Card Of The Week October 18

 I did a post a couple weeks ago talking about which current MLB players on playoff teams had been on a Nippon Series winning NPB team and therefore could be the latest player to win both a World Series and a Nippon Series championship.  Since then the Yankees have been eliminated (Yay!) which knocked out Masahiro Tanaka as a possibility but the Braves are still in it so Chris Martin's candidacy is still viable.  At least for another couple of hours.

What I didn't bring up in the post was that there was a player on a likely NPB postseason team that had previously won a World Series.  That player is Gerardo Parra of the Yomiuri Giants who was a member of last year's Washington Nationals World Series winning team.  Were the Giants to win the Nippon Series with Parra on the active roster he would be only the second player in history to win the championships in consecutive years (with Hideki Okajima being the first in 2006 with the Fighters and 2007 with the Red Sox).  Parra (or Martin) would be the first Westerner to get both Championships since Dan Gladden in 1994.  (Should the Braves win the World Series Martin would become the first Westerner to first win a Nippon Series before the World Series.)

Last week, however, the Giants announced that Parra would be returning to the United States to get treatment on his right knee which has been injured for about two months.  It is apparently unlikely that he will return in time for the Nippon Series in mid-November (H/T NPB Reddit).  So unless the Braves win tonight it doesn't look like we'll get the 1312th member of the Dual Champions club this year.  (UPDATE - the Braves didn't win.)

Here's Parra's card from this year's BBM 1st Version set (#183):

Other Stuff

 From time to time I have been asked if I have any other Japanese baseball memorabilia other than cards.  The answer is yes.  I decided to do a post showing some of them.

My sister and her husband spent a couple months living in Japan back in 1989 when my brother-in-law had a internship with Ricoh just after he got his doctorate and they brought me back a couple Japanese baseball trinkets.  They got me a Giants hat, the 1989 edition of Wayne Graczyk's annual Japanese Baseball guide and this item, which I think was intended to hang in a window. 

I picked these odd little stuffed toys up on Ebay years ago.  I think they were prizes in those arcade claw games but I don't know that for sure.  From top to bottom that's manager Katsuya Nomura, Atsuya Furuta and Katsumi Hirosawa.

According to the tag on the toys there were five in all.  I think that the two I don't have are Takehiro Ikeyama and the Swallows mascot Tsubakuro.

I think I picked up this Shigeo Nagashima figurine off of Ebay also.  I'm figuring it was issued in the 1990's as his uniform number is 33 which is the number he wore as Giants manager between 1993 and 1999.  I don't know any more details about it.

This Ichiro figurine was issued by Bandai around 2000.  There were several different versions - home or away uniform, different batting poses - and you didn't know which you were getting in the box.  I picked this up from the late, lamented Yakyu Shop probably at some point in 2001.

I figure this bobble head of Senichi Hoshino must have been issued during the two seasons he managed the Tigers (2002-03).  I got it off Ebay but I don't remember when.  It was probably sometime during the 00's.  I wish I had thought of getting it autographed when I got Hoshino's autograph on a card in 2010.

Ryan had sent me a bunch of these Shigeo Nagashima figurines that Epoch put out in 2007 or so.  Like the Bandai Ichiro figurines there were several different versions and you didn't know which one you were getting until you opened the box.  According to Ryan's post about them, there were eight different versions but really only three different poses.  The three poses are "kneeling", "helmet coming off while swinging" and "retirement speech".  All the ones I have show him in his home uniform but apparently there are versions of two of the poses wearing away uniforms (I suspect those are only the "kneeling" and "helmet coming off while swinging" poses).  There are also "secret" versions of each pose with a bright orange base.  I don't have any of those.

I feel kind of silly because Ryan sent me these a few years back and I didn't notice until tonight that the box had a little photo of the Korakuen Stadium scoreboard from Nagashima's retirement that you could cut out and attach on the back of the figurine to recreate the iconic image from that day.

