JMC 2003

Last week when I did my memorial post for Toshio Kanbe, I included a card that I thought was probably Kanbe from what I described as a set "of uncataloged, blank backed cards from around 1975".  I got curious about these cards since I don't think I'd ever paid a whole lot of attention to them since I got them.  What really surprised me is that I must not have made much of an effort to identify the players on them - although in my defense, I probably got them before I was aware of some of the uniform number references on line and before I could use the Google Translate app on my phone to translate text on baseball cards.  I have 20 cards from this set (assuming they're all from the same set) and I had only identified maybe half of the people appearing on the cards.  I sat down and worked through the cards again and was able to increase the number of identifications.

It then occurred to me that I should check to see if this was still an uncataloged set.  After all, Gary Engel has published several updates to the Vintage Edition of his "Japanese Baseball Cards Checklist and Price Guide" since I got these cards (not that I remember when I got them but it was a while ago).  As it turns out, these cards are most likely from a set that Gary has dubbed "JMC 2003:  1976 Blank Backs".  Gary has identified 29 cards but acknowledges that there are likely more cards.  The JMC 2003 cards are 2" x 2 3/4" in size which match the cards I have.  The set has a scarcity rating of "R3", meaning there's "between 11 and 99 copies known of most cards."

Gary's description of the set is "Pure cards with white borders. Blank backed. Several picture-in-picture cards. A few cards have text in the background that is cut-off in the middle of phrases. Most likely, these cards used pictures cropped from various sources without license".  As we'll see in a minute, that description definitely applies to the cards that I have as well.  I think about half the cards I have are in Gary's list.

I had given these cards a date of 1975 but it's entirely possible that they are really from 1976.  Or it's possible they're from both years - I suspect that these cards were being randomly printed up by some outfit somewhere in Japan and they probably weren't concerned with making sure the cards made any sense to collectors 50 years later.

OK, enough back story.  Let's look at the cards.

 This first card shows a right handed hitter for the Dragons.  I have no idea who it is.

Based on the uniform number, I'm pretty certain that this is Takashi Yamaguchi of the Hankyu Braves

This is the first card I've shown that I think appears in Gary's list of cards for the set.  He lists a card for "Toshiharu Ueda wearing Braves jacket".  It does look like Ueda to me, who was the Braves manager at the time.

I'm pretty confident that both of these cards are Koichi Tabuchi of the Tigers.  Gary lists both cards with the top one being described as "full body/mid swing" and the lower one being "head & shoulders".  I'm not sure which ballpark he's superimposed on in the top card - I don't think it's Koshien.

This is one of the cards that I had not previously identified but I should have been able to.  For one thing, it looks like the player's uniform number is #8.  For another, while the text on the right is cut off a little, the top four kanji characters are still pretty obviously "山本 浩二" which is Koji Yamamoto (who wore #8 for the Carp).  Gary lists this card as well as "Koji Yamamoto - Ca RHB swinging"

Another Carp player but I don't know who it is.  Gary doesn't have anything listed that matches it.

This is the card of Toshio Kanbe that kicked this whole thing off.  Gary does not list this card either.

This is a very intriguing card.  I don't know the left handed Lotte Orions pitcher is, but given the mix of uniforms in the background, I suspect the photo was taken at an All Star game.  I think there's a Nankai Hawk to the left of the player and that may be Yutaka Fukumoto of the Braves (#7) to the immediate right.  If it IS from an All Star game, and one of the 1975 All Star games and the player is, in fact, a pitcher, then it's most likely Norihiro Mizutani who was the only left handed pitcher from Lotte on the 1975 Pacific League All Stars.

The inset photo is also interesting.  Just looking at it, I was pretty sure the guy on the left was Hiroshi Arakawa, who was managing the Swallows at this time.  But who's the guy on the right?  The text running down the side of the photo may give a clue as it says "Chatting with my mentor, coach Arakawa" (translation from Google translate so it might not be fully accurate).  Given who Arakawa's most famous pupil was, it's not unreasonable to assume the guy on the right is Sadaharu Oh.  

Gary lists a card of Arakawa as "H. Arakawa - Sw w/unknown Lotte LHP" which could be this card but it might not be.

This is Katsuya Nomura of the Hawks.  Gary has a card listed as "Katsuya Nomura - Ha #18[sic] at bat" that I assume is this one.

This is Isao Harimoto of the Nippon-Ham Fighters.  Gary has a card of Harimoto listed but he says he's with the Giants.  Harimoto was traded from the Fighters to the Giants after the 1975 season which is why I tagged these cards as a 1975 set.  I'm sure the card of Harimoto with the Giants is why Gary tagged the set as being from 1976.

