2022 BBM 2nd Version set

2022 BBM 2nd Version Set Summary

Size: 326 cards (cards numbered 337-600, the 26 cards of "Ceremonial First Pitch" subset are separately numbered FP01-FP26 and 36 cards for the "Cross Grotto" subset are separately numbered CG37-CG72)
Cards Per Team: 19 (team card + 18 players)
Team Card Theme: Early Season Candids
Number Of Leader Cards: N/A
Checklists: 0
Subsets: 1st Version Update (36), Ceremonial First Pitch (26), Cross Grotto (36)
Inserts: Wizard (12), Coming Hero (24), Combo Cross Foil Signing (12, #'d to 10), Treasure (24, #'d to 25), Foil Picturesque (12, #'d to 15)
Memorabilia Cards: Jersey cards for Kenta Kozono and Kou Matsukawa, both of which are #'d to 200 along with patch versions that are #'d to 20 each.  There's also a combination jersey card featuring both Kozono and Matsukawa which is #'d to 10 along with a patch version of the combination card that is #'d to 5.  There are autographed cards for players that use a landscape version of the "Cross Grotto" cards that have print runs between 5 and 30 cards and other autograph cards that are #'d between 3 and 5.  There is a special autographed card for Roki Sasaki celebrating his perfect game that is #'d to 5.  There are autographed versions of sixteen of the "Ceremonial First Pitch History" cards with print runs between 23 and 50 with a silver parallel autographed version that are #'d to 5 or 10.  There are also 13 players with autograph cards using the format for the autograph cards in the player's team set - these are mostly for players who BBM was not able to include autograph cards in their team set.
Parallels: 12 cards (one per team) have a "Secret" version which is a short printed photo variation.  12 other cards (also one per team) have an "Ultra Secret" version which is an even shorter printed photo variation.  108 of the "regular" and "1st Version Update" cards have SEVEN different facsimile autograph parallels - silver (unnumbered), gold (#'d to 100), pink (#'d to 75), hologram (#'d to 50), red (#'d to 25), purple (#'d to 10) and sky blue (1-of-1).  Each of these 108 cards also have a "holo" parallel - no signature but just a hologram finish.  Note - the "Secret" and "Ultra Secret" versions do not have the parallels.  Each "Cross Grotto" card has two parallels - one that's #'d to 100 and a "1 of 1" version.  There are five different parallels for the "Ceremonial First Pitch" cards - holo (#'d to 300), silver (#'d to 200), gold (#'d to 100), silver holo (#'d to 50) and gold holo (#'d to 25).  The "Wizard" inserts have three parallels - "Gold" (#'d to 200), "Green Foil" (#'d to 100) and "Purple Foil" (#'d to 25) - while the "Coming Hero" inserts have four - "Gold Leaf" (#'d to 200), "Green Foil" (#'d to 100), "Shrinking Gold Leaf" (#'d to 50) and "Shrinking Green Foil" (#'d to 25).
Notable Rookies: Natsuo Takizawa, Taiki Kikuchi

BBM's 2nd Version set came out about two months ago but I'm just now getting around to writing about it.  The reason - there were six sets coming out between mid-August and late September that I wanted to get and I decided to get them all shipped at once.  I got the big box from ZenMarket last Friday and I'm hoping to get posts up about all six sets in the next week.

This year's 2nd Version base set pretty much follows the same pattern that BBM has been using for it since 2015 (with the exception of 2020) - 216 "regular" player cards (18 per team), 36 "1st Version Update" cards (3 per team), 36 "Cross Something" cards (in this case Something is "Grotto"), 12 team checklist cards and some number of "First Pitch Ceremony" cards (in this case 26).  The total card count for this year's set is 326.

