NPB Down Under

The Shlabotnik Report started an interesting Blog Bat Around the other day - how many countries do you have baseball cards from?  I'm not really going to participate in it as my collection doesn't have a wide variety of countries represented - most of it's from Japan with a little bit from Korea and a little bit from the US (mostly WBC related).  But I thought I'd take the opportunity to talk about some cards I just picked up from another country - Australia.

The Australian Baseball League started back up in 2010 and NPB teams have sent players to play in the league every season.  There haven't been a lot of official cards issued for the league (although the Australian Custom Baseball Cards blog shows great homemade cards) and what I've seen doesn't include many of the NPB players - for example the 2018-19 Choice set only has one Japanese player who's no longer under contract with an NPB team.  But I was pleasantly surprised to find a handful of cards on Ebay recently that did feature NPB players on ABL teams.

The 2011-12 Brisbane Bandits featured five players from the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks (who had just won the 2011 Nippon Series) - Kenta Imamiya, Taisei Makihara, Keiji Nakahara, Ayatsugu Yamashita and Yohei Yanagawa.  Imamiya and Makihara are still with the Hawks while Yamashita (who goes by "Ayatsugu") is with the Eagles.  Nakahara and Yanagawa retired following the 2013 and 2012 seasons respectively.

In 2012 Brisbane issued a pair of team sets that were not related to the "official" cards issued for the ABL from a company called Select.  These appear to be team issued sets that were available as a giveaway.  The first set contained 30 cards and included player cards for Makihara, Yamashita and Yanagawa.  The second set had 31 cards and included player cards for Imamiya and Nakahara.  The second set also includes a subset for Brisbane players who were selected for the 2011 All Star Game - this subset includes Imamiya, Yamashita and Yanagawa (as well as future Orix Buffalo Alex Maestri) along with a group photo of the All Stars.  There's also a third Yamashita card in the "Non Stop Action" subset.

I have all the NPB player cards from these team sets except for the group All Star card and the "Non Stop Action" card of Yamashita.  Here's each of the cards along with a card of the player with the Hawks:

2012 Brisbane Bandits Team Set II #037

2012 Brisbane Bandits Team Set II #053

2014 Hawks "Special Baseball Card" #2

2012 Brisbane Bandits Team Set I #022

2019 BBM 1st Version #043

2012 Brisbane Bandits Team Set II #044

2012 BBM Hawks #H58

2012 Brisbane Bandits Team Set I #014

2012 Brisbane Bandits Team Set II #052

2014 BBM Hawks Futures And Legends #17

2012 Brisbane Bandits Team Set I #013

2012 Brisbane Bandits Team Set II #051

2011 Bandai Owners League 04 #010

The 2012-13 Canberra Cavalry won the ABL Championship.  The team featured three players on loan from the Hanshin Tigers - Masanori Fujihara, Kohei Shibata and Hirokazu Shiranita.  None of the three are still active players.  Fujihara retired after the 2015 season, Shibata retired after spending one season with the Marines in 2017 and Shiranita retired in 2016 after spending two seasons with Orix.

A card company called Dingo issued ABL cards for the 2013-14 season.  As part of those cards they issued a 43 card "Canberra Cavalry Championship Edition" set that celebrated Canberra's championship the previous season.  This appears to be the only one of Dingo's ABL sets that included any Japanese players as all three Tigers players are in the set.  Here are the three cards along with cards showing them with the Tigers:

2013 Dingo Canberra Cavalry Championship Edition #116

2015 BBM Tigers #T19

2013 Dingo Canberra Cavalry Championship Edition #091

2016 BBM Tigers #T56

2013 Dingo Canberra Cavalry Championship Edition #115

2008 BBM 1st Version #106

The only other Australian cards that I know of featuring NPB players (other than the two I mentioned from the Brisbane set) is a card for Tigers pitcher Takumi Akiyama from the 2012 Select set for the Canberra Cavalry and a couple cards of Kenshi Sugiya of the Fighters from what I think is a team issued set for the Brisbane Bandits from 2018.  I will need to keep an eye out for these cards as well as the 2012 Select card for Dae-Sung Koo when he was with the Sydney Blue Sox.

UPDATE - Steve Smith contacted me today to let me know that I had missed an NPB player.  The Melbourne Aces have had a number of players from the Saitama Seibu Lions play for them over the years but it looks like only one of them made a card set - Toshihiro Iwao appears in the 2013-14 Dingo set for the Aces.  I had missed this when looking through the Dingo checklists on the Australian Custom Baseball Cards blog.  Steve was kind enough to send a photo of the card:

So that's another card I will need to be on the look out for.