This is another card that I didn't identify before but, through the wonders of Google translate, I can now tell is Swallows pitcher Hiromu Matsuoka.  The text on the left side of the card says something like "pitcher Hiromu Matsuoka's blazing fastball!".  Gary has this card listed as well (with a description of "RHP full body EOD [end of delivery]"

I'm fairly confident that this is Tsuneo Horiuchi of the Giants.  The number is obscured but Horiuchi wore #18 and that's possibly the number.  Other possibilities would be Takaaki Taniyama (#12) and Shigeru Kobayashi (#19) but Horiuchi was the biggest name of those three at the time (or pretty much anytime, really, although Kobayashi had a few good seasons with the Giants a little later than this before being dealt to the Tigers in the Suguru Egawa affair).  That's coach Yukinori Miyata (#83) in the background.  Engel does not list this card.

These are both Shigeo Nagashima, who was in his first two seasons managing the Giants in 1975-76.  Engel lists one Nagashima card which he describes as "portrait".  That could describe either one of these.

This is Shoji Sadaoka who was the Giants first round draft pick in the 1974 draft.  Gary has a card of Sadaoka listed that's simply described as "pitching" which may or not correspond to this card.

I'm pretty confident the guy on the right is Masaichi Kaneda who was managing Lotte at this time.  I don't know who the Swallows player on the left is (could also be a coach although I'm pretty sure it's not manager Arakawa).  Once again, this may be from an All Star game (since there was no interleague play in 1975).  The light standard in the background looks like the ones at Koshien which hosted Game One of the All Star series that year.  IF that's the case, the only Swallows on the Central League team that year were pitchers Matsuoka and Takeshi Yasuda, catcher Akihiro Oya and outfielder Tsutomu Wakamatsu.  Engel lists a card for Kaneda with the description "arm out to the right" which doesn't really fit this card.

This is obviously two Giants players but I don't know who they are.  If the orange text on the guy on the left's sleeve is his uniform number - it looks like #11 - then he's Yoshimasa Takahashi.  But that might not be a uniform number.  Gary lists a card with both Sadaoka and Horiuchi on it which might be this one but, then again, it might not be.  I could buy that that's Sadaoka on the left and Horiuchi on the right though.

This is another intriguing card.  I'm fairly certain that the guy on the left is Senichi Hoshino but I don't know who the guy on the right is.  Gary lists a card that shows both Hoshino and Wally Yonamine, who was the Dragons manager at the time.  While I'd love for this to be that card, I'm kind of skeptical that the guy on the right of this card is Yonamine, simply because I haven't seen any photos of Yonamine as Chunichi manager where he's not wearing glasses.

This last card is not listed in Engel but the players are easy to identify.  From left to right are Masakatsu Tsuchiya (#16) of the Dragons, Kazuhiko Kudo (#19) of the Tigers and Sadaoka (#20).  The three players were the top high school picks for each team in the 1974 draft with Tsuchiya and Sadaoka both being first round picks - Kudo was the Tigers second pick after Masaaki Koga (who ultimately didn't sign with the Tigers).  I suspect this photo was from the farm team All Star game (now called the "Fresh All Star Game" but was then called the "Junior All Star Game") that was held at Koshien in 1975 although I don't have any rosters from the game so I can't confirm that.

If anyone has any idea who the handful of guys that I haven't identified are, I'd be happy to hear suggestions.

Mel Bailey Postcards

I got an email a few weeks back from someone who was trying to put together a comprehensive list of Mel Bailey postcards.  Mel Bailey was a US Air Force captain stationed in Japan in the mid to late 1960's who - along with Navy CPO Bud Ackerman - was responsible for importing a number of NPB card sets to the US.  Bailey also took photos at baseball games in both Japan and the US and sold postcards featuring these photos on them.  I had picked up ten of his postcards some time ago and was able to provide the person who contacted me with the list of what I had.

During our email exchange, he mentioned that there was a Mel Bailey postcard of Dick Stuart available on Ebay.  I was sorely tempted by it since there aren't any known baseball cards of Stuart during his two years with the Taiyo Whales.  But I was also trying to keep my vow of not buying anything that wasn't on my want list.  I finally gave in and pulled the trigger right before the auction ended.  Here's the postcard:

I found it interesting that there were some differences between this postcard and the ones I already had.  For one thing, this one is slightly larger than the others - it's 3 3/4 inches wide and 5 1/2 inches high while the others are 3 1/2 inches wide and 5 7/16 inches high.  The other obvious thing is that the other postcards I have seem to have a softer focus - although I'm not sure I'm really using the correct terminology.  Here's the other ten postcards so you can maybe see what I'm trying to talk about:

Yukio Nishimoto

Minoru Murayama

Katsuya Nomura

Futoshi Nakanishi

Katsuo Ohsugi

Katsuo Ohsugi

Masaaki Koyama

Masaichi Kaneda

Masaichi Kaneda

Tetsuharu Kawakami

One other significant difference is the backs of the postcards.  My correspondent said that Bailey mostly printed his postcards on Kodak paper but also used EtchTone and Mitsubishi.  All of the ones that I had already had were on Kodak paper:

I played with the contrast a little in that image to make the writing a little more visible.  I believe that that's Bailey's handwriting identifying the player.

