Tigers, Hawks and Hirose

Ah. Baseball. Hot dogs. Cold beer. Battered octopus dumplings. Battered octopus dumplings?!
I have been reading Sayonara Home Run, an illustrated history of Japanese baseball cards, and stoking my current Japanphile obsession by immersing myself in baseball history from the Land of the Rising Sun.
I have been a baseball fan since toddler days, but only had a vague idea of Japanese baseball.
I knew they had a team called the Giants -- just like my favorite team.
I knew they called their championship the Japan Series.
I knew Sadaharu Oh hit a lot of home runs.
I knew teams could play to extra-inning ties.
That is about all I knew until college, when I read Robert Whiting's excellent "You Gotta Have Wa."
Now, I am learning even more about Japanese baseball:
* The V-9 years when the Giants won nine consecutive titles.
* The three-year dominance of Kazuhisa Inao, star pitcher for the Nishitetsu Lions (1956-58).
* The epic clash of the Osaka titans in 1964.
The latter interests me most.
On the eve of the Giants' unstoppable string of wins, Osaka's Nankai Hawks edged Osaka's Hanshin Tigers, four games to three, in the Japan Series.
The Tigers were loaded, capturing the Central League crown for the second time in three years thanks to a staff ERA of 2.75.
The Hawks were even better. Future Hall-of-Famer Yoshinori Hirose (pictured) won the batting title with a .366 average. He also belted 12 home runs (that's a good total in bunt-oriented Japanese baseball) and swiped 72 bases. I would have loved to see the 1964 Japan Series.
It must have been a real classic.