A
couple of months ago I made a fun announcement here on the blog: The
Sadaharu Oh stained glass card design that I'd created back in 2020 was now available in print form. I even gave away a few copies to readers.
But I hadn't forgotten that the original inspiration
for the design came from Sean, the man behind the blog called Getting
Back into Baseball Cards . . . in Japan. So that same week I also sent
him a copy of the stained glass Sadaharu Oh card.
Well, wouldn't you know it, just a few weeks later something arrived in my mailbox . . . from Japan.
There's the postage.
It was from Sean. Included was a nice thank-you note, plus a card that I wasn't expecting at all.
A 1975 Calbee card featuring Sadaharu Oh!
Wow. That's very cool. Not only is it my first playing-era Sadaharu Oh card, it's also my first Calbee card. Ever!
It measures
2 3/8 x 3 3/8, which is just slightly smaller than the standard trading
card. It's a pretty crisp color photo for 1975. Here's a look at the
card back.
I found the checklist for this set, and it runs at a rather large
936 cards. At first I was floored when I noticed that about 75 of those
cards feature Sadaharu Oh exclusively. Seventy five!
But it turns out that's not
exactly atypical. Fellow Yomiuri Giants slugger Shigeo Nagashima has well over 100!
That's
what will happen when you have only 11 teams in such a large set.
And that's not all. The Giants in particular were such a big deal that they received a whopping 366 of the 936
total cards, while less popular teams at the time, like the Kintetsu Buffaloes, only
received 25. Ouch.
But the Giants are the Giants. And besides, look at these career stats.
Sadaharu Oh: 2831 G, 2786 H, 422 2B, 25 3B, 868 HR, 2170 RBI, .301/.446/.634
Shigeo Nagashima: 2186 G, 2471 H, 418 2B, 74 3B, 444 HR, 1522 RBI, .305/.379/.540Sadaharu Oh still sits atop the Nippon Professional Baseball career home run list by a large margin. Nagashima, known as "Mr. Giants", sits at 15th all time.
That'll get you numerous cards in the set. And I'm happy to have this particular card in my collection.
Any time you add a vintage card of Oh to your collection, it's worthy of a celebration. Congratulations! Very generous gift from Sean.
ReplyDeleteI agree completely, Fuji! Thanks very much.
DeleteVery cool! Those Calbee stats is very Panini Chronicles-like
ReplyDeleteMuch appreciated, Jafronius!
DeleteGlad it arrived safe and sound! Stars like Oh and Nagashima (and Giants players in general) really do dominate the checklists of 1970s Calbee sets. They can get hyper specific as a result, the card I sent you specifies that the photo was taken at a game played on April 24, two days after he hit his first of the season on the 22nd.
ReplyDeleteGreat information, Sean! It's pretty cool that Giants fans back then were able to link cards to specific games like that.
DeleteThis had to be quite the surprise, especially if you weren't told in advance that something was coming. You really couldn't have received a bigger name either, at least not as far as Japanese players go.
ReplyDeleteQuite the surprise, indeed! Sean is a good dude. I recently read Sadaharu Oh's "A Zen Way of Baseball" too, so that made the surprise card even more meaningful.
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