Card Of The Week October 11

There are some many things that happened over the past week that would warrant a "Card of the Week" post that I couldn't pick just one.  So in more or less chronological order...

On Thursday, the Dragons announced that their new manager would be Hall of Famer Kimiyasu Kudoh who managed the Hawks to five Nippon Series championships during his seven years running the team from 2015 and 2021.  Kudoh had a 29 year playing career from 1981 to 2010 and was always one of my favorite players, especially as he was the last NPB player who was older than me (I think Jamie Moyer was the last such MLB player).  Which means there'll be at least one NPB manager in 2027 who is older than me.  I believe his 1982 Takara Lions card was his first card:

1982 Takara Lions #47

The 2025 NPB regular season wheezed to a finish on Thursday with the Swallows knocking off the Tigers 4-0.  The last few weeks of the season are make ups of games that were rained out earlier in the season so it's a somewhat random collection of matchups every day until they're all played.  With that final game in the books, the statistical leaders for the season were finalized.  The big news is that Teruaki Sato of the Tigers won the Triple Crown in the Central League with a .306 average, 39 home runs and 109 RBIs.  

2024 Topps Stadium Club NPB #13

Ryoma Nishikawa of the Buffaloes and Misho Nishikawa of the Marines tied for the most hits in the Pacific League.  It was the first time since 1944 that two players with the same surname tied to lead a league in any category.

2024 Calbee Series Two #092

2025 BBM 35th Anniversary/Shukan Baseball 4000th #235

And finally, the first round of the Climax Series started this weekend.  Alexander Canario of the Lions had a walk off home run Saturday to beat the Fighters but, unfortunately, since he didn't start playing in Japan until this year, I don't have any cards of him.  I do have cards of Ryuki Watarai of the Baystars, however.  Watari hit the game winning home run in Game One against the Giants and hit another home run in Game Two to help DeNA sweep Yomiuri in two games.

2024 Epoch One #079

Card Of The Week October 4

Apologies for being a day late this week - had some unexpected issues come up that I needed to deal with.  

With the MLB playoffs getting underway this past week, I thought I'd do a quick post to round up what players who had previously won a Nippon Series championship could possibly add a World Series Championship as well and join the fourteen players who have won both titles.  I believe there are only two although it's entirely possible I missed someone.  The two players are Munetaka Murakami of the White Sox and Robert Suarez of the Braves who won championships in Japan with the 2021 Tokyo Yakult Swallows and 2019 Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks respectively (note that Suarez was with the Hawks in 2017 and 2018 when they also won the Series but was not on the team's roster for either of those Series).  Here are cards of the two players from the years they won their championships:

2021 Topps NPB ##86-MMU

2019 BBM Hawks #H36

UPDATE - I will admit that I threw this post together pretty quickly last night and did not fully check out the team rosters.  But I was pretty sure I had everyone.  But then this morning, I was reading today's installment of Craig Calcaterra's Cup Of Coffee newsletter and saw in his recap of last night's White Sox-Guardians game that Chicago starter Anthony Kay had left the game after only recording one out.  "Oops," I thought to myself, "I'm pretty sure Kay was with the Baystars when they won the Series in 2024".  I did some quick research and discovered that not only had he been a member of that team, he won an "Outstanding Player" award for his performance in the Series.  I then went and actually checked the rosters of all eight teams and I'm pretty sure that these are the only three guys.  So let me go ahead and add a card for Kay:

2024 BBM 1st Version #067

Card Of The Week September 27

Last Tuesday night, the Los Angeles Queens defeated the San Francisco Firebells to wrap up the inaugural championship of the Women's Pro Baseball League (WPBL).  The two teams had split the first four games of the championship series but the Queens prevailed in the final game behind the pitching of Ayami Sato, who threw the first complete game (seven innings) shutout in league history.

Sato, of course, has been a mainstay of the Madonna Japan team that has dominated the Women's Baseball World Cup over the past 20-ish years and spent seven years playing in the Japanese Women's Baseball League (JWBL).  She played for the Saitama Seibu Lions' Women's Team for a few year before joining Toronto of the Intercounty Baseball League in Canada last year.

I don't have any new cards of Sato that I haven't shared before so I'm going with her card from Epoch's 2016 JWBL set.  The set was Epoch's first set (of two) that they did for the league and is ten years old now:

2016 Epoch JWBL #43

Autumn Offerings

I've been needing to write a round up of recently announce sets for a few weeks now but I kept either being to busy to write it or wanted to write something else first.  I was thinking that it was fine as the first of the sets I needed to write about wasn't going to be released until...uh...today.  So let me get caught up...

- That set that's being released today is another "mini colored paper" or "mini shikishi" team set from TIC (aka "Hits" or "Produce 216").  This one is for the Giants and has thirty possible cards for ten different players.  To be clear, I mean that each of ten players has three possible cards - a "normal" card, a "special" foil signed card and a "secret" card that's "hologram processed" and serially numbered (although I don't know what the print run is for them).

- Epoch has announced a couple of their ultra high-end annual sets.  The "Pacific League Premier Edition" set will be released on October 24th.  Boxes of six cards (three "regular" cards, two "special insert" cards (no "GEM" cards) and either an insert card or a "GEM" "special insert" card) will retail for 17,600 yen (around $112).  The base set has 54 cards - nine per team - and a 24 card "Pacific League Superstars" insert set - the insert cards are serially numbered and there's both "hologram" and "black" parallel versions of them available.  The "special insert" cards are "GEM" (18 cards,  with "black" parallel versions), "Authentic Autograph" (54 cards with parallel versions), "HOLOSPECTRA Autograph" (54 cards), "Uniform Autograph" (18 cards), "Uniform" (18 cards), "Uniform Patch" (18 cards) and "Uniform Letter" (18 cards).  All of the "special insert" cards are serially numbered.

On Halloween, a week after the "Pacific League Premier Edition", Epoch is releasing the "NPB Luxury Collection" set.  Six card boxes for this set will retail for 23,760 yen or around $150.  The base set is just 36 cards - three per team - and all the cards are serially numbered.  There are also parallel versions of the base cards although the details are not on the website.  There's a 24 card "NPB Stars" insert set, a 12 card "GEM" special insert card set, and two varieties of autographed cards - "authentic" and "baseball".  There's at least 84 of the former and 48 of the latter.  As you might guess, there's more autographed cards available than there are players in the base set.  Apparently the base set cards only include players who participated in the All Star and/or Fresh All Star games while the autographed cards include both current players as well as retired ones.

- Epoch is also releasing two more of their "ultra high-end" combination active/OB player "Stars & Legends" team sets.  The Tigers set will be out on November 14th while the Dragons set will be out a week later on the 21st.  Boxes for each set will retail for 18,600 yen (about $118) with the Tigers boxes containing four cards while the Dragons ones only have three.  All the cards in both sets - base, insert and "special insert" - are serially numbered.  The Tigers set has a base set of at least 44 cards, three six card "Decomori Signature" insert sets ("Gold", "Green" and "Hologram"), a six card "GEM" special insert set, a six card "BLACK GEM" special insert set and six different varieties of autographed cards - "Authentic" (42+ cards), "Star" (8 cards), "Legendary" (19+ cards), "Remember 2005" (12+ cards), "Combo" (1 card) and "Baseball" (6 cards),  The Dragons base set contains 47 cards and there are four insert sets - the three previously mentioned "Decomori Signature" ones along with a 12 card "Force Of The Dragon" one.  The set also includes the "GEM" and "BLACK GEM" special insert sets like the Tigers set does but they are both 12 card instead of six.  There are nine varieties of autographed cards - "Authentic" (30 cards), "Authentic Parallel" (16 cards), "Baseball Greats" (22 cards), "Remember 2007" (3 cards), "Remember 2011" (4 cards), "Combo" (2 cards), "Combo Memory" (2 cards), "Legend Combo" (1 card) and "Baseball" (13 cards).  The Dragons set also has memorabilia cards (the set is officially called "Dragons Stars & Legends With Memorabilia") - there are five varieties of bat cards - "core", "grip", "barrel", "knob" and "combo".  There are five different of all of these except the "combo" one - there's just two of them.

- BBM will be releasing their annual "season-in-review" set, "Fusion", in late November.  As usual, will be a kitchen-sink Franken-set that's basically got four independent parts - a 99 card combination active-OB player subset that recaps the year; 25 "1st Version Update" cards featuring players who did not make it into either the 1st or 2nd Version sets for whatever reason; 20 "Monthly MVP" cards and an unspecified number of short-printed "Ceremonial First Pitch" cards.  The "1st Version Update" cards will include players who returned from MLB in mid-season like Shinnosuke Ogasawara as well as late signing foreign players like Jerar Encarnacion.  There's also the usual insert sets - the 24 "Great Records" cards which highlight milestones reached by two active players from each team; the 12 "Legendary Player" cards which feature one OB player from each team and the serially numbered premium inserts of "Treasure" (12 cards), "Esperanza" (24 cards) and "Superstars" (24 cards).  There are also autographed cards available for both the active and OB players. 

- I'm late getting to this but SCC issued their third KBO set back in August.  The set is called "KBO+" and I think it has a base set of 120 cards (12 cards per team).  There's also 50 "Record" cards, 50 "Hologram" cards, 50 "Victory Charm" cards (which will have transparent portions) and 30 autographed cards.  

