NST

After Yamakatsu and Nippon Ham, the other big card manufacturer of the late 1970's (besides Calbee of course) was NST.  Between 1975 and 1983, NST produced four large sets of 2 inch by 2 7/8 inch cards.  Technically I guess the cards are really stamps as they were intended to be pasted into albums that (I assume) were sold in conjunction with the packs of cards.  At least two of the sets had a parallel set of thicker stock cards also.  The sets were very Giants-centric - the last two featured only Giants players.  The fronts of the cards in all four sets are "pure card" - white border photos with no text whatsoever.

The first NST set was issued in 1975 to honor Shigeo Nagashima, who retired at the end of the 1975 season.  It was a 288 card set called "Mr. Baseball".  The set contains many cards highlighting Nagashima's career (including a bunch of Shukan Baseball Magazine covers) - in many ways this was the model for the set Mr. Giants set BBM produced in 1999 to commemorate Nagashima's career.  The remainder of the set contains mostly other Giants players, but there are some players from other teams.  The real highlight of the set is a handful of cards showing major league players with the Giants - there's a couple cards with Boog Powell and Brooks Robinson during the 1971 Orioles tour of Japan, a card showing Nagashima with Gene Mauch and a card with Tsuneo Horiuch and Ron Cey (unfortunately I have none of these).  The backs of all the cards were identical except for the card number.  There was a parallel set of thicker stock cards which were blank backed.  Here's a couple examples:

Shigeo Nagashima #1

Koichi Tabuchi #66

Back Of Tabuchi's card

Wrapper

NST issued a 388 324 card set called "Mr. Baseball 2" in 1976 1977.  Again, the cards are mostly Giants players although there appears to be a pretty good selection of players from other teams.  To some extent, the set was intended to honor Sadaharu Oh as there is a small subset dedicated to his records, although nothing like the amount of cards dedicated to Nagashima in the previous set.  The highlight of the set, however, is a card featuring Sadaharu Oh and Henry Aaron - the picture was probably taken when Aaron and Oh had a home run hitting contest in 1974.  Like the 1975 set, the backs of all the cards in the set were identical except for the card number - in fact I think the only real difference between the backs in the two sets is that the backs of this set were blue (despite my scanner deciding to scan it in black and white) - the text appears to be the same.  Here's a few cards:

Keishi Suzuki #4

Takashi Nishimoto #294

Back Of Nishimoto's card

Wrapper

After a hiatus of a year, NST issued a 264 card set in 1978 that was exclusively for the Giants.  Not only did they show the Giants on the field, there were a great many card showing the players off the field, both training in uniform and relaxing or traveling in street clothes.  The set also features cards of OB Giants players such as Victor Starffin and Eiji Sawamura (I think this is the first ever card of Sawamura but I could be wrong).  There was a parallel set of thicker stock cards that had "menko-like" backs showing a dice and a rock-paper-scissors symbol.  The backs of the regular cards were again very similar to the two previous sets - it looks like there's a difference in the last line of text.  Here's a couple examples:

Tadashi Matsumoto #169

Tadao Okada #263

Back of Matsumoto card

Giants Training #160

Shigeru Takada disembarking #50 (I think)

Back of parallel card

Wrapper

NST's final set with 288 cards was released in 1983 and it also is completely dedicated to the Yomiuri Giants.  I don't have any cards from this set, so I can't say too much about it.  It appears from Gary Engel's "Japanese Baseball Card Checklist and Price Guide" that the backs were a different format than the earlier sets although it is not clear if they are identical except for card number in the set itself.

Atsunori Inaba

Sometime this weekend, Atsunori Inaba of the Fighters most likely will get his 2000th hit - he homered yesterday for hit number 1999.  I thought I'd do a little retrospective on him in anticipation of his milestone (since I have time right now but might not later).

Inaba attended Hosei University from 1991 to 1994.  He was drafted by the Swallows in the third round of the 1995 draft (conducted in the fall of 1994).  He debuted for the Swallows during the 1995 season, appearing in that year's Nippon Series against the Orix Blue Wave.  (His BBM rookie card is #554 in the 1995 set, which I don't have, but he also appears in that year's Nippon Series set - #S20)

2011 Legend Of Tokyo Big 6 #095

1995 BBM Nippon Series #S20

He spent the 1995-96 offseason playing for the West Oahu Canefires of the Hawaiian Winter League with future fellow NBP players Gabe Kapler and Matt Skrmetta.

