Card Of The Week December 20

After 20 inches of snow and five hours spent clearing my driveway, I'm very jealous of these two:


2006 BBM Tigers #T108

Card Of The Week December 13

Scott Atchison has left Hanshin and returned to the US, signing with the Red Sox. His 2009 BBM 1st Version card (#260):

Card Of The Week December 6

OK, way late this time. Been a crazy week.

In 2010, BBM will be celebrating their 20th year of producing baseball cards. I'm planning on doing a series of posts during the winter on the history of BBM cards. I probably won't get going on it until after Christmas, but I thought I could start with this card, card #1 from the first BBM set in 1991:


In 1973, when Calbee put out their first set, card #1 was of Shigeo Nagashima, the most popular player in Japan ever. For some reason, for the first card of their inaugural set, BBM chose a reasonably obscure pitcher for Lotte named Yasuji Ibe, who went 10-12 in 168 games (161 of which were in relief) in a 10 year career from 1983 to 1992. This is, in fact, half of the cards BBM ever printed featuring Ibe (the other being from the 1992 set). I would be very curious to know why BBM choose such an unlikely player to lead their first set.

As a point of comparison, here's the list of the players who were the first cards in the initial set of the major US card companies: Bob Elliott (1948 Bowman), Andy Pafko (1952 Topps), Ozzie Smith (1981 Donruss), Pete Rose (1981 Fleer), Don Mattingly (1988 Score), and Ken Griffey Jr (1989 Upper Deck). So that's a Hall Of Famer, a guy who will be a Hall Of Famer, a guy who would have been a Hall Of Famer if he hadn't broken the most fundamental rule of the game, the most popular player of the 1980's and a couple of guys who were very good players but perhaps not as well remembered as others from their era (Elliott was the 1947 NL MVP, and Pafko had been a four time All Star with the Cubs in the late 1940's).

Card Of The Week November 29

I missed this, but NPB Tracker didn't - Friday of last week (November 20) was the 75th Anniversary of Eiji Sawamura's one hit game against a group of touring All Stars - a game in which he struck out future Hall Of Famers Charlie Gehringer, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Jimmy Foxx in succession, although Gehrig got revenge later in the game by hitting a solo home run for the American's only hit and the winning run. Rob Fitts has the details here at his 1934 All American Asian Tour blog that he's using to promote his upcoming book on the tour.

Due to several stints in the military, Sawamura's professional career only consisted of the 1936, 1937, 1940, 1941 and 1943 seasons before his troop ship was sunk by an American submarine in 1944. The Sawamura award for best pitcher in NPB was first awarded in 1947 and he was among the initial inductees into the Japanese Baseball Hall Of Fame in 1959.

There aren't a whole lot of cards of Sawamura. There are no known cards of him from when he was an active player. The first card I'm aware of is from the 1978 NST set. BBM included cards of him in the "Nostalgic Player" subset from the 1992 set, the 2000 20th Century Best 9 set and the 2006 Nostalgic Baseball set as well as a couple of the Giants teams sets. Here's one of his cards from the 20th Century Best 9 set (#361):


Some of the afore mentioned cards use the same picture, so there's more cards of Sawamura than actual pictures!

Akira Etoh

Maybe it was just me, but it seemed that Akira Etoh's retirement didn't get a whole lot of press in the last days of the season. It could have been announced earlier and I just missed it. The Lions apparently gave him a send off at their fan fest yesterday.

I can't write a better biography of him than what's already at the Baseball Reference bullpen, so I'll just show a bunch of cards. Here's his rookie card (as a catcher!) from the 1991 BBM set (#283):


1992 BBM #437 with Tomonori Maeda:


1996 BBM All Stars #A8:


1999 BBM #360:


After the 1999 season, Etoh left the Carp for the Giants. Here's his 2000 BBM New Face insert card #NF2:


2001 BBM #275:


2002 BBM Nippon Series #S19:


2005 BBM Giants #G099 ("Shared Number Subset") - Shigeo Nagashima switched from uniform #33 back to #3 in 2000. I'm guessing he did this to accomodate Etoh, who had worn #33 as a Carp:


Following the 2005 season, Etoh was traded to the Lions as compensation for the Giants signing Kiyoshi Toyoda. 2006 BBM 1st Version #92:


2009 BBM 1st Version #021:

Card Of The Week November 22

Buddy Carlye is returning to Japan to play for the Fighters. He had previously played for Hanshin back in 2001 and 2002. Here's his 2001 BBM Late Series card (#561):

2009 Award Winners

This past week Alex Ramirez of the Giants and Yu Darvish of the Fighters were named MVPs of the Central and Pacific Leagues respectively. This was Ramirez's second consecutive MVP. Here's their 2009 BBM 1st Version cards (#s 241 & 074):



In addition, the Rookie of the Year awards went to Tetsuya Matsumoto of the Giants and Tadashi Settsu of the Hawks. Here's Matsumoto's 2nd Version card (#659 - for the second year in a row, one of the Rookies Of The Year does not have a 1st Version card) and Settsu's 1st Version card (#214):



This also means that again BBM struck out with their "Rookie Of The Year Preview" subset in the 1st Version set - neither of the winners is in it.