Takahiro Mahara

February 16, 2016, 7:27 pm

≫ Next: Yuma, the Swallows and the Arizona Winter League

Former Hawks and Buffaloes pitcher Takahiro Mahara had announced his retirement back in early December but for some reason I didn't realize it until recently.

Mahara was taken by the then Fukuoka Daiei Hawks in the "free agent phase" of the fall 2003 draft out of Kyushu Kyoritsu University. He debuted with the team as a starter in 2004 before taking over the closer role in 2005. He remained the Hawks closer through the 2011 season, missing some time in 2008 due to shoulder injury. His shoulder caused him to miss some time again in 2011 and then the entire 2012 season. After the 2012 season, he was chosen by Orix as compensation for the Hawks signing Hayato Terahara as a free agent. Injuries again plagued him in two of the three seasons he spent with the Buffaloes although he had a pretty good season in middle relief for them in 2014.

He led the Pacific League in saves with 38 in 2007. He made the All Star team three times (2006-07 & 2010). He played for the Japan National Team in the 2009 World Baseball Classic. He appeared in one Nippon Series (2011, his final appearances with the Hawks).

2004 BBM Rookie Edition #1

2004 BBM 1st Version #25

2006 BBM All Stars #A06

2009 Calbee #049

2009 Bowman Chrome #BCW47

2011 BBM Nippon Series #S02

2012 BBM Hawks #H04

2013 BBM The Trade Stories #87

2015 BBM Buffaloes #Bs10

↧

Yuma, the Swallows and the Arizona Winter League

February 20, 2016, 5:47 pm

≫ Next: 2001 Hawks Official Fan Club Set

≪ Previous: Takahiro Mahara

As I mentioned previously, I was in Yuma, Arizona on business in late January and early February. Before going there, I didn't really know much about the city. I only kind of vaguely even know where it was - somewhere in the southwest corner of the state (it turns out it's in a little bump on the Arizona border that's kind of odd - it's south of California and east of Mexico). About all I really knew about it is that once upon a time the Yakult Swallows did spring training there and the only reason that I know that was because of this card from the 2007 BBM Atsuya Furuta Memorial set (#17):

I did a little research and I discovered that what is now called the Ray Kroc Baseball Complex was the original spring training home of the San Diego Padres. In some ways Yuma was an idea spring training home for the team as it's only 170 miles east of San Diego - pretty much all on Interstate 8. Unfortunately it's also about 170 miles from Phoenix where most of the rest of the Cactus League trained which made for long road trips for the team so after 1993, the team moved to a new spring training home at the Peoria Sports Complex near Phoenix, the same facilities that the Fighters used earlier this month.

After doing a little more research I discovered that the Padres were well acquainted with sharing their spring training facilities with a Japanese team. The Swallows had trained in Yuma for about 20 years, from the late 1970's until the late 1990's. That picture of Furuta could have been taken any year from 1990 (his rookie season) until 1998 (the Swallows' last year in Yuma) - although the thick red cuff on his jersey identifies a style the Swallows wore from 1990 to 1993 so I can narrow it down a little more.

Armed with this knowledge, I thought it would be fun to drive out to the complex (if it still existed) and get a picture of the water tower (if it still existed) from the same perspective. If nothing else I figured I could get a "Card Of The Week" post out of it (despite having already used this card in one last year). It turns out that the complex (and the water tower) still exist so on the first Sunday that I was in town, I drove over to get a picture.

As you can see, I got the picture of the water tower. But as you can also see, the field was in use. I had noticed, of course, that there were a bunch of players on the field as I walked up and I briefly wondered if one of the Korean teams that I had heard was training in Arizona was actually training in Yuma rather than Phoenix or Tucson. I stopped someone kind of official looking and asked what the players were there for. I was told that it was spring training for the Arizona Winter League which, of course, lead to a whole bunch of other questions.

In a nutshell, the Arizona Winter League is essentially an extended tryout camp for unsigned players. There were a hundred or so players on the fields of the complex, working out for a number of coaches. After two days of workouts, the players would be "drafted" into six teams that would play a 17 game season between February 3rd and the 24th which would allow scouts to view the players in game situations. The six teams were somewhat misleading named the Edmonton Capitals, the El Paso Tejanos, the Laredo Apaches, the Pericos de Puebla, Team Canada and the Yuma Wranglers. I say misleadingly as obviously no one was playing any home games anywhere but Yuma and Team Canada actually had no Canadians on it. I kind of got the feeling that the six teams were basically what uniforms the league had available.

The players for the league come from a wide variety of backgrounds. A few have experience in major league organizations, a few more have some experience in the independent minors while the vast majority of them are former college and high school players. There are a couple 19 year olds and two pitchers in their 40's but most of the players appear to be in their mid to late 20s. The only name that seemed vaguely familiar to me was Todd Gossage whose father is Hall Of Fame (and former Fukuoka Daiei Hawk) pitcher Rich Gossage. Some of the players had been through the Arizona Winter League in previous years (the league has actually played every year since 2007 although I believe the last two were actually held in San Antonio, not Yuma).

What I was most intrigued about the league was that there were a handful of Japanese players involved. Once the rosters were published, I quickly went through them to see if there were any familiar names, any former NPB player trying to continue his career in America? I was disabused of this pretty quickly. None of the names looked familiar and none of them had spent any time in NPB, at least according to Baseball-Reference. I asked Deanna Rubin to take a look figuring if anyone was going to know who any of these guys were, it would be her. She didn't recognize anyone off the top of her head but she did a little bit of research and found some information about some of the guys.

Here's the list of the Japanese players with what the rosters that they handed out at the games said about them (the EXP column):

