Don Blasingame

Don Blasingame — "Blazer" — is one of those guys who deserves way more name recognition than he gets. A slick-fielding second baseman out of Corinth, Mississippi, he spent over a decade in the majors with five clubs, including some solid years as the Cardinals' everyday second sacker in the late 1950s. But honestly, what makes Blasingame genuinely fascinating to me is what came after: he crossed the Pacific and made a real go of it in Japanese baseball during the 1960s, well before that kind of move became a recognized career path. To do that — leave everything familiar, adapt to a completely different baseball culture and language — took a quiet kind of courage that rarely makes highlight reels. He passed away in 2005 at 72, but his life reads like a testament to loving the game more than the spotlight.

Name (English)

Don Blasingame

Name (Japanese)

ドン・ブラッシンゲーム

Reading

どん・ぶらっしんげーむ

Born

March 16, 1932 – April 13, 2005

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Pisces / Monkey

Origin

Corinth, Mississippi, United States

Height

177 cm

Occupation

baseball player

Motto

Private

• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%89%E3%83%B3%E3%83%BB%E3%83%96%E3%83%A9%E3%83%83%E3%82%B7%E3%83%B3%E3%82%B2%E3%83%BC%E3%83%A0

Tags

• Mississippi
• baseball player

Last updated

2026-06-02

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.