Shukan Baseball Season Memorial Cards

One of my on going projects the past few years has been to try to get all the baseball cards that were included with the "Season Memorial" issue of Shukan (Weekly) Baseball each year.  I had originally thought that there were only 12 cards total - two each year from 2011 to 2016.  However I have recently discovered that this was incorrect - there were cards included in this issue each year from 2005 to 2010 as well.  What's more, there were four cards in each of those years so the total number of cards is actually 36.  

I'm not positive because I haven't seen all the cards from 2005 to 2010 but I think the four cards each year featured the MVPs and Rookies Of The Year from each league.  The post-2010 issues usually but not always featured the league MVPs.  The exceptions are 2014 when they featured Shohei Ohtani and Tetsuto Yamada instead of Chihiro Kaneko and Tomoyuki Sugano and 2016 when the Central League player was Hiroki Kuroda instead of Takahiro Arai.

I had found a lot of six of these cards on Mercari a little while back and picked them up via ZenMarket.  It was 588 yen plus the 300 yen ZenMarket fee which worked out to about $6.52 which was well worth it as you'll see in a minute.  I had ZenMarket ship the cards to me with the new Lions History set (which I'll be posting about soon) and I got the package earlier this week.

I already had half of the cards.  Two of the cards I didn't already have were from 2008 and featured the Central League MVP and the Pacific League Rookie Of The Year:

The other was from 2012 and featured the PL MVP:

These three cards bring me up to 18 total.  Ryan has already picked up one of the other cards for me so I'm really only need slightly less than half of the cards.

I do need to mention here that one of the attractions of this particular lot of cards was one of the cards that I already have though:

I'm thinking if I put this up on Ebay, there's a pretty good chance I'll make back the $6.50 I spent on these cards.

Podcast Interview

Last Sunday I was interviewed by Tjay and Philly of the Tool Time Podcast and the interview is included in the latest episode which dropped today.  (The link is for Spotify but the podcast is available on other platforms as well - I found it on the Overcast app on my iPhone under "The Eephus Baseball Cards Podcast").  It's a long episode - 3 hours and 13 minutes(!) - but mercifully for everyone involved I'm only on for maybe a half hour.  My portion starts at 0:29:20.  They also talked to Gaijin Baseball in this episode - his interview is at 01:40:15.  

I started listening to the podcast while running some errands but I haven't gotten too far into it.  I'm hoping I don't sound like a complete idiot but I make no promises.

Card Of The Week October 8

There were a couple different stories in the news this week that I wanted to quickly mention.  First up, on Wednesday Samurai Japan announced that former Dragons and Giants player Hirokazu Ibata was named their new manager (which means my post about Kimiyasu Kudoh getting the job was incorrect).  Ibata will be the manager for the team for the 2024 Premier 12 tournament and then a decision will be made if he'll continue for the 2026 World Baseball Classic.  Ibata played on the National Team a couple of times - the 2001 & 2002 IBAF World Cups and the qualifiers for the 2004 and 2008 Olympics but the only time he was in one of the "big" tournaments was the 2013 World Baseball Classic.  Here's a card of him from the 2003 Asian Championship, a qualifier for the 2004 Athens Olympics:

2003 BBM Japan National Team #20

Tatsunori Hara stepped down as manager of the Yomiuri Giants after leading the team to "B" class finishes two years in a row, a first in the team's history.  Hara was the longest tenured NPB manager, having managed the team for the past five seasons.  It was his third stint with the team - he's managed the Giants for all but five of the last twenty-two seasons.  Shingo Takatsu of the Swallows is now the longest tenured NPB manager and there doesn't appear to be any other managerial changes expected - even though I can think of at least two teams that REALLY need to make them.  Hara is being replaced by Shinnosuke Abe, who's spent the past few years being groomed for the position.  Here's a card of Hara from the 2020 BBM Giants History 1934-2020 set that my scanner apparently insists on scanning crooked:

2020 BBM Giants History 1934-2020 #69

The last bit of news I wanted to pass on was that Emi Taniho, the public address announcer for the Chiba Lotte Marines, was stepping down after 33 years.  It took a little bit to click with me that she'd been with the team longer than they'd been the Marines or in Chiba - her first year was 1991 when the team still played across Tokyo Bay in Kawasaki and were called the Lotte Orions.  The team held a ceremony for her after the last regular season game yesterday and the fans were able to express their appreciation for her.  Her retirement made me think of some of the great PA announcers from MLB like Sherm Feller at Fenway Park, Bob Sheppard at Yankee Stadium and especially Rex Barney, the voice of both Memorial Stadium and Oriole Park at Camden Yards for almost 30 years.  Rex passed away suddenly in the middle of the 1997 season and was never able to have the kind of send off that Taniho had - at least not when he was around to enjoy it.  

Taniho had a card in last year's BBM Fusion set celebrating her 2000th game behind the microphone.  I've shared this card a couple of times on Twitter this past week but I thought I'd show it again.  It's very shiny so it doesn't scan well:

2022 BBM Fusion "Great Record" #GR16

Run The Series - BBM Classic

It's been about two years now since Topps announced that they had a license to do NPB baseball cards and pretty much ever since then I've been saying that Topps needs do an Archives or Heritage style set using their classic card designs for NPB players.  There is precedent for doing such a set in Japan - the Classic set released by BBM annually between 2013 and 2016.

The four BBM Classic sets pretty much followed the same pattern with one minor exception.  Each set except the first had a 108 card base set consisting of 72 cards of active players and 36 cards of OB players (except the 2013 set).  For some reason, the 2013 set had 109 total cards as they had one extra OB player.  The cards for the active players reused an earlier BBM "flagship" set design.  The 2013 set used the design of BBM's initial set from 1991, 2014 used the 1992 design, 2015 used the 1993 design and you've probably already guessed that 2016 used the 1994 design.  In addition each set had several insert sets associated with it that reused designs from various BBM sets in the past.  The OB cards were a little less consistent as two of the sets reused the 2002 All Time Heroes design and the other two sets used a new design.

The active player cards were pretty true to the original design.  BBM updated the year in their logos but otherwise they looked like the logos used each year.  The rookie cards used the same box or icon that the original sets had used.  The big difference between the original 1991-94 cards and the Classic versions is that while the original cards had been a smaller than standard size of 2 3/8" x 3 5/16", the Classic cards were all the standard 2 1/2" x 3 1.2".

I figured I'd go through each set quickly and show a couple of the active player cards and one of the OB cards.  I'd also mention the inserts and show any that I have.  I'd also link to the posts I did for each set when they originally came out (or at least when I got them which might have been a few months later).

The 2013 set came out at the end of June that year.  This was one of the sets that used the 2002 All Time Heroes set for the OB cards.  It had three insert sets - "Rivals" based on the 1997 flagship insert set of the same name, "00's Best 9" based on the "90's Best 9" insert set from the 2000 flagship set and "Above Average" based on the insert set with the same name from the 1999 Diamond Heroes set.  The Rivals set had 24 cards - two per team that were paired up with each other - while the other two had 12 cards each (1 per team despite the "Best 9" name).  The two 12 card insert sets were much more scarce than the "Rivals" set.  I think all the insert sets had active players but I don't know about the "00's Best 9" set for sure.

2013 BBM Classic #055

2013 BBM Classic #001

2013 BBM Classic #087

2013 BBM Classic "Rivals" #R07 & #R08

The 2014 set didn't come out until mid-November, late enough that I started to doubt that BBM was doing a second installment of the set.  The OB cards used a completely new design - at least I think it was a new design although it may have been used for a non-baseball set that I'm not aware of.  The non-premium insert set was a 12 card "Best 9" set based on the 1997 Best 9 card format (and again not really a "Best 9" but featuring one player per team).  There were three other 12 card insert sets that apparently were more limited - "Run Producers" (based on the Diamond Heroes insert set - BBM's website said it was from 1998 but I don't know that there WAS a "Run Producers" insert set with the 1998 Diamond Heroes set), "Above Average" and "Pitcher Perfect" (both based on insert sets from the 1999 Diamond Heroes set).  

2014 BBM Classic #063

2014 BBM Classic #009

2014 BBM Classic #086

The 2015 set came out in June that year which seemed more "normal".  The set had several similarities to the 2014 set - the OB cards used a similar format to the 2014 cards and the two premium insert sets - "Above Average" and "Pitcher Perfect" - were a repeat from the 2014 set (as in using the same design - I don't know that they had the same 12 players in each).  The non-premium insert set was the 24 "All Stars" set that uses the same design as the 2002 Touch The Game set's insert set of the same name - one again the set name was a misnomer as it featured two players from each team who weren't necessarily All Stars.

2015 BBM Classic #056

2015 BBM Classic #007

2015 BBM Classic #084

2015 BBM Classic "All Star" #AS15

For the 2016 set (which was released in July), BBM returned to using the "All Time Heroes" design for the OB cards.  The non-premium insert set was the 24 card "All Around Players" set that reprised an insert set from the 1995 BBM set.  The premium insert set was a 12 card "3D Magic" lenticular set that resembled the "Magic Motion" insert cards from the 1996 "flagship" set.  There were also 12 reprints of BBM rookie cards of active players - I don't know if they were premium or not.

2016 BBM Classic #040

2016 BBM Classic #036

2016 BBM Classic #078

2016 BBM Classic "All Around Players" #AA20

I don't know why but BBM discontinued this set after 2016.  I've wondered sometimes if BBM decided that since the cards in the 1995 set (and all their sets afterwards) were standard size, there was no need to make more cards at the standard size.  This strikes me as a silly reason though.

I really did like these sets but I wish they had been better.  I'd have preferred not having the OB cards and it would have been nice to have had subsets that called back to the subsets in the original sets (especially the subset showing all the stadiums in use from the 1992 set) like Topps' Heritage sets have.  I'd really be happy if BBM brought these sets back.

I should mention here that there was actually one other "Classic" set from BBM but it didn't follow the same format.  In March of 2014, BBM issued a box set called "Rookie Edition Classic".  The base set contained 24 cards - two per team of course.  All the cards used the design from the 2003 BBM Rookie Edition set - the inaugural edition of BBM's annual draft pick set.  Now what you would have expected is that BBM would have had cards of the 2013 draft picks in this set, right?  After all, the regular Classic set (of which there had only been one at this point) showed active players in the old card design so it would make sense that "Rookie Edition Classic" would show the current draft picks using the old card design, wouldn't it?  But that's not what happened.  Instead, BBM chose an active player from each team and used a photo of the player from his rookie season, even if the player wasn't on his current team then (for example Kazuo Matsui was representing the Eagles but his photo was from the Lions).  That accounted for half the cards in the set.  The other half were OB players from each team - again showing them in their rookie season.  The photos used also mess up how the set follows the original as only one or two of them were taken when the player attended the press conference when the team formally introduces the draft class which is where all the Rookie Edition photos for the draft picks come from.  It doesn't appear that this was a popular set and BBM never did another edition of it.  Here's a card of a (then) active player and an OB player:

2014 BBM Rookie Edition Classic #05

2014 BBM Rookie Edition Classic #20

Yoshihisa Hirano

Yoshihisa Hirano of the Orix Buffaloes notched his 29th save of the season yesterday.  It was NPB career save number 242 for him which, when added to the eight saves he had in MLB during his three year stint with the Diamondbacks and Mariners, brings his total number of saves between the two leagues to 250 and qualifies him for the Meikyukai or Golden Players Club.  He's only the fourth NPB pitcher to reach this milestone, following Kazuhiro Sasaki, Shingo Takatsu and Hitoki Iwase.

I did a post on Hirano when he left for the majors after the 2017 season so I'm just going to show off some other cards of him tonight (I'm still ridiculously busy at work so I don't have time to go into much more detail):

2006 BBM 2nd Version #570

2006 Shukan Baseball #4-1/3

2008 Calbee #094

2002 Calbee #AS-02

2013 Front Runner Buffaloes Season Summary #02

2016 BBM Fusion #016

2017 Calbee Samurai Japan #SJ-19

2021 BBM Buffaloes #B07

2023 Topps NPB #4

Card Of The Week October 1

Sorry for the lack of posts lately.  We were away last weekend and I've been in code monkey mode most of the week at work.  Hopefully things will calm down a little soon.

