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Norichika Aoki
I'm a little late in getting to this but last Sunday Norichika Aoki, formerly of the Tokyo Yakult Swallows and currently with the Houston Astros, got his 2000th hit in NPB & MLB. I did a post for...
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Tomokazu Ohka
Tomokazu "Tomo" Ohka, veteran pitcher from the Yokohama Baystars and several MLB teams, has announced his retirement. Ohka was a third round pick of the Baystars in the fall 1993 draft. He made only...
View ArticleMore New Sets Coming Soon
A quick roundup of some new sets that will be released in the next month or so...- Information on the last two of BBM's pack based team sets has been released. The Dragons set will be out in mid-July...
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Card Of The Week June 25
Interleague play wrapped up last week and for the third year in a row, the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks were Interleague "Champions". They ended up with an identical record as the Hiroshima Toyo Carp but...
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Study Abroad Program - Kuni Ogawa
Continuing my chronicle of Japanese players playing in the North American minor leagues...A couple of years when I was in high school, I had a subscription to get minor league cards from TCMA. I don't...
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RIP Masato Kawano
A very sad story out of Japan last week - former Carp and Hawks pitcher Masato Kawano passed away suddenly from ischemic heart disease. He was just 39 years old. Kawano was taken in the third round of...
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RIP Tamotsu Nagai
Former Carp, Lions, Whales and Hawks pitcher Tamotsu Nagai passed away last week from liver cancer. He was 63 years old. Nagai was drafted out of high school by the Carp in the 3rd round of the fall...
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RIP Shinji Mori
Stunning news out of Fukuoka yesterday - Saitama Seibu Lions pitching coach Shinji Mori has passed away from multiple-organ failure at the age of 42. Mori had taken ill over the weekend while the...
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Card Of The Week July 2
The big news this past weekend was that Shohei Ohtani made his first pitching appearance of 2017 with the Fighters' farm team on Saturday. As I'm sure everyone already knows, Ohtani's been out with an...
View ArticleMissing From 2017 BBM 1st Version
A few months back when I did a post on BBM's new 1st Version set I had made my usual complaint that with each team only getting 27 cards to cover their manager and players and each team having ALL...
View ArticleCalbee And The Hokkaido Potato Crisis Of 2017
I've been asking around lately about what's going on with Calbee and why Series Two didn't get released in June when expected. Last week I sent a message to the company using the "Contact Us" page on...
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RIP Toshiharu Ueda
Hall Of Fame manager Toshiharu Ueda passed away last weekend. He managed the Hankyu Braves from 1974-78 during which time the team won four Pacific League pennants and three Nippon Series...
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Study Abroad - Fall Instructional Leagues in the 1960's
Sometimes there's an odd path to discovering something. I was up early on Monday of this week and tuned into the Lions/Fighters game in time to see the first pitch ceremony (well actually it was a...
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Card Of The Week July 9
Friday night the Carp were down 8-3 going into the ninth inning against the Swallows at Jingu Stadium but it didn't stay that way for long. Pinch hitter Xavier Batista lead off the inning with a home...
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Card Of The Week July 16
Daichi Suzuki of the Marines had a pretty good game in yesterday's second All Star game (that's the second All Star game in 2017, not the second played yesterday) - he went 2-3 with a triple and a home...
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Georgia On My Mind
Back in 2010, BBM did some cards as a tie-in with Georgia Coffee, a coffee drink made by Coca-Cola in Japan that is sold in cans. You would get two cards with each can you bought. The cards were...
View ArticleMore New Stuff
Here's some information on some recently announced sets...- BBM's annual high end set Genesis will be released in mid-September. It has a 120 card base set - 108 player cards (9 per team) and 12...
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Card Of The Week July 23
Japhet Amador of the Eagles has been having a good weekend. Yesterday the big fellow became the first Eagle ever to hit home runs in three consecutive at bats:Then in today's game, Amador lead off in...
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Card Of The Week July 30
Last Wednesday the Chunichi Dragons were cruising along with a 10-0 lead over the Swallows going into the bottom of the seventh when all the wheels fell off. The Swallows scored two runs in the bottom...
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Tokyo Rocks
BBM stopped doing card sets for the Tokyo Big Six collegiate league after 2013 but it turns out that there is kinda-sorta another outfit doing cards for the league. The catch is that they are virtual...
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