Name	Team	DOB	EXP
Abe, Yoshiya	Yuma Wranglers	5/12/1991	INT - College In Japan
Aoyama, Kazuaki	Edmonton Capitals	10/8/1979	INT - Japanese Club Team
Ehata, Shuya	Edmonton Capitals	2/8/1992	INT - Japanese Club Team
Fukaya, Genki	Team Canada	12/19/1993	INT - Japanese Club Team
Hashimoto, Naoki	El Paso Tejanos	6/7/1990	AFF - Cleveland Indians (R), TWL
Iwasaki, Koya	Laredo Apaches	7/1/1993	INT - Japanese Club Team
Kaneda, Kyohei	Edmonton Capitals	12/8/1992	INT - College In Japan
Kotabe, Takeshi	Pericos de Puebla	11/6/1992	INT - Japanese Club Team
Kunitomi, Tatsuhiro	El Paso Tejanos	2/11/1993	INT - Keio University, CWL
Kusama, Satoru	Edmonton Capitals	5/15/1993	CO - Clackamas CC
Machita, Takanori	El Paso Tejanos	10/14/1978	INT - Auburn Orioles (Australian), 2014 TWL
Maeda, Yuki	Yuma Wranglers	8/30/1993	INT - Tohoku Tech University (Japan)
Motoyama, Takayoshi	Edmonton Capitals	9/2/1991	INT - Japanese Club Team
Muraki, Yoshimitsu	Edmonton Capitals	9/15/1980	INT - Japanese Club Team
Sakaguchi, Fumitaka	Team Canada	4/26/1991	INT - Oceans 9 (Indy Japan), Kobe Sound (Indy Japan), Puerto Rico Winter Ball, Ishikawa Millon Stars (Japan)
Sanogawa, Ryo	Yuma Wranglers	4/23/1993	INT - Japanese Club Team
Shirakashi, Shota	Team Canada	9/28/1992	INT - Japan, 2012 AWL
Shiroto, Hayate	Edmonton Capitals	5/25/1994	INT - Japanese Club Team
Sugi, Naomichi	Pericos de Puebla	11/24/1990	INT - Fukui Miracle Elephants (Japan Indy), Niigata Albirex
Takahashi, Shion	Edmonton Capitals	9/13/1996	INT - Japanese Indy Team

With Deanna's help, I've found out a little about a couple of these guys. Naoki Hashimoto made 13 appearances with the Indians Arizona League team in 2013 and 2014. His Japanese Wikipedia page says that he went to PL Gakuen high school (becoming the ace pitcher after Kenta Maeda was drafted), dropped out to join the NOMO baseball team, went to Hannan University for a couple years before dropping out to join the Kobe Sands of the Kansai Independent League in 2012. After spending most of 2013 with the Indians, he pitched in one game for the Kishu Rangers, also from the Kansai Independent League. He returned to the Indians for only one game in 2014, then joined the Fukui Miracle Elephants of the Baseball Challenge (BC) League. He spent 2015 with the 06Bulls of the Baseball First League. It looks like he failed a tryout with the Kagawa Olive Guyners of the Shikoku Island League last fall. Tatsuhiro Kunimoto appeared in one game in his four years at Keio University - he did not get an at bat. Naomichi Sugi is another former NOMO baseball team member in addition to his stints with Niigata and Fukui. I found 2013 stats for Satoru Kusama with both Clackamas Community College and the Portland Toros of something called the West Coast League Portland. Kazuaki Aoyama, Takanori Machita and Yoshimitsu Muraki are all in their late 30's and I wonder if they are all industrial league veterans who decided to try their luck over here.

There are three games played every day. There are two games in the morning (10 AM during the week and 11 AM on the weekend) and one game in the afternoon (1 PM during the week and 2 PM on the weekend officially but the afternoon game usually starts soon after the morning game ends). My work schedule for the week the league started originally looked like it was going to accommodate going to the morning games as I didn't need to be at work until 3 PM that week but I ended up only getting to games on February 3rd (Opening Day) and February 6th. I needed to come in early on the 4th and 5th, the league on the 7th and I left Yuma on the 8th.

I mentioned before that the league had spent the last two years in Texas rather than Yuma. While the league was gone, Desert Sun Stadium, the main ballpark at the complex was converted into a soccer stadium. From what the office manager for the league told me, it sounded like the outfit that converted the stadium to soccer had intended to bring a team to Yuma but had gone bankrupt before it happened. So now there's a very nice soccer stadium that no one is using and the AWL had to play on a couple of the practice fields that were only maybe a hundred feet apart. Foul balls from one game could (and did) land on the field of the other. The stands were small metal bleachers with maybe five benches placed behind the foul screen between the dugouts and home plate.

Tickets for the games were $5 or you could buy a season pass for $20. Considering the facilities they weren't drawing too badly. Yuma has a large population of snowbirds from Canada and the league is a cheap diversion for a lot of them. There was one couple from Saskatchewan I spoke to both days I was there who told me that they were rooting for Team Canada even though there were no Canadians on it. Of course, at this point they're really only rooting for laundry.

The games were interesting although frequently lopsided (one of the issues with leagues of this type and independent baseball in general is that if the pitchers were any good, they wouldn't be here). Due to the lack of crowd noise it was easy to hear the players and coaches talking to each other. It was also easy to hear Marky Billson, the voice of the Arizona Winter League, doing play by play for the league's internet radio broadcasts from basically a card table set up behind home plate at one of the fields. There was no PA announcer at the park so pretty much the only way to know who a player was at times was to listen to him. That's when he knew - sometimes he'd leave his table and run over to the dugout to find out who someone was.

Here are some pictures I took at the games:

Sign for the complex

Only advertisement I saw for the league

The "broadcast booth" for the league

Ozzie Canseco is one of the coaches for the league

Marky Billson asking Canseco about a player's name

Evidence that the Swallows had actually once played here

I tried to get pictures of the Japanese players. I didn't get a lot of them but I did get some. I felt kind of like a stalker actually.

Yoshimitsu Muraki of Edmonton

Pretty sure this is Takayoshi Motoyama of Edmonton

Shion Takahashi of Edmonton

Takeshi Kotabe of Pericos de Puebla

Naomichi Sugi of Pericos de Puebla

Yuki Maeda of Yuma

There's two other pictures of Japanese players that have a little story behind them. While I watched the El Paso - Yuma game on February 6th, I became aware of a bit of a commotion in the bullpen area. El Paso pitcher Naoki Takahashi was warming up. The coach was asking him how fast he could throw like that and it took me a second to realize that Takahashi was warming up left handed. Which isn't a big deal unless you happened to know that he's a right handed pitcher. I don't know if he's pitched at all in the league as a lefty but it was fun watching him throw.

I had struggled some during the El Paso-Yuma game to try to get a good picture of Tatsuhiro Kunitomi. The sight lines at the ballpark were pretty bad for getting pictures due to the cyclone fencing between the bleachers and the fields. So I decided that I'd actually approach him after the game to get a picture.

I told him I had a friend who was a Keio fan and he expressed surprise that anyone in the US had heard of Keio. We spoke for a few minutes - his English wasn't very good but it was much better than my meager (and that's being very generous) Japanese - and I wished him good luck. What was entertaining about this is that one of Kunitomi's Keio teammates is Akihiro Hakumura of the Fighters. Deanna told him that Kunitomi was in Yuma on Monday in Peoria and on Tuesday we showed him this picture.

And speaking of the Fighters, I was somewhat surprised to see that on the off day they had the day after the exhibition game that Ohtani pitched (the day I was finally going home), manager Hideki Kuriyama made the three hour drive down to Yuma to visit the AWL! And actually it makes some amount of sense as Kuriyama played for the Swallows from 1984 to 1990 and would have trained with them in Yuma.

