Card Of The Week May 31

There were a couple interesting events last week, both in MLB and NPB.  On Monday night, three Astros pitchers combined to no-hit the Texas Rangers.  One of those pitchers was Tatsuya Imai, who started the game and went six innings.  Imai had also been part of a combined no-hitter last year in Japan.  I had briefly thought that Imai was the first pitcher to have taken part in a no-hitter in both NPB and MLB but I had forgotten that Shota Imanaga had thrown a complete game no-hitter in Japan and been part of a combined no-hitter in MLB.  In fact, Imanaga's combined no-no was the most recent no-hitter in MLB before the Astros' one last week.   Fun fact - the final pitcher of the night for Houston, Alimber Santa, was making his big league debut in that game.  He's the second player in history to debut in a no-hitter, after Bumpus Jones in 1892.

On Tuesday, the news broke that Shinnosuke Abe, manager of the Yomiuri Giants, was stepping down after having been arrested under suspicion of assaulting his teenaged daughter.  I'm not sure all the details have been established but apparently he intervened in an argument between his daughters and may have thrown the older one to the ground.  The daughter contacted child consultation services who then got the police involved.  The whole thing is quite serious and disturbing and it's not what I want to focus on.  With Abe stepping down, the Giants have named Hideki Hashigami as interim manager.  Hashigami had a 12 year career playing for the Swallows (1988-96) and the Fighters (1997-99) - and notably did not play for the Giants.  He's coached for numerous teams since retiring as a player.  Yomiuri is stressing the "interim" part of his job title as the team hasn't replaced a manager mid-season since 1949 and they've never had a manager who didn't play for them.  In fact, they've never had an "official" manager who ever played for another team (at least not before he managed the team).  There's a lot that will still play out in the story but I doubt Hashigami will have the job after the season ends.

Here are cards of both Imai and Hashigami:

2024 Calbee Series Two #114

1994 BBM Late Series #594

RIP Bob Horner

Bob Horner passed away yesterday at the age of 68 years old.  Horner was a star player at Arizona State in the 1970's, winning the first ever Golden Spikes award in 1978.  He was the number one overall pick in the MLB draft that year and was immediately put on the Atlanta Braves' major league roster, skipping the minor leagues entirely.  He'd hit 23 home runs in just over half a season and was named National League Rookie Of The Year.  He'd would team up with with Dale Murphy to be a deadly middle of the lineup combination for much of the next nine seasons in Atlanta, hitting 215 home runs over that time span.  And then, in 1987, Bob Horner went to play in Japan.

Horner had become a free agent following the 1986 season and wanted a contract for $2 million.  No major league team would offer him that but the Yakult Swallows did.  Horner signed and headed overseas.

A major league star at the peak of his career signing with a Japanese club was unheard of at the time (and pretty much still is).  These were the days of Japan's global economic dominance and it seemed like it was just another example of the Japanese buying up everything.  Robert Whiting used Horner's signing and experience playing in Japan as the opening chapter in his 1988 book "You Gotta Have Wa" and put the signing in context:

Japan was at the height of its economic muscle.  Japanese interests owned 54 percent of all the cash in the world's banks, 65 percent of all Manhattan real estate, and 3 percent of the entire U.S. national debt.  A staid Japanese insurance company had paid 39 million dollars for Van Gogh's painting Sunflower.

And now, in what one TV commentator had called the piece de resistance, a Japanese baseball team had outbid the American major leagues for a prime American player: James Robert Horner.

What Whiting didn't know or account for at the time was that the main reason the Swallows were able to sign Horner was that the major league owners were illegally conspiring to not sign each other's players.  Almost no free agents changed teams that winter.  What he also couldn't know was that the Japanese economy would stagnate starting in 1990.  Horner's signing by the Swallows was not a harbinger of things to come but basically a one-off due to unique circumstances - Japan's economic clout and MLB collusion.

The Swallows issued Horner uniform number 50 with the implication that he'd hit that many home runs, despite not joining the team until mid-April.  For the first few weeks, it looked like that was a possibility.  He homered in his first game and hit several more in his next games.  But inevitably the league adjusted to him and and pitchers stopped challenging him.  He finished 1987 with a .327 average, 31 home runs and 73 RBIs in 93 games.  

The Swallows offered him a three year contract for $10 million dollars but Horner had had enough of Japan after one season.  He returned to MLB and signed a one year deal with the Cardinals.  He was invited to spring training with the Orioles in 1989 but retired instead.  