1996 HWL Canefires

He remained with Yakult through the 2004 season, returning to the Nippon Series again in 1997 and 2001. He set a record in the 1997 Series for more hits (10) in a five game series and won one of the "Outstanding Player" awards for that Series.

1997 BBM Nippon Series "Outstanding Player" #S61

2002 Calbee #095

He joined the Fighters before the 2005 season and has been in Sapporo ever since.  He's gotten a lot more playing time with the Fighters than he had with the Swallows, having gotten over 500 plate appearances every year in Hokkaido except his first while only once having more than that in his 10 seasons with Yakult.  He appeared in three more Nippon Series (2006, 2007 and 2009), winning the Series MVP award in for the 2006 Series.  He won the Pacific League batting championship in 2007 along with leading the league in hits.

2005 BBM 2nd Version 1st Version Update #562

2009 BBM 1st Version #100

Inaba made the All Star team twice when he was with the Swallows (1997 and 2001) and another 5 times (2007-11) with the Fighters.  He was the number one vote getter in 2009 and was MVP of the third All Star game in 2011.  He also made the post-season Best 9 team five times, once with the Swallows in 2001 and 2006-09 with the Fighters.

2001 BBM All Stars #A35

2007 BBM All Stars #A30

In addition, Inaba was named to Team Japan for both the 2008 Olympics and the 2009 World Baseball Classic.  He does not appear in any of the card sets Topps put out for the 2009 WBC but he does show up in the 2008 BBM Olympic team set.

2008 BBM Japanese National Team #JPN27

2012 BBM Tokyo Big Six Spring Version

My 2012 BBM Tokyo Big Six Spring Version set showed up in the mail today from AmiAmi.  It's a 37 card box set featuring 36 "regular" cards and one special card.  As has been fairly standard the past few years, the 36 "regular" cards are split evenly between all six teams - each team has a team card and five player cards.  As usual, the photography is very nice.  Here's a couple examples (I'm trying something new with my scanner, so the images are a little more washed out than they should be):

#16

#26

#03

#12

The "special" card included in the set is either one of six possible "Tokyo Big Six Heroes" insert cards or an autographed version of one of the 30 player cards.  I lucked out and pulled an autographed Hiroshi Taki card (#21):

Each of the autographed player cards is serially numbered to 30 with the exception of Taki and Yuhei TakahashiTakanashi of Waseda - their cards are only numbered to 29.

All the regular cards can be seen here.

Pack Opening Videos

Jason alerted me recently to a fellow going by the name of Taka Tanaka Giants who is an American (I think) living in Japan who is posting videos of himself opening packs of Japanese baseball cards (and showing off stuff he's won in auctions) on YouTube.  Very cool to see the product come out of the pack and see what the insert and memorabilia cards look like (since I pretty much skip them because they're generally more expensive then I want to pay).

He also just started a blog.

Just out of curiosity, I did a quick search on YouTube to see what videos about Japanese Baseball Cards were out there.  There's a couple from Gwynar, who writes the amazing and indispensable YakyuBaka blog, talking about 2007 Calbee cards as well as some others by various people doing pack breaks or showing off stuff they are selling.

And then there's this, a commercial for Calbee from 1989:

Card Of The Week April 22

I hate showing the same player two weeks in a row, but I wanted to mention two things about Darvish.  The first is that he had a very good outing against the Tigers on Thursday, lowering his ERA by over a run.  I'd still like to see his strikeout to walk ratio improve, but it looks like he is adjusting pretty well.

The second is something I noticed while looking through the 2012 BBM 1st Version cards that are posted online at Jambalaya (I'm still waiting on my set to get here from Japan).  While looking through the Leader subset, I noticed that there was no card commemorating Darvish leading the Pacific League in strikeouts last season.  I'm not positive, but I think this may be a first.  Prevously, anytime someone who had led the league in something or gotten an award had gone to the US the following season, BBM still had a card of them in the appropriate subset or insert set the following season.  For instance, the 2001 BBM set featured Leader subset cards and both Best 9 and Golden Glove cards for Ichiro, despite the fact he spent 2001 with Seattle.  Similarly, there was a 2002 Golden Glove card for So Taguchi, several 2003 Leader subset cards for Hideki Matsui, a 2004 Best 9 for Kazuo Matsui, 2006 Best 9 and Golden Glove cards for Kenji Johjima, etc, etc, etc...up to a Best 9 and a couple leader cards for Tsuyoshi Nishioka last year.  So it is completely unprecedented for BBM to not have a Darvish leader card.  I have no idea what the reason is for the omission - I don't know if there's some sort of licensing deal that Darvish decided not to participate in or if it was a decision by BBM not to include him.

2011 was the third time Darvish had led the league in strikeouts.  Here's the 2008 BBM 1st Version card (#454) commemorating the first time he led the league (2007):

Nippon Ham

I wrote about the Yamakatsu sets from the late 1970's a couple weeks ago.  Yamakatsu was not the only non-Calbee maker of baseball card sets in that time period.  There were two other companies of note - NST and Nippon Ham.  I plan on talking about NST in the near-future but today I'll concentrate on Nippon Ham.

Nippon Ham (and I believe this is the same Nippon Ham that owns the Fighters but I don't know that for sure) issued two separate sets - one in the 1975-76 time period and the other in the 1977-79 time period.  The cards were distributed in boxes of "Homerun Sausage".  The first set is the better known of the two (and better checklisted).  There are 351 known cards from this set.  They are slightly narrower in width but longer in height than "normal" cards - 2 1/4 inches by 3 3/4 inches.  These cards are distinctive for their time by a half inch color border on the bottom of the front of the card with the team logo on it - most cards from this era have "pure card" fronts with either borderless or simple white bordered photos with little to no writing on them.  There are multiple cards for many players (including 19 for Koichi Tabuchi and 15 for Sadaharu Oh) so there are significantly fewer than 350 players represented in the set.  Here's a couple examples:

Hiroaki Inoue

Tsutomu Wakamatsu

The second set is not as well checklisted.  As of the 7th Edition of Gary Engel's "Japanese Baseball Card Checklist and Price Guide", there were only 161 known cards from this set.  As with the first set, there are multiple cards for many players (including 12 for Oh).  The cards are the same size as the first set, but the fronts lack the design of that set - this set has a "pure card" design that make it easily confused at a glance with the 1978 Yamakatsu JY6 set.  Here's a couple of examples:

Yutaka Fukumoto

Tsuneo Horiuchi

The photography in these two sets isn't anywhere near as nice as that in the Yamakatsu sets, but I like these sets anyway.  They are difficult to come by - I lucked in on a lot on eBay once (in fairly poor shape - there's magic marker writing on the backs of a couple of the cards) but I don't see them offered very often.

Card Of The Week April 15

Yu Darvish had his first two start for the Rangers this past week - Monday vs the Mariners and yesterday vs the Twins.  He's currently got a 4.76 ERA and opponents are hitting .340 off of him - which considering his opponents so far were the worst two AL teams last year is not a good sign.  His next start is this coming Friday against Detroit and the Ranger play the Yankees next week, so things are about to get more difficult.  I read things saying that he's adjusting, but honestly, other than the number of runs given up, both his starts look very similar statistically - (same number of innings pitched, batters faced and walks given up, almost the same number of pitches thrown, strikeouts and hits).  It's early and he's learning, so I hope it goes better for him in the future but those are two very scary lineups he's dealing with in his next two starts.


UPDATE - After looking at his stats a little more, I think I'm being too hard on him.  He hasn't pitched that bad since the first inning on Monday where he gave up four of the six earned runs he's been charged with.  I still would like to see what he does against the Tigers and the Yankees and I'd still like to see him get a little deeper in games, but he's probably doing better than I first gave him credit for.

I picked up his 2005 BBM Rookie Edition (#12) a couple of weeks ago: