Card Of The Week April 7

Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles manager Yosuke Hiraishi had to get kind of creative today in their game against the Orix Buffaloes.  The Eagles were down 5-1 in the seventh inning when he pinch hit for his starting catcher Motohiro Shima with Louis Okoye to lead off the inning.  Okoye struck out but the Eagles managed to score a run in the inning.   Backup catcher Yuichi Adachi replaced Shima in the field for the next two innings.  When Adachi's spot came up in the ninth with one out, Hiraishi brought in Kazuya Fujita to pinch hit for him.  Fujita hit a single that started a game tying rally for the Eagles.  But now the Eagles were in a bit of a pickle - the game was tied but who was going to catch?

Hiraishi took his first baseman, Ginji Akaminai, and suited him up in the tools of ignorance.  This was not quite as random as it seemed since Ginji (as he is known) had played catcher in high school and was actually drafted by the Eagles in 2005 as a catcher.  But he hadn't played the position since 2009 with the ni-gun team and had never caught in an ichi-gun game.

With two outs in the bottom of the ninth Orix center fielder Hayato Nishiura singled and probably everyone in the ballpark figured he was going to try to test Ginji's arm.  On the second pitch to Masataka Yoshida Nishiura broke for second.  Ginji's throw sailed to the first base side a little but shortstop Eigoro Mori made a nice play to grab the throw and slap the tag on the head first sliding Nishiura to end the inning:



The Buffaloes failed to get a baserunner in the remaining three innings so Ginji was not challenged again.  He didn't make any errors and wasn't charged with any passed balls so the emergency move by Hiraishi was an apparent success.

Ginji's first appearance in a BBM flagship set shows him as a catcher (2006 BBM 1st Version #212).  I don't know how many cards he has showing him in catching gear - I'm pretty sure I don't have any others but after looking through Yahoo! Japan Auctions I can say that at least his 2009 BBM Eagles card shows him catching.  Here's his 2006 BBM rookie card:

2019 Panini USA Baseball Stars & Stripes Japanese Collegiate All Stars

A couple weeks ago Panini issued a set for USA Baseball called "Stars & Stripes".  Normally this isn't something I'd be paying much attention to but Panini included autograph and memorabilia cards for members of the 2018 Japanese Collegiate All Star team (specifically the one that took part in the Haarlem Baseball Week tournament that took place last July in the Netherlands) so the set turned out to be something I was interested in.  This is the second time that Panini has included autograph and/or memorabilia cards for a Japanese Collegiate All Star team (the first being in 2013) and the third time overall that a US manufacturer has done it (Upper Deck did it in 2007).  One big difference between these cards and those two previous sets is that the cards from the previous sets were either autograph cards or memorabilia cards while the new cards are both.

I've been putting off writing about this set until I got one of the cards from it.  It took eight tries on Ebay but I finally won a card the other day and it arrived in the mail today.  That's it at the top of the post.

I put together a list of the players in the set with their colleges, their year in college (my best guess anyway based on their age) and if they had been drafted.  Eight of the 24 players were taken in last fall's NPB draft including four players who were first round picks.  There were four other players who I think were seniors last year but weren't drafted - I don't know if they have gone to the independent or corporate leagues.

