Pillbox Hats In NPB

I've been seeing some coverage lately of the pillbox hats that MLB teams wore for the 1976 All Star games (and some teams continued wearing afterwards) and thought it'd be fun to do a quick post about when NPB teams wore similar hats on a couple occasions.  Oddly enough, however, baseball cards showing these hats are almost non-existent.  I only know of two, and, bizarrely, they are both from the same set which was issued 30-ish years after the hats were used.

I'll be relying on my usual uniform references for this post - the book The History of Uniform (HOU) and the mook Professional Baseball Uniform Encyclopedia 1934-2013 (PBU).

Now, obviously, the bicentennial of the United States was not something that merited a major celebration in Japan, but NPB decided to adopt pillbox hats for the 1979 All Star games (there were three that year) to celebrate the league's 30th Anniversary - or, more accurately, the 30th season after the Japan Baseball League (JBL) reorganized itself into the two leagues (Central and Pacific) of Nippon Professional Baseball.  HOU does not appear to mention this anywhere but there's a small blurb on it in PBU's section called "How To Dress For The All-Star Game" (p. 86):

The text here mentions that most teams just added stripes to their regular hats but Kintetsu used a completely new design.

The only baseball card I've found that shows one of these hats is from the 2009 BBM Sadaharu Oh Memorial set.  Oh had hit his tenth All Star game home run in Game One in Osaka, setting a new record.  He took home the MVP award for that game: 

2009 BBM Sadaharu Oh Memorial #50

While there don't appear to be any other baseball cards that show these hats, the interior of one of Calbee's albums that were available as a giveaway in 1979 show a sequence of photos of Tigers pitcher Shigeru Kobayashi wearing it:

The Central League held a post-season East-West All Star game almost every year between 1979 and 1990 (with the exception of 1989).  For the first two years, the players wore special uniforms for this game that included pillbox caps.  Here's the page from HOU describing the uniforms:

The text here erroneously says that this was the first time a pillbox hat was worn in NPB.  The 1979 All Star Series would have been held about three and a half months earlier than the 1979 Central League East-West All Star game.

Here's the blurb from PBU about it:

The 1980 game, held in Nagoya Stadium, was treated as the retirement game for both Sadaharu Oh and Morimichi Takagi.  The photo of Oh's do-age (number three in the above scan) was used on another card in the 2009 BBM Sadaharu Oh Memorial set:

2009 BBM Sadaharu Oh Memorial #55

This is the only card I've ever seen depicting these uniforms although I did one see some "Fuji Film Photos" of Oh that included shots from this game.

The Pacific League held a similar game off and on between 1981 and 2006 but, as far as I've been able to tell, they never wore the pillbox hats.

The final occurrence that I know about with pillbox hats in NPB was for the 1980 "Junior All Star Game".  This is the minor league All Star game held between the then-two farm leagues - the Eastern and Western Leagues.  (This game is now known as the "Fresh All Star Game").  Normally the players in this game wear their team's uniform but for the 1980 game, they wore special uniforms that included pillbox hats.  Here's the writeup from HOU:

Here's the blurb from PBU:

As far as I know, there are no baseball cards that feature players wearing these uniforms and hats.  

More Calbees From Kenny

I got home from work today to discover I'd received another envelope from Kenny (aka Zippy Zappy) in Japan.  Like the last one I got from him, this one contained several cards from the 2026 Calbee Series One set.  This time, all the cards were base cards from the set:

#008 Kota Tatsu

#014 Kotaro Kurebayashi

#023 Hiroshi Kaino

#021 Shuta Tonosaki

#T-21

#C-03

That final card is one of six checklist cards in the set.  The checklist cards for Calbee used to feature some of the best and most interesting photos in the set but for the past two years have featured images of the mascots instead.  Last year they were drawings but this year they seem to just be dull photos.  It's one of many decisions that the company has made over the past four years or so that make me scratch my head.

But despite that, I'm, as always, very grateful to Kenny for sending me the cards.  Thanks again!

Card Of The Week June 28

Interleague play wrapped up a week and a half ago and, for the first time ever, the Lions were interleague champions.  They went 14-3-1 during the three-ish weeks of interleague play for a winning percentage of .824, the highest mark in the history (that goes back to 2005 with the exception of 2020).  Seibu's Shinya Hasegawa was named interleague MVP, partly because of his getting sayonara hits in back-to-back games a few weeks ago.  

As I mentioned when I featured him two weeks ago, Hasegawa was originally an ikusei player.  He was taken by the Lions in the second round of the development player phase of the 2020 draft and wasn't added to the 70 man roster until mid-season in 2022.  Here's his "1st Version Update" card from the 2022 BBM Fusion set (#620), his first card in anyone's "flagship" set:

Sorry for the lack of posts lately.  I've been ridiculously busy the last couple weeks but I'm hoping things settle down some this week and I can get back to writing somewhat regularly.

