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Card Of The Week September 9

September 9, 2018, 5:00 am
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One of the things I am constantly on the lookout for is cards that show "collisions" (for lack of a better word) between NPB and MLB, especially from when NPB teams have come the US to do spring training.  I recently picked up a card from the 1975 NST "Mr. Baseball" set (#189) that shows Yomiuri Giants manager Shigeo Nagashima with Gene Mauch who was manager of the Montreal Expos at the time. 



The Giants were doing spring training in Vero Beach, Florida that year and played at least one exhibition game against the Expos - there's a Calbee card from the 1974-75 set that shows Giants pitcher Kazumi Takahashi facing an unidentified right handed Expos batter.

Posting is going to be very light for me for the next few weeks - I'm on a two and half week vacation.
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Card Of The Week September 16

September 16, 2018, 5:00 am
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I was at an Orioles-Red Sox afternoon game a couple months ago and as I was coming into the ballpark from the Light Rail station at Camden Yards I noticed a someone wearing a familiar looking uniform but not one you see in Baltimore very often - there was a guy wearing a Samsung Lions jersey.  I stopped to talk to him for a minute - he was surprised someone recognized the uniform and knew anything about the team.  The guy was gracious enough to let me take a couple pictures - I knew Dan Skrezyna would get a kick out of it:



Dan pointed out to me that the jersey was for Man-Soo Lee who had played for the Lions from 1982 (the KBO's first season) to 1997.  Lee was the KBO career home run leader when he retired although he has been passed by a number of players in the 20+ years since he retired.  He coached in the US minor leagues for a couple years after he retired (Kinston in the Indians organization in 1998 and Charlotte in the White Sox organization in 1999) before becoming the White Sox bullpen coach from 2000 to 2006.  He managed the KBO's SK Wyverns from 2011 to 2014.

There aren't many cards of Lee that I know about.  TradingCardDB,com only lists two - a 1995 KBO sticker (#52) and a card in the 1999 Blueline Charlotte Knights set (#27).  I don't have either of these cards but I have a 1994 Teleca card of him (#40):


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Card Of The Week September 23

September 23, 2018, 5:00 am
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One thing I've learned from reading various baseball autobiographies is that most pitchers hate to run.  So I was amused when I saw this card of Joichiro Maki of the Tigers in this year's BBM 1st Version set (#216):


Of course I was also just pleasantly surprised that BBM had a picture of pitcher when he wasn't pitching.  (And note that he's not wearing a batting helmet so he's not base running.)

I thought it'd be appropriate to show a picture of a player running today as I'm currently in Inverness, Scotland so that my wife can run the Loch Ness Marathon.
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The Fall Lineup

September 30, 2018, 9:43 am
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I'm back from vacation so it's time to get caught up on sets that were announced while I was gone...

- BBM announced that their annual Rookie Edition Premium set will be released in late October.  This box set will contain 38 cards - a 36 card base set plus two premium cards which may be parallel, autograph or memorabilia cards.  The 36 cards (three per team) feature top rookies from the season but they aren't necessarily each team's top three picks from last year's draft.

- Two years ago BBM issued a multi-sport set called Masterpiece to celebrate the 70th Anniversary of BBM Sha, the parent magazine publisher for BBM.  Last year they did another multi-sport set called Infinity.  This year they will release yet another multi-spot set and it too will be called Infinity.  It's a pack based set but there's not a lot of detail about the set on the web page - I can't tell you how big the base set is.  As with the other two sets it appears that the sport most represented in the set is baseball - the website lists about 30 baseball players (17 OB and 13 current) including Katsuya Nomura and Masanori Murakami.  The other sports represented include wrestling, golf, figure skating, tennis, rugby, American football, volleyball, softball and horse racing.  The card design looks exactly like last year's set which makes me wonder if this set should be viewed as a continuation of that set.  The website shows a couple cards called "Family Ties" - I don't know if these are a subset or an insert but one of them shows brother and sister baseball players Shingo and Yuki Kawabata.  The set will be released in early November.

- Speaking of Yuki Kawabata, her league is getting a card set this year.  Epoch is releasing a second set for the Japan Women's Baseball League (JWBL) on October 20th (their first came out back in 2016).  This is a pack based set that has an 80 card base set which includes the manager, coach and mascot for all four teams in the league.  The base set will also include a card for Ami Inamura, the "First Pitch Queen".  There will be autograph and memorabilia cards randomly inserted in the packs.

- Epoch is releasing a fourth in its series of ultra high end team sets called "Stars & Legends" - this one will be for the Carp.  A box of this retails for 13,300 yen and I think only includes four cards - although two of those will be "special insert cards" which are either autograph or memorabilia cards.  The base set has 55 cards which I think are split between 33 active players and 22 OB players.  The set will be out on October 27th.

- I had suggested earlier this year that BBM might possibly do a 40th Anniversary set for the Lions moving to Saitama from Fukuoka (which happened in 1979 making this year the Lions' 40th season there).  It doesn't look like BBM is doing a set but Epoch is - as another ultra high end set.   Each box will retail for 12,100 yen and contain six cards - two of which will be autographed.  The base set contains 37 cards - 36 cards for OB Lions greats like Koji Akiyama, Tsutomu Itoh and Katsuya Nomura (this is apparently Nomura's first Epoch card) plus a card for...Ami Inamura for some bizarre reason.  The set will be released on October 20th.

- For the third year in a row Epoch is releasing a Pacific League only ultra high end set called "Pacific League Premier".  Boxes of this will retail for 13,900 yen and contain eight cards - four base set cards, two "insert" cards (holospectra or "silk embossed") and two "Special Insert" cards (autograph or memorabilia).  The base set has 54 cards - nine for each PL team.  This set hits the shelves on October 20th.