I've been saying nice things about the job BBM's been doing picking photos for their "flagship" sets the past few years but, unfortunately, that ends with this set.  I'm really not impressed with many of the photos as we're back again to the way too common "batters batting, pitchers pitching and catchers catching" rut.  Worse, there's an almost startlingly monotonous repetition in some of the poses - check out these three Giants cards as an example:

#419, #423 & #426

Here's some examples of some of the better photos from the set (although I picked the Takinaka card to show off a card with a horizontal format more than because it was a good photo):

#427

#584

#473

#524

#404

#564

#453

#550

I have one minor gripe about the design of the cards - I think it's way to similar to this year's 1st Version set with how the photo fades out at the bottom of the card and the relatively large uniform number.  As far as I can remember this is the first time the two designs were somewhat similar although I have no idea if it was intentional.

Here's an example of a card back - it has the player's stats up until May 23rd:

#502 (Roki Sasaki)

There were 44 players who appear on the "regular" cards of the set who were not in this year's 1st Version set which I think ranks up there with last year's set for the most ever (last year I counted 43).  I suspect (as I did last year) that the reason for that is that there were so many new foreign players who ended up in the "1st Version Update" subset (which I'll talk more about in a minute) that other players who might have ended up in that subset ended up with "regular" cards instead.  (Although I again have to mention that I have never had any clear idea why BBM decides who goes into the "1st Version Update" subset and who goes into the "regular" cards.)  These 44 players are mostly guys who BBM hadn't originally expected to make much of an impact like Go Matsumoto of the Fighters, Yuma Tongu of the Buffaloes and Iori Yamasaki of the Giants although there are a handful of new foreign players - Matt Shoemaker of the Giants and Jantzen Witte, Bo Takahashi and Burch Smith from the Lions.  

The "1st Version Update" subset contains 36 cards (3 per team) using the 1st Version design featuring players who didn't appear in 1st Version.  As I said above, a lot of these - 19 in all - are foreign players who are new to Japan and arrived too late to be in the 1st Version set.  This includes Tayron Guerrero of the Marines; Freddy Galvis of the Hawks; Aaron Wilkerson of the Tigers; Drew Anderson, Ryan McBroom and Nik Turley of the Carp; Arismendy Alcantara, Renato Nunez and Cody Ponce of the Fighters; Jesse Biddle, Brevic Valera and Jacob Wageuspack of the Buffaloes; Dietrich Enns and Brian O'Grady of the Lions; Jose Marmolejos of the Eagles; AJ Cole of the Swallows; Brooks Kriske of the Baystars and Gregory Polanco and Adam Walker of the Giants.  The subset also contains players who kind of established themselves this season like Hiroto Takahashi of the Dragons and Souma Uchiyama of the Swallows.  There are also several ikusei players who signed 70 man roster contracts during the season including two 2021 draft picks who got the rookie icon on their cards - Natsuo Takizawa of the Lions and Taiki Kikuchi of the Giants.  Here's a couple examples cards:

#355

#371

The theme for the team checklists is best described as "early season highlights" again.  There's about eight that show teams celebrating apparent walk-off wins like this one for the Tigers:

#590

I'm kind of partial to this one showing a sunset over Chiba Marine Stadium myself:

#596

The set has the other half of the cross set subset "Cross Grotto" - the first half was in the 1st Version set.  There are 36 cards (three per team) numbered from #CG37 to CG72.

#CG39

At 26 cards, the "Ceremonial First Pitch" subset is quite large this year and it may have actually been short printed (given the prices I'm seeing for individual cards on Yahoo! Japan Auction).  If you're not familiar with this subset, it features non-baseball (usually) Japanese celebrities throwing out the first pitch at baseball games.  This year's collection of people includes Idols Mana Okamura and Manatsu Akimoto (from Nogizaka46); singers Yuuki Tokunaga and Fuminori Ogawa (from BUDDiisS); table tennis player Miu Hirano; pro wrestler Manami Toyota; model Honoka; comedians Seiya Ishikawa (from Shimofuri Myojo), Masanori Hasegawa (from Nishikigoi) and Ryuichi Hamaie (from Kamaitachi); announcers Masaharu Miyake and Seika Inoue; voice actors Nagisa Aoyama and Naomi Payton; and actresses Ayano Kudo, Anju Inami, Rikako Aida, Yua Shinkawa and Hiroe Igeta.  There's a number of winter sports athletes included as well - speed skater Miho Takagi, Nordic combined skier Akito Watabe, ski jumper Ryoyu Kobayashi, figure skater Marin Honda and snowboarders Kokomo Murase and Sena Tomita.  I think all of these athletes except Honda were on the 2022 Japanese Winter Olympics team.  The last person in the subset is Iori Miura, a member of the Hanshin Tiger's women's baseball team.  Takagi (2018 2nd Version), Kobayashi (2019 2nd Version) and Kudo (2017 2nd Version) have all appeared in previous "Ceremonial First Pitch" subsets and Miura has cards in various JWBL sets as well as one of BBM's "Shining Venus" sets.

