SABR (Society of American Baseball Research) New England chapter holds couple meetings every year (usually spring and winter). They had one today, and I attended the morning portion of it and it was, as always, pretty inspiring. What I love about baseball is that it is such a fascinating subject, there are so many different facets to it and every research project is unique, and hearing about other people’s project is so interesting. I found that often times they just pick a subject for very personal reasons. For example, one of the guy did a research on a player (and was published in a collective book about the team in that particular team in a year) because the player was his dad’s favorite player. He said doing this research was like a tribute to his father. And I like that.
I have been fascinated about Masanori Murakami, who was the first Japanese player ever to play in US. I’ve been meaning to start some researching about him, but it has been difficult, time wise and other reasons. First of all, year 1965, I wasn’t even born. I have no idea what the world was like in US, or for that matter, in Japan. Fascinating to think about a 19 years old boy who came alone to US from Japan in that year. And ends up playing major league baseball, facing Willie Mays, Roberto Clemente, Pete Rose and the like, and he even gets a hit off of Sandy Koufax. Just mind boggling.
Anyways, I was thinking maybe I’ll start collecting baseball cards of that era in both Japan and US. Or at least looking into it. I have Murakami’s rookie card, which I saw in the shop in Cooperstown, and I had to have it right there and then. There is even a blog dedicated for it. I don’t want to spend too much money, but I think I’d like that…