- I'm late in mentioning this but there's a new KBO set from SCC out.  This one does cover 2018.  Dan has all the details on it here but I'll summarize by saying that it's a 253 card set although the last 13 cards are all autograph cards.  The base set then is 240 cards which breaks down to 24 cards for each of the ten KBO teams.  What's a bit confusing is that those 240 cards are split between 100 "Normal" cards, 45 "Rare" cards, 43 "Holo" cards, 43 "Facsimile Autograph" cards and 9 "Rookie" cards - I don't know if any of these subsets are short printed or not.  Dan's post includes information on where to purchase boxes for the set and he's also uploaded the checklist and card images for the set to TradingCardDB.com.
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Card Of The Week September 30

September 30, 2018, 5:15 pm
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I was in London a couple of weeks ago and while browsing shops in Camden Market I came across a used clothing store that had a bunch of foreign (to the UK) sports jerseys.  The majority of them were for the NFL and MLB but I did see what I think was an industrial league jersey from Japan as well as a Yomiuri Giants jersey that I'm pretty sure was for Kenji Yano.  I didn't buy it since it probably wouldn't have fit and it's for a team I don't like that much but it was certainly an odd thing to come across in England.

Here's a card of Yano wearing a similar jersey to the one I saw:

2006 BBM Giants #G078
Yano is one of a number of players who has announced he's retiring at the end of the season so I'll be doing a post for him in the next few weeks.
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Kazuya Fukuura

October 2, 2018, 6:11 pm
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I'm late in getting to this but back on September 22nd Kazuya Fukuura of the Marines became the latest member of the 2000 hit club.  Fukuura has spent his entire career with Lotte - he was their seventh round pick in the fall 1993 draft out of Narashino High School.  He was originally drafted as a pitcher but shoulder issues forced him to convert to a position player in July of 1994.  He didn't make his debut with the ichi-gun Marines until 1997 so he never pitched for the top team.  He led the Pacific League in hitting in 2001, becoming the first player other than Ichiro to lead the league since 1993 (it didn't hurt that Ichiro was in Seattle by then).  He played in the annual All Star series three times - 2000, 2004 and 2005 - and was selected for the 2006 team but didn't play due to injury.  He won Golden Glove awards in 2003, 2005 and 2007 and a Best 9 award in 2010.  He's played in two Nippon Series for the Marines in 2005 and 2010.  He's never played for Team Japan in any international tournaments although he has played against the MLB All Stars in a couple of the post-season All Star series in the early 00's.

Here's a selection of cards of Fukuura from throughout his career:

1994 BBM #529

1998 Calbee #173

2001 Upper Deck #170

2002 BBM 1st Version #376

2004 BBM All Stars #A58

2006 BBM 1st Version #GG3

2007 Calbee #030

2010 BBM Nippon Series #S21

2011 BBM 1st Version #368

2015 BBM Marines #M74

2018 Epoch NPB #201
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Calbee Team Books

October 7, 2018, 8:32 am
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About a year ago I was browsing Amazon's Japanese website and I came across an interesting little book.  It was a small paperback book that looked like it had something to do with Calbee cards featuring Hiroshima Toyo Carp players.  It was around 1200 yen (~$10.50) so I decided to pick it up.

When I arrived I discovered that the book did indeed show Calbee cards of Carp players.  The cards are broken down by player and the players are broken down by position.  The book has 400 pages and I would guess that there's close to 500 cards shown in the book for roughly 100 players.  The player selection is heavy on the recent players although there's a handful of older players - Koji Yamamoto, Sachio Kinugasa, Manabu Kittabeppu and Yutaka Ohno for example.  Some players only have one card while others have many - Kenta Maeda has 29 while Tomonori Maeda has 42(!).

It was an interesting enough book that I was curious if there were books for any other teams.  I searched Amazon Japan a number of times over the past year but I didn't find any.  But a couple weeks ago Deanna Rubin sent me the above photo that she had taken at the bookstore near the Tokyo Dome (I think the store is called "Oaks" and is the store that replaced the store that had been there for 60+ years until it closed a few years back - Yamashita) and asked me if I had seen these.  Obviously I had not seen the other teams.  I did another search on Amazon Japan and lo and behold, books for all twelve teams showed up.  I wondered why I hadn't seen them before but a glance at the publication dates explained that - the Carp book had been published in July of 2017 but the rest weren't published until after August of this year - in fact the Lions book was just published two days ago.  I ordered books for the Dragons, Hawks and Fighters and had them in hand a few days later (Amazon Japan and DHL continue to amaze me - I ordered the books on a Tuesday and had them by Friday).


Here's a couple example pages to give you a sense of what the books look like.  These aren't great scans because the books are too thick to lie flat in my scanner but you'll get the idea.  These are the first couple pages of Shohei Ohtani's section in the Fighters book:



Ohtani has 12 pages total that show 22 cards.  Now you may be surprised to discover that Ohtani HAD 22 Calbee cards in the five years he was in Japan - I know I was.  These 22 cards include checklist cards (although not all of them that feature him - there's this one from 2014 Series One showing both him and Sho Nakata that's not included), cards from Title Holder, Exciting Scene and Exciting Rookie  subsets, cards from a couple of the "Wins Leader" Lucky Card redemption box sets and Star insert cards, including the parallel versions.  This last item is one of my complaints about these books - there are two many instances where they include both the original and the parallel version of the premium insert cards.  It's annoying enough to see two nearly identical versions of a recent "Star" insert card - one with a facsimile signature and one without - but it's really irritating for some of the older inserts where the parallel version was just a "foil" finish that doesn't come across well in a picture.  Here's Shinya Okamoto's pages from the Dragons book as an example of this:


Can you tell which one's the parallel?  I think it's the one on the top.  This is the only card they included for Okamoto - in fairness I think it's the only Calbee card he had with the Dragons.  But there was a signature parallel version of this card as well - why not use that instead?

