RIP Katsuya Nomura

Another of the all time greats from NPB has passed - Katsuya Nomura, long time player and manager (not to mention player-manager) has passed away at age 84.  Jim Allen has already written a wonderful appreciation of Nomura so I'm just going to show a bunch of baseball cards.

Here's a bunch of vintage menko and game cards from the late 50's and early 60's:

1958 Marusho JCM 38a

1958 Yamakatsu JCM 33e (Nomura in center with Tadashi Sugiuchi on the left)

1959 Doyusha Game Set 

1959 Maruta JCM 40

1962 JGA 149

1964 Marusho JCM 11

1964 Marukami JCM 14g

Here's several cards for him from the 1970's, mostly from Calbee.  The first two show the Hawks winning the 1973 Pacific League playoffs, the first pennant that Nomura won as manager (and the last pennant that Nankai ever won).  The third card shows him batting in the 1973 Nippon Series against the Giants.

1973/74 Calbee #355

1973/74 Calbee #356

1973/74 Calbee #336

~1975 Uncataloged Menko

1975/76 Calbee #697

1975/76 Calbee #952

1975/76 Calbee #1113

I think this card shows him getting recognition for being selected to his 20th All Star team before the first All Star game in 1976 on July 17th at Kawasaki Stadium:

1975/75 Calbee #931

He left Nankai after 1977 and joined the Lotte Orions.  As far as I know this is the only card ever issued that shows him with Lotte:

1978 Yamakatsu JY10

He finished his career by spending two seasons with the Seibu Lions:

1979 TCMA #13

Here are cards from his three managerial stints between 1990 and 2009:

1997 BBM Nippon Series #S1

2001 Upper Deck Victory #036

2007 BBM 1st Version #181

Here's a selection of recent OB cards for him.  He went through a stretch in the late 00's to early 10's when he didn't appear much in OB sets but that changed in recent years.

2006 BBM Nostalgic Baseball #051

2007 BBM HR Chronicle #02

2013 BBM All Star Game Memories 80's #85

2013 BBM Hawks 75th Anniversary #03

2014 BBM 80th Anniversary Batters Edition #91

2018 BBM Hawks 80th Anniversary #05

Finally here's the front and back of a card from the 2018 BBM Infinity set (#092) showing him with his son Katsunori:

Eishin Soyogi

Former Hiroshima Toyo Carp infielder Eishin Soyogi announced his retirement back in October.  You'll be forgiven if you thought he had already retired as he last played for the Carp back in 2017.

Soyogi attended Komazawa University but spent three years playing in the corporate leagues for Nissan Motor after graduating.  He was drafted by his home prefecture team the Carp in the third round of the University/Corporate League portion of the 2005 draft (Soyogi is from Miyoshi-city in Hiroshima-prefecture). 

He made the Carp's Opening Day lineup in 2006, the first time a Carp draftee had done so since Koji Yamamoto in 1969.  He had a good rookie season as the Carp's regular shortstop, hitting .289 with 8 home runs and winning the Central League Rookie Of The Year award.  The following year he changed his batting strategy in an attempt to add more power - he ended up with 18 home runs but his average dropped to .260.  His numbers fell off in 2008 and he got demoted to ni-gun, losing his starting role to rookie Tetuya Kokubo.  He had further issues getting playing time in 2009 when the Carp picked up Takuro Ishii as well.  It didn't help that he had somehow gotten into manager Marty Brown's doghouse as well.

Kenjiro Nomura took over the managerial reigns in 2010 and Soyogi earned the starting shortstop job in camp that year with Kokubo moving to third base (and the 39 year old Ishii moving into a utility role).  He had the best season of his career that year, hitting .306 with 13 home runs and leading the Central League in stolen bases with 43.  He also won a Golden Glove that season. 

