New Stuff

BBM listed a couple new sets in the past week or so:

- a "Memorial" box set for Tomoaki Kanemoto (finishing the trilogy of box sets for retiring Meikyukai members).  It's got 28 cards in the set - 27 "regular" cards covering Kanemoto's career plus one "special" card - possible jersey, bat, autograph, etc.  The set will be out at the end of November.

- the annual Nippon Series box set.  This set contains 72 cards - 2 for the team managers, 64 for the players who appeared in the set (including Yuki Saitoh - how does a guy who spent the entire second half of the season stinking it up at Kamagaya get to pitch in the Nippon Series - granted it was mop up relief but still...*), 5 for the Award Winners and 1 card showing the Giants celebrating.  It will be out in mid-December.

* I'm going to do a Joe Posnanski style footnote/aside here to continue to rant about Yu-Chan.  So not only does he spend the second half of the season just sucking with the ni-gun Fighters and then pitches two innings in Game Five of the Nippon Series where he continues to suck (2 innings pitched, four hits, one walk, one strikeout and two earned runs for a nifty ERA of 9.00), he makes the Samurai Japan roster for the two games against Cuba!  Mercifully he's the only pitcher on the roster who didn't appear in either game - this goes a long way with giving me some confidence in Koji Yamamoto as manager.  But for God's sake, please don't put him on the WBC roster!

I also happened to notice that Epoch and the All Japan Baseball Foundation are putting out yet another OB Club set.  This one is entitled "History Of Best Nine" and it looks like there's 45 regular cards and a boatload of possible special cards - lots of autographs.  The set will be out on the 22nd of December.