Mystery Solved?

I picked up a 1975 NST card recently that I hadn't actually been looking for, breaking my new rule of not buying anything that wasn't already on my want list, but, if you'll indulge me for a minute, you'll see why I got it.

I've written a lot about what I call the "Florida Project" - a series of 22 cards from the 1974/75 Calbee set that feature photos of the Yomiuri Giants from spring training in 1975 which they spent in Vero Beach, Florida, as guests of the Los Angeles Dodgers.  I've been working on picking up all the cards in the series and I'm down to only needing one.

I was aware that the 1975 NST "Mr. Baseball" set also included cards of the Giants in Florida although I've been less interested in getting them.  It's somewhat unclear to me how many there are and NST cards can be difficult to find.  There's a couple gems in the set, though, that I've been happy to find - one shows Tsuneo Horiuchi pitching to Ron Cey and the other shows Shigeo Nagashima with Gene Mauch.  I know from looking at Gary Engel's "Japanese Vintage Baseball Card Checklist & Price Guide" that there are also cards showing Nagashima with Stan Wasiak (the manager of the Dodgers' Triple-A team in Albuquerque at the time) and possibly Kansas City Royals manager Jack McKeon.  I had not seen either of these cards until the other day when the Wasiak card showed up in an Ebay search:

1975 NST #188

My eyes lit up when I saw the number on the back of Wasiak's uniform - it looks like it's 75.  Why do I care?  Because it may solve the mystery of who the Dodger's coach on this Calbee card is:

1974/75 Calbee #710

I want to stress that neither the Calbee card nor the NST album (the NST "card" is actually a stamp that is meant to be pasted into an album) identifies Wasiak by name.  The back of the Calbee card talks about shortstop Kazumasa Kohno (#29) although the Google translation appears to say something about Kohno getting training "by the coach of the 3A team himself":

The text of the NST album appears to imply that the other person on both card #188 (Wasiak) and #189 (Mauch) are Walt Alston who was Dodgers manager at the time:

But Alston's number was 24, not 75 so it's not him on card #188 and he wouldn't have been wearing an Expos hat so it's not him on card #189 either.  Engel's guide is the only place where Wasiak is mentioned by name (and only for the NST card).  I don't know how Gary determined who it was but I don't see any reason to doubt him.

So to recap the clues - Gary Engel's listing for 1975 NST card #188 says it's Stan Wasiak on the card with Nagashima.  Wasiak is wearing uniform number 75 which is the same number someone (who may have been referred to as the "coach of the 3A team") is wearing on the back of 1974/75 Calbee card #710.  Wasiak was the Dodgers' Triple-A manager at the time.  Assuming Gary's identification of Wasiak is correct, that's also Wasiak on the Calbee card.

Wasiak's an interesting figure that I didn't know anything about before writing this post.  He played in the Dodgers' organization in the 1940's, missing four years due to the War, and never made the majors.  He became a minor league manager in 1950 and managed at least one game every year for 37 years (he missed some time in the early 80's with some health issues but was able to keep his streak intact by managing one game in 1982).  He finished his career in 1986 with 2,530 career victories, the most ever by a minor league manager.

Card Of The Week February 9

I found out a couple interesting pieces of trivia a while back while I was researching my post about BBM's cards for the previous year's Best 9 and Golden Glove award winners.  The first was that the Golden Glove awards weren't always called the Golden Glove awards.  When they were first introduced in 1972, they were called the "Diamond Glove" awards.  It wasn't until 1986 that the name changed to "Golden Glove".  I think it had something to do with a change in who sponsored the awards but the machine translation of the Japanese wikipedia page on the award is unclear.

The second and perhaps more interesting thing is that there have been four players to win both a Gold Glove in MLB and a Diamond/Golden Glove in NPB.  Clete Boyer was the first, having won the MLB award with the Atlanta Braves in 1969 and the NPB award with the Taiyo Whales in 1973 and 1974 (he shared the 1973 award with Shigeo Nagashima).  

1975/76/77 Calbee #374 (w/Daisuke Yamashita)

Wes Parker won six Gold Gloves between 1967 and 1972 with the Los Angeles Dodgers.  He sat out the 1973 season before joining the Nankai Hawks for 1974.  He won a Diamond Glove award for his one NPB season which gave him seven consecutive awards across the two leagues (with a gap for the one year he didn't play).  

1975 Broder JA4

Davey Johnson was another player with multiple Gold Glove awards, having won them in three consecutive years as a member of the Baltimore Orioles between 1969 and 1971.  He won a Diamond Glove award in 1976, his second and final year with the Yomiuri Giants.