Jingu Stadium celebrated its 90th Anniversary in 2016 and the Swallows had a giveaway of a little stadium replica.  I picked this up off Yahoo! Japan Auctions through Noppin.

Deanna Rubin gave me this bobblehead of T-Okada when we met up at the World Baseball Classic finals in Los Angeles back in 2017.

I have a couple of laminated sheets that are roughly 7 inches wide and 10 inches tall.  I'm not sure if these are considered shikishi or not.  One of them is for the 1999 Yokohama Baystars.  The front side shows a bunch of the stars for the team including Kazuhiro Sasaki, Daisuke Miura, Motonobu Tanishige, Takuro Ishii and Norihiro Komada.  The back shows head shots of the entire roster of the team.  I bought this on Ebay.

Hiro, the guy I used to buy most of my baseball card sets from, picked this up from the Sadaharu Oh museum in Fukuoka a few years back and sent it to me as a gift.  The back is blank except for the museum's logo.

Study Abroad - Tigers On Two Continents

By 1992 most NPB teams had ended their partnerships with either Major League organizations or independent minor league teams that had resulted in young Japanese players seeing action in the North American minor leagues.  After reaching a peak of seven NPB teams sending players to minor league teams in 1989, there were only three teams doing it three years later.  The Hawks and Swallows were in their final year in Salinas, California and the Hanshin Tigers were starting a five year partnership with the Detroit Tigers that would see two Hanshin players each season playing in Detroit's farm system.

This was not Hanshin's first go around in North America.  In 1988 they had sent four players to the independent Fresno Suns of the California League.  That Fresno team was sold and moved to Salinas following the season where they started their partnership with the Hawks and Swallows which may have prevented the Tigers from also sending players to them although I have no idea if they would have wanted to.  

In 1992 the Tigers sent two 19 year old pitchers to North America - Yoshitaro Ban and Kazuharu "Kazu" Yamazaki.  They played for two different Detroit farm teams - the Niagara Falls (NY) Rapids of the Short Season Class A New York-Penn League and the Bristol (VA) Tigers of the Rookie Appalachian League.  I'm not sure which team they played with first (or even if they were both with the teams at the same time) but I suspect that they started out with Niagara Falls as they appear in the baseball card team sets for the Rapids but not for Bristol.  The Rapids were managed by former Expo, Ranger and Red Sox Larry Parrish who had finished his career with two years in Japan including his final season of 1990 with Hanshin.  Neither pitcher performed particularly well in New York - Ban went 0-1 with a 6.75 ERA and 8 strikeouts in 9 1/3 innings over five games while Yamazaki went 1-1 with a 10.80 ERA and 2 strikeouts in five innings over five games.   The two did better at the lower level league in Bristol - Ban went 0-0 with a 3.38 ERA and 20 strikeouts in 21 1/3 innings over nine games and Yamazaki went 2-1 with a 3.15 ERA and 19 strikouts in 20 innings over nine games.  In retrospect it was probably a mistake sending two teenagers to play in the New York-Penn league against mostly guys who had just been drafted out of college.  The Appalachian League was mostly high school draftees and more in line with the development level of the Hanshin players.

The two pitchers Hanshin sent to the US in 1993 were both a little older than Ban and Yamazaki.  Yasutaka Furusato was 22 and had made 17 appearances with the ichi-gun Hanshin team in 1991 and 1992 while Shinya Nakagawa was 21.  Despite their age, Detroit assigned the players to Bristol.  Nakagawa pitched pretty well, going 2-2 with a 3.34 ERA in 29 2/3 innings over 24 games.  His 40 strikeouts was tied for third on the team.  Furusato did not fare as well, going 1-1 with an 8.36 ERA and 16 strikeouts in 14 innings in 11 games.  One of their Bristol teammates, Matt Skrmetta, would go on to play in parts of two seasons in NPB - 2003 with the Fukuoka Daiei Hawks and 2005 with the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles.

