Card Of The Week November 29

I missed this, but NPB Tracker didn't - Friday of last week (November 20) was the 75th Anniversary of Eiji Sawamura's one hit game against a group of touring All Stars - a game in which he struck out future Hall Of Famers Charlie Gehringer, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Jimmy Foxx in succession, although Gehrig got revenge later in the game by hitting a solo home run for the American's only hit and the winning run. Rob Fitts has the details here at his 1934 All American Asian Tour blog that he's using to promote his upcoming book on the tour.

Due to several stints in the military, Sawamura's professional career only consisted of the 1936, 1937, 1940, 1941 and 1943 seasons before his troop ship was sunk by an American submarine in 1944. The Sawamura award for best pitcher in NPB was first awarded in 1947 and he was among the initial inductees into the Japanese Baseball Hall Of Fame in 1959.

There aren't a whole lot of cards of Sawamura. There are no known cards of him from when he was an active player. The first card I'm aware of is from the 1978 NST set. BBM included cards of him in the "Nostalgic Player" subset from the 1992 set, the 2000 20th Century Best 9 set and the 2006 Nostalgic Baseball set as well as a couple of the Giants teams sets. Here's one of his cards from the 20th Century Best 9 set (#361):


Some of the afore mentioned cards use the same picture, so there's more cards of Sawamura than actual pictures!

Akira Etoh

Maybe it was just me, but it seemed that Akira Etoh's retirement didn't get a whole lot of press in the last days of the season. It could have been announced earlier and I just missed it. The Lions apparently gave him a send off at their fan fest yesterday.

I can't write a better biography of him than what's already at the Baseball Reference bullpen, so I'll just show a bunch of cards. Here's his rookie card (as a catcher!) from the 1991 BBM set (#283):


1992 BBM #437 with Tomonori Maeda:


1996 BBM All Stars #A8:


1999 BBM #360:


After the 1999 season, Etoh left the Carp for the Giants. Here's his 2000 BBM New Face insert card #NF2:


2001 BBM #275:


2002 BBM Nippon Series #S19:


2005 BBM Giants #G099 ("Shared Number Subset") - Shigeo Nagashima switched from uniform #33 back to #3 in 2000. I'm guessing he did this to accomodate Etoh, who had worn #33 as a Carp:


Following the 2005 season, Etoh was traded to the Lions as compensation for the Giants signing Kiyoshi Toyoda. 2006 BBM 1st Version #92:


2009 BBM 1st Version #021:

Card Of The Week November 22

Buddy Carlye is returning to Japan to play for the Fighters. He had previously played for Hanshin back in 2001 and 2002. Here's his 2001 BBM Late Series card (#561):

2009 Award Winners

This past week Alex Ramirez of the Giants and Yu Darvish of the Fighters were named MVPs of the Central and Pacific Leagues respectively. This was Ramirez's second consecutive MVP. Here's their 2009 BBM 1st Version cards (#s 241 & 074):



In addition, the Rookie of the Year awards went to Tetsuya Matsumoto of the Giants and Tadashi Settsu of the Hawks. Here's Matsumoto's 2nd Version card (#659 - for the second year in a row, one of the Rookies Of The Year does not have a 1st Version card) and Settsu's 1st Version card (#214):



This also means that again BBM struck out with their "Rookie Of The Year Preview" subset in the 1st Version set - neither of the winners is in it.

2009 BBM Premium Malts

I also received the 2009 BBM Premium Malts set in the mail the other day. This set commemorates an old timer game that Suntory Brewery puts on every year. This year, the two teams were called "The Premium Malts" and "World Japan 2009". It's actually a pretty interesting group of players who were on the rosters, but not everyone who was on the roster appears in the set - I'm going to assume that the set only includes guys who actually appeared in the game, but I don't know that for sure. What I can say for sure is that Yutaka Enatsu, Choji Murata, Daiuske Motoki, Mitsuo Tatsukawa and Koichi Tabuchi appear on the rosters but not in the set. The set does include a wide variety of OB players including 77 year old Keiji Ohsawa, and 69 year olds Isao Harimoto and Eiji Bando, as well as a lot of guys who played a little more recently - Randy Bass, Osamu Higashio, Hiromichi Ishige, Hiroo Ishii, Tsutomu Itoh, Masayuki Kakefu, Masumi Kuwata, Hiromi Makihara, Yukihiro Nishizaki, Kenjiro Nomura, Yutaka Ohno, Akinobu Okada, Shigeki Sano, Shinji Sasaoka, Yukio Tanaka Yasushi Tao and both Koji Yamamoto's to name several of the more notable names.

The set itself is a 51 card box set (plus an insert/autograph card - as usual I got an opened box without the extra card) with 26 cards for "The Premium Malts" and 25 cards for "World Japan 2009". The cards are OK - the pictures are nice, but I'm not real impressed with the design. The design looks like some of the minor league card designs done in the late-90's. I don't know, maybe it's just I don't like the font.

Anyway, here's some examples so you can decide for yourself:






From the top, that's Yukio Tanaka (#43), Tsutomu Itoh (#38), Shinji Sasaoka (#24) and Isao Harimoto (#02).

I'm hoping that if this set does well, BBM will consider doing a set for the Masters League.

2009 BBM Tokyo Big 6 Autumn Version

Got my 2009 BBM Tokyo Big Six Autumn Version set in the mail the other day. This is a 36 card box set (plus one insert card - more about that in a minute) that came out a couple of months ago in conjunction with the Tokyo Big Six's fall season. The set features five player cards for each team plus a team picture. As Deanna mentioned here, the set contains one card of a player taken in October's NPB Player Draft (Rikkio's Kenji Tomura). Deanna also mentions that the insert cards are the spring season's Best 9 and feature at least a couple of players who are not in the rest of the set (she mentions Hiroshi Taki and Shingo Kamegai - I'm trying to find the spring Best 9 list on line and failing...) As usual, the cards have a nice simple design with beautiful photography.

Here's some examples:




From the top, that's the Waseda team card (#12), Junpei Komuro (#19) and Soichiro Tanaka (#29).

Card Of The Week November 15

I was looking up some stuff the other day regarding the beginning of the two league system in Japan in 1950 when I was reminded of a rather obscure piece of trivia - the team that is now the Saitama Seibu Lions began life in 1950 as the Nishitetsu Clippers. Before the 1951 season, the Clippers merged with the Nishi-Nippon Pirates and the new team was christened the Nishitetsu Lions. (I could be wrong here, but it looks like Nishi-Nippon Railroad actually owned both the Clippers and the Pirates - Nishitetsu IS Nishi-Nippon Railways.) Interestingly enough, the Pirates were a Central League team while the Clippers (like the Lions) were in the Pacific League.

Anyway, I found a card of a Clippers player (Tokuji Kawasaki) from the 2006 BBM Nostalgic Baseball set (#076):