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.

2006 BBM Nostalgic Baseball #014

Nineteen times!

Fujimura's record was set in 1950 and stood for 44 years.  During those 44 years, only three players even got within 10 hits of the record - Larry Raines with 184 in 1954; Yoshinori Hirose with 187 in 1963; and Isao Harimoto with 182 in 1976.  But since Ichiro passed the mark in 1994, fifteen different players have gotten at least 191 hits during at least one season with Akiyama having done it twice and Norichika Aoki having done it FOUR times.  You can see the list of the top single season hit totals in NPB history here. 

It turns out there's a pretty obvious reason for why Fujimura's record has been passed so many times since 1994* and it's actually part of the reason that the record stood for so long - the number of games in a season.  

*And it's not steroids

The number of games in a season for an NPB team has varied over the years and, especially in the early days of the two league system, it wasn't unusual for a Central League team to play a different number of games in a season than a Pacific League team.  In 1950, Fujimura's Tigers played 140 games, the same as the rest of the Central League teams.  The number of games played per team dropped to 116 in 1951, went to 120 in 1952 and then 130 in 1953.  It remained at 130-ish for the next ten years before going back to 140 for three years (1963-65) and then dropping back into the 130's for the next three years.

Meantime each Pacific League team played only 120 games in 1950, dropped to 104 in 1951, went back to 120-ish for 1952 and 1953 before jumping to 140 in 1954 (when Raines got his 184 hits with Hankyu).  The number of games reached 143 in 1955 and 154 in 1956 before dropping to the 130's again the next few season.  It jumped back up to 140 in 1961, dropped back to 133 in 1962 and then leapt to 150 in 1963 (when Hirose got his 187 hits for Nankai).  It stayed at 150 for 1964, then dropped to 140 for 1965 and into the 130's for the next couple years.  

I think that the two leagues finally stabilized at 130 games for teams in each league starting in 1969.  It remained at that level for the next 28 years, increasing to 135 in 1997 and then to 140 in 2001 and 144 around 2004 or so.  It dropped to 143 ten years ago and has been there ever since (with the exception of the COVID shortened 2020 season).

So the record was set in a season that had an unusually high number of games - more than only a handful of seasons over the next almost 50 years.  Once the number of games a team played was the same or higher than the 140 played in 1950, Fujimura's record was surpassed many times.

2000 BBM 20th Century Best 9 #S-02

This actually makes Ichiro's 1994 performance all the more impressive.  He surpassed Fujimura's record by 19 hits while playing in ten fewer games.  There were two more times that Fujimura's record was topped in fewer games than 140.  Ichiro had 193 hits in 130 games in 1996 and Bobby Rose had 192 hits in 134 games in 1999.  The remaining seventeen times Fujimura's total was equalled or surpassed all happened after 2001 and therefore in at least the same number of games.

The 1995 BBM "flagship" set contained a ten card subset entitled "Untouchable Records".  These cards commemorated ten NPB records - nine career and one single season - that the publishers of the set deemed "untouchable".  I thought it'd be interesting to take a quick look at this subset now that almost 30 years have gone by since it was published and see how they've stood up.

1995 BBM #319

Yeah, OK, nobody's touched this one and it doesn't look like anyone's going to any time soon.  The active player with the most home runs, Takeya Nakamura of the Lions, is 390 home runs behind and, at age 41, isn't likely to get a whole lot closer.  Hell, the second place RETIRED player, Katsuya Nomura, is over 200 home runs behind Oh.  And, of course, anyone who might be good enough to someday beat this record will probably end up in MLB.

1995 BBM #320

1995 BBM #321

2015 BBM 25th Anniversary #188

1995 BBM #322

1995 BBM #323

1995 BBM #324

1995 BBM #325

2011 BBM 1st Version #339

2016 Calbee #T-08

1995 BBM #326

1995 BBM #327

1995 BBM #328

I was scrolling through BlueSky the other day and I came across a post (skeet?) from someone whose son was going to Japan to participate in the JET program.  They'd included a picture showing a bunch of baseball cards of Americans who'd played in Japan like Davey Johnson, Charlie Manuel, Roger Repoz, Warren Cromartie and Miles Mikolas.  I was taken aback by the inclusion of John Werhas, who'd spent a couple seasons with the Dodgers in the 1960's and also played for the Taiyo Whales in 1971.  I'd never heard of this guy and I was kind of surprised.  I guess I had an unrealistic assumption that I'd heard of every Westerner to play in Japan.  

I was disabused of this notion when I checked out the list of gaijin from one of the late Wayne Graczyk's annual "Japan Pro Baseball Fan Handbook & Media Guides".  When I looked up Werhas, I saw a whole bunch of other names I'd never heard of either - Jarvis Tatum, Thad Tillotson, Elijah Johnson, Terry Hankins and Bill Sorrell, for example, who were all on the same page in the guide as Werhas:

I consoled myself by thinking that, well, none of these guys had baseball cards because they played in Japan before Calbee started doing cards, so why would I have heard of them?  And these guys were all playing before I got interested in baseball in the mid-70's so it's not surprising that I hadn't heard of them.

Then I went on Ebay and found listings for Japanese cards of two more gaijin that I'd never heard of.  Both cards were from the 1980's so I theoretically could have heard of either player but I really hadn't.  I picked up both cards and they arrived in the mail yesterday.

The first player is Art Gardner, who played in the Astros, Giants and Expos organization in the 1970's, including 86 games at the major league level over three seasons with Houston and San Francisco.  He spent 1981 and 1982 in Japan with the Carp.  It's not really surprising that I hadn't heard of him as he wasn't in any Topps sets in the 70's.  Here's his 1981 Calbee card:

1981 Calbee #90

He only had one Calbee card in 1981 but he had three in 1982.  He also appeared in the Takara Carp set for both seasons.

The second player was Richard (or Rich) Duran who spent part of 1984 with the Kintetsu Buffaloes.  He had a surprisingly short minor league career so it's very odd that he ended up in Japan.  He had signed with the Brewers organization as a undrafted free agent in 1979 where he split time between Double-A Holyoke and Single-A Stockton.  He apparently didn't play in 1980 but returned to Stockton in 1981.  He spent 1982 and 1983 in Mexico with Ciudad Juarez, hitting what I think was a league leading .377 in 1983.  He parlayed that average into a contract with the Buffaloes for 1984 but it didn't go well.  He was only hitting .188 in mid-May when he decided to follow Kintetsu's other foreign player - Don Money - back to the US, forcing the team to replace them with Dick Davis and Mark Corey (who, like Money,  I had actually heard of).  Here's Duran's 1984 Takara Kids card:

1984 Takara Kids Buffaloes #44

Duran only had three baseball cards and two of them are Takara issues from Japan.  The other card is a 1979 TCMA Holyoke Millers card which I actually had owned when I was in high school, although I think I can be forgiven for not remembering everyone in a set I owned 40 years ago.