Horner was one of only two Golden Spikes winners to play in NPB (with Trevor Bauer being the other) and one of only four number one overall picks to do so (along with Danny Goodwin, Floyd Bannister and Bryan Bullington).  

As far as I can tell, he only had six cards showing him with the Swallows that came out in 1987.  Five of these were in that year's Calbee set, numbers 101, 111, 121, 201 and 319.  The other was from the Play Ball set which was an unlicensed set issued in the United States, possibly to capitalize on Horner's presence on the Swallows.  He's only appeared in two OB sets since he retired - the 2013 BBM Legendary Foreigners and the 2020 Epoch OB Club Career Achievements sets.  Here are the cards I have of him:

1987 Calbee #101

1987 Calbee #111

1987 Calbee #121

1987 Play Ball #1

2013 BBM Legendary Foreigners #35

In rereading Robert Whiting's book when doing research for this post, I saw that he mentioned a commercial Horner had done for Suntory beer.  I went spelunking through YouTube and found this, although I'm not positive it's the one Whiting meant:

Japanese MLB Players With No NPB Experience

Rikuu Nishida made his MB debut with the White Sox today.  Nishida was born in Osaka, Japan but played college baseball in Oregon for Mt. Hood Community College and the University of Oregon.  He was drafted by the White Sox in 2023 and has been working his way up their farm system ever since.

I think that Nishida is the seventh Japanese baseball player to make it to MLB without having played in NPB first but I'm not positive.  Part of the uncertainty is defining what "Japanese baseball player" means.  Does it mean being born in Japan?   That would mean that someone like Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, who was born in Okinawa to an American serviceman father and Japanese mother, or Lee Jung-hoo, who was born in Nagoya while his father Lee Jong-beom was playing for the Dragons, would count.  I'm not sure folks like that are what most people think about when thinking about "Japanese baseball players", however, so I'm going to go with "players who could reasonably be expected to hold a Japanese passport".

The six previous players by my definition are Mac Suzuki, Michael Nakamura, Kazuhito Tadano, Junichi Tazawa, Gosuke Katoh and Lars Nootbaar.  I'm a little iffy on whether or not Nootbaar has a Japanese passport but obviously he meets the definition of "Japanese" for the purposes of the World Baseball Classic.  I suspect Nootbaar would probably not want to let anyone know he's got a Japanese passport if he ever decided to play in NPB as he would then be subject to their draft rather than being a free agent (which is why Katoh was drafted by the Fighters despite being born in California to Japanese parents).

Four of these six players eventually played in NPB with Tazawa and Nootbaar (so far) being the exceptions.  Three of those four joined the Fighters oddly enough.  Tazawa had wanted to join NPB but was pretty much blackballed after spurning the league for MLB in the late 00's.  He had made himself available for the 2020 NPB draft but wasn't taken by anyone.

Here are NPB cards of the four plus a Japanese WBC card of Nootbaar:

2003 Calbee Series One #082

2006 BBM Nippon Series #S08

2013 BBM 1st Version #171

2024 Epoch Fighters Premier Edition #29

2023 Topps Samurai Japan #10

There have been a number of Japanese baseball players who started their professional careers in North America (but didn't necessarily make it to MLB) before ending up back in Japan with NPB.  I did a post on a bunch of them some years back (which included Suzuki, Nakamura and Tadano) but I don't know if I missed anyone or if there's anyone that's come in the years since then.

Card Of The Week May 24

Taisei Irie of the Baystars tied a dubious record yesterday when he threw 60 pitches in the first inning of his start against the Swallows.  He faced ten batters and gave up six earned runs on six hits (including three doubles) and a walk.  Incredibly, he gave up all the hits (and the walk) after having gotten the first two batters of the game out.  It was the only inning he pitched and the six runs were the only runs scored in the entire game.  

The record he tied was set 29 years ago by Bob Milacki of the Kintesu Buffaloes, who gave up 10 runs int the first inning against the Seibu Lions on June 27th, 1997.  Milacki's stint with Kintetsu was fairly short-lived, going 0-2 with an ERA of 7.30 in six games (including five starts).  Irie was the Baystars first pick in the 2020 draft so I suspect he'll be given a longer rope than Milacki was.

