not to pursue it after the Giants expressed disapproval. Johnson returned to MLB and spent his last two seasons with the Phillies and Cubs before retiring at the end of the 1978 season.
Dave Johnson had a number of baseball cards while he was in Japan. Engel's latest guide lists 31 cards for him, including 20 from the 1975/76/77 Calbee set. I think that number's a little low, though as it does not include a card he shares with Isao Harimoto or his appearance on the Giants' team card. He also had a card in the 1975 NST set, one of the Yamakatsu sets, a Broder set and a bunch of oddball sets including a couple of inserts in kid's magazines. Here's some of the Calbees and the Yamakatsu:
1975/76/77 Calbee #348
1975/76/77 Calbee #385 (w/Isao Harimoto)
1975/76/77 Calbee #449
1975/76/77 Calbee #494
1975/76/77 Calbee #559
1975/76/77 Calbee #591
1975/76/77 Calbee #675
1975/76/77 Calbee #1067
1976 Yamakatsu JY1a (w/Isao Harimoto)
I've had that Yamakatsu card a while now but it wasn't until today that I noticed that it only had a facsimile signature for Harimoto.
As far as I can tell, Johnson has only appeared in two OB sets since he left Japan - the two BBM sets from 2013 that featured foreign players - "Legendary Foreigners" and "Deep Impact":
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:
*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:
1964 Marukami JCM 14g
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:
Former Toei Flyer and Hankyu Brave shortstop Yutaka Ohhashi passed away about ten days ago at age 79. Ohhashi had been a star in the mid-60's at Asia University, winning four Best 9 awards and setting a Tohto League record with 20 career home runs (a record since surpassed by Tadahito Iguchi). He was the number one overall pick by Toei in the 1968 NPB draft (which apparently predates the system now in place where multiple teams can select a player in the first round and a lottery is used to determine who gets the player).
He was pretty much immediately made the Flyers' starting shortstop in his rookie season of 1969. His defense was sound but his offense was not great. He hit .217 in 1969, .183 in 1970 and .213 in 1971.
He was somewhat unexpectedly dealt to the Hankyu Braves after the 1971 season in a blockbuster trade involving both teams' starting shortstops. Toshizo Sakamoto had committed an error in the 1971 Nippon Series that contributed to the Braves losing the Series to the Giants in five games and the team apparently wanted him out of Nishinomiya. The Braves sent Sakamoto, Koji Okamoto and Seigo Sasaki to Toei for Ohhashi and Masayuki Tanemo. Ohhashi found some of his lost collegiate power in Kansai, reaching double digits in home runs in his first three seasons with Hankyu after never reaching that level for the Flyers. His batting average, however, remained in the low .200's.
I think he pretty much became the dictionary definition of "good-field, no-hit" in the 70's. NPB instituted the "Diamond Glove" award in 1972 (later renamed the "Golden Glove") and Ohhashi won the first seven Pacific League awards for shortstop. His lack of offense didn't prevent him from winning the Best 9 awards for PL shortstop from 1972 to 1976. As far as I can tell, the only offensive category he ever led the league in was sacrifices in 1977. He was a three time All Star (1970, 1973 and 1975) and helped the Braves win three straight Nippon Series Championships between 1975 and 1977.
He retired after the 1982 season and spent the next 21 years coaching for the Braves (1983-90), Dragons (1991-92), Swallows (1993-2000) and Dragons again (2001-03). He went on to coach in Taiwan for the Uni-President Lions in 2005-07 and in South Korea for the SK Wyverns in 2008.
I was a bit surprised to discover that I really only had one card of his from when he was active (not including his appearance on the Braves multi-player card from the 1975/76/77 Calbee set). He's appeared with some regularity in BBM and Epoch OB player sets over the past 25 years although never with the Flyers - I suspect the fact that there's never been an OB Fighters set that covered time before they moved to Hokkaido has something to do with that. Here's a handful of his cards:
I have to be honest here - I'd been kind of hoping that I'd never write this post. I know I was fighting against actuarial probabilities, especially given that he'd had a stroke 21 years ago, but I was really hoping he'd beat the odds and live well into his 90's and I'd have stopped writing before I had to write this.
Most Americans assume that Sadaharu Oh is the most famous Japanese baseball player from the pre-Nomo and Ichiro days. And on a world wide stage, that's probably true. But the most famous baseball player in Japan was Shigeo Nagashima. He passed away from pneumonia earlier this week at age 89.
Nagashima was born in what is now Sakura-city in Chiba-prefecture. Surprisingly, he was a Tigers fan growing up and his favorite player was Fumio Fujimura. He started playing baseball in elementary school and continued through high school at what I think was then called Chiba Sakura Daiichi High School. He drew some attention from a corporate league team after graduating but his father wanted him to get an education so he instead enrolled at Rikkio University in Tokyo.