In 1994 Detroit once again assigned both of the Hanshin players to Bristol.  The players were a little younger than the 1993 players - Tomojiro "Tomo" Adachi  was 19 and Kazuhiko Shiotani was 20.  Shiotani was the first position player of the six players sent so far.  Neither player did very well - Adachi went 2-3 with a 4.50 ERA and 24 strikeouts in 36 innings across 19 games while Shiotani went hitless in 14 at bats in ten games, striking out six times.

I suspect that because the Hanshin players had not performed well at Bristol (with the exception maybe of Nakagawa) in 1995 the two Tigers teams decided to send that year's two players to Detroit's Gulf Coast League team in Lakeland, Florida.  21 year old pitcher Kazuki Yonemura led the team with 49 strikeouts and went 2-4 with a 2.32 ERA and one save in 42 2/3 innings over 14 games.  20 year old catcher Daiki Katayama hit .180 with two home runs and four RBIs.  He also struck out 13 times.  His two home runs tied him with three other players for third place on the team, behind two players who each hit three.

Both players in 1996, the final year of the Hanshin-Detroit partnership, were again sent to Detroit's Gulf Coast League team in Lakeland.  Tomojiro Adachi returned for a second stint in the US and actually pitched worse than he had in 1994 despite being two years older and pitching at a lower classification.  He went 0-1 with an ERA of 8.38 and 7 strikeouts and 7 walks in 9 2/3 innings over five games.  19 year old shortstop Shuta Tanaka got into 44 games and hit .168 with no home runs in 116 at bats.

As always I have no insight into why the Two Tigers partnership ended after five years.  I suspect that Hanshin didn't feel they were really getting much out of it as none of the players really went on to greatness or even pretty goodness but that's just speculation on my part.  Here's a summary of the nine players Hanshin sent to Detroit's organization:

Player	Year	Team	Draft	NPB Career
Tomojiro Adachi	1994,1996	Bristol,Gulf Coast Tigers	1992 Tigers 1st	Hanshin Tigers 1993-99
Yoshitaro Ban	1992	Niagara Falls/Bristol	1990 Tigers 6th	Hanshin Tigers 1991-97
Yasutaka Furusato	1993	Bristol	1989 Tigers 4th	Hanshin Tigers 1990-97
Daiki Katayama	1995	Gulf Coast Tigers	1992 Tigers 4th	Hanshin Tigers 1993-2000
Shinya Nakagawa	1993	Bristol	1991 Tigers 5th	Hanshin Tigers 1992-95
Kazuhiko Shiotani	1994	Bristol	1992 Tigers 6th	Hanshin Tigers 1993-01, Orix BlueWave/Buffaloes 2002-05
Shuta Tanaka	1996	Gulf Coast Tigers	1994 Tigers 3rd	Hanshin Tigers 1995-2009
Kazuharu Yamazaki	1992	Niagara Falls/Bristol	1990 Tigers 3rd	Hanshin Tigers 1991-2000, Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes 2001-02
Kazuki Yonemura	1995	Gulf Coast Tigers	1992 Tigers 3rd	Hanshin Tigers 1993-97

The six players who played for either Niagara Falls or Bristol appeared in the team sets for those teams.  As I mentioned previously Ban and Yamazaki appeared in the team sets for Niagara Falls (both the Classic Best and Fleer ProCards sets) but not Bristol in 1992.  Furusato and Nakagawa appear in the Fleer ProCards Bristol team set in 1993 but not the Classic Best one.  Adachi and Shiotani reversed this in 1994 by appearing in the Classic Best set but not the Fleer ProCards one.  I don't have any of these team sets but I've swiped the images from either the Trading Card Database or COMC.  (I could not find an image of Yamazaki's 1992 Fleer ProCards card.)  There are no card sets that I know of for the two Gulf Coast League teams.

1994 Classic Best Bristol Tigers #1

1994 BBM Tigers #T-2

Tomojiro Adachi overcame childhood cancer to be the ace pitcher for Kobe Murano Technical High School in the 1991 Summer Koshien tournament.  He was the first round pick of Hanshin in the 1992 draft although he was not their first choice - the Tigers were one of four teams that selected Hideki Matsui in the first round but they settled for Adachi after losing the lottery for Matsui to the Giants.  Despite being a high draft pick he was never able to get off Hanshin's farm team due to poor performance.  Even changing his registered name to Katsuya Adachi in 1995 and 1996 didn't help.  He switched to being an outfielder in 1998 but only hit .236 with the ni-gun team.  He switched back to the mound at the urging of new Hanshin manager Katsuya Nomura in 1999 but his performance hadn't improved much and he retired after being released by the Tigers at the end of the season.  He was a batting practice pitcher for the Tigers for a couple years after retiring and did some youth baseball coaching later.  Tragically he passed away from liver failure in 2016 at age 41.

1992 Classic Best Niagara Falls Rapids #10

1992 Fleer ProCards #3314

Yoshitaro Ban was Hanshin's sixth pick pick in the 1990 draft out of Chikuyo Gakuen High School.  He spent his entire career in Japan on Hanshin's farm team.  Probably his biggest claim to fame was holding Ichiro Suzuki hitless in a Western League game on August 8, 1993, snapping Ichiro's hitting streak at 30 games.  Like Adachi he also changed his name - he went be Yoshitaro Mitoma from 1993 on.  He suffered a shoulder injury in 1994 and retired after the 1997 season.  He has no Japanese baseball cards that I'm aware of so these two cards from the US are his only cards.

1992 BBM #215

1993 Fleer ProCard #3642

Yasutaka Furusato was drafted by the Tigers in the fourth round of the 1989 draft out of Fukuoka Daiichi High School.  He made his ichi-gun debut in April of 1991 and pitched adequately with the top team that year, going 2-2 with a 3.51 ERA and 16 strikeouts in 25 2/3 innings over 14 games.  He only got into three games in 1992 and posted an ERA of 9.00 in just three innings of work.  I suspect his poor performance in Bristol in 1993 pretty much sealed his fate as he stayed on the farm team for the rest of his career.  He was a batting practice pitcher for the Dragons and Tigers after retiring in 1997 and has been a scorer for the Tigers and Giants since 2003.

Daiki Katayama was mostly a catcher at Yamaguchi Prefectural Tokuyama Commercial High School but he also pitched and played some outfield.  The Tigers took him in the fourth round of the 1992 draft as a catcher.  He spent his entire eight year career on Hanshin's farm team and has been a bullpen catcher for the team since retiring after the 2000 season.  He has a couple cards in the comprehensive team sets that BBM did for the Tigers in 1999 and 2000 but I don't have either of those cards.

1993 Fleer ProCard #3646

It's odd that Shinya Nakagawa arguably put up the best numbers of any of the players in this group since he had the shortest career of any of this group of players.  He pitched a 5-0 complete game victory as a first year player for Akita University of Economics and Law High School against Shimane Prefectural Izumo Commercial High School during the 1989 Koshien tournament.  He also pitched in the tournament in the following two seasons.  He was the Tigers fifth pick in the 1991 draft and spent his entire four year career in Japan on their farm team.  He took a job in construction after he quit baseball after the 1995 season and has done some youth baseball coaching.  He doesn't have any Japanese baseball cards - he, like Ban, was drafted before BBM started including all the draft picks in the following year's card set and retired before they started doing team sets that included the team's entire 70 man roster.

1994 Classic Best Bristol Tigers #23

2001 BBM Tigers #T49

Kazuhiko Shiotani was drafted as a catcher out of Shinko Gakuen High School in the sixth round of the 1992 draft.  His first home run with the ichi-gun team was a record setting grand slam as he and Tsuyoshi Shinjyo were the first teammates to each hit grand slams in one inning.  His path to getting playing time at catcher was pretty much blocked when the Tigers acquired Akihiro Yano and Ryo Yoshimoto after the 1997 season so he switched to playing the infield, mostly third base.  He was traded to the Orix BlueWave for Hidemitsu Saitoh after the 2001 season.  He had his best season in 2003, getting into 123 games and hitting .307.  He made the All Star team that year - he's the only player from this group to do so.  Released by Orix after the 2005 season he joined the SK Wyverns of the KBO.  His 2006 season was cut short when he was hit by a pitch in early May and broke his left hand.  He returned to Japan and announced his retirement.  He coached with the Fukui Miracle Elephants of the Baseball Challenge League in 2010 but ended up abruptly quitting the team in early April for "personal reasons".  His Japanese Wikipedia page doesn't say anything about what he's done since leaving Fukui.

2003 BBM Victory Road Prologue

Shuta Tanaka (who's registered name was simple "Shuta" after 2003) had the longest and arguably the best career of all of the group of players.  He attended Kumamoto Technical High School where he was a year ahead of future Chunichi Dragon legend Masahiro Araki and was Hanshin's third round pick in the 1994 draft.  After a couple seasons bouncing back and forth between the ichi-gun and ni-gun squads he established himself as a late inning defensive replacement and pinch running specialist for a couple years.  He played in the 2003 Nippon Series, the only one of these nine players to appear in one.  His playing time with the top team declined after 2004, enough so that he requested a trade although nothing ever came of it despite the Hawks showing some interest.  He retired after the 2009 season and has been a scout for Hanshin ever since.

1992 Classic Best Niagara Falls Rapids #7

1998 BBM Tigers #T190

Kazuharu Yamazaki attended Shizuoka High School where he was a teammate of future Kintetsu Buffaloes pitcher Motoyuki Akahori, a three time All Star.  He was drafted by the Tigers in the third round of the 1990 draft.  Like Adachi he was not the team's first choice for that pick - both the Tigers and the Carp had selected Hideki Takahashi that round but Hiroshima won the lottery for him.  He made his ichi-gun debut in April of 1993 and recorded a save on 15th of that month, becoming the youngest player in Tigers history to do so (he was 20 years old).  He spent the 1994 and 1995 seasons as a starter but most of the other seasons with Hanshin he mostly worked out of the bullpen.  He was involved in a big trade after the 2000 season when Hanshin sent him, Toshiro Yufune, and Hirotoshi Kitagawa to Kintetsu for Hiroki Sakai, Tetsuji Mende and Koji Hirashita.  He spent two years with the Buffaloes (where he was reunited with Akahori) before retiring after the 2002 season.  He was a batting practice pitcher with Hanshin after retirement until 2017 when he unsuccessfully ran for the House of Representatives as the Hope Party candidate for Shizuoka District 1.

1993 BBM #425

Kazuki Yonemura was the Tigers third round pick in the 1992 draft out of Kumamoto University of Commerce High School - four of the Tigers' six picks in that year's draft were sent to North America - Adachi, Katayama, Shiotani and Yonemura.  He retired after the 1997 season without having ever made the ichi-gun team, making him the fifth of the nine players in the group who spent their entire Japanese career on the farm team.  His Wikipedia page doesn't say what he's been doing since retiring.

1992 Classic Best Niagara Falls Rapids #28

1992 Fleer ProCards #3344

1993 Fleer ProCards #3667

1994 Classic Best Bristol Tigers #29

2019 BBM Baystars 70th Anniversary #20

Hanshin did not sent the players to North America by themselves - they sent a coach along with them.  For the first three years that coach was former Taiyo Whales pitcher Shigeyuki Takahashi.  Takahashi had dropped out of Chiba Commercial High School in 1962 to join Taiyo but spent his first two seasons on the farm team.  Takehiko Bessho became the Whale's pitching coach in 1964 and recognized Takahashi's potential.  He ended up going 17-11 with a 2,77 ERA and won the Central League Rookie Of The Year award.  He had an even better season in 1965, going 21-17 with a 2,40 ERA.  He had  somewhat mixed results after that.  He actually had two stints playing in the United States as he and three other Taiyo players played on the San Francisco Giants' Arizona instructional league team in the fall of 1969 and he spent the entire 1972 season with the Giants' Triple-A team in Phoenix.  He made three All Star teams (1964, 1965 and 1978) before retiring after the 1980 season.  He became a coach for Hanshin in 1981 and had a variety of coaching roles for them until 1997 after which he moved into the Tigers' front office.  I don't think he coached with the Gulf Coast League team in 1995 and 1996 as I think he was the Tigers' ichi-gun pitching coach in 1996 and 1997.  He passed away in 2010 from heart failure at age 64.  

I assume that the Tigers sent someone to coach the players on the Gulf Coast League team but I don't know who that was.

2020 Konami Baseball Collection

 For the third straight year Konami has issued a collectible card game set called Baseball Collection.  The cards are somehow used in an arcade game - I think you get them as rewards for playing the game but I don't know if there's some other way to get them.  As in 2018 and 2019 there are four varieties of cards -"P" (Premium?), "SR" (Super Rare?), "R" (Rare?) and "N" (Normal?).  There are 81 cards for each team (so a total of 972 for the whole set) - 4 "P", 19 "SR", 29 "R" and 29 "N".  It looks like there's only 29 players per team but each player has 2 to 4 cards.  This is more cards than the previous sets - there were only 76 cards per team before - 3 "P", 13 "SR", 30 "R" and 30 "N".  There are also apparently 12 OB player cards that I think are being issued later this month.

I recently picked up a couple cards from this year's set from a seller on Ebay:

#202000-R-C097-00

#202000-N-H044-00

To repeat the obvious, Franzua's card is an "R" card while Van Den Hurk's is a "N" card.

Card Of The Week October 11

 Last week's episode of the Baseball.com.au podcast featured a long interview with Michael Nakamura who played for the Twins and Blue Jays in MLB and the Fighters, Giants and Lions in MLB.  It was a fascinating interview and well worth a listen.  

The one story he told that really stood out to me concerned how he ended up joining the Fighters.  Nakamura is the son of a Japanese father and an Australian mother.  He was born in Japan and grew up in Australia.  He was a fan of NPB growing up and had hoped to someday play in the league.  He decided to try his luck in Japan after the 2004 season.  He and his agent had reached an agreement on a two year contract with the Hanshin Tigers but the Tigers ultimately backed out of the deal.  The Chiba Lotte Marines held a tryout for him that went very well and he and the team were on the same page about his salary so it looked like they would be making a deal.  The Marines had a suggestion though - since Nakamura was a dual citizen of Japan and Australia, would he be willing to enter NPB as a Japanese citizen?  He'd be subject to the draft but it would mean that he would not count as a foreign player on the roster.  Nakamura agreed and the Marines promised to draft him in the upcoming draft (in mid-November of 2004).

Before leaving Japan, Nakamura had a tryout with the Fighters as well which also went well although his feeling was that it was kind of unnecessary since he expected to be drafted by the Marines.  However to his surprise (and probably Lotte's as well) he was drafted by the Fighters instead!  

It's kind of interesting how this happened.  In 2004 (well, not JUST 2004 - this happened in a number of years) NPB teams were allowed to reach agreements with players before the draft.  I don't fully understand this process but I believe these players were referred to a "kibouwaki".  If a team had a kibouwaki player in a round of the draft they would forfeit a pick in the following round.  So if a team announced they'd signed a kibouwaki player in the first round they wouldn't have another pick until the third round.  I'm probably getting the details of this wrong but the important part is that signing the kibouwaki player essentially costs the team two rounds in the draft.  In 2004 the Marines actually signed TWO kibouwaki players - Yasutomo Kubo and Satoshi Tejima - and therefore didn't have a pick in the draft until the fourth round (as I said I don't fully understand all the details of this so this doesn't quite make sense).  I think they had intended to pick Nakamura with the ninth pick in the fourth round but the Fighters took him with the seventh pick.  

Nakamura didn't say so in the interview but I suspect it took him a little bit to come to terms with Nippon-Ham as he was not in BBM's Rookie Edition set in 2005 while all the other draft picks were.  Ultimately though he really enjoyed his four years in Hokkaido.  One of the highlights of his time with the Fighters was winning the 2006 Nippon Series in five games.  He appeared in all four of the games that the Fighters won and notched saves in Games Two, Four and Five.  Here's his card from the 2006 BBM Nippon Series set (#S08) showing him raising his arms in triumph - I don't know for sure but I suspect that he's just gotten Dragons pinch hitter Alex Ochoa to fly out for the final out in Game Five:

News From Noppin

I got a message last week from Noppin, the proxy bidding company that I use to buy most of my new baseball card sets off of Yahoo! Japan Auctions.  They are going to temporarily shut down for three months starting on November 2.  What this means is that they will no longer take new orders although they will continue to store items previously ordered until the end of the year.  If you don't request that your items get shipped by December 31st they will close your account and dispose of your items.

They've been forced to do this by the ongoing issues in shipping from Japan to the US (and other places) caused by the pandemic.  Last April Japan Post announced that it would no longer ship via EMS to the US due to a lack of flights so Noppin has allowed customers to store items indefinitely (as well as ship using other carriers such as UPS and DHL).  However since the situation has really not improved (and is unlikely to improve until January 20th) they are starting to run out of storage space ("our warehouse is not unlimited").

They will return to normal operation after January 31, 2021 (or as close to normal that the pandemic will allow).  You can read the message here.

The other proxy services that I've used do not appear to be following suit.  JAUCE has a message up from early August saying that they'll ship via either DHL or surface.  KuboTEN doesn't have any news up about any shipping issues or anything Coronavirus related at all.  I haven't used kuboTEN for a number of years so I don't know if they're actually still operating.

I'm not sure yet how this is going to affect me.  Noppin is currently storing three sets for me and I'm waiting until the next Calbee set comes out (in another week or so) before getting everything shipped.  I'm anticipating a couple more sets coming out before the end of the year that I'll want to get (BBM Fusion and Time Travel, Calbee Samurai Japan and Epoch JWBL) but none of those have been announced yet (and the JWBL set is probably unlikely).  I'll probably use JAUCE to get any of those sets during the three months Noppin will not be available - hopefully JAUCE doesn't do anything similar.

Card Of The Week October 4

With the first round of the expanded MLB post season completed, I thought it'd be interesting to take a look at who could possibly become the 12th player to win a championship in both NPB and MLB. 

If I'm counting right, six of the nine NPB players who played in MLB this season made the postseason - Yoshitomo Tsutsugoh of the Rays, Shingo Akiyama of the Reds, Masahiro Tanaka of the Yankees, Yu Darvish of the Cubs, Shun Yamaguchi of the Blue Jays and Kenta Maeda of the Twins (leaving Shohei Ohtani of the Angels and Yusei Kikuchi and Yoshihisa Hirano of the Mariners  on the non-playoff teams).  The teams for Akiyama, Darvish, Yamaguchi and Maeda have been eliminated although Darvish is the only player among those four to have won a Nippon Series title (2006 with Nippon-Ham).  Of the two remaining players, only Tanaka has a Nippon Series championship, having helped the Eagles win in 2013 (his last pitching appearance in Japan was closing out Game 7 in the rain in Sendai).

But the possibilities don't end with the players of Japanese descent.  Chris Martin of the Braves (I'll pause here for all the Coldplay jokes) won a championship with the Fighters in 2016.  I don't think there's any other Western players on postseason rosters who were on a Nippon Series winning team but I could be wrong.

Here's cards of both Tanaka and Martin from their NPB championship seasons:

2013 Calbee #214

2016 BBM Fighters #F31