RIP Masaaki Ikenaga

Former Nishitetsu Lions pitcher Masaaki Ikenaga passed away from cancer yesterday at age 76.  Ikenaga was a stand out pitcher for the Lions in the late 60's, with three 20 win seasons in his first four seasons but he is better known as one of the players who was banned for life for his participation in the "Black Mist Scandal" in 1970.  He is the only player of the nine who were banned who was ever reinstated - in fact he may be the only one of the players who attempted to be reinstated.  His reinstatement occurred in April of 2005, just after NPB passed a rule allowing banned players to petition for reinstatement.  (If this all sounds familiar, I just did posts about Ikenaga and the other banned players a few months ago.)

He was the Pacific League Rookie Of The Year in 1965, led the league in victories in 1967 and made the All Star team in each of the five full seasons he played (1965-69).  All before being banned at the age of 23.  After his reinstatement he was a baseball commentator both on the radio and in "Shukan Baseball" as well as a coach of the corporate league team Yamaguchi Hofu Baseball Club.

Ikenaga's career falls squarely in the empty time period between the end of menko in 1964 and the start of Calbee in 1973 where there were very few Japanese baseball cards produced.  As a result, there are only two known cards of him from his playing days:

1967 Kabaya-Leaf #353

1968 Shonen Book

(Note - I don't have the Kabaya-Leaf card - I swiped the image from the Trading Card Database.)

Ikenaga had several cards after he was reinstated.  The first of these commemorated him throwing out the first pitch at a Hawks game about two weeks after his reinstatement:

2005 BBM 2nd Version #815

The other cards came in various OB sets from both BBM and Epoch.  These are all that I have although I suspect there are others from some of Epoch's ultra high-end sets:

2008 BBM Lions Classic #11

2008 BBM Lions Memorial #16

2009 Epoch All Japan Baseball Foundation 15th Anniversary #69

2010 BBM Lions 60th Anniversary #19

2011 BBM Hometown Heroes #055

2013 Epoch Japan Baseball Promotion Association Rookie Of The Year #24

Card Of The Week September 25

The Tokyo Yakult Swallows are the 2022 Central League Champions!  The Swallows clinched their second straight title with a 1-0 victory over the Yokohama DeNA Baystars today.  Yakult won the game in the bottom of the ninth on a walkoff double by rookie Kazuya Maruyama that scored Yasutaka Shiomi from second.

Maruyama was the Swallows' second round pick in last fall's draft out of Meiji University.  As a collegiate player he had been on the Japanese National Team that took on the USA National team in the 43rd USA vs Japan Collegiate All Star Series in the summer of 2019 and therefore had a memorabilia/autograph card in the 2020 Panini USA Baseball Stars & Stripes set:

KBO 40 Legend

As part of the KBO's 40th Anniversary celebration the league has announced the "40 Legends" team, a ranking of the 40 greatest players in KBO history.  The list was compiled by a combination of an expert panel and fan voting.  Only retired players were considered so guys like Lee Dae-ho and Oh Seung-hwan do not appear.

I thought it might be interesting to show off cards of all 40 players but I discovered I had a problem - I only have cards of 3233 of the players.  Worse, for two of those 3233 players I only have Japanese cards, not Korean ones (by my count there are 1011 players on the list who played in Japan as well as the KBO).  But I still thought it'd be worth doing so here goes.  (UPDATE - realized I actually did have cards of Lee Sang-Hoon after all.)

One note before I begin - I'm using the list that Dan Kurtz (@MyKBO) tweeted out the other day which has the players ranked in order - the list in the article I refer above has them in a different order.  I've listed the players I don't have cards for as well so you'll see eight names that don't have cards after them.

