Run The Series - BBM Premium Malts

The Suntory Brewery has sponsored an old timers game called the "Dream Match" almost every year since 1995.  This year's game was supposed to have taken place last Monday but obviously was cancelled due to the on-going pandemic.  BBM issued box sets commemorating three of the games - 2009, 2010 and 2012 (there was no game in 2011 - I suspect this was due to the Tohoku Earthquake).  I thought I'd due a post that was a round up of this series of sets - partly because Dan sent me the 2012 set a month or so ago.

The 2009 base set contained 51 cards, the 2010 set contained 54 cards and the 2012 set had 49 cards.  Each card represented one player from the game as there were no subsets.  As is standard for BBM, each box included a bonus autograph or memorabilia card and as is standard for me, I didn't get any sets that had the bonus card (the set Dan sent me actually came from George originally who pulled an Isao Harimoto auto from his unopened set).

There are 77 different players who appear at least in at least one of these sets.  31 of those 77 appear in all three sets.  The players run the gamut from very famous (there are five Hall Of Famers and six Meikyukai members) to extremely obscure (Tatsuya Shiokawa) with a lot of guys falling in between.  There's only one foreign player - Randy Bass.  The oldest players are Eiji Bando and Harimoto while the youngest player was Shiokawa.  Here's a list of all the players who appear in the sets:

Player	DOB	2009	2010	2012	Hall Of Fame	Meikyukai
Awano, Hideyuki	1964-07-28	x	x
Bando, Eiji	1940-04-15	x	x	x
Bass, Randy	1954-03-13	x	x	x
Egawa, Suguru	1955-05-25		x
Enatsu, Yutaka	1948-05-15		x
Endo, Kazuhiko	1955-04-19			x
Gotoh, Koji	1969-05-14	x
Hamanaka, Osamu	1978-07-09			x
Harimoto, Isao	1940-06-19	x	x	x	1990	x
Hashimoto, Kiyoshi	1969-05-22	x	x	x
Hata, Shinji	1962-07-29	x	x
Hatsushiba, Kiyoshi	1967-02-26	x	x	x
Higashio, Osamu	1950-05-18	x	x	x	2010	x
Hikono, Toshikatsu	1964-10-12		x
Hirosawa, Katsumi	1962-04-10		x	x
Ikeda, Chikafusa	1959-05-17		x
Ikegaya, Kojiro	1952-06-28	x	x	x
Ikeyama, Takahiro	1965-12-17		x
Imanaka, Shinji	1971-03-06		x
Ishige, Hiromichi	1956-09-22	x	x	x
Ishii, Hiroo	1964-06-21	x		x
Ishii, Masahiro	1960-09-04	x	x
Itoh, Tsutomu	1962-08-29	x			2017
Iwata, Toru	1967-02-12			x
Kakefu, Masayuki	1955-05-09	x		x
Kanemura, Satoru	1976-04-19			x
Kanemura, Yoshiaki	1963-08-27	x	x	x
Kawamata, Yonetoshi	1960-08-04	x	x
Kawatoh, Kozo	1949-07-05	x	x	x
Kobayakawa, Takehiko	1961-11-15		x
Kohda, Isao	1965-05-29			x
Kohno, Hirofumi	1962-04-28	x
Komada, Norihiro	1962-09-14		x	x		x
Kubo, Fumio	1962-12-03	x	x	x
Kuwata, Masumi	1968-04-01	x	x	x
Makihara, Hiromi	1963-08-11	x	x	x
Matsumoto, Tadashi	1954-08-08	x	x	x
Miyamoto, Kazutomo	1964-02-13	x	x	x
Mizuno, Katsuhito	1965-09-03	x	x	x
Motoki, Daisuke	1971-12-30		x	x
Naitoh, Naoyuki "Gyaos"	1968-07-24		x
Nakahama, Hiroyuki	1978-04-10			x
Nishioka, Yoshihiro	1961-06-28		x
Nishizaki, Yukihiro	1964-04-13	x	x	x
Nomura, Hiroki	1969-06-30			x
Nomura, Kenjiro	1966-09-19	x				x
Ohno, Yutaka	1955-08-30	x			2013
Ohsawa, Keiji	1932-03-14	x	x
Ohtsuka, Koji	1967-08-26	x	x	x
Ohya, Akihiko	1947-12-20		x	x
Okada, Akinobu	1957-11-25	x
Onoue, Akira	1959-04-22	x
Sadaoka, Shoji	1956-01-29	x	x	x
Saitoh, Akio	1955-02-23	x	x	x
Sano, Motokuni	1958-03-06	x	x	x
Sano, Shigeki	1968-04-30	x	x	x
Sasaoka, Shinji	1967-08-26	x	x	x
Satoh, Hiroshi	1962-06-09	x	x	x
Satoh, Kazuhiro "Punch"	1964-12-03	x	x	x
Shiokawa, Tatsuya	1983-03-15			x
Shoji, Tomohisa	1953-05-30	x	x	x
Takagi, Yutaka	1957-10-22	x	x
Takahashi, Masahiro	1964-07-10	x	x	x
Takashiro, Nobuhiro	1954-05-27	x
Takeda, Kazuhiro	1965-06-22	x
Tanaka, Yukio	1967-12-14	x				x
Tao, Yasushi	1954-01-08	x	x	x
Tomashino, Kenji	1966-10-11	x	x	x
Wakana, Yoshiharu	1953-12-05	x	x	x
Yamakura, Kazuhiro	1955-09-02		x
Yamamoto, Kazunori	1957-10-18		x
Yamamoto, Koji (1946)	1946-10-25	x	x	x	2008	x
Yamamoto, Koji (1951)	1951-12-25	x
Yashiki, Kaname	1959-06-11	x	x	x
Yoda, Tsuyoshi	1965-12-04			x
Yojoh, Minoru	1966-09-27			x
Yoshimura, Sadaaki	1963-04-27			x

Here are two sample cards from each set:

09 BBM The Premium Malts #10

09 BBM The Premium Malts #45

2010 BBM The Premium Malts #04

2010 BBM The Premium Malts #53

2012 BBM The Premium Malts #25

2012 BBM The Premium Malts #01

These are kind of fun little sets although I'm not sure I've really missed BBM continuing to do them.  Part of the problem I have with the sets is that the same players appear over and over.  I suspect there's been enough turnover in the players who appear in the games since 2012 that a new set would be more interesting.  Some of the players who appeared in last year's game include Atsuya Furuta, Akinori Iwamura, Tadashi Settsu, Yoshinobu Takahashi and Kei Igawa - it might be fun to see what they look like now that they've been retired for awhile.

Thanks to George and Dan for getting me the 2012 set.