The league has another couple days before the "regular" season ends. There will be playoffs this coming Friday and Saturday with the Championship Game on Sunday. It will be interesting to see who gets signed out of the league and if any of the Japanese players end up in any major league organizations.

↧

2001 Hawks Official Fan Club Set

February 20, 2016, 5:59 pm

≫ Next: Package From Ryan

≪ Previous: Yuma, the Swallows and the Arizona Winter League

I want to quickly mention that I got a couple cards from the 2001 Fukuoka Daiei Hawks Official Fan Club card set. Jason listed eight of these in his mongo team issue post from a few years back but the four I got aren't on the list.

I have the following:

15 Hiroshi Nagadomi
30 Rodney Pedraza
48 Yusuke Torigoe
51 Hiroki Kokubo

Here's the front and back of the Kokubo card:

↧

Package From Ryan

February 21, 2016, 11:50 am

≫ Next: Card Of The Week February 21

≪ Previous: 2001 Hawks Official Fan Club Set

I love getting packages in the mail from Ryan of This Card Is Cool. Ryan is always on the lookout for stuff for me and he's pretty good about finding it. And sometimes he picks up stuff that he figures I'd be interested in, even if I haven't said anything. And he's usually right - I am interested in it. So packages from Ryan always contain good stuff - some things that I know I'm getting and some things that are a surprise.

The package I got from him yesterday was no exception. I'd been eagerly awaiting this package since he told me he'd be shipping me stuff when he was back in the States in early February AND since he'd found a couple cards that I was looking for from the 2000 Upper Deck Olympics set (that he busted a couple boxes of a few months back). Sure enough, there were two of the five cards of the baseball team that I don't have in the box:

2000 Upper Deck Olympics #229

2000 Upper Deck Olympics #220

The card of Akahoshi is especially cool as it is one of the rare "pre-rookie" cards of a player in Japan. Akahoshi was playing for JR East of the industrial leagues when he was selected for the Olympic team - he wasn't drafted by the Tigers until October of 2000.

I ask Ryan to track down opened box sets for me as they can generally be had extremely cheaply - frequently 500 yen or less - but that price skyrockets when I have to pay kuboTEN fees. Ryan found three box sets for me - one he'd been looking for for most of 2015 but the other two were released late in the year.

In January of every year since 2011 BBM has published a box set commemorating the players who have retired during the previous year. I usually refer to this set as "Farewell" but the translation of the title is more along the lines of "Regret at Parting Ball Players". Last year's set contained 36 cards celebrating the careers of 32 players (four players - Atsunori Inaba, Makoto Kaneko, Alex Ramirez and Tomoya Satozaki - had two cards each in the set). The photos in the set are usually action shots from when the player was active (and may be from a year previous to last year) or from their retirement ceremony. Beyond the players mentioned already, the set includes cards for Masao Kida, Shugo Fujii, GG Satoh, Yoshinori Tateyama and Tomochika Tsuboi.

2015 BBM Farewell #09

2015 BBM Farewell #13

Hrioki Kuroda's return to Japan and the Hiroshima Toyo Carp last year was documented in a box set called "Homecoming" that was released in November. It's an 18 card set and each card appears to commemorate some event from the 2015 season. There's a card for each of the 11 wins he got and for reaching some milestones (like his 500th game between MLB and NPB).

2015 BBM Homecoming #12

2015 BBM Homecoming #18

Epoch published a Dragons box set in November as some sort of cross promotion with Mizuno. The set was called "Chunichi Dragons X Mizuno" and was very similar to some similarly named sets that Front Runner put out in 2014. In fact the "R" symbol to indicate a rookie was identical in this set to the symbol used on the Front Runner cards. The set has 24 cards but only featured 12 players. Each player has two cards in the set. The set includes Masahiro Yamamoto, Kazuhiro Wada, Michihiro Ogasawara, Masahiro Araki, Takuya Asao and Daisuke Yamai.

Epoch Chunichi Dragons X Mizuno #01

Epoch Chunichi Dragons X Mizuno #15

Lastly, Ryan included a handful of loose cards from a couple Front Runner box sets that I didn't have. He sent four cards from the 2014 Lions Signature Edition set (including one of Takeya Nakamura, one of my favorite players) and ten cards from the 2015 Giants Game Used Bat set (which was similar to the Dragons X Mizuno set in that it had two cards for each player in the set).

2014 Front Runner Lions Signature Edition #04

2015 Front Runner Giants Game Used Bat Edition #02

2015 Front Runner Giants Game Used Bat Edition #09

Ryan sent out a number of packages when he was back in the States. Jason got some cool stuff from him as well.

Thanks as always Ryan! And let me know what I owe you for these!

↧

Card Of The Week February 21

February 21, 2016, 5:35 pm

≫ Next: Card Of The Week February 28

≪ Previous: Package From Ryan

I'm slowly trying to catch up on everything so that I can do the next "Uniform History" post (next up is the Orix Buffaloes) but I am also trying to back-fill some of the earlier posts when I discover or get a card that shows a uniform that I didn't cover before. I just realized that I should be paying more attention to BBM's high end sets as they occasionally will have cards using uniforms that didn't show up in other issues. For example in 2011 the Hanshin Tigers used a "turn-back-the-clock" uniform for a number of games (it may have been the "Great Central" promotion where all the Central League teams wore retro uniforms but I'm not sure). I didn't include this uniform when I did my post on the Tigers' uniforms since I didn't have a card showing it. On Ebay recently I came across a Matt Murton card from the 2011 BBM Touch The Game set (#072) that showed the uniform and snatched it up. Here's the card (and I've already updated the Tigers post with it):

I need to go back and check all the high end issues and see if any of the other uniforms I didn't have coverage for are represented there.

↧

Card Of The Week February 28

February 28, 2016, 2:54 pm

≫ Next: Box Breaks From Jay

≪ Previous: Card Of The Week February 21

I picked up a menko card of Shigeo Nagashima off of Ebay recently. The card is from an uncataloged set from around 1973. Here's the front and back of the card:

What's significant about this card is that the picture on it was swiped from a 1973 Calbee card (#5):

Ryan had mentioned in a comment a while back that it's not uncommon for unlicensed cards to be made today using all sorts of available images. I guess this has been going on for quite a while.

↧

Box Breaks From Jay

February 28, 2016, 4:01 pm

≫ Next: Nobuhiko Matsunaka

≪ Previous: Card Of The Week February 28

I've been meaning to get to this for a bit but life has had other plans (as usual). Jay Shelton has picked up a couple unopened boxes recently and sent me photos and statistics.

