Most Hall Of Famers In A BBM Set

This post was inspired by a post that Night Owl Cards did a month or so ago that calculated how many Hall Of Famers have appeared in each Topps set.  I figured it wouldn't be that hard to do the same thing for BBM sets and I created a spread sheet with the numbers.  I updated it earlier this week with Koichi Tabuchi's selection and thought I'd share the results here.

My criteria for this was that the Hall Of Famer must have a "regular" card as either a player or manager in BBM's "flagship" set(s) for the year.  This means players appearing in an OB subset (like the "Nostalgic Stars" subsets in the 1991-94 sets) don't count.  For "flagship" set I mean the regular BBM set from 1991 to 2001 and the 1st and 2nd Version sets since then.  To be counted the player only needs to be in either 1st or 2nd Version, not both.  Appearances in the Fusion set don't count.

There are a total of 35 Hall Of Famers who appear as either a player or manager in at least one of BBM's "flagship" sets.  They are Koji Akiyama, Motoshi Fujita, Atsuya Furuta, Hiroshi Gondoh, Tatsunori Hara, Osamu Higashio, Tsuneo Horiuchi, Senichi Hoshino, Tsutomu Itoh, Hiromitsu Kadota, Masaichi Kaneda, Tomoaki Kanemoto, Manabu Kittabeppu, Sadao Kondoh, Kimiyasu Kudoh, Hideki Matsui, Masaaki Mori, Shigeo Nagashima, Rikuo Nemoto, Hideo Nomo, Katsuya Nomura, Hiromitsu Ochiai, Sadaharu Oh, Akira Ohgi, Yutaka Ohno, Masaki Saitoh, Kazuhiro Sasaki, Keichi Suzuki, Koichi Tabuchi, Morimichi Takagi, Kazuyoshi Tatsunami, Toshiharu Ueda, Tsutomu Wakamatsu, Hisashi Yamada, Koji Yamamoto and Yoshio Yoshida.  Kudoh has appeared in the most years - 25.  Kaneda and Kondoh each only appeared in one set (1991).

1991 BBM #56

With 22, 1991 is the set with the most Hall Of Famers.  They are Akiyama, Fujita, Furuta, Hara, Hoshino, Itoh, Kadota, Kaneda, Kitabeppu, Kondoh, Kudoh, Mori, Nomo, Nomura, Ochiai, Ohgi, Ohno, Saitoh, Sasaki, Tabuchi, Tatsunami and Yamamoto.

1994 BBM #132

The 1994 set has the second most Hall Of Famers - 21.  They are Akiyama, Furuta, Hara, Itoh, Kanemoto, Kitabeppu, Kudoh, Matsui, Mori, Nagashima, Nemoto, Nomo, Nomura, Ochiai, Ohgi, Ohno, Saitoh, Sasaki, Suzuki, Takagi and Tatsunami.

1992 BBM #146

1993 BBM #130

1995 BBM #50

1998 BBM #520

Four sets are tied for third with 20 Hall Of Famers apiece.  The 1992 set has Akiyama, Fujita, Furuta, Hara, Itoh, Kadota, Kitabeppu, Kudoh, Mori, Nomo, Nomura, Ochiai, Ohgi, Ohno, Saitoh, Sasaki, Tabuchi, Takagi, Tatsunami and Yamamoto.  The 1993 set dropped Fujita, Kadota, Ohgi and Tabuchi and replaced them with  Matsui, Nagashima, Nemoto and Suzuki (literally in one case - Suzuki took over as manager of Kintetsu from Ohgi).  The 1995 set has the same group as the 1994 set except that it dropped Kitabeppu, Mori, Nemoto and Nomo and picked up Higashio, Oh and Ueda.  The 1998 set has Akiyama, Furuta, Gondoh, Higashio, Hoshino, Itoh, Kanemoto, Kudoh, Matsui, Nagashima, Nomura, Ochiai, Oh, Ohgi, Ohno, Saitoh, Sasaki, Tatsunami, Ueda and Yoshida.

There has not yet been a BBM flagship set that didn't feature at least two Hall Of Famers.  Last year's set had Hara and Kudoh (who coincidentally faced off in last year's Nippon Series.  It was the first time that both managers were Hall Of Famers at the time since Nagashima and Oh faced off in 2000 although there have been a number of match ups since then where the manager was elected to the Hall Of Fame after the Series).  Barring any unexpected developments in the next month (like a major sign stealing scandal involving the Giants and/or the Hawks) I would expect that the 2020 set will also include two Hall Of Famers.  The last Hall Of Famer to appear in a BBM set as a player was Kanemoto in 2012.

I intend to do a new instance of this post after the Hall Of Fame vote each year although given the glacial pace of new inductees I don't expect it to change much.  If I get really ambitious I'll try doing it with the Calbee sets!