1. Sun Dong-Yeol

1996 BBM #108

2. Choi Dong-won

3. Lee Jong-beom

1994 Teleca #16

4. Lee Seung-yuop

1999 Teleca World Sports Cards Show Promo

5. Song Jin-woo

1999 Teleca Premium #78

6. Jang Hyo-jo

7. Yang Jun-hyuk

2000 Teleca #145

8. Koo Dae-sung

1999 Teleca #151

9. Lee Kang-cheol

1999 Teleca #206

10. Jang Jong-hoon

2000 Teleca #86

11. Park Chul-soon

1994 Teleca #47

12. Lee Man-soo

1994 Teleca #40

13. Chung Min-chul

14. Kim Tae-kyun

2014 Superstar Baseball Season Three #SBC03-081-AS

15. Park Yong-taik

2018 SCC KBO Collection #SCCR-01/142

16. Kim Yong-soo

1994 Teleca LG Twins #41

17. Park Jae-hong

2000 Teleca #121

18. Jung Min-tae

1994 Teleca #71

19, Lee Byung-gyu

2014 Superstar Baseball Season One #SBC01-030

20. Kim Si-jin

21. Lim Chang-yong

2014-15 Superstar Baseball Blue Edition #SBCBE-107-AS

22. Kim Ki-tae

2000 Teleca #67

23. Park, Kyung-Oan

1999 Teleca #187

24. Baek In-cheon (Jinten Haku)

1967 Kabaya-Leaf #408

25. Kim Sung-han

26. Cho, Kye-hyun

2000 Teleca #2

27. Lee Sang-hoon

1994 Teleca LG Twins #47

28. Han, Dae-hwa

1994 Teleca LG Twins #9

29. Kim, Dong-joo

2010 KBO Game Set #AD-002

30. Shim, Jung-Soo

1999 Teleca Premium #15

31. Kim Jae-bak

32. Park, Jung-tae

1999 Teleca #50

33. Dustin Nippert

2016 Vittum Foreign Attack #3

34. Jeon, Jun-ho

1999 Teleca "Diamond Kings 98" #DK-6

35. Bae, Young-soo

2018 Hanwha Eagles Calendar Cards

36. Hong, Sung-heon

2016 Superstar Baseball Diamond Winners PA02-DO002

37. Lee, Soon-cheol

38. Jung, Keun-woo

2018 SCC KBO Collection #SCCR-01/185

39. Park, Jin-man

1999 Teleca Premium #1

40. Tyrone Woods

2000 Teleca #18

Card Of The Week September 18

Having a busy weekend so I'm just going to show off a card I recently picked up featuring a pair of Swallows sluggers including one who's been having a very good season:

2021 Topps NPB #GP-4

2021 BBM Glory Roki Sasaki - Is It A Rookie Card?

I came across an auction on Ebay recently for a "Glorious 3D" insert card for Roki Sasaki from the 2021 BBM Glory set.  The seller labeled it as a "rookie card" which I pretty much ignored since many sellers list ANY Japanese baseball card for a player as their "rookie card".  But when I looked a little more closely at the card itself I noticed BBM had labeled it a rookie card by putting their little "rookie" icon on the back.

Here's the front and back of the card (I swiped the images from the auction):

I did a post recently that listed all of Roki Sasaki's rookie cards.  I pointed out that he was drafted in the fall 2019 NPB draft so all his rookie cards were published in 2020.  Here's the hair splitting part of the question - the set this card is part of was published in December of 2020 but has a  "cover date" of 2021!  You can see the "cover date" on the back of the card - it's the little icon below the "rookie" symbol that says "BBM 2021" as well as the text towards the bottom identifying the set as "BBM Baseball Cards Premium 2021 [Glory]".  Of course, right below that you can also see a 2020 copyright line.

My inclination is to say, no, it's not a rookie card despite what BBM says.  The card (and Sasaki's base card in the set) not only has a 2021 cover date but there had already been about 10 previous Sasaki cards from BBM with 2020 cover dates that were as "rookie"  cards.  I kind of feel this one's just late to the party.

What do you guys think?

Card Of The Week September 11

Yesterday's post about the first baseball game I ever went to mentioned Bernie Williams, the San Francisco Giants outfielder who ended up spending six years playing for the Hankyu Braves in the late 70's.  I had decided to do this week's Card Of The Week post about him and when I was looking up his cards over at the Trading Card Database something struck me about the above card (1972 Topps #761) - I have Japanese cards depicting all three of these players.  (I feel compelled to point out that while this is Oglivie and Cey's rookie card, this is not actually Williams' rookie card - he also appeared on multi-player "Rookie Stars" cards in both 1970 and 1971.)

Williams played for the Braves from 1975 to 1980.  Engel lists 18 "vintage" cards for him - mostly Calbee but he's in one of the NST sets and a couple of the Broder sets.  Here's a card of him from the 1974/75 Calbee set (#932):

Ben Oglivie sent 1987 and 1988 as a member of the Kintetsu Buffaloes.  Engel lists eight vintage cards for him including four Calbee cards and two Takara cards.  Here's his 1987 Takara card:

Now I'm sure you've been scratching your head about me having a Japanese card of Ron Cey since he never played for a Japanese team.  In fact as far as I know, he never went to Japan as part of an MLB All Star team.  However Japan - in the guise of the Yomiuri Giants - came to him.  The Giants did spring training at Vero Beach, Florida in 1975 as the guests of the Dodgers.  Photos from this appear in both the 1974/75 Calbee set and the 1975 NST set.  There's a card of Tsuneo Horiuchi from the NST set (#224) that shows him pitching to the unmistakable image of the Penguin:

So while it's not an "official" card of Cey, he does make a cameo appearance on it.