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Tadashi Settsu
Former Hawks pitcher Tadashi Settsu announced his retirement late last month. He'd been released by Softbank at the end of last season and had hoped to sign on with another team but no one made him an...
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Taketoshi Gotoh
Yet another player who retired at the end of the 2018 season was Baystars pinch hitter Taketoshi Gotoh. Gotoh had been a collegiate star at Hosei University. He won the Tokyo Big Six University...
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Card Of The Week January 27
A few months back I did a Card Of The Week post for Tigers pitcher Joichiro Maki's 2018 BBM 1st Version card. I was amused that Maki was shown running as I had always read that pitchers generally hate...
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Kenji Ohtonari
Hawks and Marines pitcher Kenji Ohtonari called it quits at the end of the 2018 season. Ohtonari was the top pick of the Hawks in the College/Corporate League portion of the 2006 NPB draft out of...
View ArticleThey're Coming Back!
After a two year absence the Shikoku Island League All Stars will again be taking part in the independent Can-Am League this summer. They will play 18 games (3 each against the six teams in the...
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Yuki Kawabata
Saitama Astraia infielder Yuki Kawabata announced her retirement at the end of December. Kawabata played softball in high school and after graduation played for Shionogi Pharmaceutical in what I'm...
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Card Of The Week February 3
The Heisei Period will be drawing to a close in a few months and I got curious about something. One of the original prerequisites for a player joining the Meikyukai (or "Golden Players Club") is that...
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Oddball Teleca Cards From 2000
I recently picked up the above card from a seller on Ebay. It commemorates Korea winning the 1999 Asian Games (a qualifier for the 2000 Olympics) in September of 1999. The manufacturer is Teleca who...
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1989 Mermaid Data Cards
In 1989 a candy company called Mermaid (at least that'd be my best guess here) issued a set of baseball cards. The set featured 50 cards in total - 10 cards for each of the Central League teams except...
View ArticleOddball Update
After seeing my post the other day about these three odd Teleca Korean cards from 2000Dan reached out to Thomas St. John to ask about them. Here's his reply:They wanted a few cards in English, after...
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Card Of The Week February 10
I've written in the past about the Japanese Collegiate All Star cards that were an insert in the 2008 Upper Deck USA Baseball box set. There were several different varieties of memorabilia cards for...
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Fuji Film Photos?
I don't usually blog about things I don't actually own but I saw these oddball Sadaharu Oh items on Ebay recently and I decided I should write about them, even though they were priced higher than I was...
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2018-19 Australian Baseball League Card
I had heard that there were cards for the Australian Baseball League this season but I hadn't seen any until I got a package from Steve Smith the other day containing two cards from the set. Steve...
View ArticleHappy New Year!
I know it's mid-February but to me the new year doesn't really start until the new baseball cards start coming out. I know that here in the States the new Topps cards hit the streets a few weeks ago...
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Card Of The Week February 17
The Fighters wrapped up the Arizona portion of their 2019 training camp last Tuesday. I was not able to make it down there this year (I'm saving leave for another long vacation in May/June) but Deanna...
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NST Albums
I've talked about NST some in the past - they issued four sets of cards between 1975 and 1983. Really what they issued were stickers that were meant to be pasted into albums. I had gotten a partially...
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Missing In Action - Warren Cromartie
For a while now I've been wanting to talk about players who for whatever reason don't show up in Japanese sets very often. Now obviously I'm talking about retired players as pretty much every active...
View ArticleOver The Top
Epoch has carved out a niche for itself over the past few years with what I've referred to as "ultra-high end" sets. Boxes of these sets typically contain four to six cards and retail for over 10,000...
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Card Of The Week February 24
This card (#344) from the 1975/76 Calbee set* shows 1975 Pacific League MVP Hideji Kato (#10 on the left) along with two of his Hankyu Brave teammates - pitcher Takashi Yamaguchi (#18 in the center)...
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Study Abroad - Hanshin In Fresno, 1988
By 1988 the trend of Japanese teams sending players to the US minor leagues was reaching its peak. Half the teams in NPB that year sent players abroad - the Lions were in their final year in San Jose...
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