Friday, July 17, 2015

RIP Kazumi Takahashi

V9-era Giants pitcher Kazumi Takahashi passed away this past week.  His two best seasons were 1969 and 1973 were he won 22 and 23 games respectively.  He also took home  the Sawamura Award and the Best Pitcher Award (which actually are two separate things) and made the Central League Best 9 team both of those years as well.  He was famously traded to the Nippon Ham Fighters after the 1975 season in the deal that brought Isao Harimoto to the Giants.  He retired as a player after the 1983 season and coached for both the Giants (on three separate occasions) and the Fighters after his playing career ended.

Here's a couple of his cards from his playing career:

1973/74 Calbee #163

1974/75 Calbee #862

1976 Yamakatsu "JY1"

1979 TCMA #35
In recent years he's been showing up in a lot of OB sets, most significantly in BBM's The Trade Stories (from 2013) to commemorate his trade to the Fighters and last year's V9 Giants 50th Anniversary set from Epoch:

2013 BBM The Trade Stories #20

2014 Epoch Giants V9 Glorious Victory #26

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