Here are cards of the two players:

2021 BBM 1st Version #265

1997 BBM #166

RIP Rick Krueger

I wanted to do a quick post on the passing of Rick Krueger, the former pitcher who was somewhat briefly a member of the Yomiuri Giants in 1979.  Krueger had signed with the Boston Red Sox in 1971 out of Michigan State University (I'm not entirely sure why he wasn't subject to the draft) and spent seven seasons (one of which he missed due to injury) in their organization, including 11 games in the majors between 1975 and 1977.  He was traded to Cleveland for Frank Duffy just before the 1978 season started and split that season between Triple-A Portland and the big league team.  

He joined the Giants in the spring of 1979 with the expectation that he'd be replacing Shigeru Kobayashi in the rotation - Kobayashi had just been dealt to the Tigers as part of the resolution of the "Egawa affair".  However, he made just one start before the team was concerned about his stamina and moved him to the bullpen.  He ultimately got into just 18 games, going 2-1 with an ERA of 4.66.  He was sent home by the team in mid-September and hung up his spikes after playing that winter in Puerto Rico (despite getting a spring training invite from Cleveland for 1980).  He would later coach at Cornerstone College and ran a baseball school.  He was 77 when he passed away on May 7th.

I wouldn't have thought that Krueger had many Japanese baseball cards but he had a couple more than I expected.  He didn't appear in any of Calbee's sets for 1979 but he did show up in that year's Takara Giants set.  He was also in a card set given away in Gekkan Giants magazine as uncut sheets of six cards.  The most common Japanese card of him, however, is from the 1979 TCMA set.  I have the TCMA and magazine cards:

1979-80 Gekkan Giants #19 

1979 TCMA #58

 I used his SABR biography as a source for this post.

Cards From Kenny

I received yet another envelope in the mail today from Kenny (Zippy Zappy) in Japan.  As he promised me a few weeks ago, this one contained some cards from the lastest Calbee set, 2026 Series One.  There were two base set cards and two insert cards.  Curiously, three of the four cards featured members of the Tokyo Yakult Swallows:

#007

#059

#L-4

#S-23

Now that I have some 2026 Calbees in hand, I see that my initial impression that this year's cards looked identical to last year's was pretty much correct.  (Sean has mentioned to me in an email that the only difference between this year's cards and last year's that he's seen is "a slightly different font size for the player name on the back".)  I really wish I had some insight in to why Calbee decided to stop making any sort of effort since at least 2023.

Regardless of Calbee's shortcomings, however, I'm grateful as always to receive the cards.  Thanks once again, Kenny!

Card Of The Week May 17

There was a trade last week in NPB.  Mid-season trades are nowhere near as common in Japan as they are in MLB but they do happen.  This was a bit unusual, though, as the Baystars shipped their starting catcher, Yudai Yamamoto, off to the Hawks in exchange for a couple of their former number one draft picks - Tomoya Inoue (first pick in the 2020 draft) and Shuto Ogata (first pick in the 2017 ikusei draft).  Here are cards for all three players:

2024 Topps NPB #37

2021 BBM Hawks #H50

2023 Hawks Volume 3 #23SBH329

Topps, Team Sets, Game Cards, 2nd Version and a KBO set

Time for another round up of recently announced NPB sets...

- Topps is back for their sixth year of doing NPB sets.  I'm not exactly sure of the details of this year's edition of their flagship set though - TradingCardJournal.com says the set will be released on June 12 but Topps' Japanese website says it'll be May 29th.  Neither listing says how big the set will be but I'm assuming it'll be the usual 216 cards (18 cards per team).  There will be insert cards but it beats the hell out of me what they'll be because Topps didn't bother including that information either - other than they're going to have one that uses the 1991 design.  There'll be the usual myriad of parallels but again there are no details other than they'll exist and some of them will be serially numbered.  There will be autographed cards of active NPB players, "active players currently playing in MLB" which I assume means active former NPB players (I don't expect to see Aaron Judge cards) and retired players (which have been some of Topps' more interesting inclusions).  The big news is that Topps will include relic cards for active players with this set for the first time.

- While I'm on the subject of Topps, I should mention that there are some World Baseball Classic inserts available in the recently released Bowman set but they're pretty rare and expensive.  The 25 card "Anime" insert set features anime-style cartoon images of a number of active and retired players including Shohei Ohtani, Aaron Judge, Cal Raleigh, Paul Skenes and Bobby Witt, Jr. in their WBC uniforms.  One of the retired players in the set is Sadaharu Oh which is pretty cool and the active MLB players include Munetaka Murakami, Kazuma Okamoto and Tatsuya Imai.  There's a kanji variation of the "Anime" inserts as well that's only for the Japanese players (Ohtani, Oh, Murakami, Okamoto, Imai along with Hideo Nomo and Shotaro Morii, a farmhand in the Sacramento Athletics organization).  

- BBM has announced the final three of their "comprehensive" team sets for 2026.  As usual, each set has a base set of 81 cards, most of which are "regular" player cards featuring the manager and the players on the 70 man roster plus a couple subsets (which may not be fully defined yet) to fill out the set.  Each set also has 18 non-premium insert cards split into a variety of sets which also may not be fully defined yet (or may have title that doesn't translate to something that makes any sense).  The sets also have two or three types of premium inserts that are serially numbered - Treasure, Esperanza and Admirar.  BBM also introduced a new premium insert called "My Fave" with this year's Giants set so all four of these sets also have those available.  There will be rare parallel versions of some of the "regular" player cards that will feature photo variants or different backgrounds.

Release Date	Team	Regular Cards	Subsets	Inserts	Other
Early July	Buffaloes	69	Reborn(2), Samurai Soul(2), Heirloom Sword(2), Small But Amazing(2), Natural(4)	Go All Together(9), Beyond The Dream That Must Come True(3), Golden Egg(3), Three Pillars(3), Treasure(24), Esperanza(9), Admirar(6), My Fave(12)	Autograph cards
Mid July	Marines	68	Rising Young Players(4), Veteran Players(2), Specialists(3), Early Season Highlights(4)	Key Players(9), Promising Players(3), Veterans(3), Rookies(3), Treasure(23), Esperanza(9), Admirar(6), My Fave(12)	Autograph & Memorabilia cards
Late July	Dragons	69	Young Starting Pitchers(3), Infield Key Players(3), Tokai Heroes(6)	Unstoppable(9), No Limit(3), Rise Above(3), Shine Bright(3), Treasure(24), Esperanza(9), Admirar(6), My Fave(24)	Autograph & Memorabilia cards

- BBM has also announced that this year's edition of 2nd Version, the second part of their flagship set, will be released in late August.   The base set follows the pattern of almost all 2nd Version sets since 2015 - 216 player cards (18 for each team), 12 team checklists, 36 "1st Version Update" cards (three for each team), 36 "Cross Forest" cards (three for each team, numbered in continuation of the same subset in 1st Version) and a currently unspecified number of "Ceremonial First Pitch" cards.  The "Ceremonial First Pitch" cards are likely short-printed again, so the base set without them will be 300 cards.  There's six different insert sets - "The Beginning", "My Generation (Year Of The Rat)", "Hero's Theme", "Combined", "Treasure" and "Foil Picturesque".  All of these have 12 cards except for "Treasure" which has 36.  There's the usual plethora of parallels of the player cards along with the "Secret", "Ultra Secret", and "Super Ultra Secret" photo variations.  There will also be memorabilia cards and autographed cards - including autographed cards using the designs from BBM's team sets along with "buyback" autographs.

- Epoch has announced another "Premier Edition" team set.  This one is for the Fighters and will hit the stores on July 18th.  The base set will contain 45 cards - 37 for active players and eight for OB players.  There's a "hologram" parallel available for each of the base set cards.  The set has the usual large batch of inserts that all the "Premier Edition" sets have- three varieties of "Regular Foil Signature" ("silver", "gold" and "hologram") (18 cards each), two varieties of "Regular Decomori Signature" ("hologram" and "hologram parallel") (18 cards each), five varieties of "Time To Shine" ("A","B","C","D","E") (six cards each) and three varieties of "Decomori Signature" ("gold","green" and "hologram") (six cards each).  I think all the inserts are serially numbered.  There are also the "GEM" and "BLACK GEM" "special insert cards" (nine cards in each) that I think are much more limited.  There are five different types of autographed cards - "Authentic" 37), "Star" (6), "Rookie" (5), "Legendary" (8) and "Combo"6).  

- Bandai is issuing updates to their "Professional Baseball FanStars" collectible card game.  The Vol. 2 Booster Packs for both the Central League and Pacific League will be released on May 30th.  Both sets will have 96 cards - 36 "Normal", 30 "Rare", 18 "Star Rare" and 12 "Super Star Rare".  In addition, Bandai will issue a set called "EX Booster Pack Vol.1" on August 1 but there's not really any more information about it than that.  

- And finally, the first KBO set for 2026 has been announced by SCC.  It's called "Festa Set" and will be released on June 6th.  As is kind of standard for KBO sets, it's a bit confusing but I think the base set is 80 cards (eight per team) with all the base cards being labeled "Sporty".  There are also 80 "Treasure" cards but I'm not sure if these should be considered inserts or parallels or just 80 more base set cards.  There are 49 autographed cards available which works out to five per team except for SSG which one has four.

Park Byung-ho

I had somehow missed the fact that longtime KBO star (and one time Minnesota Twin) Park Byung-ho had retired at the end of last season.  It was only when I saw an article about his retirement game a few weeks ago that I realized it had happened.  I thought I'd do my final retirement post for this off season about him (which takes the bad taste of finishing up with Sho Nakata out of my mouth).

Park was originally drafted by the LG Twins in 2005 but he didn't blossom as a star until he was traded to the then-Nexen Heroes in 2011.  He was the MVP of the league in 2012 and 2013 and led the league in home runs and RBIs for four straight years from 2012 to 2015.  He became the first player in KBO history to hit 50 home runs in consecutive seasons when he hit 52 in 2014 and 53 in 2015.

He left Korea for America before the 2016 season and signed a four year deal with the Twins.  He struggled at the plate in Minneapolis in his first season, hitting below .200 before being banished to Triple-A for the remainder of the season.  After spending all of 2017 in Rochester, New York, he asked for and received his release from the team to return to Korea.

He returned to Nexen for 2018 and it was like he never left, hitting 43 home runs and knocking in 112 runs.  The Heroes were sold to Kiwoom in 2019 and he responded by again leading the league in home runs.  

He left the Heroes as a free agent after 2021 and joined the KT Wiz.  He led the league in home runs one last time in 2022 but his numbers started to decline after that.  He was traded to the Samsung Lions in the middle of the 2024 season and played for them until announcing his retirement last November.  He was activated by the Heroes for his retirement game so his career record indicates that he finished his playing days with Kiwoom. 

I was kind of surprised he hadn't played for the Korean National Team more often.  He only played in three major tournaments - the 2015 and 2019 Premier 12s and the 2023 World Baseball Classic.  He hit two home runs with 15 RBIs in the 2015 Premier 12 with one of those home runs coming against Team USA in the gold medal game.

I thought I'd share all the cards I have of him.  These aren't all his cards - I haven't gotten much in the way of KBO cards since 2021 and TCDB lists 557(!) total cards for him although I'm sure a good many of those are parallels - but I do have 14 of him.  Here they are in roughly the order they were published:

2014 Superstar Baseball Season One #SBC01-043

2014 Superstar Baseball Season Three #SBC03-057-AS

2015 Superstar Baseball Season Two Unnumbered Sticker

2015 Superstar Baseball Hell's Fireball #PA01-NE001

2015 Superstar Baseball Gold Edition #SBCGE-079-N

2016 Topps Chrome #RA-BP

2018 SCC KBO Collection #SCCR-01/156

2018 KBO Collection 2 Red #SCCR-02R/057

2019 SCC KBO Collection #SCCR1-19/077

2019 SCC Premium #SCCP1-19/083

2019 SCC KBO Collection 2 #SCCR2-19/077

2020 SCC Premium #SCCP1-20/H16

2021 SCC Rainbow #SCC-21/H17

2021 SCC Golden Premium #SCC-21/H15

Card Of The Week May 10

Last week the SSG Landers of the KBO announced the signing of another Japanese pitcher, Ginjiro Hiramoto.  Hiramoto is not being signed as an "Asian Quota" player but rather as a "short term injury replacement" for Mitch White.  

Hiramoto has had a bit of an interesting baseball career so far.  He was the ace pitcher at Koryo High School, starting (and losing) the final game in the 2017 Summer Koshien Tournament.  His battery-mate at Koryo, Shosei Nakamura, was taken in the first round of that fall's draft by the Carp but Hiramoto decided to go to college instead of going pro and spent the next four years at Hosei University.  Instead of declaring for the 2021 draft, he joined Nippon Express of the corporate leagues and spent the next four years with them.  He signed with the Gunma Diamond Pegasus of the independent Baseball Challenge League this past winter, apparently to increase his possibility of getting drafted by an NPB team this fall, a possibility that will be further increased if he does well in Korea.  Of course, the downside is that he'll be 27 when this fall's draft rolls around so it'll be interesting to see what kind of interest he draws.

I was a bit surprised to discover that I had a baseball card of him.  As it turned out, he has at least three cards in the JABA sets for the corporate leagues - #14 and #59 from the 2024 set and #19 from the 2025 set.  He is definitely not in the 2022 set but I've never been able to put a checklist together for the 2023 set so it's possible he's in it.  Here's the card I have:

2024 JABA #24JP059

RIP Isami Okamoto

I haven't been very diligent in monitoring the list of the dead over at Japanese Wikipedia lately so I didn't realize that former Nankai Hawk infielder Isami Okamoto had passed away on April 15th at the age of 95.

Okamoto had signed with Nankai as a "test player" in 1949 and made his debut with the team in 1950.  By 1952 he had established himself as the Hawks starting second baseman, a role he'd keep for the rest of the decade (with the exception of 1954 which he spent as an outfielder).  His best season was 1953 when he won the Pacific League batting title with a .318 average and the league MVP award.  He was the first player born in the Showa Era to win a batting crown or an MVP award.  He won five Best 9 Awards (1952, 1953, 1955, 1957 and 1959) and made four All Star teams (1953, 1955, 1956 and 1959).  He along with first baseman Tokuji Iida, shortstop Chusuke Kizuka and third baseman Kazuo Kageyama formed what was known as the "Million Dollar Infield" in the mid-50's.

He homered twice off of Hall Of Famer Takehiko Bessho in Game One of the 1959 Nippon Series which was pretty much his last hurrah.  He lost his starting position to Carlton Handa the next season and missed the entire 1961 season due to injury.  He retired as an active player at the end of 1963.  He coached for the Hawks for the following two seasons before switching to the Sankai Atoms for 1966-67.  He returned to Nankai in 1968 and coached for them through 1972.  He switched teams again then, staying in Kansai with the Hanshin Tigers for 1973 and 1974 before becoming a commentator for Fuji TV for the next seven years.

He returned to coaching with the Kintetsu Buffaloes under manager Seiji Sekiguchi in 1982 and took over as manager when Sekiguchi retired after the 1983 season.  Okamoto managed the team for the next four seasons, going 239-242-39.  He led the team to a second place finish in 1986 but was let go when the team finished sixth (and last) in 1987.  He became a baseball commentator again after parting ways with Kintetsu and later was the director of the OB Club (aka the All Japan Baseball Foundation and the Japan Baseball Promotion Association) for a number of years.

Okamoto had a number of cards issued for him during his playing career - Gary Engel's latest "Vintage Edition" of his "Japanese Baseball Card Guide" lists 23 menko, bromide, game and gum cards.  There's a bit of an odd dichotomy in his OB player cards - they're all from BBM until Epoch paired up with the All Japan Baseball Foundation in 2009 to produce sets.  After that, he only had cards from Epoch in sets they did with the organization.  I guess it makes sense since he was their director for a while but it also meant that he only appeared in BBM's set for the Hawks' 70th Anniversary, not the ones for their 75th (in 2013) or 80th (in 2018).  Here's all the cards I have for him:

1958 Yamakatsu JCM 33b

2000 BBM 20th Century Best 9 #051

2000 BBM 20th Century Best 9 #171

2000 BBM 20th Century Best 9 #291

2000 BBM 20th Century Best 9 #411

2002 BBM All Time Heroes #112

2006 BBM Nostalgic Baseball #046

2008 BBM Hawks 80th Anniversary #12

2009 BBM Kintetsu Memorial #48

2009 Epoch All Japan Baseball Foundation 15th Anniversary #45

2011 Epoch All Japan Baseball Foundation Managers #43

In addition to these cards, TCDB lists a couple cards that I don't have - 2003 BBM Sluggers (#14), 2012 Epoch JBPA History Of Best 9 (#28), 2015 Epoch OB Club MVP Of The Year (#13) and 2018 Epoch OB Club Batting Leaders Holographica (#15).

Actually, I'll slightly correct something I said above - Okamoto DOES appear in BBM's 2018 Hawks 80th Anniversary set although he doesn't have a player card in the set.  There's a card in the set dedicated to the "Million Dollar Infield":

2018 BBM Hawks 80th Anniversary #HH3

I'm pretty confident that's him in the upper right part of the card.  I'm assuming the players' positions in the photo reflect their infield positions so that would mean that's Chusuke Kizuka to the left of Okamoto with Kazuo Kageyama in the lower left and Tokuji Iida in the lower right.  I'm going to guess that that's manager Kazuto Tsuruoka in the center but I don't know that for sure.