This season the Orix Buffaloes decided to celebrate the 1970s' versions of the two teams that merged in 2004 to form the current team - the Orix Blue Wave and the Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes. These teams were known as the Hankyu Braves and Kintetsu Buffaloes back in the '70s. Orix had a couple sets of games earlier this season in which they wore retro uniforms of each of the teams. There's
an official website dedicated to these games and BBM put out
a set in conjunction with it as well.
While BBM's website says that the set has 99 cards, it actually only has 96. There are 19 cards for the 2011 team (who are not shown wearing the retro uniforms since the set was released before the games, however it is the first set showing all the players in the new for 2011 Buffaloes uniforms), 30 cards for OB Hankyu players from the 70's, 27 (not the 30 listed on the website) cards for OB Kintetsu players from the 70's, two "Memorial Scene" cards and two nine card subsets entitled "Star Of Braves" and "Star Of Buffaloes" that also feature OB players.
The OB subsets feature the managers for each team during the 1970's. For the Braves, that's Yukio Nishimoto, Toshiharu Ueda and Takao Kajimoto. For the Buffaloes, that's Osamu Mihara, Takashi Iwamoto and Nishimoto again (so yes, he has two cards in the set). For the players themselves the set includes Yutaka Fukumoto, Bobby Marcano, Hideji Kato and Hisashi Yamada for the Braves and Keishi Suzuki, Masataka Nashida and Masahiro Doi for the Buffaloes. I don't know either team well enough to know if someone substantial is missing - the biggest name I can think of who isn't included in the set is Charlie Manuel for the Buffaloes.
The "Memorial Scene" cards feature a photo of a significant event for each team. For the Braves, it's the team marching around the field after winning the 1975 Nippon Series (the first ever for Hankyu and the first of three consecutive that they would win in the 1970's). For the Buffaloes, it's the team celebrating after defeating the Braves in the 1979 Pacific League playoffs, which propelled Kintetsu into the Series for the first time ever. If you look closely at the players in the picture, you can see Charlie Manuel - I think he's starting to hug Masataka Nashida.
The "Star Of Braves" and "Star Of Buffaloes" subsets are nine cards each, but they are not Best 9s. Instead, they're just a collection of players from each team - I guess they're meant to be the "biggest" stars for each team.
Here's some sample cards - you can see all the cards at
Jambalaya's website.
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| #12 |
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| #35 - Shinji Nakazawa - that looks like a Yakult Swallow in the background, so I wonder if this is from the 1978 Series, where the Swallows beat the Braves |
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| #21 - Toshiharu Ueda |
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| #74 - Shigeru Kurihashi |
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| #53 - Koichiro Sasaki |
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| #78 - Buffaloes Memorial Scene |
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| #87 |
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| #88 |
5 comments:
What's the deal with Seung Yuop Lee's name? I've seen it spelled like that, and also Seung Yeop Lee. Is there a significance or is one just a misspelling?
Don't really know the answer. I've seen similar issues with names of Chinese and other Korean players as well. And then there's the inconsistencies with BBM's spelling of Japanese names - Kohji vs Koji; Ohshima vs Oshima, etc. Really don't know enough about the languages involved to even guess.
I just picked up an insert card from this set that's neither of the two Stars sets. I'm trying to figure out what it is. It's numbered YK3 and has Shinji Nakazawa. It's got a foil background. It translates as The Golden Resurrection (of the) 70s.
Anyway, The same naming problem comes up frequently with different spellings based on the interpretation. I see the "sho" sound (like, Showa era) spelled as "Syo" or "Sho" - some of my students have that sound in their name and it is spelled either way. The "Oh" vs. "O" spelling is compounded sometimes by the use of "Ou" instead. There's a train station near me named Gamou. Or Gamo. Or Gamō. The differences are all attempts at conveying the proper way to pronounce that o at the end.
It may be to help distinguish "oh" from "ou" sounds. Not a big difference to us but it is to native speakers. See also: the (at least) three ways to pronounce "tokyo" with different meanings.
The "Star of ..." cards are subsets to the base set. What you've got is an insert card, but I'm not sure what the title of the set is. Jamabalaya has most of them here.
The correct translation, since he's Korean, would be Lee Seung-yeop. But BBM always uses Yuop, and even some Korean sets have used that spelling.
No Korean characters form a "uo" when translating to English.
ㅅ = s
- = eu
ㅇ = ng
여 - yeo
ㅂ = p
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