He was limited to only 52 games in 2011 after he broke his left knee after fouling a pitch off onto it.  He was back as starting shortstop in 2012 and 2013, hitting only .244 in 2012 but rebounding to .304 in 2013.  He split 2014 between third base and shortstop to make room for the development of rookie Kosuke Tanaka.  He had a poor season in 2015, hitting only .237 and got demoted to the farm team late in the season.  He spent almost all of 2016 with the farm team, getting into only seven games with the top team and then spent the entirety of 2017 at the ni-gun level.  The Carp released him after the 2017 season.

He was interested in continuing to play but as a 37 year old he didn't attract any attention from any other NPB teams or any independent teams in either Japan or the US.  He eventually joined the Agekke corporate league team as a player-coach in June of 2018 (he can be seen in this promotional video for the team which also includes footage of their women's team).  He was back with Agekke this past season although he also made some appearances as a color commentator on Carp broadcasts.  He'll be a coach with the JFE West corporate league team this year.

Soyogi's rookie cards are all from 2006.  His first BBM card was #93 in the Rookie Edition set and he also appeared in 1st Version (#431), 2nd Version (#698), Touch The Game (#141) and the Carp team set (#C051).  His first Calbee card was #192 in the 2006 set.  Here's a selection of his cards:

2006 BBM Rookie Edition #93

2006 BBM 1st Version #431

2007 BBM 1st Version #448

2009 BBM 2nd Version #701

2011 BBM 1st Version #391

2012 Front Runner Trading Cards Carp Starting Lineup #02

2013 BBM 2nd Version #508

2015 Calbee #141

2017 BBM Carp #C48

RIP Angel Echevarria

Sad news broke yesterday - former Nippon-Ham Fighters outfielder Angel Echevarria passed away Friday at age 48.

Echevarria had played in the majors for the Rockies, Brewers and Cubs before joining the Fighters (who still played in Tokyo at the time) for the 2003 season.  He hit .275 with 31 home runs and 84 RBIs in 110 games that season.  He ran into issues getting playing time the following season (the Fighter's first in Hokkaido) as Fernando Seguignol had joined the team and Sherman Obando had returned after a season playing in Mexico.  His numbers dropped to 16 home runs and 54 RBIs with a .258 batting average in 94 games.  He rejoined the Cubs organization in 2005, spending the first month of the season with their Triple-A Iowa club before playing the rest of the season in the Mexican League.  He finished his career playing for the Bridgeport Bluefish in the independent Atlantic League in 2006.

Echevarria had cards in the 2003 and 2004 1st and 2nd Version sets from BBM as well as their Fighters team sets for those years.  He was also in their Touch The Game set for both years and their 2004 Pacific League Playoffs set.  He also had Calbee and Konami cards both years he was in Japan.  The only OB card for him that I know of is from the 2013 BBM Fighters 10th Season In Hokkaido set.

2003 BBM 2nd Version #771

2003 BBM Fighters #061

2004 BBM 1st Version #149

2004 BBM Pacific League Playoff #P48

2013 BBM Fighters 10th Season In Hokkaido #64

Card Of The Week February 9

Sean did a post the other day about some round menko cards he had gotten recently of Sadaharu Oh from 1977 that were given away somehow with Pepsi.  Those weren't the only cards of Oh that Pepsi would give away that year.  They also put out a set of 8 large (6 inches by 8 1/4 inches) bromide cards.  Engel has these cards cataloged at "JBR 149: 1977 Sadaharu Oh Giant Sized Pepsi Bromides" and gave them a scarcity factor of "R2" so they're not quite as rare as the round menko Sean showed off.

I only have one of these cards:

The back of the card shows monochrome images of all eight cards in the set:

Shoitsu Ohmatsu

Shoitsu Ohmatsu announced his retirement back in September.  Ohmatsu was a bit of star at Tokai University and was the captain of the Collegiate National Team in 2004.  He was a fifth round pick of the Chiba Lotte Marines in the fall 2004 draft and played briefly with the top team in 2005.  His playing time with the ichi-gun level picked up in the next two seasons before he had his breakthorugh year in 2008.  He played in 134 games that year and hit .262 with 24 home runs and 91 RBIs.  He did particularly well with the bases loaded that year, hitting .571 with three grand slams.  He made his only All Star team that year although he was not on the initial team but was named to the team after Hiroshi Shibahara declined to play (which is why he's not in BBM's All Star set that year). 