#FP15

#FP10

As always you can see all the cards in the set (including the "secret" versions and some of the parallels and inserts) over at Jambalaya.

RIP Yasumitsu Shibata

Former Lions and Fighters pitcher Yasumitsu Shibata passed away from arrhythmia yesterday at the age of 65.  Shibata played for a couple of industrial league teams after graduating from high school.  He was the second round pick of the Seibu Lions in the 1978 draft, the first ever draft by Seibu.  He spent the next five seasons with the Lions, working mostly out of the bullpen.  He got into one game in the 1982 Nippon Series against the Dragons but didn't pitch against the Giants in the 1983 Series.  Following the 1983 season, the Lions sent him and Hiroshi Kimura to the Nippon-Ham Fighters in exchange for Yutaka Enatsu.  

On the advice of Nippon-Ham coach Katsumi Kanayama, Shibata started throwing with a three quarter sidearm delivery which greatly improved his control.  He went from averaging between 3.2 and 6.3 walks per nine innings in his first six seasons to between 1.9 and 2.6 over the remainder of his career.  He worked as both a starter and reliever for the Fighters for several years although he became almost exclusively a starter over the last five years or so of his career.  He was elected to three All Star teams (1985-86 and 1991).  His big claim to fame is that on April 25th, 1990, he pitched what was not only the first no-hitter ever in the Tokyo Dome (and therefore the first indoor no-hitter ever in Japan) but also the first no-hitter of the Heisei Period.  He suffered a heart attack prior to the 1994 season and was advised by his doctor to retire from playing baseball.  He coached for the Fighters for a couple years in the late-90's and did some TV work with J-Sports.

Shibata's first card was in the 1982 Takara Lions set,  He appeared in a Takara set every year after that until (and including) 1994.  He had a couple of Calbee cards in the 80's before appearing in every set from 1990 to 1994.  He also appeared in the first four BBM flagship sets (1991-94) as well as both Tomy sets (1993-94).  He didn't appear on any cards after he retired in 1994 until 2010 but he's been in about seven sets from either BBM or Epoch since then.  Here's a small sampling of his cards:

1982 Takara Lions #12

1991 Calbee #15

1994 BBM #177

2012 BBM No-Hitters #66

Card Of The Week October 9

Four NPB teams will have a new manager in the dugout next spring.  Last spring Akihiro Yano of the Tigers had said he would step down as manager at the end of the season and the Tigers recently announced he would be replaced by Akinobu Okada, who had previously managed the team from 2004 to 2008.  Hatsuhiko Tsuji of the Lions similarly announced recently that he was going to quit at the end of the season which arrived today for Seibu at the hands of the Hawks in the First Stage of the Climax Series.  Tsuji will be replaced by Kazuo Matsui who was the team's head coach this past season after spending three years as the farm team manager.  At the end of the regular season last weekend both Shinji Sasaoka and Tadahito Iguchi - managers of the Carp and Marines respectively - announced their resignations as well.  Former Hiroshima slugger Takahiro Arai will take over for Sasaoka while Iguchi will be replaced by the Marines' pitching coach Masato Yoshii.  

With Tsuji and Iguchi stepping down, the longest tenured manager in NPB is Tatsunori Hara of the Giants who has been at the helm of the team since 2019 (although this is his third stint as manager of Yomiuri - he previously managed the team from 2002-03 and 2006-15).

