2025 Hall Of Fame Class

The Japanese Baseball Hall Of Fame announced its 2025 inductees today, and, to no one's real surprise, Ichiro Suzuki was elected in his first year of eligibility.  He is joined by three others - long time Dragons relief ace Hitoki Iwase (who, like Ichiro, was elected on the Player's Division ballot), Tigers slugger Masayuki Kakefu (on the Expert Division ballot after coming two votes short last year) and umpire Hiroya Tomizawa (who I believe went in on the Special Committee vote).  It's always kind of surprised me that Kakefu wasn't already in the Hall Of Fame so I'm happy he's finally in.

Hitoki Iwase

1999 BBM #311

2007 BBM Nippon Series #504

2019 BBM Retirement #01

Masayuki Kakefu

1977 Yamakatsu JY4

1984 Calbee #3

2017 Epoch Tigers #02 (Variant 1)

Ichiro

1993 Takara BlueWave #51

2000 BBM Diamond Heroes #F6

2009 Konami Baseball Heroes WBC #W09R113

As usual, I've updated my spreadsheet listing all the Hall Of Famers in BBM flagship sets.  1994 remains the set with the most Hall Of Fame players although the number has now grown to 18.  The set with the most Hall Of Famers overall (both players and managers) remains 1991 with 25 but it no longer stands alone - the 1994 and 1998 sets now also boast 25 Hall Of Famers each.  Iwase's final season was 2018 which means that that is now the latest year that includes a Hall Of Fame player.

2024 Topps Stadium Club NPB

I make fun of Topps' NPB offerings a lot here and with pretty good reason.  I feel like Topps is pretty lazy and/or sloppy with their Japanese products, especially in comparison with BBM's sets.  I was intrigued, though, a few months back when Topps announced they'd be doing a Stadium Club set for NPB.  Stadium Club has always been an MLB product I've admired - it's always looked like they had some outstanding photography - and I had long wondered what an NPB version would look like.  The set was released in mid-December and I liked what I saw of it on Jambalaya enough that I decided to pick it up.  I got a complete set through ZenMarket and it got delivered to my house yesterday.

As I went through the cards last night, I was kind of surprised to discover how much I really liked the set.  I mean, obviously I thought I was going to like it or I wouldn't have ordered it but I really wasn't expecting how much better the cards would look in person then they did on Jambalaya's website.  Don't get me wrong - there's still a lot of nit-picky things that annoy me about the set so I'm not totally going off brand here, but for the most part, this is a really good set.  

The base set contains 216 cards which, as you probably can guess, are split evenly between the 12 teams so there's 18 cards per team.  Each team's manager and top three 2023 draft picks are included in those 18 cards.  Most of the big stars of NPB are in the set - Roki Ssaaki, Munetaka Murakami, Tomoyuki Sugano, Kazuma Okamoto, Kensuke Kondoh, etc.

This set really lives up to Stadium Club's reputation for good photography.  There's a lot of great photos included and the cards themselves just look really good.  Here's a handful of examples:

#91

#54

#81

#53

#103

#195

#75

#182

#169

#33

I mean, you just look at these photos and you hold your breath, hoping Tyler Austin didn't hurt himself on that play.  You can just sense the speed of Okabayashi.  Even the more mundane photos with a "pitcher pitching" pose look pretty good:

#122

I thought Murakami's photo looked familiar:

#184

A similar photo was used on an Epoch One card last April.  I assume it's from the same game (if not almost the same moment):

2024 Epoch One #271

To be clear - not all the photos in the set are breathtaking masterpieces.  But there's a really good variety of interesting shots and a healthy number of horizontally oriented cards.  One of the few things that I haven't complained about Topps' NPB cards is their photo selection and this set probably has the best.

My main nit-picky thing about this set to complain about is the card backs.  Once again, Topps has made no real effort on their card backs.  At least they're a little more colorful this time:

#160 (Chusei Mannami)

The one other minor complaint about the set is the inclusion of the managers.  I'm not sure I understand the point of having a set that specializes in interesting photos and include 12 cards of guys who it's going to be very difficult to have an interesting photo of.  Probably the dullest of these twelve cards is the one for the guy who shouldn't even be in the set, seeing as he resigned six and a half months before the set was released:

#183

I'm feeling a little melancholy about this post, as this is probably the last new set I'm going to get via ZenMarket.  Ryan has a few sets for me that he'll probably ship next month but, otherwise, this was it.  I'm glad it was a good set to end my run with ZenMarket with.

I put the link earlier in the post but I'll repeat it here - as always, you can see all the cards (including inserts and parallels) over at Jambalaya. 

Card Of The Week January 12

When I made my announcement recently that I was not going to continue to buy new baseball cards anymore, only things on my want list, I got a comment from Scott Kaneko.  Scott had taken a look at the list and realized he had one of the cards on it.  He sent an email asking me for my address and dropped it in the mail to me - without telling me which card it was.  It showed up at my house on Friday - the final card I needed to complete the 2000 Ovation short printed Rising Stars insert set (#30):

Scott had said "I feel like I should hold it 'hostage' until I get a signed document that you will continue to post".  Thank you, Scott, and consider this your guarantee that I'll continue to post.