First up is a "light pack" box from the 2003 BBM 1st Version set. I've talked about the "Light Pack" boxes a bit in the past but in a nutshell they are packs with half the number of cards than the regular packs at an MSRP of half the price. In the case of the 2003 1st Version set, the packs contained 5 cards at a price of 100 yen a pack rather than the standard 10 cards for 200 yen a pack. The "Light Pack" boxes contained only a subset of the base set (only the player cards and the Leader subset) and none of the parallels, insert cards or memorabilia cards available in the "standard" boxes, but there were parallels and insert cards that were only found in the "Light Pack" boxes. For the 2003 1st Version set, 60 of the player cards had "kira" parallels and all the Leader subset cards have a "silver" parallel. There was also a 2 card "MVP" insert set featuring the 2002 MVPs (Hideki Matsui and Alex Cabrera). (More details and examples can be seen here).

The box contained 20 packs total. As I mentioned above, each pack had five cards. Of those five cards, one of them was either a "kira" card or a "silver" Leader card. I'm not sure that any non-"silver" Leader cards were actually available in the boxes. So there's 100 cards in the box. Jay got 88 unique cards plus 12 doubles. Of the 88 cards, 70 were player cards, nine were "kira" parallels and nine were "silver" Leader cards. Of the 12 doubles, one was a "silver" Leader card, one was a "kira" parallel and the rest were regular cards.

Here's Jay's photos of the box:

Jay also opened a "Light Pack" box of the 2003 BBM 2nd Version set. This one had 20 packs containing four cards each (BBM had cut the number of cards in their "standard" packs to 9 for this set - it would go to eight in 2004). Like before, one of the cards would be a "special" card. The "Light Pack" boxes again only contained a subset of the base set (the player cards) and parallel versions of the "Opening Game" and "Record Achievement" inserts. None of the parallels, inserts (other than the parallel versions) or memorabilia cards from the "standard" boxes were available in them. Once again 60 of the player cards had "kira" parallels and once again there was a two card "MVP" insert set. (And again there are more details here.)

Of the 80 cards in the box, Jay got 75 unique cards - 57 player cards, 12 "kira" parallels, five "Opening Game" cards and one "Record Achievement" card. Two of the five duplicates were "kira" cards (and actually were the same card!). Here's some photos that he sent:

The final box Jay opened was from one of the 2011 Bandai Owners League sets. I think that Bandai issues four of these sets a year. The 2010 ones were labeled 01-04, the 2011 ones were labeled 05-08, etc. This is from the set labeled "06" so I think it was the second one issued in 2011. There were 20 3 card packs in the box for a total of 60 cards. Of those 60 cards, Jay got 58 unique cards. There were 144 cards in the set but some of them are short printed. There are at least two different types of short print - "Star" and "Super Star". Of the 58 unique cards Jay got, 49 were "regular" card, five were "Star" cards and four were "Super Star" cards. The "regular" cards could have either a black or white border - I don't know if there's some significance to that.

Here's Jay's photos:

Thanks for the information and pictures Jay!

↧

Nobuhiko Matsunaka

March 3, 2016, 6:47 pm

≫ Next: 2004 Upper Deck Opening Series Japan Commemorative Sheet

≪ Previous: Box Breaks From Jay

Long time Fukuoka Softbank (and Daiei) Hawk Nobuhiko Matsunaka announced his retirement earlier this week. He had been released by the Hawks at the end of last season but he had hoped to sign with another team. He had given himself until the end of February to sign with someone and when it didn't happen, he decided to call it a career.

Matsunaka had spent five seasons playing for Nippon Steel Kimitsu in the industrial leagues after graduating from high school before being drafted in the second round of the fall 1996 draft by the then Fukuoka Daiei Hawks (who took Tadahito Iguchi in the first round). He became a regular for the Hawks in 1999 and a star in 2000. He remained a star for the Hawks for the next decade before injuries started to take their toll.

Matsunaka's best year was 2004 when he won the triple crown by leading the Pacific League in batting, home runs and RBIs (as well as hits and OBP). As you'd expect, he won the MVP that year (his second - he also won in 2000). He won another batting title in 2006, another home run crown in 2005 and RBI titles in 2004 and 2006. He was named to the Best 9 team five times (2000, 2003-06) and won a Golden Glove once (2004). He made the Pacific League All Star team nine times between 1999 and 2009, missing only in 2002 and 2006 (he was selected in 2006 but missed the game due to injury).

He appeared in five Nippon Series during his career - winning it all four times (1999, 2003, 2011 and 2014) and losing in 2000. He did not appear for the Hawks in last year's Series. He played for the Japanese National Team in the 1996 and 2000 Olympics and the 2006 World Baseball Classic.

Here's a card from each year of his career:

1997 BBM #478

1998 BBM Hawks #FD50

1999 BBM Nippon Series #S20

2000 Upper Deck Sydney Olympics #215

2001 Upper Deck Victory #040

2002 Calbee "Sayonora Home Run" #SH-2

2003 BBM 2nd Version #698

2004 BBM 1st Version #382

2005 BBM 1st Version #61

2006 Upper Deck WBC Moments #CM-19

2007 Club Hawks

2008 BBM Hawks 70th Anniversary #93

2009 BBM All Stars #A31

2010 BBM 1st Version "Cross Stream" #CS123

2011 BBM Hawks #HMT

2012 Calbee #001

2013 BBM Classic #052

2014 BBM 2nd Version #420

2015 BBM 25th Anniversary #095

↧

2004 Upper Deck Opening Series Japan Commemorative Sheet

March 5, 2016, 11:25 am

≫ Next: 1975 Calbee "Star History" cards

≪ Previous: Nobuhiko Matsunaka

In 2004, MLB held their second ever "Japan Opening Series". The Yankees and (still then) Devil Rays opened the regular season by playing a two game series in Tokyo at the Dome. Upper Deck produced a commemorative sheet of baseball cards in conjunction with the series:

There's a couple interesting things about this sheet. The first thing is the inclusion of two NPB players - Yoshinobu Takahashi of the Giants and Kei Igawa of the Tigers. I know the Yankees played each of these teams in exhibition games before the regular season games so I assume that the sheets were given away at these games as well (not sure if Tampa played any exhibition games). The second thing is that while ostensibly all these cards supposedly are from an Upper Deck set called "First Pitch" (which appears to have been their version of Topps Opening Day and BBM Preview - a smaller set using a similar design to the company's "flagship" set), none of these eight cards actually appear in the set. Obviously you wouldn't expect the Takahashi and Igawa cards in the set but the actual cards of Matsui, Jeter, Huff and Baldelli cards use different photos and Crawford does not actually have a card in the set. Alex Rodriguez's card in the First Pitch set depicts him still playing for the Rangers - he had just been traded to the Yankees on February 16th, barely a month and a half before the Opening Series. I suspect that this is the first baseball card to depict Rodriguez as a member of the Yankees.

The back side of the sheet is taken up by a large shot of Matsui with what looks like a directory of stores in Japan that stocked Upper Deck baseball cards in 2004.

