Norihiro Nakamura

It's probably not getting the press it deserves today given the Matsui/Nagashima event but another piece of baseball history occurred today - Norihiro Nakamura of the Yokohama DeNA Baystars notched his 2000th hit.  Nakamura became the 43rd player (and fifth in the last two years) to reach this milestone.  (Technically he reached it earlier last week if you count the five hits he got as a member of the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2005.)

Nakamura was drafted in the fourth round of the 1992 draft by the Kintetsu Buffaloes (a round which also included Ichiro Suzuki and Tomoaki Kanemoto).  He became a regular with them in 1994.  His BBM rookie card is #376 from the 1995 set.  His Calbee rookie card is also from the 1995 set - #70.

1995 BBM #376

Following the 2002 season, Nakamura came to terms with the New York Mets but ended up backing out of the deal after the news was released before he had a chance to tell the Buffaloes himself.  He remained with Kintetsu until the team merged with Orix following the 2004 season.

2001 Upper Deck 124

Unhappy about the merger, Nakamura left Japan to play a season in the US for the Dodgers (spending most of the season at the Dodger's AAA team in Las Vegas).  He returned to Japan for the 2006 season, "returning" to the now Orix Buffaloes at the request of manager Akira Ohgi (who was his first manager with Kintetsu in 1992).  Tragically, however, Ohgi passed away before the season began.

2006 BBM 1st Version #127

Nakamura left Orix following the 2006 season and joined Chunichi for 2007 - late enough that he doesn't appear in BBM's 1st Version set that season.  He had a very successful season for the Dragons, one that culminated in his being named MVP in the Nippon Series.

2007 BBM "The Climax" Dragons #D28

2007 BBM Nippon Series #S59

After two seasons in Nagoya, Nakamura went north to Sendai, signing a deal with the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles.

2009 BBM Rookie Edition #124

Nakamura only spent two seasons with the Eagles.  For the 2011 season, he headed for Yokohama.  I'm not positive, but I think he's joined the Baystars late in both the 2011 and 2012 seasons as he does not have a card in the 1st Version set for either year (although he does this year).

2012 BBM 2nd Version #670

Nakamura also played for the Japanese Olympic team in both 2000 and 2004.  He appears in Calbee's 2001 subset featuring the 2000 Olympic team:

2001 Calbee Japan National Team #J-04

I cribbed some of the information for this post from Baseball Reference's Bullpen's article on Nakamura.

Card Of The Week May 5

The big event in Japanese baseball today was the pre-game ceremony at the Tokyo Dome honoring Hideki Matsui and Shigeo Nagashima.  It was both a retirement ceremony for Matsui and also an awards ceremony as the two men were given the People's Honor Award from Shinzo Abe, the Prime Minister of Japan.

Here's some YouTube clips from the festivities (H/T YakyuBaka):

Matsui career highlights:



Victory lap around the field:



Speeches:



First pitch ceremony:



There's also a bunch of pictures from Sanspo here.

I had not realized how disabled Nagashima was from the stroke he suffered in 2004.  It looks like he has a lot of issues with his right side.  I don't think he removes his right hand from his pocket at any time in the video that I've seen (including when he swung a bat during the first pitch ceremony).  It looks like the right side of his face droops some during his speech as well.

Here's a couple Calbee cards of the pair from the 1990's:

1994 Calbee #45

1997 Calbee #057

RIP Animal

Brad "Animal" Lesley passed away last Saturday from kidney failure at age 54.  Lesley spent two years playing in Japan (1986-87 for the Hankyu Braves) and then spent a number of years as a character in a Japanese game show called Takeshi's Castle.  He also did some acting in the early 1990's.

I only have four cards of him with Hankyu and only one of them is from his playing days:

1987 Play Ball #16

2009 BBM Hankyu Memorial #16

2013 BBM Legendary Foreigner #33

2013 BBM Legendary Foreigner "Off Shot" #79

I found a couple YouTube clips of interest.  This one appears to be some music video he did while in Japan (which appears to be what the "Off Shot" card is from):



This one shows him on Takeshi's Castle. I figure that the Australian narration was added later.

Card Of The Week April 28

Tomonori Maeda of the Carp was hit by a pitch last week from Masaya Emura and broke his wrist.  He had surgery on Thursday and will likely be out for three months.  Maeda is 41 and there may be some question about whether or not he simply retires at this point.

Here's video of the HBP (H/T Japan Ball Blog).  The benches cleared, but I think the only actual fighting was when the Carp's pitching coach Kenji Furusawa went after Swallow's pitching coach Daisuke Araki.  Furusawa was ejected.



 Here's a card of Maeda that I brought back from Japan last month.  It's a gold signature parallel of his card from the 1999 Calbee third series (#232):

(Got game details from Yakyu Baka)

Tokyo Big Six Perfect Games

Deanna Rubin had a post up the other day talking about a perfect game thrown last Sunday (the 21st) in the Tokyo Big Six collegiate baseball league by Yuhei Takanashi of Waseda against perennially hapless Tokyo.

2011 BBM Tokyo Big Six Autumn Version #27

Takanashi's feat was the third perfect game ever thrown in the Tokyo Big Six league.  Deanna mentioned that the most recent one before this one was thrown by Rikkio's Satoshi Kamishige in 2000. Kamishige went on to be a TV announcer instead of a professional baseball player, but he does have a card in the 2011 BBM Legend Of Tokyo Big Six historic set:

2011 BBM Legend Of Tokyo Big Six #075

So that's two perfect games.  But who threw the other?  Being Japanese language challenged, I wasn't sure what the best way to figure this out would be (other than ask Deanna :-)).  Then I noticed this red text on the back of Kamishige's card:

I wondered if that was the kanji for "perfect game".  I took a look around to see if I could find any way to easily verify this.  In 1994, BBM did a small set celebrating all the perfect games ever thrown in Japan after Hiromi Makihara thrown one for the Giants.  I noticed that the back of one of the cards had a picture of the scoreboard after Makihara's game - sure enough, those four kanji appeared:

1994 BBM Perfect Pitching #P16 Back

So then I went through the other cards in the Legend Of Tokyo Big Six set to see if anyone else had that text on the back of their card (and there should be no more than one).  I found it on the card for a pitcher for Keio in the early 1960's named Taisuke Watanabe, who later pitched for Nankai from 1965 to 1972.  The line indicated that he pitched the perfect game in 1964.  I checked out his bio over at Japan Baseball Daily's Data Warehouse and verified it - he threw the game on 5/17/1964 against Rikkio.

2011 BBM Legend Of Tokyo Big Six #023

Watanabe's career falls perfectly into the black hole for Japanese baseball cards between the end of the menko era in 1964 and the beginning of the Calbee era in 1973.  The only card (other than this one) of him that I'm aware of off hand is from the 1967 Kabaya-Leaf set (#303).

Prestige Collectibles Auction #43

The latest Prestige Collectibles Auction is running from now until May 7.  As always, lots of cool vintage stuff available.

Card Of The Week April 21

On Thursday Dragons closer Hitoki Iwase notched his 350th career save.  When asked by a reporter what was next, he said "number 351".

Here's a card celebrating his 250th save, slightly less than three years ago (2010 BBM 20th Anniversary "Great Records & Highlights" #251):