I have other complaints about the books.  As I mentioned with the Carp book, the players included in the books are mostly recent players.  The books do include some older players but in almost every case the older players only have one or two cards shown.  For example here's Hall Of Famer Koji Yamamoto's pages from the Carp book:


(You'll notice that Yamamoto's bio page is on the right while those for Okamoto and Ohtani are on the left.  The Carp book opens on the left while the other books open on the right in Western style.)  You can see there's only two cards for Yamamoto.  What's also annoying is instead of showing a card of him from the 1970's, they show a card from the 2002 "Memorial" subset that celebrated Calbee's 30th Anniversary.  This is another complaint I have - the advertising for the books brags about how Calbee's been publishing cards since 1973 but I haven't seen a card from earlier than 1981 in any of the books.  The only card for Kinugasa is from 1984.  Senichi Hoshino's cards are from 1982 and 2012 (another "Memorial" subset card - this time for Calbee's 40th Anniversary).  Morimichi Takagi only has one card and it's also a card from the 2012 "Memorial" subset.  Then there's the guys who don't show up at all - Hiromitsu Ochiai is not in the Dragons book while neither Katsuya Nomura or Hiromitsu Kadota show up in the Hawks book (the Hawks book does include other Nankai-era players so it's not that non-Softbank players are being excluded).

I was considering getting books for all 12 teams but I'm not sure I'm going to do that now.  The emphasis on recent cards is a bit of a turn off for me as I have all the Calbee sets since 2012.  I'll probably just pick up the Lions book.  But your mileage may vary.  Here's a link to the listing of all the books on Amazon Japan - there's actually 13 in all since there are two versions of the Carp book - I don't know what the difference is between the two versions.  (I thought it'd be cool if they did an edition for the Kintetsu Buffaloes but that doesn't look like that's happened.  I don't know if the Orix edition includes Kintetsu players but I would expect that it doesn't.)

I have seen someone selling these on Ebay for around $26 with free shipping - if you are getting just one it's probably six of one, half dozen of the other about whether that's cheaper than Amazon.  If you're getting more than one though, Amazon is the way to go.  I got the three books for roughly $45 including the super fast DHL shipping.
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Card Of The Week October 7

October 7, 2018, 2:45 pm
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Orix manager Junichi Fukura stepped down a few weeks back and it was announced this week that head coach Norifumi Nishimura would be taking over as manager.  Nishimura's only other managerial experience was with the Chiba Lotte Marines, the team he had spent his entire playing career with between 1982 and 1987.  Taking over the Marines from Bobby Valentine going into the 2010 season Nishimura led the Marines to a third place finish with a record of 75-67-2, just barely squeaking by the Fighters who had a record of 74-67-3.  Improbably the Marines swept the Lions in the First Stage of the Climax Series and beat the Hawks in the Final Stage to advance to the Nippon Series.  They then beat the Dragons in the Series in six games, becoming the first and I believe only third place team to win the Nippon Series (I think the 2017 Baystars are the only other third place team to advance to the Series).  Nishimura led the Marines to a last place finish in 2011 however and though they moved up to fifth in 2012 it wasn't enough to save his job - he was replaced by Tsutomu Itoh for the 2013 season.

Here's Nishimura's card from the 2010 BBM Nippon Series set (#S01) as well as the card showing the team celebrating their championship with the traditional do-age of him (#S71):



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2008 BBM Collegiate National Team Set - Where Are They Now?

October 8, 2018, 6:55 pm
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Ten years ago this month BBM released their second collegiate set.  This set featured the Japanese collegiate team that played in the World University Baseball Championship held in Brno in the Czech Republic in July of 2008.  This is the only collegiate set of the eleven BBM issued between 2008 and 2013 that is not for the Tokyo Big Six league.

I wrote about this set when it originally came out - it was a 44 card set that featured 2 cards each of the 22 players on the team.  As you might expect from a team that's essentially a collegiate all star team, most of the players featured in the set went on to play in NPB.  Only two of the players did not go on to NPB - Hiroto Nakamura and Takuya Tsukuura, who were both seniors at Toyo University.  I do not know if they went on to play in the corporate or independent leagues - there's no entries for either player in Japanese Wikipedia.  The set is significant as it is the first appearance of Yuki Saitoh in a BBM set - I still maintain it was the popularity of Saitoh following the 2006 Summer Koshien tournament that led BBM to start doing collegiate sets.

Here's a summary of the careers of the other 20 players.  All of them went directly from college to NPB.  Five of the players are still active in NPB.