There have been commemorative sheets produced for other MLB Opening Series in Japan but I don't think any of the others are as interesting as this one. In 2000, Fleer produced a sheet for the Mets-Cubs series but it was a simple promotion sheet for their Tradition set - only two of the eight players included were actually on the Cubs (Sammy Sosa) or the Mets (Mike Piazza). The other six players were MLB stars from other teams - Ivan Rodriguez, Mo Vaughn, Derek Jeter, Chipper Jones, Pedro Martinez and Cal Ripken. In 2003 MLB had planned to have the Mariners and Athletics open the season in Japan but called it off due to security concerns with the start of the Second Gulf War. A commemorative sheet was created by Upper Deck and has somehow found its way to the collectors market. The sheet shows eight players - four from the Mariners (Ichiro, Edgar Martinez, Bret Boone and Freddy Garcia) and four from the Athletics (Tim Hudson, Eric Chavez, Barry Zito and Miguel Tejada). All the cards are identical to the corresponding cards in the Upper Deck "MVP" set. The back of the sheet is similar to the 2004 sheet - a directory of Japanese Upper Deck dealers superimposed over a picture of Ichiro.

MLB has opened the season in Japan on two other occasions - 2008 (Red Sox and Athletics) and 2012 (Mariners and Athletics). I have not seen any commemorative sheets for those series but I don't know that there aren't any.

↧

1975 Calbee "Star History" cards

March 6, 2016, 1:59 pm

≫ Next: Card Of The Week March 6

≪ Previous: 2004 Upper Deck Opening Series Japan Commemorative Sheet

Calbee released their largest set ever (1472 cards) between late 1975 and late 1976. Ryan has done an excellent job of identifying some 26 separate series that the cards were released in although it is believed that the actual number is more like 40. I wanted to highlight one series that he mentioned - the "Star History" cards - that appears to have been issued in late 1975.

The series contained 36 cards numbered 289 to 324. Each card featured a color photo of the player along with an older black and white photo. In some ways these cards resembled the "Boyhood Photos Of The Stars" cards from the 1972 and 1973 Topps sets except that most of these photos showed the player with his high school or college baseball team. There are a couple that show a photo of the player earlier in his NPB career, possibly with a different team than he was on when the card was produced.

I've got about a third of the 36 cards in the series (and by the way, don't assume that because there's 36 cards that there are three per team - the even division of cards between teams didn't really start until a lot later and keep in mind that there's almost no Calbee cards for the Lotte Orions until 1985). Here are the cards I have and my best guess to the background of the old photos:

#299 Taira Fujita (Hanshin)

#321 Isao Harimoto (Namihana Commercial High School?)

#292 Masaji Hiramatsu (Okayama Prefectural Okayamahigashi Commercial High School)

#293 Senichi Hoshino (Meiji University)

#317 Tatsuhiko Kimata (Chukyo Commercial High School?)

#313 Toshiyuki Mimura (Hiroshima Prefectural Hiroshima Commercial High School?)

#294 Atsushi Nagaike (Hosei University?)

#295 Shigeo Nagashima (Rikkio University)

#290 Sadaharu Oh (Waseda Jitsugyo Gakko High School)

#323 Tsuyoshi Ohshita (Toei Flyers)

#302 Yoshiro Sotokoba (Hiroshima Carp)

#320 Koichi Tabuchi (Hosei University)

#297 Tsutomu Wakamatsu (Hokkai High School?)

Most of the high school names I've listed here are from Google translations of Japanese wiki pages so they may not be correct.

↧

Card Of The Week March 6

March 6, 2016, 2:12 pm

≫ Next: New Upcoming Non-BBM Sets

≪ Previous: 1975 Calbee "Star History" cards

Samurai Japan completed their two game sweep over the Taiwanese national team this weekend by beating them 9-3 today in Osaka. The game was fairly close entering the top of the ninth inning with Japan up 3-1 but they then rallied for six runs to blow the game open. The big blow in the inning was a bases loaded triple from Dragons outfielder Ryosuke Hirata which put Japan up comfortably 7-1. This was followed moments later by a two run home run by Yoshitomo Tsutsugo of the Baystars to really seal the deal.

Here's Hirata's rookie card from the 2006 BBM 1st Version set (#286):

↧

New Upcoming Non-BBM Sets

March 8, 2016, 5:22 pm

≫ Next: Card Of The Week March 13

≪ Previous: Card Of The Week March 6

BBM has not updated their website in over a month - there's something like eight sets from them in the pipeline right now (including this year's 1st Version) but I will continue to wait to post anything about them until they put it on their website (you can see the sets for yourself over at Discount Niki and/or Hot Box). In the meantime, there's a couple other releases to talk about.

- Series One from Calbee hits the stores on or around March 21 (that's the official release date but don't be surprised to see them showing up online a few days before that). The base set has 72 player cards (six per team but you already had guessed that) along with 18 "Title Holder" cards, 10 "Legend" cards (for retired players) and four checklist cards (looks like the theme for them is the 2015 post-season). As usual there's a 24 card "Star" insert set (and I'm assuming that it has the gold facsimile parallels but there's nothing on the web page about them). There do not appear to be any "lucky" cards or premium box set available with the set.

- I've been wondering for a while if Epoch somehow acquired Front Runner as the Dragons X Mizuno set that Epoch put out last fall strongly resembled some Front Runner sets from 2014 (and Front Runner hadn't issued any sets since spring last year). Epoch has announced a Lions "Stars & Rookies" set that will be released in April which looks kind of similar to the "Heroes & Rookies" box sets that Front Runner did last spring. The big difference is that the new set is not a box set - it looks kind of like a high end set. Each box (which has an MSRP of 10,800 yen or around $95) contains two mini-boxes. Each mini-box contains five "regular" cards and one autograph card. The base set has 29 cards and there's a myriad of possible autograph cards. It will be interesting to see if Epoch releases similar sets for other teams the way that Front Runner did the last couple years.

↧

Card Of The Week March 13

March 13, 2016, 1:29 pm

≫ Next: Big Bunch Of BBM

≪ Previous: New Upcoming Non-BBM Sets

Last week's edition of the Japan Baseball Weekly podcast featured an interview with former Nippon Ham Fighters player (and current scout) Matt Winters. Winters spent five seasons with the Fighters from 1990 to 1994 when they still called Tokyo home. One thing that Winters mentioned that I found interesting is that when he joined the Fighters he was reunited with someone that he had played with in his first season of professional baseball - catcher Fujio Tamura. The two of them had played together on the 1978 Oneonta Yankees of the New York-Penn League. Since I'm always interested in discovering NPB players who have played in the minors in the US and I had never heard of anyone playing in the Yankees organization, I had to do a little more research.

