Card Of The Week May 13

Friday night's 3-2 victory by the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles over Orix was the 1000th win in Senichi Hoshino's managerial career.  He's the 12th manager in Japan to make it to 1000 wins and the first former pitcher.  He's been managing off and on since 1987 - two stints with the Dragons (87-91 and 96-01), one with the Tigers (02-03) and his current gig with the Eagles since last year - not to mention his time spent managing the 2008 Olympic team.  Here's his 1991 BBM card (#44) from his first tenure with Chunichi:

Shinya Miyamoto

Running late on this, but last week Shinya Miyamoto of the Swallows got career hit number 2000.  Miyamoto and Atsunori Inaba, the other player to reach 2000 hits this season (so far but Hiroki Kokobu of the Hawks is getting close as well), both started their careers with the Swallows in 1995 (Miyamoto was the Yakult's second round pick in the 1995 draft; Inaba was the third round pick).  They are only the second pair of rookie teammates to go on to get 2000 hits in their careers - the first set being Yutaka Fukumoto and Hideji Kato, who both debuted with the 1969 Hankyu Braves.  Not only are they the first set of rookie teammates to get their 2000th hit in the same season, but they actually got it in the same number of games - 1976.

Like Inaba, Miyamoto's rookie card is in the 1995 BBM set (#553, one before Inaba's) and as was the case for Inaba, I don't have the card.  He did appear in the 1995 BBM Nippon Series set (#S17):

Here's a selection of Miyamoto cards from the last 15 years or so:

1997 BBM #192

1999 Future Bee #008

2002 BBM 1st Version #408

2003 BBM Japan National Team #17

2005 BBM Swallows #S63

2007 BBM All Stars #A59

2012 Calbee #046

So who was the first round pick in the 1995 draft for the Swallows?  A pitcher named Tetsuya Kitagawa, who was drafted out of the industrial leagues (Nissan Motors), appeared in 36 games with Yakult between 1995 and 1998 and then returned to the industrial leagues.

RIP Noburu Inoue

Former Dragon and Hawk infielder Noburo Inoue passed away last week.  Inoue played for Chunichi from 1953 to 1961, for the Hawks from 1962 to 1966 and returned to the Dragons for a final season in 1967.  I'm sure Inoue has a number of menko and bromide cards from the 1950's and 60's, but all I have of him are his cards from the two BBM Dragons Anniversary sets - the 2006 70th Anniversary set (#22) and the 2011 75th Anniversary set (#16):

Card Of The Week May 6

Masahiro Yamamoto got the win in the Dragon's 1-0 victory over the Baystars last Monday.  This was win #212 for his career, passing Hall Of Famer Shigeru Sugishita for most in Dragon's history.  Here's his 2009 Calbee card (#080):

Prestige Collectibles Auction

Been meaning to mention this since it started last week - there's a new Prestige Collectibles Auction going on until May 15.  Details are here.

One really cool item up for auction is a 1962 menko card of Larry Doby, when he played for Chunichi.  The auction description is incorrect when it says that Doby is the only US Hall Of Famer to have played in Japan as Rich Gossage played for the Hawks in 1990.  However, Gossage didn't have any cards, so Doby's the only one you can get a Japanese card of.

More new 2012 BBM team sets

Over the last couple weeks, BBM has announced this year's editions of the Carp, Giants and Marines team sets.  The Carp set has 109 base cards (including apparently one for Kenta Maeda's no hitter on April 6), a nine card insert set (Soul Of CARP) and various autograph and jersey cards (looks like for Kenta Meada and Yuya Fukui, including cards with autographs or jerseys for both).  The Giants set is a whopping 127 cards with (I think) two nine card insert sets (Young Giants and Super Metallic Giants) and memorabilia cards featuring up to four player's jerseys.  The Marines set has 99 base cards, a nine card insert set (Counterattack Of Marines?) and memorabilia and autograph cards (the memorabilia cards have jerseys of Yoshihisa Naruse and Yuki Karakawa - one each by themselves and one with both).

There's no release date listed for the Carp set.  The Marines set will be out in mid-May and the Giants set will be out in late-May.

In addition, BBM is releasing a box set to commemorate the Baystars being bought by DeNA.  Called "Reborn", the set will contain 28 cards - 27 cards for players (and manager Kiyoshi Nakahata) and one "special" card.  The "special" card will either be one of 12 "Newcomer 4 Hometown" insert cards or one of 10 possible memorabilia cards featuring jersey, bat or patch pieces from up to three players.  The set will be released in mid-May.

Card Of The Week April 29

So it looks like Atsunori Inaba wasted no time in getting hit #2000 - he did it in his first at bat in yesterday's game against the Eagles:
 

Looking at the list of milestones on the Yakyu Baka page I linked above, I'm amused to see that he got hit #1500 back in 2008 in his 1500th game played. I always love symmetry. Here's yet another Inaba card - his "Power Of Veteran" subset card from the 2008 BBM 2nd Version set (#734):