1989 marked the peak of NPB teams sending players to the US minor leagues. That year there was a record seven teams who had players in North America. It was the last year for the
Buffaloes,
Whales,
Giants and
Dragons but the Hawks and Swallows were starting a bold partnership with the Salinas Spurs of the California League (which will be the subject of a future post) and the Carp were beginning their own two year tenure in the United States.
Hampton, Virginia has a rich history of minor league baseball. Two Hall Of Fame catchers - Johnny Bench and Gary Carter - made stops there on their way to Cooperstown and Satchel Paige made his last appearance in professional baseball here, pitching two innings in 1966 at age 59 (at least). A bunch of other great players from the 1970's and 1980's passed through there as well including Darrell Evans, Cesar Cedeno, Julio Franco, Hal McRae and Andre Thornton. But by 1989 the team had fallen on hard times. They lost their affiliation with the White Sox after the 1987 season and operated in 1988 as an independent team in the Carolina League under the name the Virginia Generals. They switched back to their traditional name of the Peninsula Pilots for 1989 but they still didn't have a major league affiliate. The Pilots' owner Jay Acton approached the Carp at the 1988 winter meetings and got them to agree to send three players for the 1989 season.
Some visa issues held up the players for a couple weeks but they finally joined the team in early May. As was the usual case for an independent team in organized ball, the team wasn't very good. They went 44-89 and finished last in the South Division, 37 1/2 games behind first place Durham and 19 games behind third place Winston-Salem (although this was an improvement over their 41-99 record in 1988 when they finished 47 games out of first and 32 games out of third).
The Carp were still interested in sending players to the US for 1990 but Peninsula was no longer an independent team, having secured an affiliation with the Seattle Mariners. Their fortunes did not improve much on the field however as they finished last in each of the next two seasons with 57-83 and 46-93 records in 1990 and 1991 respectively. They set a Carolina League record by losing 22 games in a row in 1991. But in 1992 they not only finished first in their division but they ended up winning the Carolina League Championship. It was a bittersweet moment for Hampton, Virginia as the team moved after the season to Delaware and became the Wilmington Blue Rocks. Hampton has not hosted a minor league team since although they do have a team in the Coastal Plain League, a summer collegiate league.
Luckily for the Carp, they were able to make a deal with another independent team. The Pocatello, Idaho team in the Pioneer League had lost their affiliation with the San Francisco Giants after three years. The team renamed itself the Gate City Pioneers (since the Pocatello Giants didn't make sense anymore) and operated as an independent team. The Carp sent five players to Idaho but if they had any real impact on the team, it was pretty small. The team went a dismal 15-55 and finished last in the South Division - 28 games behind first place Salt Lake City and 23 1/2 games behind third place Butte. Their .214 winning percentage would equate in a 35-127 record over 162 games.
Pocatello would continue to be an independent team in 1991, changing their name to the Pocatello Pioneers, but the Carp were done with their US experiment. The Pioneers moved to Lethbridge, Alberta, for the 1992 season and became the Lethbridge Mounties. They continued to be independent until 1996 when they became the first ever minor league affiliate of the Arizona Diamondbacks - two years before the major league Diamondbacks would take the field. They spent three seasons as the Black Diamonds before moving to Missoula, Montana and becoming the Osprey. The team remains in Missoula to this day although it changed its name to the Paddleheads for the 2020 season (although with the cancellation of the 2020 season and the fact that Missoula is reportedly on
the list of minor league teams that MLB plans to eliminate, the Paddleheads may never play a game under that name).
Here's the list of the eight players the Carp sent to the US those two seasons:
There was
a card set for the 1989 Peninsula Pilots published by Star but unfortunately none of the Japanese players appeared in the set.
Wataru Adachi made 20 starts for the Pilots, going 7-8 with an ERA of 3.85 and 119 strikeouts in 138 innings (and only 57 walks). He was tied with Tad Powers (a reliever) for most wins on the team and led the team in strikeouts. He also had the best ERA of any starter who made more than 10 starts with the team. He was rewarded by a promotion to the
ichi-gun Carp in October of that year. He was somewhat less successful with the Carp, going 4-11 with an ERA of 4.13 in 38 games with the
ichi-gun team between 1989 and 1992 and one season with the Fighters in 1994. I suspect that the highlight of his career was pitching a perfect inning against the Lions in Game 7 of the 1991 Nippon Series, striking out Seiji Tomoshino and Tsutomu Itoh. He has a handful of cards from the early 1990's - 1992-94 BBM, 1991 BBM Nippon Series, 1990, 1992 & 1993 Takara and 1993 Tomy.
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| 1992 Takara Carp #22 |
Tetsuya Katahira might have had the oddest career of any of the Carp players who played in the US. He was originally drafted as a pitcher by the Dragons in the second round of the 1985 draft. After spending the 1986 season pitching on Chunichi's farm team, he became an outfielder and made his
ichi-gun debut late in the 1987 season. The Dragons traded him along with Shingo Motomura to the Carp for Mitsuhiro Kataoka and Hiroyuki Saitoh during the 1988-89 offseason. He hit .216 in his 70 games with Peninsula the following season and made his only appearances with the
ichi-gun Carp in 1990, hitting .231 in 11 games. He spent two more years on the farm team for the Carp and switched back to pitching in 1992 but he never made it back to the top team and hung up his spikes at the end of that season. He only has two cards that I know of - one from the 1988 Takara Dragons set and one from the 1991 BBM set.
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| 1991 BBM #99 |
Koichi Ogata is easily the best known player of the eight players the Carp sent to North America. He only hit .239 with the Pilots but he led the team in runs scored with 51 and steals with 41 while only playing in 98 of the team's 133 games. His 5 triples was tied for the team lead with Hernan Cortes and his 7 home runs was fourth most on the team (some of this says more about the other players on the team than it does about Ogata). By the mid-90's Ogata was a starting outfielder for the Carp. He lead the Central League in runs scored in 1997 and 1999 and in steals for three straight years from 1995-97. He made the All Star team in 1999 and he won five straight Golden Glove awards from 1995 to 1999. He retired in 2009 after having played for the Carp for 23 years. He managed the team for five years beginning in 2015 and led them to three straight Central League pennants from 2016 to 2018. His team made it to the Nippon Series twice - losing to the Fighters in 2016 and the Hawks in 2018. There are many cards of him available - way too many to list.
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| 2006 Calbee #092 |
I want to wrap up the Peninsula season with a personal note - I saw this team play! On August 9th, 1989, I saw them take on the Frederick Keys at McCurdy Field (the American Legion field the Keys played in during their first season while Grove Stadium was being built). I hadn't remembered much about the game, other than it was a blow out, a position player pitched for Peninsula and that Doug Robbins, who had been on the 1988 US Olympic team, had hit a home run. But I dug up my scorecard for the game and discovered that I had saved the box score and game story from the Washington Post. It turns out that I saw both Ogata and Katahira in the game:
There were two team sets published for the Gate City Pioneers in 1990 -
a 27 card set from ProCard and
a 24 card set by Sport Pro. Both sets had cards of all five Japanese players. I've swiped the images of the front and back of each card from
The Trading Card Database and will be showing them here along with a Japanese card of each player.
In addition to the baseball cards, each player was profiled on the blog
The Greatest 21 Days which is about the minor league players from 1990. I've linked to their profiles in each of my blurbs about the players.
Itsuki Asai had the longest career of any of the players the Carp sent to Pocatello and the second longest (after Ogata) of any of the Carp's US players. He'd been drafted by the Carp in the sixth round out of Toyama Commercial High School in 1989 and split his first professional season between the Carp's farm team and the Pioneers. He hit .253 with 2 home runs in 58 games with Gate City. He also made one pitching appearance, giving up one run on three hits but also striking out a batter in one inning of work. Back in Japan he briefly made his first team debut in 1993 and was up for good in 1995. He spent 12 seasons with the top team as a backup outfielder and pinch hitter before retiring after 2006. He's been a coach with the Carp ever since. Like Ogata, he has too many cards to mention.
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| 2000 Future Bee Power League #213 |
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| 1990 ProCards #3345 |
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| 1990 ProCards #3345 |
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| 1990 Sport Pro Gate City #2 |
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| 1990 Sport Pro Gate City #2 |
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Shoshi Chiyomaru went by the name Akihito until the last two years of his career. He had been a pitcher at Joban High School but switched to being a batter after getting drafted by the Carp. He hit .245 with 4 home runs with Gate City and like Asai got pressed into duty as a pitcher (which makes probably more sense given his background). He made two appearances, giving up no runs on two hits and a walk while striking out two batters in 1 2/3 innings. He spent most of his nine year career with the Carp with the farm team as he only got into 14 games with the
ichi-gun squad in parts of four different seasons. He had another opportunity to play overseas when the Carp sent him to play with the China Times Eagles of the CPBL in Taiwan in 1995. He hit .211 in 12 games with them. He retired after the 1997 season and has coached for the Oki Data Computer Education Academy corporate league baseball team since then. He only has one NPB card that I know of - 1997 BBM but in addition to his two cards with Gate City he had a card in the 1995 CPBL A-Plus Card set (I swiped that image from The Trading Card Database also).