Card Of The Week June 21

Normally this week I'd be doing a post for the Interleague MVP but I am currently on the road so I've had to prepare this post a week early.  Last Monday, the Eagles named former Chiba Lotte Marines manager Masato Yoshii as their new manager, replacing interim manager Tatsuya Shiokawa after just a week.  I thought I'd share what I believe to be Yoshii's first ever baseball card from the 1988 Takara Buffaloes set (#36):

Summer Offerings

As usual, I feel like I blinked and a month passed since the last time I did a round up of the recently announced sets.  So let's get to the new batch of announcements...

- I'm somewhat astonished but Topps is actually releasing a second 2026 NPB set while the baseball season is still happening.  Hell, the release date for this year's edition of the Stadium Club NPB set is July 10th, so it'll hit the stores before the All Star break.  Considering that the 2024 edition didn't come out until December of that year and last year's wasn't until September, this is a major development for them.  Like their flagship set, the details for the set are a little sparse but again, I'm assuming it's a 216 card set.  There are at least "Beam Team" insert cards and I assume there are a couple other insert sets but, again, they're not listed.  There will be relic cards for active NPB players and autographed cards for both active and retired NPB players as well as active Japanese MLB players.  The big new gimmick that Topps has added for this set is image variations for 24 players (which I assume means two per team).  I mock Topps' NPB sets quite a bit but I have to admit that Stadium Club NPB is pretty good (at least the 2024 edition was).

- BBM's annual cheerleader/dance squad set - "Dancing Heroine" - will be released in mid August.  The set will be around 180 cards.  As usual the set only includes members of the squads from the Giants, Tigers, Swallows, Dragons, Hawks, Fighters, Marines, Eagles and Lions and, as usual, I have no idea why the ones from the Buffaloes and Baystars are not included (the Carp don't have cheerleaders).  There a holo parallel of all the base set cards and an 18 card "Two-shot" insert set.  There are also autographs and "cheki" cards available.  

- Genesis, BBM's annual high-end set will be released in late September.  As has been standard for the entire run of the set (since 2012), the base set will contain 120 cards - ten per team which splits up as nine player cards and a team checklist.  No one really cares about the base set though as the attraction of Genesis is the autograph and memorabilia cards available in the boxes.  The different varieties are too numerous to list but there are booklets, super patches, ball autographs and multiplayer autographed memorabilia cards.  There's also a myriad of parallel versions of all the base cards and six "High-grade insert card" sets - Elite Of Nine, Game Changer, Unrivaled, Cross Forest, Combo Cross Foil Signing and Treasure.  

- The latest "Premier Edition" team set from Epoch is for the Dragons and will be released on July 11th.  The base set will contain 45 cards - 42 for active players, one for Doala, the mascot and two for coaches Takuya Asao and Nobumasa Fukuda (using photos from when they were players) - and there is, of course, a "hologram" parallel available for each of the base set cards.  The set has the usual large batch of inserts that all the "Premier Edition" sets have- three varieties of "Regular Foil Signature" ("silver", "gold" and "hologram") (18 cards each), two varieties of "Regular Decomori Signature" ("hologram" and "hologram parallel") (18 cards each), five varieties of "Time To Shine" ("A","B","C","D","E") (six cards each) and three varieties of "Decomori Signature" ("gold","green" and "hologram") (six cards each).  I think all the inserts are serially numbered.  There are also the "GEM" and "BLACK GEM" "special insert cards" (nine cards in each) that I think are much more limited.  There are seven different types of autographed cards - "Authentic" (43), "Star" (3), "Rookie" (9), "Legendary" (2) and three types of multiple player autographed cards -  "Combo" (1), "Dragons Combo" (4) and "Rookie Combo" (5).  I don't know what the difference between "Combo" and "Dragons Combo" is.  

- Epoch will be releasing their annual Pacific League Rookies box set on July 25th.  This year's edition will have 38 cards - a 35 card base set, two "special" cards that may be either foil facsimile signature parallel cards or GEM insert cards (both of which would be serially numbered) and one autograph card.  The base set is made up of all of last fall's draftees from the six Pacific League teams (regular phase of the draft only - there are no development players included).  There are three types of autographed cards available of all 35 players and the first round picks also have a "baseball" autograph.

- I missed that SCC had issued their 2026 KBO Collection set on the 20th of last month, just three weeks before their Festa set that I erroneously said was the first KBO set for 2026.  The base set (or at least the "normal" portion of it) will contain 290 cards which will include 10 cards for retired players.  The other 280 cards feature two cards for 14 players on each of the ten KBO teams - one showing the player in their home uniform and one showing them in their away uniform.  There are 112 "Alphabet" cards which each feature a player superimposed on a letter that spells the team's name.  There's two versions for each letter for each team, one showing a pitcher and one showing a batter.  So for the LG Twins, there's two cards with a player superimposed over a letter "T", two cards with a letter "W", etc.  Obviously each team has a different number of these cards although each team has at least 10 (I'm guessing they did the full name of the "KT Wiz") and the SSG Landers having 14.  There are 80 "Hologam" cards - 7 for each team plus the 10 retired players - and each "Hologram" has a parallel version available.  There are 30 "Victory Charm" cards - three from each team.  These appear to be some sort of partially transparent card.  I think there's 77 autographed cards available - 67 for active players (with either six or seven per team) and one for each of the OB players.

Card Of The Week June 14

There were two things that happened last week in NPB that I wanted to highlight.  On Wednesday, the Rakuten Eagles announced that manager Hajime Miki was stepping down and Tatsuya Shiokawa was taking his place on an interim basis.  Shiokawa had had a seven year playing career, all with the Eagles and has been a coach for the team since 2018.  It's kind of funny but by replacing Miki, who had never played for the Eagles, with Shiokawa who had, all the NPB teams are now managed by former players for that team with the exception of the Giants - who've NEVER had an "official" (non-interim) manager who didn't play for the team.  The Eagles have now had twelve managers in 22 seasons if you treat Miki's two stints as separate managers, 11 in 22 if not. Orix is the only other team to have double digits in that time period and that was partly because Akira Ohgi passed away after one season.  The Eagles had also had an odd habit of having a manager serve only one season every year ending in a "5" or "0" - Yasushi Tao in 2005, Marty Brown in 2010, Hiroki Ohkubo in 2015 and Miki in 2020 - which Miki had avoided last year but apparently for only a few more months.

The other thing that happened last week was that Shinya Hasegawa of the Lions had sayonara hits on back-to-back days, walking it off against the Carp on both Tuesday and Wednesday.  It was the first time a Lions player had had back-to-back walk offs since Kazuo Matsui did it in 2002.  (H/T NPB Reddit)  Hasegawa had been drafted by the Lions as a development player in 2020 and wasn't added to the 70 man roster until the following year.

Here are the Rookie Edition cards for both guys.  Shiokawa was the fifth round pick in the Eagles' initial draft class in 2004 and I don't think they'd unveiled their uniforms by the time the photos were taken for the set.  You can see that Hasegawa's uniform number has three digits due to his ikusei status.

2005 BBM Rookie Edition #32

2021 BBM Rookie Edition #031

New Acquisitions

I thought I'd do a quick post about some cards I recently picked up.  It's been about 18 months since I stopped buying new stuff but I do get a hankering every so often to get some new ones.

I put in an order with COMC in mid-April but, of course, I didn't actually receive the cards until late May.  I had decided to get serious about replacing a couple old Calbee cards that I'd picked up on my last trip to Japan two years ago but I was only able to find one of the cards.  I'd brought home this card of Shitoshi Sekimoto from the "Florida Project" subset of the 1974/75 Calbee set (#708) that someone had used a pencil to highlight Sekimoto on:

The new version looks much better:

Since I was already ordering from COMC, I figured I'd look around and see if there was anything else I wanted at a reasonable price.  I decided to pick up this card of Masato Morishita because (1) I've been a fan of Morishita since seeing him pitch for Meiji back in 2019 and (2) I wanted to have an example of the 1990 inserts from last year's Topps NPB set (#90-7):

I also picked up a couple cards from the 2023 Topps World Baseball Classic set.  I picked up the "image variant" of Masataka Yoshida's card (#91):

I already had the base version:

I also grabbed the "Captains Of The World Baseball Classic" insert card of Ha-seong Kim (#CC-14):

Moving on to some stuff I ordered from Ebay...

I'm kind of low key trying to get one of each of the autographed cards for the Samurai Japan Collegiate team that were in the 2024 Panini USA Baseball Stars & Stripes set.  This card of Ryuta Hirose got me halfway there:

Since the remaining 14 cards I need to complete the set include Misho Nishikawa, Seiya Watanabe, Rui Muneyama and Natsuki Takeuchi, I'm not expecting to ever actually finish the set.  As I've always said, I'm cheap, so I'm not willing to pay what it'd take to get those cards.  But I'll keep trying to get the low hanging fruit when I can.

The last two cards are for Rintaro Sasaki of Stanford University.  Sasaki was drafted last fall's NPB draft by the Hawks and is potentially going to get taken in next month's MLB draft.  The Hawks' rights for him expire at the end of July so he can see if any MLB teams are interested before deciding if he wants to join Softbank.  Panini has done about a gazillion cards of him (with another two gazillion parallels) so I decided to pick up a card of him from each of the past two years.  Generally I find Panini's cards kind of hideous but I was able to find two that weren't too bad.  This 2024 Onyx Vintage Extended card (#OVRISA) show him in what I think is a Trenton Thunder uniform with all the logos airbrushed/photoshopped off:

The 2025 Prizm card (#271) shows him in his Stanford uniform:

This batch of cards scratched an itch for a bit.  Ryan's still picking stuff up for me and, while I try not to take him for granted, Kenny's probably preparing another envelope of goodies for me, so I'm sure to be getting some more new stuff soon.