Card Of The Week April 26

I was looking through some old Calbee cards today (looking to see what I had in the way of Hiromitsu Kadota cards for the next Career Home Run Leader post) and I came across this card of Tsutomu Wakamatsu from 1979:


1979 Calbee was a little odd. Calbee produced over 400 cards that year in about 12 different sets. There was the "regular" set; sets for the "best" players (according to some sort of contest) for April, May, July, August and October; sets for the April-June "stars" for both the Central and Pacific leagues; a "Title holders" set; a set for the the Central League Champion Carp; a different set for the Nippon Series champion Carp and a set for the Nippon Series between the Carp and Buffaloes itself.

The Wakamatsu card is from the "May Best" series. It is card number 15, indicating that he came in 15th in the contest (Shigeru Kobayashi came in first).

Career Home Run Leaders #4 - Koji Yamamoto

Number four on the list of Career Home Run Leaders is long time Hiroshima Toyo Carp outfielder Koji Yamamoto with 536. Yamamoto played for the Carp from 1969 until 1986.

1976 Mitsuya Small Disk:


1977 Yamakatsu:


1980 Yamakatsu:


1986 Calbee #232:


Yamamoto finished his career by leading the Carp to the Nippon Series in 1986. His final home run was in Game 1 of the Series, which they ultimately lost to the Lions. Apparently, Yamamoto decided to retire after the season was over, so the Carp's retirement celebration for him wasn't until early in the 1987 season (2008 BBM Hiroshima Memorial #14):


After sitting out the 1987 season, Yamamoto returned to the Carp in 1988 as manager. He remained manager through the 1993 season, leading the Carp to the Nippon Series in 1991, losing to the Lions. (The Carp have only played in 5 Nippon Series with Yamamoto being involved in all as either player or manager.) He returned as manager of the Carp in 2001 and continued through 2005. (2001 Upper Deck #50):


In 2008, he was a coach for the Japanese Olympic team (2008 BBM Japanese National Team #JPN03):



(The card at the top of this post is 2002 BBM 2nd Version #827)

More about "Ando"

Deanna Rubin suggested in a comment to my last post that I scan the back of the "Ando" card and see if there's any more information to be found. So here it is:


Here's what I think this says: the kanji across the top identifies the team (Tokyo Orions). Starting from the left, the columns indicate that he bats and throws right, his weight and height (don't know the values), his school (Keio University?), his uniform number (23) and his position (infielder). The number on the bottom is the "menko number" and doesn't really mean anything. The text in the bat says "Who am I?" and the hand is the "paper" symbol for the "rock/paper/scissors" game. These last two items are games that kids could play with the menko cards. (I used information in John Gall and Gary Engel's book "Sayonara Home Run" to try to decode the back of the card.)

The two candidates I had before, Kazuhiro Ishiguro and Kazuyoshi Nishiyama, were both right handed. Ishiguro attended Keio while Nishiyama attended Kansai University. So right now it's looking like Ishiguro may be the guy, assuming I've deciphered everything correctly.

Card Of The Week April 19

One of the cool things about old menko cards is that they would sometimes come in blocks of 4, 8 or 16 cards, suitable for framing. Here's a 16 card block of 1964 Marukami "Bat On Right" menko:


Top Row(L to R): Kazuhiro Yamauchi, Takao Katsuragi, Masahiro Doi, Isao Harimoto
2nd Row: unknown, Takeshi Kato, Jim Marshall, Masuho Maeda
3rd Row: Katsuya Nomura, Kent Hadley, Akira Ishii, Joe Stanka
Last Row: Hachiro Yamamoto, Masaaki Koyama, Etsui Nakai, Toshiaki Tokuhisa

The Tokyo Orions player on the far left in the second row is identified in Gary Engel's "Japanese Baseball Card Checklist and Price Guide" simply as "Ando". I've checked Japan Baseball Daily's Data Warehouse, however, and I can't find an "Ando" who played for the Orions in 1964 (or the early 60's for that matter). Curiously, the back of the card says his uniform number is "23", but his helmet says "8". So I don't know who this really is.

Update: Using the information available in the Data Warehouse, I've been able to figure out that #23 on the 1964 Tokyo Orions was Kazuhiro Ishiguro. I think Kazuyoshi Nishiyama wore #8 (he's listed as wearing both #8 and #9 in his three years with the Orions). But I'm also pretty sure that the kanji on the card says "Ando". So I'm very confused...

2009 BBM Baystars set

This week, BBM's website announced the Baystars team set, the sixth of twelve expected pack based team sets this season. The set contains 99 regular cards (71 cards for the players and manager, 1 checklist, 6 cards of new Baystars players, 6 cards of active team leaders, 6 cards for the "back numbers" subset featuring current players and an OB player they share their number with, and a 9 card puzzle) as well as a 9 card "Shining Star" insert set and the usual memorabilia cards. The set will be released around the end of May.

RIP Mickey

Mickey, the ball delivery golden retriever for the Carp, has passed away at age 11.


2005 BBM 2nd Version #822

Card Of The Week April 12

This was the closest thing to the Easter Bunny that I could find:


2005 BBM Giants #G070