Tragedy struck as his father passed away during his freshman year at Rikkio but he remained there (despite briefly considering dropping out to join the Chunichi Dragons who apparently rebuffed his offer). By his sophomore year, he was the starting third baseman for the team. He and teammates Tadashi Sugiura and Kingo Motoyashiki were referred to as the "Rikkio Three Crows". He won led the Tokyo Big Six in batting in both the Spring 1956 season and the Fall 1957 season, his final one in college. He won five straight Best 9 awards from Fall 1955 to Fall 1957. He hit eight home runs during his college career which was the record at the time. He helped the team win back-to-back championships in the Spring and Fall seasons in 1957.
1974/75 Calbee #499 (w/Tadashi Sugiura)
He very nearly signed with the Nankai Hawks (where Sugiura went) after graduation but his mother begged him to sign with a team in Tokyo so he instead signed with the Yomiuri Giants. He hit seven home runs in his first training camp with the team in 1958, raising expectations. He struck out four times against Masaichi Kaneda and the Swallows on Opening Day, though. He recovered after that, however, and ended his rookie season with a .305 average and league leading totals in home runs (28) and RBIs (92). He won the Central League Rookie Of The Year award (with Sugiura winning the Pacific League award) and he appeared on the cover of the first ever issue of Shukan Baseball with Tatsuro Hirooka in April.
1998 BBM #556
1959 would be significant for two reasons. The first is that the Giants signed a kid pitcher out of Waseda Jitsugyo High School. It would take a couple seasons for Sadaharu Oh to become the feared slugger that we're familiar with but this was his rookie season. He and Nagashima would be teammates for the remainder of Nagashima's career and would be dubbed the "ON Cannon" with Oh batting third in the lineup and Nagashima batting cleanup.
1992 BBM #478
The pair would hit home runs in the same game a record 106 times. The first time they did it was in the other significant event of 1959 - the Emperor's Game. Emperor Hirohito attended the game between the Giants and Tigers at Korakuen Stadium in Tokyo on June 25th, the first time an Emperor had attended a professional baseball game. Oh had a game-tying two run home run in the bottom of the seventh which set the stage for Nagashima to hit a sayonara home run in the bottom of the ninth.
2000 Calbee ON-07
I'm not going to go year-by-year through the rest of Nagashima's career because that'll make this post way to long. Suffice to say he was very good. He won the Central League batting crown six times (1959-61, 1963, 1966 and 1971) and led the league in home runs twice (1958 and 1961) and RBIs five times (1958, 1963 and 1968-70). He won five Central League MVP awards (1961, 1963, 1966, 1968 and 1971). He won the Best 9 award for third base in every season of his 17 year career. The Diamond Glove award (now called the Golden Glove) didn't start until 1972 but he won the first two of those awards for third basemen. He was selected to the All Star team every year of his career although he did not participate in the 1964 games due to injury.
He played in 13 Nippon Series, losing in the first two in 1958 and 1959 (to Sugiura's Hawks) but winning in 1961, 1963 and the V9 years of 1965-1973. He won a record four Nippon Series MVP awards (1963, 1965, 1969 and 1970). His 25 home runs in Nippon Series play is second only to Oh's 29. He hit four home runs in a Series twice (1969 and 1970), a feat that has only been matched by Kenji Johjima (2000 and 2003). He homered in three consecutive at bats in the 1970 Series which I think has never been done by anyone else.
2014 Epoch Shigeo Nagashima National Treasures #06
Nagashima's popularity was such that his marriage in 1965 was telecast nationwide. When he decided to retire at the end of the 1974 season, his retirement ceremony on October 14th before a packed Korakuen Stadium was rated one of the top events of 1974 (and later the top baseball event of the 1970's, topping Oh passing Henry Aaron). The Giants would sweep the Dragons in a doubleheader with Oh and Nagashima both homering in the first game for the 106th and final time. Nagashima gave a speech after the game that's been compared to Lou Gehrig's "Luckiest Man" speech, thanking the fans for supporting him throughout his career. The image of him standing alone on the pitcher's mound with the Korakuen Stadium scoreboard behind him is iconic. (UPDATE - Nippon Baseball Retro has an English translation of his speech)
2000 BBM 20th Century Best 9 #S-03
I'm not sure exactly when they did it but the Giants retired Nagashima's uniform number 3. I've always felt it's kind of neat bit of trivia that there have been three Hall Of Famers to wear the number 3 with the Giants - Haruyasu Nakajima, Shigeru Chiba and Nagashima with Nagashima, obviously, being the last one.