More Cards From Kenny

Earlier this week, I received the latest envelope full of baseball cards sent from Kenny (aka Zippy Zappy) in Japan.  Most of the cards in the envelope were another batch from this year's Topps Stadium Club NPB set:

2026 Topps Stadium Club NPB #100

2026 Topps Stadium Club NPB #15

2026 Topps Stadium Club NPB #90

2026 Topps Stadium Club NPB #196

2026 Topps Stadium Club NPB #201

2026 Topps Stadium Club NPB #130

2026 Topps Stadium Club NPB #216

2026 Topps Stadium Club NPB #203

Kenny also included a "Bash And Burn" insert card from the set.  I've scanned both sides of it so you can see both the "Bash" side (front) and the "Burn" side (back):

In addition to the Topps cards, Kenny also included another Calbee Series Two card:

2026 Calbee Series Two #061 (Taisei Makihara)

As always, Kenny, thanks again for the cards!

RIP Brian Wolfe

Retired pitcher Brian Wolfe tragically passed away last week at age 45 after fighting leukemia.  Wolfe spent parts of nine seasons in NPB with three different teams.

He was originally drafted by the Minnesota Twins in the sixth round of the 1999 draft and played in the Twins, Brewers and Blue Jays organizations, making the big leagues for parts of three seasons with Toronto (2007-09).  He signed with the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters in 2010 and started the season in middle relief before being promoted to closer.  He eventually moved on to the starting rotation where he would remain for the next three seasons.  On May 24th of 2011, he became the first foreign pitcher in NPB history to record an immaculate inning.  He started and won Game Three of the 2012 Nippon Series against the Giants. 

The Fighters released him after 2013 and the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks immediately snatched him up, signing him to a two year contract.  His elbow gave way two months into the 2014 season and he underwent Tommy John surgery to repair it.  He was able to return in 2015 to make just two appearances but the Hawks did not resign him after his contract expired.

He started 2016 without a contract but the Saitama Seibu Lions picked him up in late July for their stretch drive.  He made four starts for the ichi-gun Lions and won all four of them, earning himself a contract extension for 2017.  He'd spend his final two seasons with the Lions, retiring after the 2018 season.

Here's a selection of Wolfe's Japanese baseball cards.  I tried to pick one card from each year of his NPB career but there are no Japanese cards of him from 2016 (and only one from 2015).

2010 BBM 1st Version #218

2011 Fighters Victory Card #053

2012 BBM Nippon Series #S35

2013 BBM 2nd Version #556

2014 BBM 1st Version #084

2015 BBM Hawks #H06

2017 BBM 2nd Version #433

2018 Epoch Lions Rookies & Stars #31

Card Of The Week September 20

I had always been under the impression that the late Isao Harimoto was the only survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bombing that ever played professional baseball.  I discovered, however, while researching my memorial post for him, that that was not the case.  I believe that the correct answer is that there were three other survivors who also played pro ball, one of whom is still alive at the age of 83.

Wataru Nonin was 30 years old and working at his father's sawmill at the time of the bombing.  He had played seven years in the Japan Baseball League (the predecessor to NPB), missing time in 1938 when he was drafted and served in the army in China.  He was about 2.5 kilometers from ground zero and was buried under the rubble but was otherwise unharmed.  He played one more season after the war with the Kinsei Stars in 1948 and managed the Dragons in 1961 and 1962 and the Tokyo/Lotte Orions in 1965 and 1967-71.  He passed away in 1990.

13 year old Takashi Harada had been conscripted along with other children of the same age (like Harimoto's sister Jang Jeom-ja) to help demolish buildings to create fire breaks.  He was laying on his back, talking to friends when the bomb detonated.  The school uniform he was wearing at the time is now in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.  Harada would play for the Carp from 1954 to 1957 although he only appeared in 14 games with the top team in 1954.  He later played for and managed the Mazda Motors corporate league team.  He died in 2016.

Kunio Fukutomi's story is similar to Harimoto's.  He was two years old and at his family's home when the bomb dropped.  His home, like Harimoto's was shielded from the blast by Hijiyama Hill.  Fukutomi would have a 16 year career in NPB, playing for Sankei/Yakult Atoms from 1965 to 1972, the Taiheiyo Club Lions in 1973-74 and the Yakult Swallows from 1975-80.  He coached for the Swallows from 1981 to 1993 and the Buffaloes (1997-2000) as well as the CPBL's China Times Eagles in 1995 and the KBO's Ssangbangwool Raiders in 1996.

The three players do not have many baseball cards.  Engel lists two cards of Nonin when he managed the Dragons - both cards are in somewhat obscure sets.  I do not believe there are any cards of Harada.  There are seven cards of Fukutomi - two cards from the 1974/75 Calbee set, the Swallows multi-player card from the 1975/76/77 Calbee set, the Takara Swallows sets from 1978, 1979 and 1980 and the 2022 BBM Swallows History 1950-2022 set.

I have two of Fukutomi's cards:

1975/76/77 Calbee #439

Fukutomi is the player on the far right of the bottom row (#7).

2022 BBM Swallows History 1950-2022 #12