He followed that up with two more solid seasons as a regular outfielder although towards the end of the 2010 season his offensive numbers had declined enough that he was first dropped to the bottom of the lineup and then was effectively benched in the Nippon Series that year.  He started Game One batting seventh and playing left field and hit a double in the second inning but was immediately replaced by pinch runner Yoshifumi Okada.  He didn't make another appearance in the entire Series, not even Game Six which ended in a 15 inning 2-2 tie and featured 22 separate Marines players.

His numbers didn't rebound in 2011 and he spent half the season with the farm team while the team went with Katsuya Kakunaka and rookie Shota Ishimine in the outfield .  Ohmatsu shifted to first base in 2012 but his offensive woes still kept him on the ni-gun squad in Urawa the majority of the time over the next few years.  He tore his right Achilles tendon in May of 2016 and missed the rest of the season.  The Marines released him in late 2016.

The Swallows gave Ohmatsu a tryout during training camp in 2017 and he made the team.  He got into 94 games with the top team that year, mostly as a pinch hitter and late inning replacement.  He didn't very well (just .162) but he did manage to have two pinch hit sayonara home runs that season, only the fourth player in NPB history (and first since 1977) to manage that feat.  He spent all of 2018 with the farm team and was released after the season ended.  He spent 2019 with the Fukui Miracle Elephants of the independent Baseball Challenge League.  He suffered a knee injury late in the season and announced his retirement shortly afterwards.  He'll be a coach with the Swallows farm team this season.

His first cards were with BBM in 2005.  He appeared in Rookie Edition (#22), 1st Version (#163) and the Marines team set (#M058) that season.  His first Calbee card was #196 in 2006.  Here's several of his cards:

2005 BBM Rookie Edition #22

2005 BBM 1st Version #163

2008 Calbee #251

2010 BBM Touch The Game "Cut Off Piece Ball" #B33

2010 BBM Nippon Series #S29

2013 BBM !st Version #286

2016 BBM Marines #M46

2018 BBM Swallows #S57

Hayato Terahara

I have to confess that I've gotten behind in the retirement posts I wanted to do at the end of the 2019 season.  The main reason for this is that the primary resource that I've used for the past...well, ever...is YakyuDB which unfortunately has not been updated much in the past year.  (And I hope that Gen, the guy who runs the site, is doing ok.)  I tried looking around a little on the Japanese version of Wikipedia but I didn't really get a chance to really research it before BBM's annual set for retired players came out last week.  It was a lot easier to look at those cards rather than try to decipher translated Wikipedia pages so I did that instead.  I came up with five guys that I wanted to do posts on and I'm starting with Hayato Terahara.

Hayato Terahara was a big deal coming out of high school.  He was the ace pitcher at Nichinan Gakuen High School and was clocked in the high 90's.  He gained nationwide recognition while pitching in the 2001 Summer Koshien tournament although his team lost in the quarterfinals.  Later that fall he was the first high school player to ever make the Japanese National Team when he was named to the squad for the 2001 Baseball World Cup.  That tournament ended the day before that year's NPB draft where he was taken by four teams in the first round - the Dragons, the Baystars, the Giants and the Hawks, who won the lottery for his rights. 

He had a promising first season in 2002 - he went 6-2 with a save and an ERA of 3.59 in 14 games including seven starts - but things started to go wrong in 2003.  Injuries and ineffectiveness limited him to only 42 games with the ichi-gun team between 2003 and 2006.