2001 BBM #530
He took over as manager of the Giants from Tetsuharu Kawakami and it didn't go well at first. The Giants finished last in 1975, the only time in their history this had happened. They rebounded in 1976, however, winning their first Central League pennant in three years although they lost to the Hankyu Braves in the Nippon Series. 1977 was a repeat of 1976 with the Giants again winning the Central League and again falling to the Braves in the Series. They narrowly lost the 1978 pennant to the Swallows but dropped to fifth in 1979. They rebounded to finish in third in 1980 but it wasn't enough to save his job and he was let go by the team at the end of the year.
1977 Calbee #145 (w/Masaichi Kaneda)
He spent the 1980's as a "ronin" (according to his Japanese Wikipedia page), traveling around to watch baseball. He did some TV commentary and was approached by several teams about becoming their manager but declined all of them in hopes that he'd be rehired by the Giants. In the meantime he was elected to the Hall Of Fame in 1988 and got to see his son Kazushige make his debut with the Yakult Swallows that same year.
He was rehired as Giants manager in late 1992, replacing Motoshi Fujita (who had replaced Nagashima 12 years earlier). His first act as manager was to beat out Chunichi, Daiei and Hanshin for the rights to Hideki Matsui in that fall's draft. The team would make a deal with the Swallows to acquire Kazushige Nagashima so that he could manage his son.
1993 BBM #475
The Giants finished third that year but the following year they narrowly beat out the Dragons for the CL pennant and beat the Lions in the Nippon Series for Nagashima's first championship as a manager.
1999 BBM Mr. Giants #G85
The Giants would win another pennant in 1996 but would lose in the Series to Ichiro and the Orix BlueWave. They'd drop to fourth in 1997 and improved a spot in the standings in each of the following years, finishing third in 1998, second in 1999 and first in 2000. With the Hawks, led by Sadaharu Oh, winning the PL pennant in 2000, the 2000 Nippon Series was dubbed the "ON Series".
2002 BBM Giants #G114
Nagashima's Giants defeated Oh's Hawks in six games for Nagashima's second championship as a manager. It was the fifteenth and final championship of his career. After a second place finish in 2001, he retired as Giants manager.
2001 Upper Deck #76
He didn't stay retired for long, however, as towards the end of 2002, he was named the manager of the Japanese National Baseball Team for the 2004 Olympics. He was the first former professional manager to lead the National Team as the previous teams had all been helmed by coaches from either colleges or corporate league teams.
The first hurdle for the team was to qualify for the 2004 Olympics and the team put together for the 2003 Asian Games was a juggernaut. They outscored their opponents 24-1 while sweeping China, Taiwan and South Korea to clinch a spot in the Athens games.
2003 BBM Japan National Team #01
Unfortunately, Nagashima would be unable to manage the team in Athens, as he suffered a stroke in March of 2004 which left his right side partially paralyzed. Head coach Kiyoshi Nakahata ended up taking over the team from him, leading them to a disappointing Bronze Medal finish.
2005 BBM Giants #G001
He was named "lifetime honorary director" of the Giants in the 00's and was awarded the "National Honor Award" with Hideki Matsui in a ceremony at Tokyo Dome on May 5th, 2013. He and Matsui also participated in a first pitch ceremony with Matsui pitching to Nagashima.
2013 BBM 2nd Version #690
2013 BBM 2nd Version #684
While he didn't get to manage the national team for the 2004 Olympics, he was a torch bearer for the 2020 (2021) Tokyo Olympics. He briefly held the torch with help from Matsui before passing the flame on to Oh:
I'm not positive, but I think his last public appearance was last May 5th for "Shigeo Nagashima Day" at Tokyo Dome which was part of the Giants' 90th Anniversary celebrations. There's an Epoch One card for the event that I don't have yet but I swiped the image from their website:
That's Hideki Matsui and Shinnosuke Abe behind him.
Speaking of baseball cards of Nagashima, he has a lot of them. I've included some above but I thought I'd share some more of my favorites:
1958 Yamakatsu JCM33a
1962 Doyusha JCM55
1962 JBR 64
1964 Marukami JCM 14g
1973 Calbee #1
1973/74 Calbee #148
1975 NST #56
2005 BBM Nostalgic Baseball #099
2014 Epoch Shigeo Nagashima National Treasures #19
2020 BBM Giants History 1934-2020 #15
Some comments about these cards:
Nagashima had a lot of cards issued for him in 1958 - TCDB lists 25 but doesn't have the one I show here. It's impossible to say which one was the first one issued so you have lots of good choices if you want a rookie card of him