Name	Position	College	School Year	Year Drafted	Team	Round	DOB
Ryosuke Aizawa	Outfielder	Meiji	4	N/A			9/26/1996
Hayata Fujino	Catcher	Rikkyo	3	N/A			1/7/1998
Hiromi Ito	Pitcher	Meiji Tomakomai Komazawa	3	N/A			8/31/1997
Yukiya Ito	Infielder	Rissho	4	2018	Baystars	2	8/30/1996
Shunya Iwaki	Infielder	Kyushu Sangyo	4	N/A			1/25/1997
Hiroshi Kaino	Pitcher	Toyo	4	2018	Hawks	1	11/16/1996
Daigo Kamikawabata	Infielder	Nihon	4	N/A			1/12/1997
Shoki Katsumata	Infielder	International Budo	3	N/A			7/20/1997
Ryosuke Kodama	Infielder	Kyushu Sangyo	3	N/A			7/10/1998
Wataru Matsumoto	Pitcher	Nittai	4	2018	Lions	1	11/28/1996
Masato Morishita	Pitcher	Meiji	3	N/A			8/25/1997
Motoki Mukoyama	Outfielder	Hosei	3	N/A			5/7/1997
Kento Ogo	Pitcher	Tokai	2	N/A			9/28/1998
Kazuya Ojima	Pitcher	Waseda	4	2018	Marines	3	7/7/1996
Teruaki Sato	Infielder	Kinki	2	N/A			3/13/1999
Toshiya Sato	Catcher	Toyo	3	N/A			1/27/1998
Noburo Shimizo	Pitcher	Kokugakuin	4	2018	Swallows	1	10/15/1996
Seiya Tanaka	Pitcher	Rikkyo	3	N/A			10/27/1997
Ryosuke Tatsumi	Outfielder	Ritsumeikan	4	2018	Eagles	1	12/27/1996
Yuma Tongu	Catcher	Ajia	4	2018	Buffaloes	2	11/17/1996
Yuki Tsumori	Pitcher	Tohoku Fukushi	3	N/A			1/21/1998
Takashi Umino	Catcher	Tokai	3	N/A			7/15/1997
Yoshiaki Watanabe	Infielder	Meiji	4	2018	Eagles	6	1/8/1997
Nagi Yonemitsu	Infielder	Nara Gakuen	4	N/A			1/9/1997

What's a bit bewildering about the set is that according to the checklist for the set in Beckett there are 10 different versions of each card!  What I have is the most common version - the Silhouettes Signatures Jerseys Prime version, each of which is numbered to 13.  There are five other versions of the Silhouettes Signatures cards - Jerseys (numbered to 5), "Gung Ho" patch (numbered to 4), "Samurai Japan" patch (numbered to 4), "Brand Logo Asics" (1 of 1) and "Samurai Japan Small" (1 of 1).  I found images of all but the "Samurai Japan Small" version on Ebay:

Jersey

Gung Ho

Samurai Japan

Asics

The other four versions are "Signatures" (numbered to 4), "Prime Signatures" (numbered to 2), "Laundry Tag Signatures" (1 of 1) and "Buttons Signatures" (numbered to 7).  Again I was able to find images on Ebay for all but one of these ("Prime Signatures"):

Signatures

Laundry Tag

Buttons

You can see that despite having names like "Jersey" and "Signature", each card has both an autograph and a piece of memorabilia.  I like that the signatures are in kanji - they look better than the ones in English on the 2013 cards.

Here's what the back of the card I got looks like.  I'm kind of disappointed that unlike the 2013 Panini cards there's no biographical information about the player on these cards.

 

The set also contains similar cards for the Chinese Taipei Collegiate All Star team.  There was a Taiwanese team at the Haarlem Baseball Week tournament also but I don't know if this is that team.  Since I don't know anything about the CPBL I don't know if any of the players in the set have turned professional.

I probably won't seriously try to complete this set but I'll do what I've been doing with the 2013 set - pick up the cards when they are available for a reasonable price.  There were only 25 of each card from the 2013 set but if you take all 10 versions of each card into account there are 42 cards for each player in this set!

Card Of The Week March 31

Opening Day for NPB was Friday and three of the six games that day went extra innings.  All three were won on walk offs by the home team (it would be very unusual to have a walk off by the visiting team of course) but none was more impressive than that of the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters.  The Fighters had been down 3-1 to the Buffaloes late in the game but tied it up with two runs in the bottom of the eighth.  Nippon-Ham loaded the bases with one out in the bottom of the tenth for Sho Nakata who ended the game emphatically with a grand slam:



Here's a card of Nakata from his first season in NPB (2008 BBM 1st Version #501):

Despite his inclusion in this subset, Nakata wasn't actually a candidate for the Rookie Of The Year award in 2008 as he spent the entire season with the Fighters' farm team.  He made his ichi-gun Fighters debut in 2009 and didn't become a regular with the top team until 2011.  The actual 2008 Pacific League MVPRookie Of The Year was Satoshi Komatsu of the Orix Buffaloes who was not included in the subset.