1975/76/77 Calbee #1067

It'd be 25 years before another player joined this club.  Ichiro won Golden Gloves his last seven years in NPB with the Orix BlueWave between 1994 and 2000 and then won Gold Gloves in each of his first ten seasons in MLB with the Seattle Mariners.  He's the only player on the list with multiple NPB awards and he basically won one or the other award every year for seventeen years.

2000 BBM #G7

Zippy Zapped Again!

I was greeted upon my return home from work one day last week with a package from Kenny - aka Zippy Zappy  I've been the beneficiary of Kenny's generosity a number of times over the past few years and it's continued even though he's now moved to Japan.  I don't know what I've done to make him so nice to me - we've never met in person (although we were both at Rob Fitts' Masanori Murakami event at the Barnes & Noble in Manhattan ten years ago) - but I'm always grateful for whatever goodies he decides to send my way.

I'm also always amazed at how he manages to send me stuff I don't already have.  I mean, I have a LOT of Japanese baseball cards.  Like, over 80 thousand.  So for him to send me 50-ish cards and there only be eight that I don't already have is unbelievable.  I thought I'd do a...well, I was going to say "quick post to show some of the cards he sent" but with almost 40 cards to talk about, it probably won't be all that quick.  So let's dive into what he sent (although I'm skipping the cards he sent that I already have):

First up are some cards of the late Shigeru Sugishita.  This first card is from the 2000 DigiCube set which is pretty rare - I've only seen a handful of singles from it (and one of them was this one when Kenny posted about it):

2000 DigiCube #118

Here's a couple inserts from the 2006 BBM Dragons 70th Anniversary set:

2006 BBM Dragons 70th Anniversary #DB1

2006 BBM Dragons 70th Anniversary #DR6

These next two cards are parallel versions of insert cards from the 2016 BBM Dragons 80th Anniversary and 2021 BBM Dragons History 1936-2021 respectively.  I have the base version of each card.  Both cards are serially numbered with the "Dragons Heroes" card being /100 and the "Team Records" card being /120:

2016 BBM Dragons 80th Anniversary #DH01

2021 BBM Dragons History 1936-2021 #TR7

The "Dragons Heroes" card has a shiny "kira" finish that doesn't scan well.  The last Sugishita card is another one that unfortunately doesn't scan well.  It's a "shadow box" card from the 2015 Epoch MVP Of The Year set.  

2015 Epoch MVP Of The Year #S-DSS

It's hard to tell from the scan but the card is hollow with the white background being the back of the card and the photo and facsimile signature being on a transparent front of the card.  The card is /10.

This next batch of cards come from various Epoch and BBM sets.  Here's another card with a shiny "kira" finish that doesn't scan well - a kira parallel version of a "Ceremonial First Pitch" card of Nozomi Sasaki from the 2015 BBM 2nd Version set.  Once again, I have the base version of this card:

2015 BBM 2nd Version #

A 2018 Epoch One card of Masami Ishigaki, commemorating his winning the MVP at the 2018 Fresh All Star game (the farm team all star game):

2018 Epoch One #387/CD-043

A "Printed Signature" insert card of Hiroto Takahashi from the 2023 Epoch Dragons Premier Edition set (/70):

2023 Epoch Dragons Premier Edition #PV01

Here's a couple numbered parallel versions of insert cards from BBM Dragons' team sets.  The "Boost Phase" card of Shinnosuke Ogasawara is from 2020 and is /150 while the "D's Legacy" card of Masahiko Morino and Akira Neo is from 2022 and is /70:

2020 BBM Dragons #BP1

2022 BBM Dragons #DL4

That 2022 card doesn't scan well - it looks a lot nicer in person.

One of Kenny's favorite players is Hiroki Kuroda so it was no surprise to see this card in the lot (another shiny card that doesn't scan well):

1999 BBM Diamond Heroes #83

Here's an insert and a parallel card from two different BBM sets from 2010:

2010 BBM 1st Version #GG08

2010 BBM Giants #G062

Kenny included a brand new Dragons Starter Deck from the 2024 Bushiroad Dream Order collectible card game set.  Like the Lions one I got last May, the set contains 12 unique playing cards but has three copies of each card.  There's also six (five unique) photo-less "Tactics" cards, a "team" card and five identical "time" cards showing the team logo.  The sticker price on the front of the set was only 440 yen rather than the 1500 yen I paid for the Lions set.  Here's a couple of the cards from the set - the Shinnosuke Ogasawara card was the "cover" card for the set and has a foil finish with gold embossed text:

2024 Bushiroad Dream Order Dragons Starter Deck #CSD06-D01 Shinnosuke Ogasawara

2024 Bushiroad Dream Order Dragons Starter Deck #CSD06-D03 Raidel Martinez

2024 Bushiroad Dream Order Dragons Starter Deck #CSD06-D10 Seiya Hosokawa

2024 Bushiroad Dream Order Dragons Starter Deck #CSD06-D09 Ryuku Tsuchida

Moving onto some more interesting fare...Kenny threw in a couple memorabilia cards:

2009 BBM Dragons #DM2

2013 Dragons #DM2

2017 BBM Genesis

The Morino and Ogasawara cards are /300 while the Ohsima card is /200.

The remaining cards are all autographed cards, the bulk of which are from various Dragons team sets - both "comprehensive" and smaller box sets - from BBM:

2010 BBM Dragons

2015 BBM Dragons

2015 BBM Dragons Autographed Edition

2016 BBM Dragons

2016 BBM Dragons

2016 BBM Dragons

2016 BBM Dragons

2016 BBM Dragons

2016 BBM Dragons

2016 BBM Dragons Dash

2019 BBM Dragons

All of the BBM Dragons autographed cards are /60 except Takuya Kinoshita which is /50.  The two Takeshi Kaneko autographed cards are /30.  It's kind of funny* that Kenny ended up with the same player as the premium card for both box sets, especially since Kaneko doesn't appear in either base set.

*Kenny might not have thought it was funny after spending all the money on an unopened box set

There was also an autographed card from an Epoch set:

2022 Epoch Dragons Premier Edition #AA-03

As you can tell, this card was /17.  This and all the BBM autographed cards are sticker autographs.

The last autographed cards that Kenny sent were ones that he got signed TTM.  Here are three for Gosuke Katoh when he was a Yankees farmhand:

2013 Bowman Draft Picks & Prospects - Chrome Draft Picks #BDPP37

2014 Bowman - Prospects #BP56

2014 Grandstand Charleston RiverDogs

The final card needs a little backstory.  In 2013, pitcher Takumi Numata dropped out of Nagoya Sangyo University to play for a club team called the Edion Aiko University OB BLITZ.  By the end of the season, however, he had signed a contract to play for the Los Angeles Dodgers.  He spent all of 2014 with Dodger's rookie league team in Arizona and was assigned to the Ogden Raptors of the short season Pioneer League the following year.  He was released by the team before the season started and returned to Japan.  He spend a couple years in the independent Baseball Challenge League (two with Gunma and one with Ishikawa) before being taken by the Swallows in the 2017 draft.  Yakult released him after two seasons and he retired as a baseball player after one year with the Ryukyu Blue Oceans.

Kenny had found an on-line image of a 1987-ish Topps card of Numata and printed it out.  Numata signed the card via a TTM request:

Thank you again, Kenny, for all the cards!

RIP Yoshio Yoshida

Hall Of Famer Yoshio Yoshida passed away yesterday at age 91.  Yoshida was perhaps the greatest shortstop in NPB history.  He joined the then-Osaka Tigers as a 19 year old in 1953 after dropping out of college and immediately became their starting shortstop, a role he didn't relinquish for another 15 years.  He won nine Best 9 awards at the position, the most of anyone in history.  He was also a 13 time all star and led the league in steals in 1954 and 1956.  He retired after 1969 and had three stints as Tigers manager in each of the next three decades although the only one most people really remember is from the mid-1980's when he led the team to their first ever Nippon Series championship in 1985.  In between his 1980's and 1990's iterations as Hanshin manager, he managed the French National Baseball team which earned him the nickname "Monsieur".

There are a ton of baseball cards of Yoshida, both from him playing days and in OB sets from both BBM and Epoch over the past 30 years or so.  Here's a bunch of them from my collection:

1958 Mitsuwa JACM 129 (w/Shigeo Nagashima) 

1958/59 JBR 60

1960 Doyusha JCM 30c

1962 Marusan JCM 10

1962 Marusho JCM 13b

1967 Kabaya-Leaf #113

1998 BBM #517

2000 BBM 20th Century Best 9 #T-06

2001 BBM #537

2010 BBM Tigers 75th Anniversary #15

2015 Epoch Tigers Nippon Champions 1985

2021 BBM Tigers History 1935-2021 #09