Sadly, the Baseball Bullet-in says goodbye to a good friend and great fan of the game, Takashi “Bert” Shimada, aka “Mr. Minor League,” who died in Tokyo on June 19 at the age of 87. Though he followed baseball at all levels in his own country as well as the U.S., he preferred American minor league baseball over the major leagues and pro ball in Japan.

Shimada visited North America on his own personal baseball tours on so many occasions, he was able to see games in more than 200 minor league and independent league ballparks in the U.S. and Canada. He wrote a book about his experiences titled, “American Baseball — The Adventures of a Japanese Fan in the Minor Leagues,” and he had many interesting stories to tell.

He said he enjoyed the minor league games because the players were not spoiled as he found many of the major leaguers. “When I would ask a Rookie League or Single-A player to sign a ball, they thanked me for asking,” Shimada remembered. “They are so polite.”

The trips to the minor league parks also afforded him the chance to tour America and visit many states which do not have major league franchises, plus a few Canadian provinces. He racked up hundreds of thousands of frequent flier miles and saw the U.S. from sea to shining sea.

He also amassed a collection of plastic drinking cups with the team logos from the parks where he visited. That was his favorite souvenir, and he had them on display in his Tokyo home.

On one occasion, Shimada got a pass to sit in the home team’s dugout to watch pre-game batting and fielding practice. When those sessions were over, he got up to go and watch the game from the stands and thanked the manager who said, “Where are you going, Bert? Stay right there on the bench.”

He wound up watching the game with the players as if he were a member of the team, and no one asked him to leave. Maybe they thought of him as a kind of mascot.

A fluent English speaker, Shimada was asked on another occasion to join a team’s radio broadcast for a few innings, during which time he impressed the announcers and audience while talking about his love for the minor league game.

Then there was the night he lingered after a game and, when he left the stadium, he could not find how to get back to his hotel. He remained in the ballpark parking lot until the field lights were turned off and then the car park lights were extinguished as well. Shimada had no idea how he would get home.

After a while, a police car on patrol came by, and the officers stopped to ask what he was doing there. He explained he was from Japan, had been at the game and now had no way to get back to his place of lodging.

“Hop in,” said a policeman, and they drove him back to the hotel.

After that, Shimada rented a car and was able to drive himself to the games, and he later expressed his appreciation for the way the parking lots were emptied following the conclusion of the action.

“Drivers coming from two directions would alternate leaving the parking area, and it went smoothly. In Japan, everybody would be fighting each other to get out first, and there would be a massive traffic jam,” he said. “I was impressed by the way the Americans yielded to each other.”

As for Japanese baseball, he respected the great players such as Shigeo Nagashima, Sadaharu Oh and Katsuya Nomura and, in later years, he became friends with long-retired former Nankai Hawks pitching ace Joe Stanka. Shimada was Oh’s sempai at Waseda High School, and Oh endorsed Shimada’s book.

Regarding the Japanese game, Shimada did not like what most American fans also find annoying; such things as ties and the slow pace of games. He also did not like the oendan cheering sections and the constant noise they make.

“What the heck is that?” he used to say.

Old-timer foreign fans in Japan during the 1980s and ’90s may remember when the Nippon Ham Fighters were based in Tokyo, and the team presented free game tickets to the gaikokujin community for the annual Yankees Day promotion to celebrate the working agreement the teams had at the time.

I coordinated the ticket distribution and could always count on kind-hearted Bert to help with the sponsorship. He was working for the now-defunct Aiwa electronics firm and got the company to support the event as “Aiwa Yankees Day.”

For a time in the early ’90s, he was sent to northern California to run a company called Grass Valley Group, and that gave him additional opportunities to see even more minor league games and ball parks.

One of Shimada’s trademarks was his wide-grin smile, and he spent so many happy days and nights at a cozy minor league stadium, eating a hot dog with a beer or soft drink (sipped out of one of those plastic logo cups) while watching the youth of America play ball.

Now it is time to say sayonara to “Mr. Minor League.”

Contact Wayne Graczyk at: Wayne@JapanBall.com