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Akihiro Higashide
Another retiring player was Akihiro Higashide of the Carp. You'd be forgiven if you thought he'd already retired - he hasn't appeared at the ichi-gun level since 2012. He was drafted in the first...
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Kentaro Sekimoto
Kentaro Sekimoto is yet another player who retired at the end of the 2015 season. Sekimoto was drafted out of high school in the second round of the 1996 draft by the Tigers (Makoto Imaoka was the...
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Hiroshi Kisanuki
Fighters pitcher Hiroshi Kisanuki announced his retirement back at the end of September. Kisanuki was originally signed by the Yomiuri Giants back in 2002 out of Asia University - I'm not entirely...
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Card Of The Week November 1
The Fukuoka Softbank Hawks wrapped up their second straight Nippon Series Championship on Thursday, defeating the Tokyo Yakult Swallows four games to one. This is the first time that an NPB team has...
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Hichori Morimoto
Lions outfielder Hichori Morimoto is yet another player who is hanging up his shoes now that the 2015 season is over. Morimoto was drafted out of high school in the fourth round of the 1998 draft by...
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Shinichiro Koyama
Eagles pitcher Shinichiro Koyama retired at the end of the season. Koyama was the number one draft pick of the Chunichi Dragons in the 1996 draft (Masahiko Morino was their number two pick that year)....
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Card Of The Week November 8
The inaugural Premier 12 tournament got underway today with Team Japan taking on Team Korea in Sapporo. Japan won the game handily by a score of 5-0. Shohei Ohtani went six innings for the win,...
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Hisanori Takahashi
Yet another player who retired at the end of the 2015 season was Baystars pitcher Hisanori Takahashi. He was drafted in the first round by the Giants in the 1999 draft out of Toshiba in the industrial...
View ArticleLast Of The 2015 And First Of The 2016 Sets
A month ago I speculated that we'd seen the announcements for the last sets for 2015. I was wrong. There's at least a couple more coming out.- BBM is releasing a set for Hiroki Kuroda called...
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Akihito Fujii
Another face in the crowd of players who retired at the end of the 2015 season belongs to Akihito Fujii of the Hanshin Tigers. Fujii was taken in the second round of the 1998 draft out of Kinki...
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Card Of The Week November 15
Sho Nakata has had quite a good week in the Premier 12.On Wednesday, Nakata homered and drove in five of Japan's six runs (including the winning run on a sayonora hit) in their 6-5 win over Mexico. On...
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Keiichi Hirano
Orix Buffaloes second baseman Keiichi Hirano retired at the end of the season. Hirano was drafted by the then Orix Blue Wave in the "free agent acquisition frame" of the 2001 NPB draft out of Tokai...
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Kazuyuki Hoashi
Another player who retired at the end of 2015 was pitcher Kazuyuki Hoashi of the Hawks. He was originally drafted by the Lions in the third round of the 2000 draft from Mitsubishi Motors of the...
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Some 1990's Era Packaging
I wanted to do a quick note about an Ebay auction I won recently. This auction included most of a box of 1992 BBM Series One (16 out of the original 20 packs) along with seven unopened packs of 1990...
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Card Of The Week November 22
The inaugural Premier 12 wrapped up yesterday with Korea defeating the US in the gold medal game. Many would say, however, that the championship game was really last Thursday when Korea rallied from a...
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Tatsuhiko Kinjoh
As we continue to wind down the list of players who retired at the end of the 2015 season, we reach Tatsuhiko Kinjoh of the Giants. Kinjoh was drafted as a pitcher by the Yokohama Baystars in the...
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2015 BBM 25th Anniversary Set
BBM released a set commemorating their 25th Anniversary at the end of October. This set has 189 cards in its base set - 180 player cards and 9 "Great Records & Highlights" cards.This is one of the...
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Card Of The Week November 29
Back at the beginning of March, I made note of the fact that with Norihiro Nakamura retiring, Michihiro Ogasawara was now the active home run leader in NPB. I mentioned in the post that it would not...
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2015 Award Winners
The last of the major 2015 awards were announced last week. As I think most people expected, Yuki Yanagita of the Hawks and Tetsuto Yamada of the Swallows were named MVP of the Pacific and Central...
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Sports Card Magazine #114
I received the newly published Sports Card Magazine #114 in the mail today. Like issue #108 that came out this time last year, the focus of this issue is the upcoming "Real Venus" set from BBM, a set...
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