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| 1997 BBM #346 |
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| 1990 ProCards #3339 |
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| 1990 ProCards #3339 |
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| 1990 Sport Pro Gate City #6 |
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| 1990 Sport Pro Gate City #6 |
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| 1995 CPBL A-Plus Card #159 |
Like Asai,
Takashi Maema was a 1989 draftee who split his first professional season between the Carp's farm team and Gate City. He made 19 appearances including 9 starts and went 1-8 with a 7.16 ERA (keep in mind that the team's entire pitching staff posted a 6.22 ERA so while he was bad, he wasn't THAT bad). On the plus side, his 47 strikeouts were third on the team and he only walked 24 batters in 49 innings. He spent the next five seasons on the
ni-gun team, finally making his debut with the top team in 1996. He pitched well that season, going 3-2 with a 3.88 ERA in 32 appearances, mostly in relief. He picked up one save and struck out 30 in 48 2/3 innings. 1997 didn't go as well for him - he only made 6 appearances with the top team and got slapped around, giving up seven runs in 5 1/3 innings for a 11.81 ERA. The Carp tried to trade or sell him to the Marines after that season but he refused to go and retired instead saying he had lost his passion for baseball. I think he became a chiropractor after retiring. He only has three NPB cards that I know of - BBM cards from 1992 and 1997 and a 1997 Takara Carp card.
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| 1992 BBM #335 |
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| 1990 ProCards #3358 |
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| 1990 ProCards #3358 |
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| 1990 Sport Pro Gate City #14 |
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| 1990 Sport Pro Gate City #14 |
Arguably
Hideki Mizusawa has had a more successful career as a scout than he had as a baseball player. He spent four years in the Carp organization and never got off the farm team. He pitched fairly poorly with Gate City, going 2-3 with a 7.44 ERA in 17 appearances, mostly in relief. He only struck out 10 batters in 42 1/3 innings of work. He became a batting practice pitcher for Seibu after he retired as a player in 1991 and then moved into scouting with the Lions in 1998. He is credited with helping sign a number of players from Tohoku and Hokkaido including Shogo Akiyama, Takayuki Kishi, Yusei Kikuchi, Hotaka Yamakawa and Shuta Tonasaki. He does not have any NPB cards that I'm aware of.
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| 1990 ProCards #3342 |
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| 1990 ProCards #3342 |
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| 1990 Sport Pro Gate City #17 |
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| 1990 Sport Pro Gate City #17 |
Hiroyuki Satoh's .267 batting average the highest one of any of the Japanese batters who played in the US those two seasons. His 12 doubles were tied for the team lead with Doug Noce. He spent eight seasons with the Carp but only got into 11 games with the top team across four seasons before they sold him to the Giants in mid-1996. He spent two and half seasons on Yomiuri's farm team before being traded to the Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes for Satoshi Iriki. He was released by the Buffaloes after getting into 19
ichi-gun games in 1999 and rejoined the Carp. After two years spent mostly on the farm team he retired. He now works for a shipping company in Hiroshima. He had three NPB cards that I know of - two with the Carp (1995 and 1996 BBM) and one with the Giants (1997 BBM Giants).
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| 1995 BBM #372 |
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| 1990 ProCards #3340 |
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| 1990 ProCards #3340 |
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| 1990 Sport Pro Gate City #19 |
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| 1990 Sport Pro Gate City #19 |
Both seasons the Carp sent coach
Keiji Abe to the US to accompany the players. He attended high school at baseball powerhouse PL Gakuen and Iin 1979 he was the first player to ever hit three home runs in a summer Koshien tournament. He went to Asia University after graduating from high school but dropped out and played for the Yamaha Motor team in the industrial leagues for a few years. He was drafted by the Carp in the sixth round of the 1983 draft and made an auspicious debut by homering in his first at bat with the
ichi-gun team in 1984, the 18th player to ever do so. That ended up being the only home run of his career though as he ended up only getting into 27 games with the top team in three seasons between 1984 and 1988 (basically all the even numbered seasons). He retired following the 1988 season and moved into coaching. He remained a coach for the Carp for 22 seasons from 1989 to 2010 before (I think) moving into the front office. He has no NPB cards that I know of but he does appear in both of the Gate City sets.
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| 1990 ProCards #3362 |
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| 1990 ProCards #3362 |
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| 1990 Sport Pro Gate City #23 |
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| 1990 Sport Pro Gate City #23 |