RIP Akihito Kondoh

Akihito Kondoh, who manned second base for the Taiyo Whales in the 1960's, passed away this past week at age 80.  Kondoh signed with the Whales after graduating from Waseda University and made his debut with them in 1960.  Taiyo won their first Central League pennant that season and defeated the Daimai Orions in the Nippon Series in the first ever four game Series sweep.  Kondoh's solo home run in the ninth inning of Game Three broke a 5-5 tie and proved to be the game winner.  He followed that the next day with an RBI single in the fifth inning of Game Four that plated the only run of the game.  He was named the MVP of the Series. 

The rest of Kondoh's career was relatively unspectacular.  He was the Whales regular second baseman through the 1971 season and spent two seasons as a bench player before retiring following the 1973 season.  He made the Central League All Star team twice - 1962 and 1965.  He became a coach after his playing days were over, coaching for Taiyo from 1974 to 1978, the Swallows from 1979 to 1981, the Lions from 1982 to 1986 and the Giants from 1989 to 1991.  He returned to his old team as manager in 1993 (becoming the first manager of the newly renamed Yokohama Baystars) and ran the team for three seasons.  He managed the Chiba Lotte Marines from 1997-98 and returned to the Giants to coach again in 2006.

I was surprised when I went to pull cards for this post to discover that I didn't have any cards from him that came out when he was playing.  After doing a little research I discovered there's a reason for that - he only had five cards that appear in Engel's latest guide and a couple of those are somewhat obscure - 1960 Marusho Flag Back menko (JCM 13a), 1960 Sakai Gum (JF 49), 1961 Union Oil Taiyo Whales (JA 1), 1962 Shonen Club Flag Back Playing Cards (JGA 180) and the 1979 TCMA set (when he was a coach for the Swallows).  He also doesn't show up in BBM or Epoch's OB sets very often - there's only about five of him as a player since 1998 with another two commemorating his managerial career.

2016 BBM The Ballpark Stories #038

2006 BBM Nostalgic Baseball #045

2010 Epoch All Japan Baseball Foundation #107

2015 BBM Whales Achievement #16

1979 TCMA #23

1993 BBM #398

1997 BBM #517

If it's not obvious the card from the 2016 BBM The Ballpark Stories celebrates him winning the 1960 Nippon Series MVP award.  His name is misspelled on the TCMA card.

Play Ball! (2019)

I was inspired last year by something Night Owl Cards has been doing for a while now for Opening Day each year - he does a post that shows a baseball card from the last year that each of the 30 MLB teams last won the World Series (not including the seven that have never won one).  I decided that I could steal the idea and do it for NPB.  After doing it for the first time last year I decided I would make a tradition out of it.  So here's the 2019 version:

The last time the HAWKS won the Nippon Series, cards looked like this:

2018 Epoch NPB #26

The last time the FIGHTERS won the Nippon Series, cards looked like this:

2016 BBM 1st Version #029

The last time the EAGLES won the Nippon Series, cards looked like this:

2013 BBM Classic #057

The last time the GIANTS won the Nippon Series, cards looked like this:

2012 Calbee #195

The last time the MARINES won the Nippon Series, cards looked like this:

2010 Bandai Owners League 04 #115

The last time the LIONS won the Nippon Series, cards looked like this:

2008 BBM 1st Version #385

The last time the DRAGONS won the Nippon Series, cards looked like this:

2007 Konami Baseball Heroes 3 Black Edition #B07B138

The last time the SWALLOWS won the Nippon Series, cards looked like this:

2001 BBM #342

The last time the BAYSTARS won the Nippon Series, cards looked like this:

1998 Future Bee Baystars #9

The last time the BUFFALOES* won the Nippon Series, cards looked like this:

1996 Takara BlueWave #6 (So Taguchi)

The last time the TIGERS won the Nippon Series, cards looked like this:

1985 Calbee #6 (Masayuki Kakefu)

The last time the CARP won the Nippon Series, cards looked like this:

1984 Mizuno (Yoshihiko Takahashi)

*The Buffaloes were called the BlueWave in 1996

All 12 current NPB teams have won the Series at least once so there are no "Photo Not Found" teams.