Tamura had been drafted by the Fighters in the sixth round of the fall 1977 draft out of high school (Kanto Daiichi) while Winters was drafted by the Yankees in the 1st round of the June 1978 draft (#24 overall with a compensation pick the Yankees got from the Red Sox due to Boston signing Mike Torrez as a free agent). Tamura was only with Oneonta for 13 games and I suspect he was only a part time player for those games - he only had 17 plate appearances (11 at bats plus six walks) and had no hits. I'm not sure if the Yankees and Fighters had some sort of working agreement that year - the only two Japanese players on the roster that year were Tamura and infielder Haruhiko Nakano. Nakano got into 20 games but also had no hits in only 14 plate appearances (9 at bats with four walks and a sacrifice). Nakano never played for the ichi-gun Fighters (or any other ichi-gun team) - about all I've been able to find out about him (other than his record in Oneonta) is that he was a sixth round draft pick of the Fighters in the fall 1974 draft out of "Shibata Agriculture" high school. It looks like the Fighters only sent players in 1978 as there are no Japanese players on the 1977 or 1979 rosters (although future Yakult Swallow Rex Hudler was also on the 1978 team).

Tamura didn't debut with the ichi-gun Fighters until 1981 and he became the regular catcher for the Fighters in 1985 and pretty much remained so for the next 10 years. He made the All Star team nine consecutive years from 1986 to 1994 but was pretty much overshadowed for consideration for the Best 9 and Golden Glove awards by Tsutomo Itoh of the Lions - he only won the awards in 1993. He was sold to the Marines in 1996 and then signed with the Hawks as a free agent for the 1997 and 1998 seasons. He's been a coach almost every season since retiring after 1998 - first for the Hawks, then the Fighters, Dragons, Tigers and back to the Hawks where he's been since 2013.

Here's a card of him from the 1994 BBM set (#188):

↧

Big Bunch Of BBM

March 17, 2016, 4:54 pm

≫ Next: 2016 BBM Rookie Edition

≪ Previous: Card Of The Week March 13

BBM did their monthly update of their website yesterday and announced details of eight sets that will be released over the next month or so.

- The big announcement was for this year's 1st Version set which looks a lot like last year's 1st Version set. Once again there will only be 372 cards in the base set - 324 player cards (27 per team), 12 team checklist cards (don't know the theme yet but expect mascots yet again) and 36 "Cross Freeze" cards (for the fifth time in the last seven years, BBM is doing a cross set subset). There are two 12 card insert sets - "Infinite Talent" which features "young stars and note-worthy rookies" and "3D Cross" which features each team's "main star" in some sort of 3-D card. And then there's the usual cornucopia of parallels, autographed cards and memorabilia cards. The set will be released in mid-April.

- The theme of this year's Icons box set is Speed, both on the bases and from the mound. Each box contains 37 cards - a 36 card base set (I think it's three players per team) plus (as usual) one special card - possibly an autographed card or a die-cut card (and maybe even an autographed die-cut card). It appears that the set includes rookie players like Shinnosuke Ogasawara and Junpei Takahashi. It will be out in late March (Jambalaya says the 26th).

- BBM is issuing the first two of their "Autographed Edition" team box sets for the year in the next two weeks - Opening for the Fighters and Dragons Dash for Chunichi (obviously). Both boxes contain 28 cards - a 27 card base set plus one autographed card. One of the cards in the base set in each box will be a parallel card as well. The Fighters set will be out on the 24th while the Dragons set will be out a day later.

- BBM has announced their first four of their pack based team sets for the year. The first two will be released in late March and are for the Eagles and the Giants (which is a bit surprising as usually the Giants set is one of the last team sets to be released each year). The sets for the Tigers and Marines will be released in mid-April. Each set will feature 81 cards in its base set - somewhere between 65 and 69 cards for the manager and players and 12-16 cards in different subsets. Each set except the Giants set has 18 insert cards spread over a couple different sets while the Giants set appears to have 21 insert cards. Each set has various parallels available both for player cards and insert cards - the Giants set appears to have the most elaborate ones. Each set also has autographed cards available but I think only the Giants set has memorabilia cards also.

↧

2016 BBM Rookie Edition

March 18, 2016, 6:36 pm

≫ Next: Card Of The Week March 20

≪ Previous: Big Bunch Of BBM

My copy of this year's Rookie Edition set arrived in the mail the other day and as no surprise, it looks quite a bit like the last few years versions of the set. Rookie Edition is BBM's annual draft pick set featuring the players taken in the previous fall's draft.

This year's edition has 129 cards including 115 player cards for the draft picks. As far as I can tell, the only player taken in the draft not included in the set is Yusuke Matsuzawa who was taken in the third round of the ikusei portion of the draft by Yomiuri (he's not on the Giants roster so I assume he didn't sign with them). There are also two cards that sort of serve as checklist cards for the draft picks - there is a tiny head shot of each player along with his name, draft position and card number. The other 12 cards in the set are the "Then & Now" subset that pair the top pick for each team with some other player from the team either past or present.

This is the eighth Rookie Edition set that I've written about and I pretty much ran out of things to say about it maybe five sets ago. As always, the pictures of the players are posed shots that were probably taken at the press conference their teams held to introduce their draft class. As always, I think it would be much more interesting to show photos of the players in their high school, college, industrial league or independent league uniforms although I understand how that might be a licensing nightmare. What might be the most interesting thing about the set is that with BBM lowering the number of cards in their team sets so that only players on the official 70-man roster appear in them, this might be the only set that most of the ikusei players ever appear in.

Here are some sample cards:

#097

#084

#027

#116

#123

I don't mean to sound like I'm down on the set - it's not a bad set. It just kind of is what it is. If you want a set that features the first card of every player taken in the NPB draft then you want to get this set.

UPDATE - forgot to mention that you can see all the cards at Jambalaya (as usual).

↧

Card Of The Week March 20

March 20, 2016, 2:20 pm

≫ Next: Guest Post - Graded NPB Rookie Cards

≪ Previous: 2016 BBM Rookie Edition

There's a couple World Baseball Classic qualifiers going on this weekend and I was watching last Friday afternoon's game between France and Spain when I heard a familiar name announced. Former Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagle Rhiner Cruz pitched a "perfect" inning (one out in the eighth and two outs in the ninth) for Spain. It was in a lost cause - Spain lost the game 5-3 and was eliminated. I did a little research on Cruz and discovered that this was not the first time he had pitched for Spain - he had previously appeared with them in the 2007 European Championship and Baseball World Cup, the 2008 Olympic Qualification Tournament, the 2009 Baseball World Cup and the 2013 WBC.

