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Card Of The Week May 22
The Fighters beat the Hawks last Tuesday 7-2. It was Rick Van Den Hurk's first loss at the top level in Japan since his debut with the Hawks last season. He had won his 14th straight decision a week...
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The Lions Of San Jose
In the winter of 1982-83, Harry Steve, the general manager of Class A California League team in San Jose, had a problem. The Expos, his team's major league affiliate in 1982, had ended their...
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Card Of The Week May 29
The Hawks crushed the Buffaloes last Tuesday by a score of 22-6. The sole bright spot for Orix was Tony Blanco, who went three for four with two home runs and five RBIs:(H/T YakyuDB for the...
View ArticleChips And Cheerleaders
A couple newly announced sets to talk about:- The checklist for this seasons's Series Two from Calbee went up on their website in the last week or so. Like Series One, the new set has 72 player cards...
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RIP Tsuguo Gotoh
Former Tigers catcher-infielder-outfielder, coach and manager Tsuguo Gotoh passed away on Monday at age 92 (H/T NPB Reddit). Gotoh has joined the Tigers in 1948 from Hosei University and played 10...
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Sports Card Magazine #117
Sports Card Magazine #117 was published in Japan about a week and a half ago (May 27th). I got my issue on Tuesday (it was actually in Baltimore on Saturday the 28th but since DHL doesn't deliver on...
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Card Of The Week June 5
Shohei Ohtani threw a pitch at 163 kph (102 mph) today, setting a new NPB velocity record. Here's the video of it while it lasts (H/T YakyuDB).Just to remind you that he hits pretty well too, here's...
View ArticleMint Ships Overseas!
Kenny aka Zippy Zappy tweeted to me last week to let me know that the Mint chain of card stores in Japan was now offering overseas shipping.Apparently the way it works is that you identify items that...
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Shikoku Island League All Stars 2 - Electric Bugaloo
For the second year in a row the independent Shikoku Island League has sent an all star team to North America to take on teams from the independent Can-Am League. They kicked off the games last night...
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Card Of The Week June 12
Nowadays the photos on Calbee cards mostly show action shots but that's not always been the case. They used a lot of posed shots in their first couple years. Most of those posed photos were taken on...
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Shikoku Island League All Stars vs Sussex County Miners
Last Saturday night I made the trek up to northern New Jersey to watch the Shikoku Island All Stars take on the Sussex County Miners of the Can-Am League. Like my trip to Little Falls last year, I was...
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Recent Ebay Win
I don't very often crow about an Ebay win right after I've picked something up but I have to share this one. Rather than tell you about it, I'll just show you:Yup, that's 1973 Calbee card #1 of Shigeo...
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Card Of The Week June 19
To say Seiya Suzuki of the Carp had a good weekend would be an understatement.On Friday night, the Carp and the Orix Buffaloes had a 4-4 tie going into the bottom of the 12th inning. Yoshitaka Isomura...
View ArticleRecently Announced New Stuff
Just doing a quick post to get caught up on what's been announced lately in the way of new releases{- BBM has announced two more of this year's pack based team sets. The Swallows set might be out as...
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Nagashima Released
Jay Shelton sent me a link to a YouTube video showing how to liberate a baseball card from a PSA grading slab lat night and I decided to try out their technique on my 1973 Shigeo Nagashima card. It...
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Card Of The Week June 26
Inter-league play wrapped up last week* and once again, the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks were the "champions". This is the sixth time that the Hawks won inter-league in the 16 years it's been held. It's...
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Kosuke Fukudome
Kosuke Fukudome became the latest member of the Meikyukai last Saturday when he singled for his 2000th career hit (498 in MLB and 1502 in NPB) last Saturday against the Carp. Fukudome was the first...
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More Memories Of Uniforms - Eagles Edition
Finally a reasonably easy one...The Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles were born as an expansion team following the 2004 season to take the place of the Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes who had merged with the Orix...
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Pro Yakyuu AI Fighters
I made a trade with Dani recently and picked up a couple cards from the "Pro Yakyuu AI Fighters" set that came out in late April. This set is a little unusual in that all the cards in the set feature...
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Whatever Happened To The Class Of 2015?
The Shikoku Island All Stars tour of the CanAm League ends tonight with a game against the Cuban National Team (which has been doing their own similar tour of the league). The team has gone 8-11...
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