Spring Releases

Thought I'd do a quick post on the recently announced sets that will be released over the next two months.

- The Heisei Era is scheduled to come to a close in a little over a month and BBM is celebrating the era with a new multi-sport set.  I'm not quite sure how the name translates but I think it's basically called "Heisei".  BBM hasn't released a lot of details about the set - for example I can't tell you how many cards are in the set or what kind of insert cards there will be other than metal cards and "Phantom" inserts.  I assume there will be autograph card but I don't know that for sure.  As is typical of BBM's multi-sport sets the bulk of the athletes included are baseball players (both OB and active) but the other sports represented in the set include wrestling, boxing, speed & figure skating, soccer, softball, judo, bicycling, tennis, basketball and handball.  The set will be released in late April (Jambalaya has the release date as April 27th, three days before the Emperor abdicates).

- BBM has announced two more of their annual "comprehensive" team sets.  This time it's for the Carp and the Giants.  Both sets have a base set of 81 cards.  The base set for the Carp breaks down to 70 "regular" cards, two "Newcomer" cards, three "Starters" cards, four "Points of Team(?)" cards and two "Dominican Spirit" cards.  There are 48(!) insert cards - I'm not entirely sure what some of the insert sets are but there is a two card "One Step Beyond" set, a 15 card "Esperanza" set and an 18 card "Phantom" set.  There are also autograph and memorabilia cards available.  The Giants' base set consists of 66 "regular" cards, 1 mascot/checklist card, four "Giant Four" cards, four "Glorious Number" cards, three "Growing Hope" cards and three "G-Genuine" cards.  There are a whopping 66 insert cards split among seven different sets - "Giants Pride 2019" (15 cards), "Up And Coming" (3 cards), "Cross Foil Signing" (15 cards serially numbered to 15),  "Combo Cross Foil Signing" (3 cards serially numbered to 15), "Super Metallic Giants" (9 cards serially numbered to the player's uniform number - I think you actually get a redemption card for these), "Triplex 2019" (3 cards serially numbered to 25) and "Phantom" (18 cards serially numbered to 25*).  There are parallel versions of the "regular" player cards in the base set as well as the "Giants Pride 2019" and "Up And Coming" inserts.  There are also memorabilia and autograph cards available as well.  The Carp set will be out in mid-May while the Giants set will be out in late May.

* I assume the Carp "Phantom" cards are also numbered to 25 but the webpage doesn't say so.

- Epoch's third "Rookies & Stars" team set this year is for the Baystars.  This is another "comprehensive" team set that features 71 cards in its base set - all of which appear to be "regular" player cards.  There are a couple insert sets but as usual it's not very clear what they are.  There are several varieties of autograph cards available also.  The set will be out on May 18th.

- For the second year in a row, Epoch is releasing a "flagship" set.  Like last year's set, it's called "NPB" and has a base set of 432 cards (36 per team).  There are three varieties of parallels for some of the cards - "regular kira" (72 cards), "silver foil" (60 cards) and "hologram foil" (24 cards).  There are also 36 GEM insert cards and 24 autograph cards - both of these are serially numbered but I don't know what they are numbered to.  The set will be released on May 25th.

Blog Bat Around - My Projects - Updated

Just about a year ago I took part in a Blog Bat Around started by Night Owl Cards about the various card projects I was attempting to complete.  I thought I'd do a quick update on how those projects are going plus any new ones I've added.

First up - how I'm doing on the projects I listed last year?

2000 Upper Deck Olympics Baseball Team

As I reported last year, this one was actually done a year ago but I didn't have the last cards in hand yet.  Ryan had found the last two cards I needed and sent them to me last May.

1978 Yamakatsu JY6 set

Still need the Koichi Tabuchi card from this set.

2017 Topps Now WBC set

I reduced the number of cards I need for this set from 12 to only 3 but I haven't seen the last three I need very often and when I do, the seller wants at least $50 for each of them.  This may take a while.

2009 Konami WBC Inserts

This is another area where Ryan helped me out.  I'm down to only needing one of the "Special" cards but I still need eight of the "All Tournament Team" cards.

2003-06 BBM Rookie Edition sets

Not only did I not make any progress on any of these sets but I've misplaced my want lists!  I need to regenerate them and I need to do it fairly soon for reasons I will get into momentarily.

2017 Topps TBT WBC cards

Still need the Alex Bregman and Carlos Correa cards from this set.

1994-2000 BBM flagship sets

I made a lot of progress on the 1994 BBM set, again with Ryan's help.  I needed 45 cards from the set this time last year but a couple Yahoo! Japan Auction buys and some card shop visits by Ryan has gotten the total down to only eight.  Seven of those eight are rare low-numbered Swallows cards however and the other one is Hiroki Kokubo's rookie card so it won't necessarily be cheap or easy to complete but it's doable.  I also picked up the most expensive card I had left from the 1998 set (Yoshinobu Takahashi's rookie card) so that's getting more doable as well.  I also picked up a handful of 1997 cards as well.

1999 Teleca Sets

I'm still one card away from completing the 1999 Teleca regular set but the Premium set is complete.  Dan found me three of the four cards I needed and I got the last one from Rob Fitts when I bought some other Korean cards from him.

2000 Teleca "'99 Korea Japan Super Games" insert set

Surprisingly I made slow but steady progress on this set.  I got about seven cards from the set from various sources over the course of the year so I went from only having 15 cards to having 22.  Of course I still need 24 more cards but progress is progress.

Here's the new projects I added over the last year in no particular order:

2001 BBM Tigers set

2001 BBM Tigers #T55

After opening a box from this set a couple months ago I found that I was only six cards away from finishing it so I decided to go for it.  Ryan's already found five of them so it's almost done already.

2004 BBM 1st Version 2003 Asian Championship insert set

2004 BBM 1st Version "2003 Asian Championship" insert #AJ1

The 2004 BBM 1st Version set included an insert set for the Japanese National Team for the 2003 Asian Championship (which was a qualifier for the 2004 Olympics).  I'm a sucker for National Team sets and this is one of the few Japanese ones I don't have all the cards for.  I still need 16 of the 22 cards from the set so it'll take a while.

1999 Teleca Premium Korean Dream Team insert set

1999 Teleca Premium "Korean Dream Team" insert #D-13

Speaking of National Team sets...the 1999 Teleca Premium set included an insert set for the Korean National Team for the 1999 Asian Championship (at least I think it was for that tournament).  This is actually the only Korean National Team set that I'm aware of.  I'd had a couple cards from this set for a long time but I picked up most of the rest of the cards from a lot that Rob Fitts had up on Ebay.  I'm only three cards away from finishing the set.

2000 Teleca set

2000 Teleca #182

If you had told me a year ago that I'd only be 44 cards away from completing this set now I'd have told you you were crazy.  Last year at this time I only had 15 cards from this set.  But I bought a bunch of cards from the set from Rob Fitts in another Ebay lot and picked up another bunch of cards via a trade with a Marines fan named Takashi in Japan and now I have over 200!

I mentioned earlier that I needed to get my want lists together soon.  There's a reason for that - I am finally making another trip to Japan soon.  I'll be heading over in late May for a little over two weeks.  I'm hoping to catch a lot of baseball games and go to a lot of baseball card stores.  It'd be great if I could come back from the trip with some of these projects completed.  Of course, I'm sure I'll be finding new projects while I'm there!