The Hawks traded him to the Baystars after the 2006 season for Hitoshi Tamura.  He spent 2007 in the starting rotation, making 27 starts and going 12-12 with a 3.80 ERA.  He was Yokohama's Opening Day starter in 2008 before being converted to the team's closer.  He ended up saving 22 games for a team that lost 94 games, posted an ERA of 3.30 and made the All Star team for the only time in his career.  He lost a lot of time due to injuries over the next two years, only appearing in 33 games with the top team in 2009 and 2010.

He was traded again after 2010, this time to the Orix Buffaloes along with Kazuya Takamiya for Shogo Yamamoto and Go Kida.  He had perhaps the best season of his career in 2011, going 12-10 with a 3.06 ERA in 25 starts but injuries once again cut into his playing time in 2012.

He became a free agent after the 2012 season and resigned with the Hawks.  He pitched ok for the Hawks but once again injuries cut into his playing time.  It also didn't help that unlike his time with Yokohama and Orix, the Hawks had younger, better pitchers to give playing time to so even when he was healthy he wasn't necessarily playing with the ichi-gun squad.  He did finally get into a Nippon Series game in 2017 (the fourth time the Hawks had made the Series while he was on the team).  He had a pretty good year in 2018, posting an ERA of 2.39 in 21 games out of the bullpen but the Hawks decided they didn't need a 35 year reliever and released him at the end of the season.

He spent 2019 with the Swallows but his numbers weren't good - he had an ERA of 6.19 in four appearances with the ichi-gun squad and an ERA of 6.42 in 14 games with the farm team.  He announced his retirement in mid-September.

Terahara's first card is actually a "pre-rookie" card from the 2002 BBM Japanese National Team set for the 2001 Baseball World Cup.  His first NPB card is #P80 from the 2002 BBM Preview set and he also had rookie cards in BBM's 1st and 2nd Version, Hawks and Touch The Game sets that year.  His first Calbee card was from the 2002 "New Face" subset and he also had a couple cards in the Konami Prime Nine set that year.  Here's some of his cards:

2002 BBM Japan National Team #5

2002 BBM Preview #P80

2002 BBM 1st Version #234

2003 BBM Hawks #009

2002 Calbee #N-13

2006 Konami Baseball Heroes 2 White Edition #B06W017

2008 BBM All Stars #A12

2011 Bandai Owners League 02 #056

2015 Calbee #171

2019 Epoch NPB #263

Card Of The Week February 2

Training camps for the NPB teams opened yesterday and for the first time in four years there isn't a Japanese team training in the US.  The Fighters opened a new facility in Okinawa and so are there rather than Arizona like they were the past four years (2016-17 in Peoria and 2018-19 in Scottsdale).

I wrote a post a few years ago about all the times that I could find when Japanese teams had trained in the US.  I mentioned at the time that I hadn't seen any cards from the 1990's that I were convinced had photos that had been taken in the US.  I came across a couple cards the other day though that make me want to reconsider that conclusion.

The Yakult Swallows trained at the Padres spring training facility in Yuma, Arizona from 1977 until 1999 (they were actually there for a few years after the Padres had moved to Peoria).  I was looking through the 1993 BBM set (when I was grabbing a Yukio Arai card for this post) and noticed that the cards of Hideki Hashigami and Tsugio Kanazawa had a building in the background that I think is the locker room building at the facility:

1993 BBM #306

1993 BBM #125

I had spent some time at this facility a couple years ago when I was in Yuma for work.  Here's a photo that shows the building in question - you can see it has a low sloped roof like the one in the photos:

I could be imagining things but I think the building is visible on the lower right side of this 1990 Bowman card of Rob Nelson of the Padres although it's difficult to see.  I went looking through the Bowman Padres cards from 1989-92 since they were the most likely sets to contain photos taken in Yuma for the Padres but that was the only card that looked like it had the building in it.

I am willing to admit that I'm wrong but I'm more and more convinced that it's Yuma.

UPDATE - I should mention that there are a couple other cards that feature photos that I strongly suspect were taken in Yuma but they don't feature any identifying buildings in the background.