Cruz spent around a season and a half with the Eagles, working mostly in middle relief. Baseball card-wise he kind of fell through the cracks - I only know of four Japanese cards of his - 2014 Owners League, 2015 Eagles team-issued set and 2015 BBM Eagles set plus a "bonus" 2014 BBM 2nd Version set included with Sports Card Magazine #106. So he never appeared in a BBM "flagship" set (the SCM card really doesn't count) or Calbee set.

Here's his BBM Eagles team set card from last year (#E23):

References: Jason's contributions to the Inventory Manager at SportsCardForum and the biography of Cruz at Baseball Reference's Bullpen Wiki.

↧

Guest Post - Graded NPB Rookie Cards

March 22, 2016, 6:22 pm

≫ Next: Signing Up For Pacific League TV

≪ Previous: Card Of The Week March 20

I was having an on-line conversation with reader David Saba regarding a couple things (including the alleged 1993 Hilo Stars Ichiro cards) and we got into a discussion about graded cards. David collects "Gem Mint" graded Japanese rookie cards of Japanese MLB players. I don't know a whole lot about graded cards - I've never been that interested in them - so David offered to write a "guest post" about what he collects and how he got into it:

NPB Card Guy was nice enough to let me share my collection with his readers, so here goes.

I collect NPB Rookie Cards of guys who have made the jump to MLB. Whenever possible, I try to acquire Gem Mint graded copies of each player on my wish list.

I’ve been an avid baseball card collector since I was a kid in the late-80s and my interest in Japanese baseball initiated along with thousands of other Americans – I got caught up in Nomomania.

When Hideo Nomo burst onto the scene in 1995, it blew my mind in so many different ways. His electric stuff, the windup, the foreign language, I was hooked. How could someone from a far away land just appear in MLB and dominate hitters? I needed to know more about this professional league across the world and if there were other talented players like Nomo in Japan.

Gradually, NPB players made the move to MLB over the years and I followed their careers. When I found out these players had NPB cards, that was it, I just had to get my hands on those cards. Ebay was essential, but I’ve also acquired cards through private sales from other NPB card collectors. I’ve always collected MLB Rookie Cards, specifically MVP and CY Young Award winners. As I got older and could afford higher priced cards, I began to purchase graded Gem Mint copies for my collection. I decided to replicate this for my new NPB collection.

I like to set rules. When I decided to collect NPB Rookies of players who made the jump to MLB, I wanted my collection to only include accomplished MLB players, not just guys who made a brief appearance. For a player to appear on my wish list, they needed to meet one of the following requirements:

*Position players with at least 400 games played in MLB
*Pitchers with at least 200 innings pitched in MLB

With those parameters in place, my NPB Rookie Card wish list includes these 27 cards:

Ichiro Suzuki, 1993 BBM #239
Hideo Nomo, 1990 Takara Kintetsu Buffaloes #11
Hiroki Kuroda, 1997 BBM #496
Hideki Matsui, 1993 BBM #423
Hisashi Iwakuma, 2000 BBM #388
Yu Darvish, 2005 BBM #116
Koji Uehara, 1999 BBM #329
Tomokazu Ohka, 1994 BBM #494
Shigetoshi Hasegawa, 1991 BBM #348
Takashi Saito, 1992 BBM #471
Daisuke Matsuzaka, 1999 BBM #413
Norichika Aoki, 2004 BBM #308
Masato Yoshii, 1988 Takara Kintetsu Buffaloes #36
Hideki Okajima, 1994 BBM #483
Akinori Otsuka, 1997 BBM #462
Masahiro Tanaka, 2007 BBM #211
Tadahito Iguchi, 1997 BBM #477
Kenji Johjima, 1995 BBM #558
Kazuo Matsui, 1994 BBM #506
Akinori Iwamura, 1997 BBM #502
Kosuke Fukudome, 1999 BBM #310
Kazuhiro Sasaki, 1991 BBM #196
Hideki Irabu, 1988 Takara Lotte Orions #18
So Taguchi, 1992 BBM #448
Kenshin Kawakami, 1998 BBM #385
Hisanori Takahashi, 2000 BBM #426
Kazuhisa Ishii, 1992 BBM #464

A few notes on this list. Junichi Tazawa and Dave Roberts were born in Japan, but never played in NPB, so they are not included. Mac Suzuki only played in NPB after his MLB career, he’s not really an NPB import, so I didn’t include him either.

There are many, many different interpretations collectors have for what constitutes a Rookie Card. My definition is simply the first time a player appears on a licensed card [EDITOR'S NOTE: David clarified that he's looking for the first "flagship" set appearance as the first cards of Aoki, Darvish and Tanaka are from BBM's Rookie Edition sets). For my NPB Rookie Card collection, I always look for BBM cards unless a player’s first card was not from BBM.

The guys in bold I have acquired – you can check out those cards in the images accompanying this post. If you have one of the rookies that I don’t have in Mint condition, let me know if you are interested in selling it to me in the comments section and maybe we can work out a deal.

The hardest part about acquiring cards for my collection has been the scarcity of Gem Mint graded examples. NPB card collecting is a niche hobby to begin with and few people submit their cards for grading. Some of the players on my list have very few examples graded BGS 9.5 or PSA 10. Kenji Johjima has just one graded Gem Mint rookie card. Others, like Akinori Otsuka, Masato Yoshii, Hisanori Takahashi and Hideki Irabu, have no Gem Mint graded copies. To compile my collection, I will have to purchase ungraded copies that I think are Gem Mint and submit them for grading myself. I’ve recently acquired ungraded copies of Hideo Nomo, Hiroki Kuroda and Tadahito Iguchi NPB Rookies and will be submitting them to Beckett. In my experience, all three cards should receive Gem Mint grades. Fingers crossed.

In the past two years, as my collection has grown, I’ve become hooked on NPB baseball. Last May, I visited Japan for the first time and attended games at Seibu Dome, Meji Jingu Stadium and Fukuoka Dome. I had an absolute blast. Between singing (poorly) for home team players, the traditional 7th inning stretch balloon release and robots and cheerleaders on the field, NPB baseball offers an experience unlike anything we have in the states. I’m sure that as my love for NPB grows, my collection will grow with it.

How do you collect Japanese baseball cards and why? I’d love to read about your collection in the comments section. Thanks again to NPB Card guy for the platform and for providing invaluable insight on the hobby.

David sent me scans of his cards. Here's the graded ones:

And here's the cards he has that still need to be graded:

I'll attest to the difficulties he has in finding cards that meet his standards for grading. I have a couple of the cards that he's looking for (1994 Kazuo Matsui and Tomo Ohka and the 2000 Hisashi Iwakuma) but based on the scans that I sent him, none of the cards would end up being graded "Gem Mint".

I want to thank David for writing the post. It's been a while since I've had a guest post from anyone. If anyone else wants to write an essay on a relevant topic, let me know.

↧

Signing Up For Pacific League TV

March 23, 2016, 6:24 pm

≫ Next: Card Of The Week March 27

≪ Previous: Guest Post - Graded NPB Rookie Cards

I am frequently asked how I watch Japanese baseball games here in the States. I used to use Justin.tv until Google shut it down a few years back. I then switched to win24tv.com, a Korean site, but I've never been very comfortable with it. I've always said that I would be willing to pay for something like MLB.TV for NPB but there isn't one. There is Pacific League TV but I was never sure about whether or not I could sign up for it without a Japanese address, bank account or credit card and whether or not I could view it from outside of Japan. And rather stupidly on my part, I never attempted to find out for myself.

It turns out that the answer to those questions is "yes, it is possible to sign up for PLTV from outside of Japan with a non-Japanese credit card" and "yes, it is possible to view the games on PLTV from outside of Japan". And it also turned out that it's ridiculously simple to sign up.

The easiest way to sign up is to use a browser that automatically translates Japanese to English (I use Chrome) and go to the PLTV website. There's a red button at the top of the page with text that says "利用登録" which translates to "On registration" (at least on Chrome anyway). NOTE - all the screen shots I'm going to show don't have the automatic translation - just to show how easy it is even without the translation.

Once you click on that, you'll be taken to a page that allows you to select what kind of membership you want. Your options are the "unlimited viewing package" (at either 950 or 1450 yen per month plus tax*), interleague only (flat rate of 1450 plus tax but it's only available from May 31 to June 19) or a single day's games (600 yen). I signed up for the "unlimited viewing package" and was taken to the registration page.

*You can get the 950 yen rate if you're a member of one of the Pacific League team's official fan clubs

I will point out that PLTV is currently doing a promotion where you can watch for free from now until the end of March so this page currently looks different than the screen shot I'm showing here.

Some of the elements on the registration page have English on them, even if you don't have them automatically translated. The page is long enough that I had to split it up into three screen shots. I'll go over each of them in order.

The red boxes labeled "必須" indicate required fields. The first two fields ("お名前" or "Your name") are your last and first names. The next two fields ("フリガナ" or "Yomi") (which are not required) are apparently used if the kanji version of your name has an alternate reading in hiragana. Since I suspect that most people reading this don't use kanji for their names, just leave these blank. The next field ("性別") is for your gender (obviously) and followed by your birthdate (生年月日) - the fields are for year, month and day. The next field ("お住まいの都道府県") is where you have to lie a little bit - it's for which Japanese prefecture you live in. I didn't see an "outside of Japan" option so I said "Tokyo". The next two fields ("メールアドレス" and "メールアドレス再入力") are for your email address - the second one is to confirm that you typed it into the first one correctly.

The next two fields ("パスワード" and "パスワード再入力") are for your password - again the second field is to confirm what you typed in the first one. The next field ("お好きな球団") asks for your favorite team - all 12 NPB teams are listed, not just the Pacific League ones. The next two fields (which are not required) are how you would specify if you belonged to PL team's fan club. The first field ("球団有料ファンクラブ") is where you select whether or not you're a member. If you select "Member", the second field ("対象球団/会員番号") will ask for which team and what your membership number is. The last field ("決済方法") is where you select your payment type - currently you can only pick credit card ("クレジットカード決済") but when I signed up a few weeks ago you could also pick some sort of e-payment plan offered by Yahoo! or Rakuten.

Once you're filled in all the required fields, click on the red button towards the bottom of the page labeled "利用規約に同意の上、ご入力情報の確認へ進む (Confirm)".

At this point, PLTV will send a confirmation email to the email address you entered above (assuming that they validated everything you entered in the form). That email will contain a link that you'll follow to confirm that you gave them a valid email. At this point you'll be asked to enter your credit card information.

The first field is for the number on your credit card. The next two fields are for the expiration date - month first, then year. The last field is a captcha code to confirm you aren't a robot. Once done, hit the big red button and PLTV will charge your credit card. With the 116 yen tax, the total was 1566 yen which worked out to around $14.

I hope this makes sense and is helpful. It was very simple to do and I'm regretting not having done it previously.

↧

Card Of The Week March 27

March 27, 2016, 6:24 pm

≫ Next: RIP Kiyohiro Miura

≪ Previous: Signing Up For Pacific League TV

Opening Day for NPB was last Friday and the most exciting game was out in Tokorozawa between the Buffaloes and the Lions. Orix had a 3-0 lead going into the seventh inning behind the string pitching of Chihiro Kaneko when the Lions rallied. With one out, Tatsuyuki Uemoto singled and Tomoya Mori walked. Shogo Akiyama doubled, scoring Uemoto and Takumi Kuriyama hit a sacrifice fly to bring Mori in. Up stepped Ernesto Mejia, who then singled to tie the game at 3:

Orix took a 4-3 lead in the top of the ninth, leading to some more Lions dramatics in the bottom of the ninth. After Yuji Onizaki struck out to lead off the inning, Akiyama walked (for the third time in the game). Kuriyama then tied the score with a triple, bringing Mejia to the plate:

Mejia singled, bringing in Shotaro Tashiro (who was pinch running for Kuriyama) with the winning run and it was "Daydream Believer" time out at Seibu Dome.*

In honor of Mejia's big game, here's his 2014 Calbee card (#182):

*The Lions play "Daydream Believer" after every win at Seibu Dome. I'm not sure who the artist on the recording is but it's not the Monkees. You can hear it in this video.

↧

RIP Kiyohiro Miura

March 28, 2016, 6:42 pm

≫ Next: Sports Card Magazine #116

≪ Previous: Card Of The Week March 27

I haven't seen any coverage of this in English but NPB Reddit mentioned the other day that former Nankai Hawks pitcher Kiyohiro Miura has passed away at age 77. I looked up his Japanese wikipedia page and it confirmed that he had succumbed to pneumonia on Sunday in Osaka.

Miura had a 19 year career in NPB, signing with the Hawks prior to the 1957 season out of Beppu Tsurumioka High School. He was sold to the Taiheiyo Club Lions after the 1972 season and he retired at the end of 1975. He coached for the Lions in 1976 and 1977 and later ran a fugu restaurant. His best season was probably 1965 when he went 11-3 and lead the Pacific League in ERA (1.56). He was selected to two All Star teams (1965 & 1966) and played in four Nippon Series (1959, 1964-66).

I don't have any vintage cards of him and I don't know for sure what exists - his career falls into both the late menko era and the early Calbee years but the only card I've been able to find is his 1967 Kabaya -Leaf cards (#308). I swiped this image from Ebay:

The only modern card I've found of him is from the 2008 BBM Hawks 70th Anniversary set (#20):

↧

Latest Images