Saturday, June 5, 2021

A to Z Challenge

A week ago the Diamond King issued a challenge to bloggers to do a post featuring an A to Z list of their favorite players.  I decided to take a shot at this with NPB players and was able to get a list together although some letters were much more difficult than others - either there weren't many NPB players whose name started with that letter or there were several players I liked a lot with that letter.  What I probably should have done is picked a player whose name started with each hiragana character but I wasn't prepared to that much work yet.  Maybe later.

Anyway, here's my list.  I don't think anyone with a last name starting with "Q" or "X" has ever played in NPB or if they have, I don't have cards for them.

A - Koji Akiyama

1991 BBM Nippon Series #S58

B - Wladimir Balentien

2013 BBM Swallows #S61

C - Koji Chikamoto

2020 BBM Tigers #T58

D - Yu Darvish

2005 Konami Baseball Heroes New Black Edition #C05B051

E - Yutaka Enatsu

2003 BBM Fighters #107

F - Atsuya Furuta

1998 BBM Diamond Heroes "Hit Leader" #H1

G - Sosuke Genda

2017 BBM Fusion #067

H - Isao Harimoto

1967 Kabaya-Leaf #409

I - Atsunori Inaba

2019 Calbee Samurai Japan #SJ-01

J - Kenji Johjima

2001 Upper Deck #146

K - Hiromitsu Kadota

1985 Calbee #129

L - Lee Dae-Ho

2012 Calbee #024

M - Masato Morishita

2019 Panini USA Baseball Stars & Stripes Japanese Collegiate National Team #JC-MM

N - Takeya Nakamura

2019 Epoch One #401

O - Hiromitsu Ochiai

2011 BBM All Stars #A36

P - Roberto Petagine

1999 Calbee #230

R - Tuffy Rhodes

2001 BBM Nippon Series #S55

S - Hayato Sakamoto

2010 Georgia Coffee #002

T - Motonobu Tanishige

2005 Dragons Official Card

U - Seiichi Uchikawa

2014 Calbee #C-6

V - Dayan Viciedo

2016 Epoch Record Breakers #18

W - Tsutomu Wakamatsu

1977 Yamakatsu JY3

Y - Yuki Yanagita

2015 Calbee #ES-13

Z - Julio Zuleta

2006 BBM Hawks #H052

If I were to do this list again, it might not come out the same way.  Some of the players who I narrowly decided against include Sadaharu Oh, Shigeo Nagashima, Shohei Ohtani, Ichiro Suzuki, Shogo Akiyama, Tetsuto Yamada, Yutaka Fukumoto, Hisashi Yamada, Masahiro Yamamoto, Kazuhiro Kiyohara, Kimiyasu Kudoh and Masahiro Tanaka.  

5 comments:

P-town Tom said...

That Tuffy Rhodes card is brilliant. Thanks for sharing!

Fuji said...

So many cool cards. My top 3 would be:

#1: Tsutomu Wakamatsu

#2: Tuffy Rhodes

#3: Seiichi Uchikawa

The Diamond King said...

Totally agree on the Tuffy Rhodes card... sweet. Thanks for doing this!

Jason Presley said...

Out of the two Tuffys in that set, somehow I don't have either. I've seen that same photo on a either a phone card or rail pass.

NPB Card Guy said...

@Tom, Fuji, Diamond King - thanks! One of the attractions about doing this post was getting to show off some of my favorite cards. One thing cool about that Rhodes card is the cameo appearance by another player on my list - Atsuya Furuta.

@Jason - Sorry, not trying to rub it in that I have the set. In fairness, I did buy it when it was originally released back in December of 2001.