Card Of The Week January 27

Shingo Takatsu has signed a minor league deal with the Cubs. Here's his 1991 BBM rookie card (# 387):

RIP Hirokazu Kato

Deanna Rubin's latest post includes the sad news that former Yokohama Taiyo Whale Hirokazu Kato has passed away at age 56. His obituary can be found here. Kato ended his career just before BBM started producing cards so I only have two cards of him - from the Takara Whales team sets in 1988 and 1989. Since this was what I like to call Takara's "mug shot" phase, the pictures on the cards are nearly identical. I've included a scan of the 1989 card here.


Deanna's post also mentioned this picture of Shigeo Nagashima, Sadaharu Oh and Isao Harimoto together. I thought I'd post a card showing two of those three back when they were active players (card T-01 from the BBM Century's Best 9 set).

Deanna also has posts #2 and #3 in her series on baseball card shopping in Japan now up.

Card Of The Week January 20

I once caught a fish tthhiiiss big.



(1992 Calbee #47)

Ryuji Miyade

In a comment about this post talking about Takuro Ishii's previous life as a pitcher, Deanna Rubin mentioned another player who switched from pitching to hitting: Swallows outfielder Ryuji Miyade. Miyade was a pitcher for the Swallows up until 2001 or 2002. He then switched to the outfield and has been there ever since. His cards up until 2001 show him as a pitcher. His cards from 2003 on show him as an outfielder (he doesn't have any BBM cards in 2002 that I know of).

Here's his 2000 BBM card (#225) and his 2006 BBM Rookie Edition card (# 125) which shows him both pitching and hitting:




Obviously, Ishii and Miyade are not the first to switch from pitching to hitting. Dragons Hall Of Famer Michio Nishizawa did it among others (including some guy named Ruth in the States).

Then there are those who attempt to switch from htting to pitching, even if it's just for a third of an inning in an all star game:

Card Of The Week January 13

Deanna Rubin has had a couple of posts about baseball cards lately - one on some Fukubukuro (lucky bags) she bought at a store recently and one on three card subsets from BBM team sets that make a picture when you line them up. The last post also talked about a Draft Story card she got for a Whales pitcher from 1989 named Tadanori Ishii. Turns out we know him better as Baystars infielder Takuro Ishii. Now, according the Japan Baseball Daily's bio of him and Baseball Reference, Tadanori is his real first name and he converted to be an infielder in 1992. Curiously, he signed outside of the draft in 1988, which makes one wonder why he appeared in the Draft Story set. Anyway, here's the earliest card I have of him - his 1993 BBM card (#362):



This is BBM's first card of him. It looks like he has earlier cards in the 1992 Calbee set and the 1990 Takara Whales set. I don't know if the 1992 card shows him pitching and I don't know if either card lists him as Tadanori. I do know that this was the only year he wore uniform number 0. He was 66 prior to this and 5 afterwards.

New Hall Of Famers

Koji Yamamoto and Tsuneo Horiuchi have been elected to the Japanese Baseball Hall Of Fame. Yamamoto was a slugger for the Carp in the 70's and 80's and managed them in the early 90's and then again in the early 00's (is that what we call this decade?), taking them to the Series in 1991. Horiuchi was a pitcher for the Giants in the 60's and 70's and managed them in 2004-05. He was nicknamed "Bad Boy Taro" for his off-the-field escapades in the 1960's.

Here's a card of each of them, first as a player, then as a manager:






From top to bottom, that's Horichi's 1978 NST card (#240) and his 2004 BBM 1st Version card (#249), and Yamamoto's 1984 Takara card and his 2005 BBM 1st Version card (#411)

Card Of The Week January 6

Hall Of Famer Masaaki (aka Masahiko) Mori turns 71 on Wednesday. Here's his 1967 Kabaya-Leaf card:



The Kabaya-Leaf cards were the first Japanese cards to resemble American cards. I'll have to a blog entry for them at some point, but suffice it to say that they are very cool, very popular and very rare.

(Thanks to Japan Baseball Daily's "Today In Japanese Baseball History" for the tip.)