PlayerCollegeYearDraftedNotes
Takahiro ArakiKinki32009 Swallows 3rdPlayed for Swallows 2010-present
Masanori FujiharaRitsumeikan32009 Tigers 2ndHis cards in the set identify him as "Fujiwara".  Played for Tigers 2010-15
Takeshi HosoyamadaWaseda42008 Baystars 4thPlayed for Baystars 2009-13, Hawks 2014-15.  Was released by DeNA after 2013 and joined Hawks as ikusei player.  Made the Hawks' 70 man roster at the beginning of the 2015 season.  Played for Toyota after leaving Hawks
Yosuke InoueAoyama Gakuin42008 Eagles 4thPlayed for Eagles 2009-12.  Possibly played for Brownsville of the United Baseball League in 2014.
Masahiro InuiToyo22010 Fighters 3rdPlayed for Fighters 2011-16.  Traded to Giants in 2016 in Kenji Yano deal.  Played for Giants 2016-17.  Joined Toyama GRN Thunderbirds of Baseball Challenge League for 2018 season
Takahiro IwamotoAsia42008 Carp 1stPlayed for Carp 2009-present
Kyohei IwasakiTokai42008 Dragons 3rdPlayed for Dragons 2009-14.  Traded to Orix for Taiki Mitsumata in 2014.  Played for Orix 2014-17.  Spent 2018 with Hitachi in the corporate leagues
Shinji IwataMeiji42008 Dragons 5thPlayed for Dragons 2009-16.  Dragons minor league pitching coach starting in 2018
Keijiro MatsumotoWaseda42008 Baystars 1stPlayed for Baystars 2009-17.  Joined Nippon Steel Sumikin Kazusa Magic in 2018
Ryoji NakataAsia32009 Dragons 3rdPlayed for Dragons 2010-14.  Also played for JR Tokai after being released by Chunichi
Hiroki NakazawaKokusai Budo42008 Giants 4thPlayed for Giants 2009-12.  Traded to Eagles for Suguru Ino in 2012-13 offseason.  Played for Eagles 2013-14.  Made only ichi-gun appearances in 2013
Shota OhnoToyo42008 Fighters 1stPlayed for Fighters 2009-17.  Joined Dragons as free agent after 2017.  Member of Samurai Japan for the 2017 WBC. All Star in 2014
Yuki SaitohWaseda22010 Fighters 1stPlayed for Fighters 2011-present.  All Star in 2011-12
Kohei ShibataKokusai Budo42008 Tigers 2ndPlayed for Tigers 2009-16.  Released after 2016 and signed with Lotte.  Spent 2017 with Marines before retiring
Tsuyoshi TakashimaAoyama Gakuin42008 Buffaloes 4thPlayed for Buffaloes 2009-11.  Never played for ichi-gun team.  Played 21 games with Lancaster of the Atlantic League in 2013
Hisashi TakeuchiHosei32009 Carp 3rdPlayed for Carp 2010-15
Shingo TatsumiKinki42008 Hawks 1stPlayed for Hawks 2009-16
Toshiki TsuboiTsukuba42008 Marines 4thPlayed for Marines 2009-11.  Never played on the ichi-gun team
Hiroki UemotoWaseda42008 Tigers 3rdPlayed for Tigers 2009-present
Noriharu YamazakiYokohama Shoka42008 Baystars 3rdPlayed for Baystars 2009-16.  Spent 2018 with Tigers after being released by DeNA after 2017 season

Here's a card of each of these players from the set followed by a card of them with an NPB team.  I've tried to get the most recent card I could of them but in a couple of cases it's not all that recent.  There are three players - Nakazawa, Takashima and Tsuboi - that I don't have any card for other than their 2009 cards from Rookie Edition and 1st Version.  I've also made exceptions for the four players who were also in the 2008 Tokyo Big Six Spring Version set (Hosoyamada, Iwata, Matsumoto and Uemoto) since I've used the most recent card I have for a couple of them.

2008 BBM Collegiate National Team #CN18

2018 BBM 2nd Version #584

2008 BBM Collegiate National Team #CN29

2015 BBM Tigers #T19

2008 BBM Collegiate National Team #CN31

2012 BBM 1st Version #306

2008 BBM Collegiate National Team #CN04

2012 BBM Eagles #E23

2008 BBM Collegiate National Team #CN30

2017 BBM Giants #G26

2008 BBM Collegiate National Team #CN21

2018 BBM Carp "Successful Achievement" #32

2008 BBM Collegiate National Team #CN16

2017 BBM Buffaloes #Bs50

2008 BBM Collegiate National Team #CN23

2016 BBM Dragons #D15

2008 BBM Collegiate National Team #CN42

2014 Front Runner Baystars Rookies & Young Stars #23

2008 BBM Collegiate National Team #CN14

2011 BBM Dragons #D54

2008 BBM Collegiate National Team #CN33

2009 BBM 1st Version #252

2008 BBM Collegiate National Team #CN10

2018 Calbee #136

2008 BBM Collegiate National Team #CN24

2018 Epoch NPB #146

2008 BBM Collegiate National Team #CN19

2018 BBM Farewell #28

2008 BBM Collegiate National Team #CN37

2009 BBM 1st Version #071

2008 BBM Collegiate National Team #CN25

2015 BBM Carp #C25

2008 BBM Collegiate National Team #CN06

2015 BBM Hawks #H11

2008 BBM Collegiate National Team #CN27

2009 BBM 1st Version #142

2008 BBM Collegiate National Team #CN12

2018 BBM 1st Version #202

2008 BBM Collegiate National Team #CN17

2017 BBM Baystars #DB41

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More New Stuff

October 9, 2018, 5:45 pm
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I wanted to quickly mention a couple of sets that got announced in the last week or so...

- For the third year in a row the Hiroshima Toyo Carp have won the Central League pennant (remember that the pennant winner is the team that finishes first, not necessarily the team that wins the Climax Series and represents the league in the Nippon Series) and for the third year in a row BBM is issuing a box set to commemorate it.  The set is named "Triple Champion" and each box contains 37 cards - a 36 card base set plus one "special" card that will either be one of 12 3D cards or an autograph card.  My suspicion is that the autograph cards are extremely rare since the MSRP on the set is only 4000 yen.  The set has been getting smaller each year - the 2016 set ("Realization Of A Great Ambition" or something like that) had a base set of 54 cards and last year's base set ("Successful Achievement") had 45 cards (which means next year's set would be 27 cards, right?).  The base set is split between 30 player (and manager) cards and what I suspect are six "highlight" cards.  The set will be out in mid-October.

- Also for the third year in a row BBM is issuing the "Fusion" set.  This is a pack based set that I suspect will have a base set of 144 cards (since the previous two editions did) but I don't know that for sure.  The set appears to have the traditional four-way split with 24 Leader cards featuring the statistical leaders from the 2018 season, 96 player cards (both active and OB) and an unspecified number of "1st Version Update" and "Ceremonial First Pitch" cards.  The previous editions of the set had 102 player cards along with nine "1st Version Update" and nine "Ceremonial First Pitch" cards so I would expect that there will be six extra cards in the two subsets.  There will be three insert sets.  Two of these are what I guess you would call the standard Fusion insert sets - a 24 card "Great Record" set which shows two active players from each team celebrating a milestone and a 12 card "Legendary Player" set which features an OB player from each team.  The new one this year is another installment of the ubiquitous "Phantom" set - this time I think all 12 cards in the set are of OB players (as opposed to the active players featured in the "Phantom" inserts for the team sets).  There will also be various autograph cards available.  The set will be released in late November.

- SCC has apparently released another 2018 set.  Dan is referring to it as KBO Collection 2 Black.  The set has 115 cards - a 105 card base set plus 10 rare (#'d to 200) "Hidden Hologram" insert cards.  Dan has a friend who opened 20 boxes of the set and didn't get even one of the inserts.  One odd thing about the set is that it only features players from half the teams - Doosan, Kia, SK, NC and Hanwha.  Dan speculates that there might be yet another set with the players for the other five teams.
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2013 Bandai Owners League 02 Box Break

October 10, 2018, 6:44 pm
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For the third year in a row I've used the Amazon gift cards I got for my birthday to pick an unopened box of Bandai's Owners League cards.  This year I picked up a box of the "02" set from 2013 - my hope was to get a Shohei Ohtani card since this was the only Owners League set that had a card of him in his rookie year.

Bandai issued four Owners League sets a year from 2010 to 2015.  They were labelled "01", "02", "03" and "04".  They were some sort of collectible card game - there's a unique code on the back of each card to be used on-line somehow.   I had picked up boxes of the "04" editions from 2011 and 2013 previously - this was my first box of the "02" edition.

The set has 156 total cards available but the base set is actually only 144 cards.  The additional 12 cards are "Legend" cards which features an OB player from each team.  The base set is split into six separate card types - four of which I believe are short printed.  The four short printed types are "Super Star" (12 total - 1 per team), "Infinity" (12 total - I believe all of these are the 1st round picks from the 2012 draft), "Great" (12 total - 1 per team) and "Star" (24 total - 2 per team).  The remaining cards are split between 36 "Black" (3 per team) and 48 "White" cards (4 per team).  This is very similar to how the other sets I've opened boxes for are organized.


The box contained 20 packs which contained three cards each so there was a total of 60 cards in the box.  As with the other two boxes I opened, the box contained no duplicate cards.  Here's a breakdown by card type of what I got:

Legend - 1
Super Star - 1
Infinity - 2
Great - 2
Star - 5
Black - 21
White - 28

I was disappointed that I did not get the Ohtani card from the Infinity cards but I did get a Tomoyuki Sugano card from the same subset so that's almost as good.  Here's an example card from each subset:

#L001 (Legend)

#133 (Super Star)

#002 (Infinity)

#051 (Great)

#017 (Star)

#091 (Black)

#131 (White)
 One of the attractions for the "04" sets for me has been that since they're issued late in the year they are able to feature players who signed too late to be included in BBM's flagship sets (1st & 2nd Version).  I was surprised to discover that a large percentage of the players in this set were also not in BBM's flagship sets from 2013 - 29 of the 59 non-Legend players in the set did not appear in either the 1st or 2nd Version sets that year.  Probably the most interesting player who's in this set and not BBM's is Wil Ledezma, who appeared in 26 games for the Chiba Lotte Marines that year.  His only other Japanese card that I know about is from BBM's Marines team set from that year.
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2018 BBM Genesis set

October 12, 2018, 7:54 pm
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It's odd how you change the things you're interested in collecting over the years.  For example a couple years back I would never have thought about getting all of BBM's team sets each year but after doing it for a couple years in a row now I would feel my collection for the year was incomplete without them.  I think I'm starting to feel that way towards Genesis, BBM's annual high end set.  I got last year's edition due to the inclusion of a couple late signing players and I discovered to my surprise that I really liked the set.  So when this year's edition came out I decided to try it again.  And once again I really liked it.

Of course the whole attraction of the Genesis set is not the base set but the autograph and memorabilia cards.  Since I was just getting the base set it was relative inexpensive - I picked it up off Yahoo! Japan Auctions for 2000 yen.  With my auction fees from Noppin it was about 3000 yen in all (not including shipping to the US - I had this shipped with the Calbee Series Three set). 

The base set has 108 player cards - 9 per team.  This has been the standard size of the Genesis set since BBM started publishing the set in 2012.  In addition there are 12 team checklist cards which brings the total size of the base set to 120 cards.

The players featured in the set include most of the big stars of NPB - Tetsuto Yamada, Yuki Yanagita, Yoshihiru Maru, Seiya Suzuki, Tomoyuki Sugano, Yusei Kikuchi, Masataka Yoshida, Shogo Akiyama, Takehiro Norimoto and Yoshitomo Tsutsugoh among others.  There don't appear to be any rookies in the set and there's no late signing foreigners in the set this year.  There are two players in hte set who don't appear in either of BBM's flagship sets (1st and 2nd Version) this year - Kazuki Tanaka of the Eagles and Takumi Ohshima of the Giants.

Here's some example cards.  As with last year's set, the cards didn't scan well and look better in person.  The bright gold foil swooshes on the left side of the cards don't look so bright in the scans.

#063

#017

#035

#094

#105

#065
I'll admit that one of the attractions of this year's set was the inclusion of players wearing some of the alternate uniforms this year.  I need to start updating my uniform posts on a regular basis.

Like last year's set the team checklists are extremely boring:

#CL05
You can see all the cards over at Jambalaya although their scans aren't much better looking than mine. 
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2018 Calbee Series Three

October 13, 2018, 6:31 pm
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Calbee's Series Three set got released a few weeks back.  This is basically the third part of Calbee's flagship set for the year - the first two parts were Series One which came out March and Series Two which came out in June.  As I've mentioned before, last season Calbee was unable to produce a Series Three set due to a potato shortage so this is the first Series Three set since 2016.

Like its two predecessors this year, Series Three has a base set of 88 cards.  There's 72 player cards (split evenly between the 12 teams so there's six cards per team), 12 "Exciting Scene" subset cards and four checklist cards.  The player cards are numbered in continuation of the other two sets - Series Two ended with card #144 so Series Three is numbered 145 to 216.

I can't say that there's a great selection of players in the set.  The biggest names are Seiya Suzuki, Ryosuke Kikuchi, Nobuhiro Matsuda, Takeya Nakamura, Yusei Kikuchi, Koji Uehara, Wladimir Balentien, Masataka Yoshida and Sho Nakata.  There's about 24 players in the set (a third of the players) who appeared in Series One or Two including almost everyone I listed just now - only Yusei Kikuchi and Koji Uehara from that group are unique to this set.  There are three players in the set who didn't make it into BBM's flagship sets - Kazuki Tanaka of the Eagles, Toru Murata of the Fighters and Kazuki Mishima of the Baystars.  One of the gripes I've had about Calbee's sets lately (as well as BBM's) has been the monotony of the poses on the photos - lots of batters batting and pitchers pitching.  This set has a little better selection - there's some runners running and catcher catching - but it's still kind of monotonous.  I was also a little disappointed that there were no horizontally formatted cards.  Here's some examples:

#161 (Kazuki Tanaka)

#190 (Ryutaro Umeno)

#185 (Seiya Suzuki)

#208 (Zolio Almonte)

#146 (Nobuhiro Matsuda)

#180 (Mike Bolsinger)
The 12 card "Exciting Scene" subset features an "exciting scene" for each of the 12 NPB teams.  This includes Chihiro Kaneko of the Buffaloes getting his 1500th strikeout, Takehiro Norimoto of the Eagles getting his 1000th strikeout (which was also highlighted on his player card in the Series Two set) and Yoshitomo Tsutsugoh of the Baystars getting his 150th home run.  Other players in the set include Yuki Yanagita and Takahiro Arai.  For several of the players in the subset this is there only Calbee card this year - Tomoyuki Sugano, Daisuke Matsuzaka and Norichika Aoki are probably the biggest names in this group.  Here's the Kaneko card:

#ES-04
The four checklist cards feature highlights from the middle part of the season - Hiroki Nishikawa of the Fighters getting his 200th career stolen base on June 1st, Daisuke Yamai's win over the Baystars on May 22nd. Kazuya Fukuura setting the record for most games played for Lotte (2162) on April 10th and the Swallows clinching the "interleague championship" on June 17th.  Here's the Swallows card:

#C-12
You can see all the cards (including the "Star" insert cards and the "RBI Leader" box set that is available as a "Lucky Card" redemption) over at Jambalaya.
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Card Of The Week October 14

October 14, 2018, 6:32 am
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I'm leaving on a week long business trip to Texas this afternoon so I knew I needed to take care of "Card Of The Week" early.  I had kicked around a couple topics - new manager for the Dragons, old manager for the Giants, Koji Uehara becoming the oldest player to ever win a playoff game, etc - but I hadn't really decided on anything.  I figured I'd wait and see how the Climax Series games went today to decide.  I got up late this morning and checked the scores on-line and discovered that a clear choice had revealed itself.

Tomoyuki Sugano of the Yomiuri Giants has had a pretty amazing season this year so far.  He went 15-8 with a 2.14 ERA and 200 strikeouts (in 202 innings) this year.  He led the Central League in wins, ERA and strikeouts so he won the pitching triple crown.  He had an amazing eight shutouts and is considered a lock for the Sawamura Award (if he hasn't already won it - sometimes I miss that announcement). 

And then he went and threw a no-hitter against the Swallows in Game Two of the First Stage of the Climax Series today.  He only walked one batter - Tetsuto Yamada - so he was nearly perfect.  It was the first no-hitter in Climax Series history and I believe only the second in NPB post-season history - the first being the Daisuke Yamai-Hitoki Iwase combined perfect game in Game Five of the 2007 Nippon Series.  With the win the Giants move on to the Final Stage of the Climax Series against the Carp starting on Wednesday.

One more good thing for Sugano - it looks like his uncle is set to return as Giants manager now that Yoshinobu Takahashi has resigned.

Here's Sugano's first Calbee card - from the 2013 "Exciting Rookie" subset featuring all the 2012 first round draft picks (#D-01):


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Prestige Collectibles Auction #54

October 18, 2018, 1:38 pm
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Been meaning to get to this - Prestige Collectibles latest auction (#54) started a couple weeks back and will be running until October 27th.  As usual there's a lot of interesting stuff available.  Details on how to register and bid are available on the website.
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RIP Seizo Furukawa

October 20, 2018, 12:12 pm
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I haven't seen anything in English about this but Jim Allen tweeted yesterday that former Chunichi and Hankyu player Seizo Furukawa had passed away at age 96.  Furukawa joined the Nagoya club as a 19 year old in 1941 and spent three seasons with them before joining the Army.  He lead the Japan Baseball League in home runs in 1942 and 1943 although with the depressed offense of the war years the totals were not impressive - he hit 8 in 1942 and 4 in 1943.  Jim mentions that Furukawa played every inning of a 28 inning game between Taiyo and Nagoya on May 24th, 1942 that ultimately ended as a 4-4 tie - it was Furukawa's two run home run in the ninth that forced extra innings in the game.  Furukawa actually caught all 28 innings after playing an entire 10 inning game against Asahi earlier that day (it was a triple header involving four teams that day at Korakuen Stadium - the first game was between Asahi and Nagoya, the second game was between Yomiuri and Taiyo and the third game was between Nagoya and Taiyo).  Jiro Noguchi and Michihiro Nishizawa pitched all 28 innings for Taiyo and Nagoya respectively.  Furukawa also caught Nishizawa's no-hitter against Hankyu on July 18th, 1942.

After the war Furukawa returned to the Nagoya team which was now going by the name the Chubu Nippon Dragons in 1946 and then the Chunichi Dragons in 1947 before moving on to the Hankyu Braves in 1948 where he played the remainder of his career.  He stole 56 bases in 1950 which was the second most in the Pacific League that year behind Tadasuka Kiduka of the Nankai Hawks.  He got seven hits in a game against the Hawks on August 30th, 1953 which is an NPB record.  He retired after the 1959 season and later wrote a horse racing column (if I'm understanding the Google translation of his Japanese Wikipedia page, I think he married the daughter of a famous Japanese horse trainer named Katsuyoshi Ito).

There's around 20 or so catalogued cards of Furukawa from his playing days, most of which are either bromide or Karuta cards.  There appears to only be one modern card of him - it's in the Dragons 70th Anniversary set that BBM put out in 2006.  I only have two total cards of him - a bromide card from the set catalogued as JBR 73 which came out in 1946 and is one of the earliest catalogued sets for professional baseball in Japan and the BBM card:

1946 JBR 73

2006 BBM Dragons 70th Anniversary #11

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RIP Joe Stanka

October 20, 2018, 6:54 pm
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1964 Nippon Series MVP Joe Stanka has passed away at age 87.  Stanka was originally signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1950 and spent three years in their organization before being drafted by the Cubs.  After three years in the Cubs organization they sold him to Sacramento of the Pacific Coast League which at the time was pretty much still an independent organization (both the team and the league).  He spent four years in Sacramento before being sold to the White Sox in late 1959 where he made his major league debut (and his only major league appearances) during Chicago's September pennant drive, going 1-0 with a 3.38 ERA in 5 1/3 innings pitched in relief over two games  He did not appear in the World Series for the White Sox that year.

Following the 1959 season he signed with the Nankai Hawks.  He spent the next six seasons with Nankai, going 94-59 over that time.  His best season was 1964, when he went 26-7 with a 2.40 ERA (both marks were second in the Pacific League that season) while leading the league with six shutouts.  He threw three more shutouts in the Nippon Series that year against the Hanshin Tigers, winning Games One, Six and Seven.  He was named MVP of the Series and also MVP for the Pacific League, becoming the first non-Japanese American to win the award. 

Stanka and his family returned to the US after the tragic death of his teenage son in the off season after the 1965 season - his son was asphyxiated by a faulty gas heater while taking a shower.  Stanka was initially unsure if he wanted to return to baseball for 1966 and by the time he decided to come back, Nankai had already filled their foreign player slots.  He ended up with the Taiyo Whales and went 6-13 with an ERA of 4.17 in his final professional season.  Those six wins with the Whales gave him a total of 100 for his NPB career - he was the first American pitcher to reach that milestone.

Stanka made the Best 9 team in 1964 and was selected for the Pacific League All Star team in 1960 and 1964. 

Stanka had a number of cards issued for him while he was in Japan - mostly menko and bromide cards.  You'll notice something odd about this first card - it's from the JBR 5 set that Engel lists as being from 1959.  But Stanka didn't join Nankai until 1960 so either it's not Stanka or the set's not from 1959.

1959 JBR 5 (Stanka's on the right)

1960 JBR 6 (Stanka's in the upper right)  

1964 Marukami JCM 14g
He's had several modern cards, all from BBM:

1994 BBM $545

2008 BBM Hawks 70th Anniversary #22

2013 BBM Hawks 75th Anniversary #14

2013 BBM Legendary Foreigners #02

2014 BBM 80th Anniversary Pitchers Edition #25

2018 BBM Hawks 80th Anniversary #08
Besides the Japan Times article linked at the top of this post, I also used his biographies at the Baseball-Reference Bullpen and SABR's Biography project as well as his Japanese Wikipedia page.
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Epoch NPB Photos From Arizona

October 21, 2018, 9:31 am
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Justin (Charm City Autographs) has a YouTube channel and recently posted a video showing him opening several packs of 2018 Epoch NPB cards.  One of the cards he pulled was the above card of Kazunari Ishii of the Fighters (#168).  Justin immediately noticed something interesting about this card - the photo was taken in Arizona last February.  He realized that the guys in the background were from the KT Wiz of the KBO - the picture was taken at Salt River Fields At Talking Stick in Scottsdale at the exhibition game that the Fighters played back on February 10th.  A game, by the way, that I attended (along with Deanna and Dani).

I've written in the past about the photos BBM has used that were taken in Arizona in the last three 1st Version sets (2016, 2017 and 2018) but I have to confess that it hadn't occurred to me that Epoch might have also used photos from Arizona this year.  But once I knew there was one I had to go and check the rest of the cards to see if there were any others.

One thing stood out to me as I looked through the Fighters cards in the set - almost every player was shown wearing their home uniform.  There was only one player shown wearing the black jersey that the Fighters wore during training camp and that player (Eito Tanaka) was not one of the players who the team took to Arizona.  All the rest of the photos appeared to have been taken in games.  I knew that the Fighters had played three games in Arizona in February - the afore-mentioned game against KT, an inter-squad game on the 12th and a game against the LG Twins on the 13th.  I scanned through the Fighters cards then looking for photos that appeared to be taken during the day and (obviously) were of players that went to Arizona. 

I identified 12 more cards (out of the 36 total cards for the team) that I suspected of featuring Arizona photos.  Four I was quickly able to confirm were photos from Scottsdale:

#147

#153

#148
#156
How did I confirm these?  The first three photos appear in Fighters' on-line gallery for the inter-squad game on the 12th while the fourth appears in their gallery for the game against LG.  (The Ishii photo appears in their gallery for the game against KT.)

Of the remaining eight cards there are five that I'm almost positive are from Arizona based on the backgrounds in the photos:

#154

#157

#167

#159

#169
The photos on the other three cards were probably taken in Arizona but lack any definitive in their backgrounds:

#158

#166

#150
I took another look at the Series One and Series Two cards from Calbee this year just in case there were cards from Arizona in those sets as well.  The regular player cards appear to all have photos taken in Japan but I think the photo on the "Dora-Ichi" subset card for Kotaro Kiyomiya from Series One was probably taken Scottsdale.
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Card Of The Week October 21

October 21, 2018, 10:37 am
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The Hawks beat Seibu 6-5 today, which concluded their defeat of the first place Lions in the Final Stage of the Pacific League Climax Series.  The Hawks will now move on to face the Hiroshima Toyo Carp in the Nippon Series - the Carp having swept the Giants in the Central League Climax Series last week.  This will be the fifth appearance of the Hawks in the Series in the last eight years - they have won their previous four appearances.  Here's a fun fact - they've faced five different Central League clubs in those five Nippon Series appearances.  The only Central League team they haven't faced during this period is the Giants.

Yuki Yanagita was named MVP of the Climax Series after hitting .450 with 2 home runs and 8 RBIs.  Here's his card from last year's Fusion set from BBM (#045):


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Samurai Japan U23 Team

October 25, 2018, 6:49 pm
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The U-23 Baseball World Cup has been going on for about a week down in Colombia.  Japan went 5-0 in the Opening Round to win their Group (Group A) and beat Korea this morning in the first game of the Super Round.  This version of Samurai Japan is being managed by Atsunori Inaba who is the manager for the "main" version of the team as well. 

Obviously all 24 players on the team's roster are age 23 and under (given that it's a "U-23" tournament).  19 of the players came from NPB rosters - the remaining five are all industrial league players - Kento Harasawa (Subaru), Ryota Kita (Sega Sammy), Yoshua Miyazawa (Nippon Steel Sumikin Kazusa Magic), Masaki Mizuno (Yamaha) and Yuki Nakayama (Tokyo Gas).  (And I don't think any of them were drafted today.)  There are four players from the Eagles, three each from the Marines and Baystars, two each from the Carp and Buffaloes and one from each of the Hawks, Tigers, Fighters, Swallows and Giants.  There are no players from the Dragons or Lions.  There are three former first round draft picks (Hiroki Kondoh, Eagles 2017; Naruki Terashima, Swallows 2016; and Hisanori Yasuda, Marines 2017) and (oddly enough) two ikusei players - Ukyo Shuto of the Hawks and Ryutaro Takakyama of the Giants.  Here's a card for each of the NPB players on the roster:

2016 BBM Carp #C17

2017 BBM Eagles #E41

2014 BBM WE LOVE HOKKAIDO #28

2018 Epoch NPB #102

2017 Epoch Baystars #20

2017 BBM Carp #C31

2016 BBM Rookie Edition Premium #RP09

2018 BBM 1st Version #080

2018 BBM Rookie Edition #075

2018 Epoch NPB #320

2018 BBM 1st Version #214

2018 BBM Rookie Edition #007

2017 BBM Buffaloes #Bs36

2017 BBM Rookie Edition #080

2017 BBM Marines #M33

2017 Epoch Swallows #04

2016 BBM Eagles #E50

2017 BBM 1st Version #159

2018 BBM Icons-Fanfare #17
Samurai Japan has two more games scheduled in the tournament - tomorrow (10/26) at 1500 local time (4 PM EDT) against Venezuela and Saturday (10/27) at 1000 local time (11 AM EDT) against the Dominican Republic.  If they make the championship game (and I expect that they will) they will play on Sunday at 1900 local time (8 PM EDT).

The tournament has kind of an odd collection of nations represented.  Some of the staples of international baseball - the United States, Cuba and Canada for example - do not have teams in the tournament.  In addition to Japan, Asia is represented by Korea and Taiwan.  I don't know anything about the players on Korea's roster but CPBL Stats had a post last week about Taiwan's roster - it's mostly made up of college players supplemented by a couple industrial league players and three professionals from the Chinatrust Brothers. 
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