The Stuart card, however, used Mitsubishi paper:

It barely shows up in the scan but Bailey had stamped "Photo By Mel Bailey" just to the left of the line in the center.  I don't know if Bailey wrote "1966" on this but it's not correct - Stuart spent 1966 with the Mets and Dodgers.

Since there were very few NPB baseball cards produced in the late 60's, Bailey's postcards are an intriguing way to maybe fill in some gaps.

The Mets Tour Japan

50 years ago this month, the New York Mets embarked on an 18 game, 12 city tour of Japan that lasted almost four weeks.  In fact, 50 years ago this evening they were playing in their second game of the tour, a 10 inning 4-4 tie against the Yomiuri Giants at Korakuen Stadium in Tokyo.  They played five games at Korakuen on the tour with the remaining games being in Sapporo, Sendai, Koriyama, Niigata, Toyama, Osaka (2 games), Matsuyama, Hiroshima, Fukuoka, Kokura, Nagoya and Shizuoka.  The Mets would go 9-7-2 in Japan, putting up a 3-0 record against an "All Japan" all star team, a 3-1 record against teams that combined the Yomiuri Giants' roster with another teams (the Hawks in Osaka, the Carp in Hiroshima, the Lions in Fukuoka and the Dragons in Nagoya) but only 3-6-2 against Yomiuri.

You can read all the details about the series in Henry Tran's article on it in "Nichibei Yakyu: US Tours Of Japan 1960-2019 (Volume 2)" which was my primary source of information for this post.  There's a couple pieces of trivia that I found interesting:

• These were the final games that Shigeo Nagashima ever played in as he had retired less than two weeks before the Mets arrived
• These were the final games that Tetsuharu Kawakami managed as he announced his retirement at the end of the tour
• Joe Torre had been traded to the Mets about ten days before the tour started but insisted on coming with the team
• There was a home run hitting contest between Henry Aaron and Sadaharu Oh held before the sixth game on November 2nd at Korakuen.  Aaron won 10-9.  This was commemorated on a Calbee card from the 1977 "Oh Series" (#93):
  

Speaking of baseball cards, the really interesting thing about the Mets tour is that there's a baseball card set for it!  Ed Broder was stationed in Japan with the US Air Force in the 1970's and he published and sold six somewhat primitive sets of NPB baseball cards.  These were all obviously unlicensed, home brew cards but, as Gary Engel has pointed out, "most pre-1973 Japanese cards of all types are unlicensed" so these cards don't carry the same sort of stigma as some of the more recent ones. 

Broder's first set was a 20 card one for the Mets tour.  It featured nine player cards for the Mets (including manager Yogi Berra), eight player cards for the Yomiuri Giants and three cards featuring multiple players.  All the photos are in black and white and the card stock is pretty thin, more like a thick piece of paper than a baseball card.  The cards are all about 1 7/8 inches wide and three inches high.  

Meet the Mets:

Yogi Berra

Wayne Garrett

Ron Hodges

Jerry Koosman

Jon Matlack

Felix Millan

John Milner

Tom Seaver

George Theodore

The other members of the Mets who did not have cards include Torre, Ed Kranepool, Benny Ayala, Bruce Boisclair, Ike Hampton, Ted Martinez, Bob Apodaca, Harry Parker and Jack Aker, although Torre and Kranepool are on the multiple player cards.  Some of the Mets more famous players at the time like Rusty Staub, Tug McGraw, Jerry Grote, Bud Harrelson and Cleon Jones had decided not to make the trip.

Here are the cards for the Giants:

Tsuneo Horiuchi

Kazumasa Kono

Shigeo Nagashima

Sadaharu Oh

Shitoshi Sekimoto

Toshimitsu Suetsugu

Kazumi Takahashi

Yoshimasa Takahashi

Some of the Giants players are misidentified on the backs of the cards.  For example, Suetsugu is identified as "Tamio Suetsugu" on his card.

Here are the three multi-player cards:

Kazuyoshi Yamamoto & Joe Torre

Kazuyoshi Yamamoto & Tetsuharu Kawakami

Ed Kranepool, John Milner, Sachio Kinugasa & Joe Torre

Here's what the backs of the cards look like.  As you can see, they're pretty primitive as well with the team logo having that "photo copier" reproduction quality that I was familiar with as a kid when I copied a photo from a book in the Xerox copier at the library:

Four members of the Mets would eventually play in Japan.  Millan played for the Yokohama Taiyo Whales from 1978 to 1980; Garrett played for the Chunichi Dragons in 1979 and 1980 (his brother Adrian played for the Carp from 1977 to 1979); Boisclair played for the Hanshin Tigers in 1980 and Hampton played for the Kintetsu Buffaloes in 1981.  I do not know of any Japanese baseball cards for Boisclair or Hampton but both Millan and Garrett have Calbee and Takara cards.  The only NPB cards I have for either of them, however, is from another unlicensed set made by Americans - the 1979 TCMA set:

1979 TCMA #77

1979 TCMA #52