We're entering into the final week or so of the NPB regular season and there's still a couple things to be decided.  The playoff teams for the Central League are set but the Carp and Baystars are currently tied for second.  The Carp's schedule is complete but the Baystars play Yomiuri on Wednesday.  If they win, they are the second place team and host the First Stage of the Climax Series starting on October 14th. If they lose, then the Carp are the second place team and host the First Stage.

Things are much more up in the air in the Pacific League.  There are three teams - the Eagles, Hawks and Marines - bunched together for two playoff spots.  The Eagles and Hawks are currently tied for second with the Marines a half game behind.  We're in the postponed game makeup part of the schedule so each team has a kind of random assortment of games left - the Hawks only have four (although three are against the Eagles) while the other two teams have five each.  It's possible that the final PL playoff spot won't be decided until October 9th, the final day of the season, when the Eagles play the Marines in the afternoon and the Hawks play Orix in the evening.

Jim Allen's weekly e-newsletter this week mentioned something else to watch this week - Kensuke Kondoh of the Hawks has a shot at winning the Triple Crown.  He's currently leading the PL in RBIs with 85 (four ahead of teammate Yuki Yanagita) and tied for the home run lead with 25 with Chusei Mannami of the Fighters, Hideto Asamura of the Eagles and Gregory Polanco of the Marines.  He's about 8 points behind Yuma Tongu of the Buffaloes for the batting title though and Tongu's hurt so his average won't be changing.  Jim figures that Kondoh needs to go something like 7 for 11 (or better) in his last four games to catch Tongu and will probably need to hit at least one more home run to win both categories.  I thought I'd share a card of Kondoh from last year's Calbee "Clutch Hitter" set (#CL11) - this was a set sold though Calbee's Amazon Japan webstore (although I picked it up off Ebay) in conjunction with Series One:

Card Of The Week September 24

The Orix Buffaloes clinched their third consecutive Pacific League pennant last Wednesday.  While pitchers Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Hiroya Miyagi, Sachiya Yamasaki and Shunpeita Yamashita have been getting most of the attention this year, Kohei Azuma's the one who's done something that no one's done for over 80 years.  Azuma has won his first seven decisions as a starter.  That's in "first seven" for his career, not this season.  The last pitcher to start their career with seven winning decisions was Hall Of Famer Hideo Fujimoto in 1942.

Azuma has followed an unlikely path to his current success.  He was the ace pitcher on the Kobe Koryo Gakuen High School baseball team as a second year student but suffered a back injury during his junior year.  He was taken by Orix in the second round of the development player (ikusei) draft in 2017 but didn't play at all during 2018 due to abdominal pain.  He was healthy for all of 2019 and went 5-7 with a 3.84 ERA for Orix's farm team.  He hurt his right arm and shoulder during spring training in 2020 and between that and COVID he only pitched in six games all year, going 0-2 with a 6.87 ERA.  

At this point he'd been a development player for three years so his contract was up and the team released him but resigned him to a new contract afterwards - still as an ikusei player.  He had a strong start to the 2021 season but his performance tailed off until his season came to an early stop when a batted ball fractured his arm in late September.  He pitched well enough last season for the team to finally bring him on to the official 70 man roster in late July, making his ichi-gun debut on July 30th with a start against the Chiba Lotte Marines.  He got his first win in his second start - against the Fighters on August 6th.  He was sent back to ni-gun shortly after that but later made two appearances in relief with the top team.

He opened this season in the bullpen for the ichi-gun team but was sent back to the farm team to start after only a few appearances.  After going 5-2 with a 2.18 ERA in 11 starts on the farm, Orix called him back up in late July.  He's currently 6-0 with a 1.71 ERA.

Since he's been an ikusei player for most of his career, he does not have many baseball cards.  As far as I can tell, he's had five cards in four sets.  He has a card in the 2018 BBM Rookie Edition set, two cards in the 2018 Epoch Buffaloes Rookie & Stars set and a card in the 2019 Buffaloes team issued set.  His only card (so far) that doesn't have him as a development player is in this year's BBM Buffaloes team set.  I expect that he'll have his first BBM "flagship" card in the "1st Version Update" subset of this year's Fusion set.  Here's one of his 2018 Epoch Buffaloes Rookies & Stars cards (#35a):

H/T NPB Reddit