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

RIP Isao Harimoto

Another Japanese baseball legend has died.  Isao Harimoto, NPB's career hits leader with 3085, passed away on the Wednesday of last week at age 86.  

Harimoto was born in Hiroshima to Korean parents who named him Jang Hoon.  He severely burned his right hand after falling into a bonfire at age four and had only limited use of that hand.  He and his family were still living in Hiroshima when the US dropped the first atomic bomb on the city on August 6, 1945.  The family home was shielded from the blast itself by Hijiyama Hill which is probably why Harimoto survived.  His oldest sister, Jang Jeom-ja, was not as fortunate.  The 12 year old had been conscripted along with her classmates by the Imperial Japanese government to clear fire lanes in case of air raids.  She suffered burns all over her body and succumbed to her injuries in the days following the bombing.  Harimoto has been described as the only Hibakusha to ever play professional baseball but there were at least three others - Wataru Nonin, Takahashi Harada and Kunio Fukutomi.

His father returned to Korea after the war with the expectation that the family would join him once he got found stable employment but his father tragically died when a fish bone pierced his esophagus.  After an illegal boat taking Koreans back to the peninsula capsized off the coast of Japan, his mother decided it would be safer for the family to remain in Japan.  

The conditions in post-war Japan and the discrimination he and his family faced as Koreans shaped his childhood and, ultimately, his decision to play baseball.  He started playing baseball in elementary school.  He was naturally right handed, but the injuries he had suffered as a toddler to his right hand forced him to learn to throw left handed.  He would climb trees outside of Hiroshima Sogo Ground Baseball Park, the home of the Carp before they moved to Hiroshima Municipal Stadium in 1957, and saw that the baseball players had access to much better food than his family did.  He decided that baseball would be the way he could provide for them.

His other option, of course, was a life of crime.  He got in a lot of fights and greatly admired the local yakuza.  He had said that if he had stayed in Hiroshima, he thought he would have ended up joining them. 

Luckily, he didn't stay in Hiroshima.  With the help of his brother, he was able to attend Naniwa Commercial High School in Osaka.  He had hoped to play in the Koshien Tournament and the team made it in 1958.  However, several players, including Harimoto, were suspended from the team prior to the tournament due to a "violent incident in the clubhouse".  Harimoto had always maintained his innocence and was convinced that he was included in the suspensions due to the coach's prejudice against Koreans.  

He drew interest from professional clubs while in high school.  The Yomiuri Giants suggested that he drop out of school in his second year in 1957 and join them as a pitcher.  Harimoto had promised his brother that he'd graduate, so he declined the offer.  

He was no longer a pitcher by the time he graduated but teams were still interested in him.  While he had been interested in signing with the Carp, his final decision was between the Chunichi Dragons and Toei Flyers.  Here, again, the poverty of his family played a role.  Since they were too poor to have a television set, he and his brother (who was in charge of the negotiations) didn't know that the Central League was much more popular than the Pacific League.  He ended up signing with Toei for a two million yen signing bonus.  After the signing, he and his brother traveled back to Hiroshima from Tokyo on an overnight train with the entire two million wrapped in newspaper.  When they presented it to their mother, her reaction was "Have you done something bad again?"  Harimoto used the money to buy a new house for her.

He quickly established himself a star with Toei in 1959, winning the Pacific League Rookie Of The Year award.  He hit over .300 for the first time in 1960 and won his first batting crown in 1961.  He'd win a record seven batting titles during his time with the Flyers/Fighters (1961, 1967-70, 1972 and 1974) - Ichiro is the only other player who led the league in batting seven times.  He also led the league in OBP nine times and hits three times.  He won the PL MVP award in 1962, the year that Toei won their only pennant and Nippon Series championship.

Harimoto remained with the Flyers during their sale first to Nittaku in 1973 and then Nippon-Ham in 1974.  He and the Fighters parted ways following the 1975 season with the 35 year old Harimoto being dealt to the Yomiuri Giants for Kazumi Takahashi and Masaru Tomita.  At the time, the two teams shared Korakuen Stadium so his work commute didn't change.

The Giants were coming off their first ever last place finish under rookie manager Shigeo Nagashima and Harimoto would replace Nagashima as the number three hitter in the lineup, batting in front of Sadaharu Oh.  The two would be dubbed the "OH Cannon" as an update of the "ON Cannon" that Nagashima and Oh had been called.  

Harimoto's arrival also allowed the Giants to move Davey Johnson from third base to second, a position he was much more comfortable with while outfielder Shigeru Takada, displaced by Harimoto, took over third base.  The move paid off for the Giants and they would win the Central League pennant in both 1976 and 1977, although they'd fall to the Hankyu Braves in the Series both years.

An eye injury limited him to just 77 games in 1979 and he hit only .263, his lowest batting average to date.  The Giants felt the 39 year old was no longer in their plans and he transferred to the Lotte Orions for the 1980 season.  That season would see him reach two career milestones - his 3000th hit on May 28th and his 500th home run four months later on September 28th.   He is still the only player to reach 3000 hits in NPB.  He returned for one last season in 1981 but hit a paltry .219 in 70 games and retired at the end of the season.

He won 16 Best 9 awards during his career and was named to the All Star team 18 times.  He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1990 and was selected as one of the outfielders (along with Ichiro and Hideki Matsui) on the 20th Century Best 9 team.  He's the only player in NPB history with more than 500 home runs and 300 steals.

There were rumors of him being offered the managerial job with either Lotte or Nippon-Ham in the decade after he retired but nothing ever came of it.  He is credited with being one of the three founders of the Korean Baseball Organization (KBO) which started up in 1982.  He served as the special assistant to the commissioner of the league from its founding until 2005.  

He was also a commentator on TV and was known for his "grumpy old man" opinions - Jim Allen described him as "the commander of Japanese baseball’s curmudgeon corps" in his BlueSky post about his passing.

He made some playing appearances in his 60's for the Tokyo Dreams of the Masters League, a baseball league for retired players that operated in the off season from 2001 to 2009.  He managed to get a hit in 2005 although he said that the pitcher he got the hit off of, Nobuyuki Hoshino, was "going easy on him".  Harimoto was also active in the annual Premium Malts old-timer game for a number of years.

There are a LOT of baseball cards for Harimoto.  His earliest appearances were on menko and bromide cards in the early 60's and he was in the 1967 Kabaya-Leaf set.  In the 70's he made regular appearances in sets from Calbee, Yamakatsu, Nippon-Ham and NST.  He's shown up fairly regularly in OB sets from both BBM and Epoch (among others) since 2000.  He also appeared in all three of BBM's sets for the Premium Malts old timer games in 2009, 2010 and 2012 (I've never been able to track down any Masters League cards or even really confirm if any existed) and had a "Ceremonial First Pitch" card in the 2016 BBM Fusion set.  Here's a big batch of his cards:

1960 Yamakatsu Home Plate Menko (JCM 86)

1961 Marusan JCM 12d

1962 Doyusha JCM 55

1967 Kabaya-Leaf #409

1974/75 Calbee #248

1976 Yamakatsu JY1a (w/Davey Johnson)

1975/76/77 Calbee #1213 (w/Hal Breeden)

1975/76/77 Calbee #1252 (w/Sadaharu Oh)

1979 TCMA #61

1980 Yamakatsu JY12

1995 BBM #324

2000 BBM 20th Century Best 9 #460

2001 BBM Preview #CB9

2009 BBM/Shukan Baseball Legend Players #28

2010 BBM The Premium Malts #02

2014 BBM Classic #090

2016 BBM Fusion #FP20

2021 BBM Legendary Rookies #LR03

2024 BBM 90th Anniversary #116

NOTE - I used Harimoto's Japanese Wikipedia page extensively for the information in this post.

Mail Days

I am blessed to have some generous friends who occasionally send me baseball cards out of the blue.  I received a couple deliveries in the past week and thought I'd do a quick post to share what I got and to thank the senders.

On Saturday, I received my latest envelope from Kenny (aka Zippy Zappy).  He'd given me a heads up a few weeks earlier that there was something with some of this year's Calbee Series Two cards on its way and that's what was in the envelope:

#064 Tomohisa Ohzeki

#069 Shun Mizutani

#084 Manaya Nishikawa

#078 Fumiya Kurokawa

#117 Jose Osuna

#S-29

I make fun of Calbee's boring photo choices a lot but that's a great shot on the Nishikawa card.

On Monday I received a thick envelope from my friend Jason, the guy who used to run an Ebay store called "JK's Card Shoppe".  Jason knows that I like BBM's image variants - the "secret versions" - so he's kind enough to send me some when he comes across them.  This latest package had twelve cards in all - six "secret versions" along with the original version of the card.  Here are all 12 cards with the original card shown first, followed by the "secret version":

2021 BBM 2nd Version #397

2021 BBM 2nd Version #397 "Secret Version"

2022 BBM 2nd Version #476

2022 BBM 2nd Version #476 "Secret Version"

2026 BBM 1st Version #002

2026 BBM 1st Version #002 "Secret Version"

2026 BBM 2nd Version #372

2026 BBM 2nd Version #372 "Secret Version"

2026 BBM 2nd Version #421

2026 BBM 2nd Version #421 "Secret Version"

2026 BBM 2nd Version #502

2026 BBM 2nd Version #502 "Secret Version"

These are the first 2026 BBM cards that I've gotten this year.

So, once again, thank you, Kenny and thank you, Jason, for the cards!