Here are cards of all four managers in their team's uniform - Okada from his 2004 managerial debut, Matsui from his first year as Lions' farm team manager (the year after he retired as a player), and Arai and Yoshii from their final seasons playing (Yoshii made the last four starts of his career as a Marine in 2007):

2004 Shukan Baseball 1-1/3

2019 Epoch Lions Stars & Legends #09

2018 Epoch NPB #237

2007 SCM #88

2022 Epoch NPB Luxury Collection

I left off a recently announced set from yesterday's post because I hadn't seen any details about it yet.  So of course Epoch put information up about the set on their website today.  The set is called "NPB Luxury Collection" and it basically is a high end version of a subset of the 2022 Epoch NPB set.  Actually the proper analogy is that this is Epoch's version of Topps' Chrome sets for their MLB cards - the set has fewer cards than the original set (108 instead of 432) and each base card is "metal" which I assume means a metallic finish and not literally a metal card.  The 108 cards break down to nine per team.  The set's write up in TradingCardJournal.com claims that the set will contain cards for all the non-ikusei players taken in last fall's draft - all 77 of them.  If that's true, the set will only have 31 cards of established players.

I'm not entirely sure on the parallels and inserts but I think each card in the set has three serially numbered parallels - "emerald green" (#'d to 50), "black gold" (#'d to 10) and "black" (1 of 1).  There are three different versions of "Hologram Foil" cards but I'm not sure if these are parallels or insert cards.  There are 36 cards for each version (3 per team) and I'm not entirely sure if these are serially numbered or not.  Finally it looks like there are both printed and handwritten autographed versions of every card in the set - there may be two different versions of each.

The set will be released on November 26th.

October-November Releases

I wanted to do a quick round up of some recently announced sets that'll be released either this month or next.

- Epoch has two more of their ultra-high end combination active/OB player "Stars & Legends" team sets coming out.  The Tigers set will be out on October 22nd while the Eagles set will be out on November 19th.  Boxes for each set will contain four cards (two of which are autograph or memorabilia cards) and will retail for 17,200 yen (about $120).   The Tigers base set will contain 72 cards while the Eagles base set will only contain 40.  All of the base cards are serially numbered.  Both sets will feature the usual five "Stars & Legends" insert sets - "Decomori Signature  (Gold)" (six cards), "Decomori Signature (Green)" (six cards), "Decomori Signature (Hologram)" (six cards), "Gem" (six cards), and "Black Gem" (six cards).  All the insert cards are serially numbered also.  There are four different types of autograph cards available with the Tigers set - "Authentic", "Star", "Legend" and "Baseball" - while the Eagles set has five types of autograph cards - "Authentic", "Rookie", "Record Breaker", "1 of 1 Authentic" and "Baseball".  The "Baseball" autograph cards have the autograph on a cut up piece of a baseball embedded in the card.

- BBM has decided to get in on the ultra-high end combination active/OB player team set act with the announcement of the "Masters" series of sets.  The first "Masters" set is for the Carp and will be released in late October.    Boxes will contain six cards and will retail for 19,800 yen (~$137).  The base contains 54 cards which appear to be split evenly between active and OB players.  There are two types of insert cards - "Legend Warrior" (27 cards) and "Brave Warrior" (27 cards) and two types of premium (or "high grade") inserts - "Overlap Red " (18 cards) and "Shining Red" (24 cards).  The "Overlap Red" cards are 3D.  There's a comment about the cards all being serially numbered but it's not entirely clear if that's all the cards or just the premium inserts.  There's also (of course) some unspecified variety of autographed cards.

- BBM's annual "Rookie Edition Premium" set will be released in late October.  As usual this is a box set containing 38 cards - a 36 card base set plus two "premium" cards.  The base set contains three "rookies" for each of the 12 teams - in this case "rookie" means 2021 draft pick.  The two "premium" cards are either autograph or memorabilia cards.  It is limited to 3000 sets and unopened boxes retail for 16,500 yen ($115).