Your Hit Parade

2006 BBM Nostalgic Baseball #014

I noticed something interesting recently when I was researching the "Untouchable Records" subset from the 1995 BBM set.  In 1994, Ichiro got 210 hits, shattering Fujio Fujimura's single season hits record of 191 which had stood for 44 years.  I mentioned in the post that the single season hits record had been surpassed twice in the past 30 years, with Matt Murton setting a new record of 214 in 2010 and Shogo Akiyama topping him with 216 in 2015.  But take a guess at how many times Fujimura's total of 191 has been equalled or surpassed since 1994.

Nineteen times!

Fujimura's record was set in 1950 and stood for 44 years.  During those 44 years, only three players even got within 10 hits of the record - Larry Raines with 184 in 1954; Yoshinori Hirose with 187 in 1963; and Isao Harimoto with 182 in 1976.  But since Ichiro passed the mark in 1994, fifteen different players have gotten at least 191 hits during at least one season with Akiyama having done it twice and Norichika Aoki having done it FOUR times.  You can see the list of the top single season hit totals in NPB history here. 

It turns out there's a pretty obvious reason for why Fujimura's record has been passed so many times since 1994* and it's actually part of the reason that the record stood for so long - the number of games in a season.  

*And it's not steroids

The number of games in a season for an NPB team has varied over the years and, especially in the early days of the two league system, it wasn't unusual for a Central League team to play a different number of games in a season than a Pacific League team.  In 1950, Fujimura's Tigers played 140 games, the same as the rest of the Central League teams.  The number of games played per team dropped to 116 in 1951, went to 120 in 1952 and then 130 in 1953.  It remained at 130-ish for the next ten years before going back to 140 for three years (1963-65) and then dropping back into the 130's for the next three years.

Meantime each Pacific League team played only 120 games in 1950, dropped to 104 in 1951, went back to 120-ish for 1952 and 1953 before jumping to 140 in 1954 (when Raines got his 184 hits with Hankyu).  The number of games reached 143 in 1955 and 154 in 1956 before dropping to the 130's again the next few season.  It jumped back up to 140 in 1961, dropped back to 133 in 1962 and then leapt to 150 in 1963 (when Hirose got his 187 hits for Nankai).  It stayed at 150 for 1964, then dropped to 140 for 1965 and into the 130's for the next couple years.  

I think that the two leagues finally stabilized at 130 games for teams in each league starting in 1969.  It remained at that level for the next 28 years, increasing to 135 in 1997 and then to 140 in 2001 and 144 around 2004 or so.  It dropped to 143 ten years ago and has been there ever since (with the exception of the COVID shortened 2020 season).

So the record was set in a season that had an unusually high number of games - more than only a handful of seasons over the next almost 50 years.  Once the number of games a team played was the same or higher than the 140 played in 1950, Fujimura's record was surpassed many times.

2000 BBM 20th Century Best 9 #S-02

This actually makes Ichiro's 1994 performance all the more impressive.  He surpassed Fujimura's record by 19 hits while playing in ten fewer games.  There were two more times that Fujimura's record was topped in fewer games than 140.  Ichiro had 193 hits in 130 games in 1996 and Bobby Rose had 192 hits in 134 games in 1999.  The remaining seventeen times Fujimura's total was equalled or surpassed all happened after 2001 and therefore in at least the same number of games.

Best 9 and Golden Glove Award Cards In BBM Sets

Among the post-season awards that NPB issues are the Best 9 and Golden Glove awards.  The Golden Glove awards are basically their version of the MLB Gold Glove awards - they're issued to the player at each defensive position that the voters think had the best defensive performance for the season.  There's a set of awards for each league which means there are usually 18 awards each year.

The Best 9 awards are awarded to the player at each position that the voters think had the best overall performance for the season.  Like the Golden Glove awards, there's a set of awards for both leagues with the Pacific League team having a DH so there's usually 19 awards given out each year.  The Best 9 awards don't have a direct analogy to MLB.  The knee-jerk reaction would be to use the Silver Slugger award but that's not accurate for two reasons - the Silver Slugger awards are for "offensive performance" rather than "overall performance" and the Best 9 awards predate the Silver Slugger awards by 40 years - NPB (or more accurately its predecessor Japan Baseball League) started issuing the Best 9 awards in 1940 while MLB didn't start the Silver Slugger awards until 1980.

There was a stretch when BBM used to include cards for the winners of these awards in the following year's flagship set(s), either as insert sets or as subsets in the base set.  The first year the Best 9 award winners appeared in a set was 1997 and the Golden Glove award winners were added in  2000.  The last year that the award winners were in the flagship set was 2013, which - not coincidentally - was the last year BBM included the "Leaders" subset for the previous year's statistical leaders.

I thought it might be interesting to show one of the award winner cards from each year.  We'll start with the Best 9 winners first.  As I mentioned, the first flagship set to have the Best 9 winners was 1997.  The cards were an insert set that year but were part of the base set in 1998.  They went back to being insert cards in 1999 and remained that way until 2011.  From 2011 to 2013, they were in the base set again.  When BBM split the flagship set up into separate 1st and 2nd Version sets, the Best 9 cards were always in the 1st Version sets.

BBM actually had two versions of the cards in 2001.  When BBM issued their "Late Series" cards that year, they not only replaced all the base cards for the Tigers and BlueWave with new cards, they also replaced all the Best 9 cards with new versions.  The original cards were numbered #B1 to #B18 and the "Late Series" cards were numbered #B19 to #B36.

Here's an example Best 9 card for each year (with two for 2001).  I don't have an example for 2008 so I'm using an image I swiped from the internet.  I also don't have an example from 2010 but I have a promo version of one so I'm using that.

1997 BBM #B7

1998 BBM #531

1999 BBM #B11

2000 BBM #B5

2001 BBM #B2

2001 BBM "Late Series" #B20

2002 BBM 1st Version #BN12

2003 BBM 1st Version #BN12

2004 BBM 1st Version #BN8

2005 BBM 1st Version #BN3

2006 BBM 1st Version #BN17

2007 BBM 1st Version #BN6

2008 BBM 1st Version #BN07

2009 BBM 1st Version #BN05

Promo version of 2010 BBM 1st Version #BN01

2011 BBM 1st Version #377

2012 BBM 1st Version #358

2013 BBM 1st Version #363

A couple notes:

• Many of the cards have a shiny finish that don't necessarily scan well
• The 2001 cards are plastic "lenticular" 3D cards that also don't scan well
• The1999 cards all feature Chiba Marine Stadium in the background which was the host of one of the All Star games in 1998.  I have no idea what that would have to do with the Best 9 awards though as the Best 9 award winners weren't necessarily on the All Star teams
• Players were depicted wearing their uniforms from the season they won the award, not the season the cards were from.  So if a player switched teams after winning the award (or the player's team changed names like Matsunaka's in the 2004-05 offseason), the player is shown with their original team.  (This was true for the Golden Glove cards as well.)

On to the Golden Glove cards.  As I said, they were first included as insert cards in the 2000 set and remained insert cards until the last three years (2011-13) when they, like the Best 9 cards, were subsets in the base sets.  In 2002, the first year that BBM had split their flagship set into the 1st and 2nd Version sets, the Golden Glove cards were with the 2nd Version set.  BBM switched them to the 1st Version set in 2003 and they remained there from then on.

Like the Best 9 cards, there are two different versions of the Golden Glove cards in the 2001 set.  The original versions (#G1 to #G18) were replaced with new versions (#G19 to #G36) in the "Late Series".

Here's examples of Golden Glove cards from 2000 to 2013 (again with two for 2001).  I was only short one example - 2009 - and I again am using an image I swiped from the internet for that year.

2000 BBM #G8

2001 BBM #G1

2001 BBM Late Series #B19

2002 BBM 2nd Version #GG16

2003 BBM 1st Version #GG2

2004 BBM 1st Version #GG18

2005 BBM 1st Version #GG16

2006 BBM 1st Version #GG4

2007 BBM 1st Version #GG6

2008 BBM 1st Version #GG08

2009 BBM 1st Version #GG10

2020 BBM 1st Version #GG02

2011 BBM 1st Version #394

2012 BBM 1st Version #380

2013 BBM 1st Version #395

A couple notes:

• Again, there are shiny parts of some of these cards which make them not scan particularly well
• The 2001 cards are plastic and semi-transparent
• The 2002 cards are lenticular and don't scan well

I mentioned that I didn't think it was a coincidence that BBM stopped doing these cards at the same time they stopped doing the "Leader" subset.  These cards presented the same problem - what do you do about the players who've left NPB since winning the award?  

I've been making an assumption about how the licensing for NPB cards works but what I think happens is that BBM (or Calbee or Epoch or Topps) can make a card for any player in NPB in the same year that the player is in NPB.  But if a player leaves NPB the following year, BBM has to enter into a separate licensing agreement to include the player in that year's set.  For example, Ichiro won both a Best 9 and a Golden Glove award in 2000, his last year playing in NPB.  To include cards of him in the respective insert sets in 2001, BBM had to make a separate licensing deal with him.  I'm not positive but I think the only player they weren't able to get for these sets was 2000 Best 9 award winner Bobby Rose, who had a somewhat contentious exit from the Baystars.  I suspect, however, that by 2013, BBM had decided they didn't want to do this anymore.  They moved the statistical leaders to the Fusion set they added in 2016 but, since that set goes to print before the awards are announced, it does not include the Best 9 or Golden Glove winners (or MVP, Rookie Of The Year, Shoriki or Sawamura award winners either).