Card Of The Week July 5

Last week, the results of the All Star ballots were announced and Atsunori Inaba of the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters was the top vote-getter. Here's his card from the 2007 BBM All Star set (#A30):

Roberto Petagine

I discovered the other day that one of the 2009 inductees to the International League Hall Of Fame was former Yakult Swallow and Yomiuri Giant star Roberto Petagine.

Petagine was originally signed out of Venezuela by the Astros in 1990 and worked his way through their system, briefly reaching the majors in 1994 before being traded during the off season to the Padres in the big 12 player trade in the middle of the strike. After one season in the Padres organization, he was traded to the Mets and spent most of the next two seasons at Norfolk, their AAA team in the International League. He was the International League's MVP in 1997, but the Mets had John Olerud at first, so that winter they traded him to the Reds. He won a second International League MVP at Indianapolis in 1998, becoming the first player ever to win back-to-back MVPs in that league. Unfortunately, winning back-to-back MVPs in the same minor league is a strong hint that you're not going to move up (because if you were, you'd have moved up after the first MVP award) so that winter, Petagine agreed to let the Reds sell his contract to the Yakult Swallows.

He ended up playing six seasons in Japan - four with Yakult and two with Yomiuri. He won the Central League MVP in 2001 when he helped lead the Swallows to the Nippon Series Championship. He hit 223 home runs (leading the league in 1999 and 2001) and batted .317. He replaced Hideki Matsui in the Giants lineup in 2003, moving to the outfield after playing mostly at first for the Swallows (Kazuhiro Kiyohara was playing first for the Giants at this point).

Following his six years in Japan, Petagine returned to the states to play in the Red Sox organization in 2005 and the Mariners organization in 2006.

Here's a couple cards from his career. From the top, this is his 1999 BBM card (#339), his 2001 BBM Nippon Series card (#S18) and his 2003 Calbee card (#004):





The International League Hall Of Fame is having induction ceremonies at various ballparks this summer. The schedule is here. Petagine's induction has not yet been scheduled.

Card Of The Week June 28

Interleague play wrapped up last week in Japan. The Fukuoka Softbank Hawks had the best interleague record. Hawks pitcher Toshiya Sugiuchi was named interleague MVP. Here's his 2009 BBM 1st Version card (#195):

Pepsi buys into Calbee

According to this, on Wednesday, Pepsi bought 20% of Calbee (in return for Calbee taking over Frito-Lay in Japan). I don't expect that there will be any change in the baseball cards Calbee produces (unless they start giving them away with Frito's corn chips), but I thought it was of interest.

2009 BBM 2nd Version

OK, last week BBM put up information about this year's 2nd Version set on their website. The set will be released in early August.

Unusually for BBM, they don't actually have a complete count of what's going to be in the set, so I can't say how many cards are going to be in the set. What I do know is that there will be 180 "regular" cards (15 per team), a 12 card subset of "participation players", a 12 card "rookie" subset and a 12 card "veteran" subset (each of these three subsets has one card per team in them), and 12 team checklist cards. There will also be a 1st Version update subset of too be determined size featuring players traded since 1st Version went to press (like Ryuji Miyade), guys who signed more recently (Craig Brazell maybe?) and guys who simply didn't appear in 1st Version (Edgardo Alfonzo?). There's also another undetermined size subset that I think is the first pitch ceremony subset that's been a staple of the 2nd Version set for the last few years.

There will also be insert sets featuring the leading pitcher and leading batter for each team as well as the usual memorabilia/autograph inserts.

Card Of The Week June 21

Tuffy Rhodes and son.


2005 BBM 2nd Version #829

1967 Kabaya-Leaf

The first attempt for a Japanese card manufacturer to publish a set that was similar in style to American baseball cards occurred in 1967. Prior to then, most of the cards produced were either menko or bromide cards with little to no biographical or statistical information on the cards. In 1967, the Kabaya-Leaf set was produced that looked very similar in style to the Topps sets of the late '50's.

The card fronts had two different styles. One looked very much like the 1959 Topps design with a circular picture of the player. Here's a couple examples - Yasuhiko Kawai (#359) and Masahiko Mori (#10):



The other style looked vaguely like the 1958 design, with the photo taking up most of the front with a rectangle at the bottom giving the players name. These are the cards of Michio Nishizawa (#51) and Kingo Motoyashiki (#111):



The backs of the cards contained biographical information on the player as well as the player's career statistics. Here's the front and back of Isao Harimoto's card (#409). Notice that the years indicate Showa Period year rather than Western (1966 = 41 Showa, although I don't know if I'm saying that right).



One of the odd things about the set is that it only has card for six of the teams - the Giants, Dragons, Tigers, Lions, Hawks and Flyers. For whatever reason, the Braves, Carp, Buffaloes, Whales, Orions and Atoms were left off. (One possible reason - the six teams represented were the top three teams in each league in 1966.)

According to Gary Engel, the Kabaya-Leaf cards were imported into the US and sold by mail until the early 1970's. The cards are rarely found in Japan anymore. 1967 was the only year that the cards were published. I wonder if the fact that they mostly ended up in the US had something to do with that.

This set is very popular - bidding on eBay for the cards can get quite heated.