- BBM's likely final release for 2022 is the Fusion set, their annual combination Update and Season Summary set.  As usual the base set has four parts and as usual BBM hasn't released how large one of those parts will be so it's impossible to say how big the set will be (although we know it's at least 144 cards).  There's a 21 card "Update" subset (20 cards of which are "1st Version Update" cards for players who weren't in either the 1st or 2nd Version serts and 1 of which is a "Dancing Heroine" card for the Fighter's "fox dance") , a 24 card "Leader" subset (featuring the statistical leaders for each league in 12 categories), a the 99 card "Record Hall Of Fame" subset which despite the misleading name features cards highlighting feats by active players in 2022 and the related feats of OB players in the past, and the unspecified sized "Ceremonial First Pitch" cards that will be a continuation of the subset in the 2nd Version set.  Last year's "Ceremonial First Pitch" cards were short-printed and it remains to be seen if this year's cards will too.  The set also has Fusion's standard non-premium insert sets - the 24 card "Great Records" set featuring two players from each team who achieved some milestone in 2022 and the 12 card "Legendary Player" set featuring an OB player from each team.  Additionally there are two premium insert sets - "Esperanza" which features serially numbered cards of 24 active young players (2 per team) and "Treasure" which features serially numbered cards of 12 OB players (one per team).  There's also the usual batch of autographed cards available.  The set hits the stores in late-November, a bit earlier than either of the previous two years.

- Topps is releasing their NPB Chrome set on November 18th.  The base set will contain 216 cards (18 per team) and I assume it's the same 216 cards as in their NPB set released last month (just essentially an uglier version of the cards).  There are three types of insert cards, only one of which was part of the original set - "1958" (24 cards), "Future Stars" (24 cards) and "Power" (24 cards).  The base cards and inserts all have a boatload of parallels that I honestly don't feel like listing here - if you care, run the link through Google Translate.  The big news about this set is that it's the first Topps NPB set that will have autographs available with it.  All the autographs are of OB players which includes players active in MLB - which could include Shohei Ohtani but I'd guess if it did, Topps would be bragging about it.

KBO 40 Legend In NPB

I had done a post a few weeks back on the "KBO 40 Legend" - a list of the top 40 retired players in the 40 year history of the KBO.  I pointed out in the post that 11 of the 40 players had also played in NPB.  I thought it'd be fun to do a quick post* showing NPB cards of all 11 players (even though I had already shown NPB cards for two of the players because I didn't have any KBO cards of them).

* Yeah, I THOUGHT it'd be a quick post until my scanner decided to start acting up...

Here are the eleven players in roughly their order of appearance in NPB - remember that Baek In-cheon and Lee Sang-hoon played in Japan under the names Jinten Haku and Samson respectively.

1979 TCMA #2

1998 BBM #135

1999 BBM #61

2001 BBM #298

2003 Calbee #165

2001 BBM Giants #G27

2007 BBM Dragons #D070

2005 Calbee #100

2009 BBM Dragons #D59

2011 BBM Swallows #S03

2010 BBM Marines #M53

Card Of The Week October 2

Today was the last day of the Pacific League season and today the Orix Buffaloes caught the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks.  The two teams finished the season with identical 76-65-2 records but since Orix won the season series against the Hawks, the Buffaloes are the Pacific League champions.

The Hawks lost their last two games and yesterday's loss was particularly heartbreaking for them.  They'd been done 1-0 to the Lions but Yuki Yanagita hit a solo home run in the top of the ninth to tie up the game.  But in the bottom of the eleventh, Hotaka Yamakawa did what he's done 40 other times this year:

The Hawks loss yesterday kept them only a game in front of Orix which made it possible for the Buffaloes to catch them today.  Yamakawa is pretty much considered the front runner for the Pacific League MVP this year and you could make an argument that he played a valuable role in the Buffaloes winning the pennant.

Here's a Lions team issued card of Yamakawa from 2017: