The Baseball Bullet-In this week remembers Daryl Spencer, the former Hankyu Braves slugger who died Jan. 2 in Wichita, Kansas, at the age of 88.
Spencer was one of the 1960s-era Americans, most of them ex-major leaguers, who played in Japan. That group included George Altman, Gene Bacque, Don Blasingame, Jack Bloomfield, Kent Hadley, Marty Keough, Willie Kirkland, Arturo Lopez, Jim Marshall, Joe Stanka and eventual Cooperstown Hall of Famer Larry Doby and one-time National League MVP Don Newcombe.
Those guys played even before my time in this country, but I got to see Spencer in action — at least for one at-bat — in the twilight of his career, and I do mean twilight. It was in 1971, he was 43 years old, overweight and no longer a starting player. He was Hankyu's first-base coach but was also on the active roster and occasionally used as a pinch hitter by then-Braves manager Yukio Nishimoto.
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