What's Up With Topps?

I've been operating under the assumption that Topps would be issuing both an NPB Chrome set and an NPB Bowman set this year.  They've done the Chrome set each of the three previous years that they've had an NPB license and a Bowman set each of the last two years.  Both sets were released in November last year and were announced by early September.

This year?  There's been no announcement of either set yet and the end of the year is rapidly approaching.  BBM and Epoch have both announced several sets to be released in November but Topps has been silent.  There's nothing on their website, nothing on their Twitter feed and nothing from them on either Jambalaya's or Card Fanatic's schedule of upcoming releases.  They are still publishing their Topps Now cards for NPB so they still have a license but it's weird that they have not made any announcements about any more sets since their "flagship" set came out back in May.

I've been pretty clear about my feelings towards Topps' NPB offerings so I wouldn't describe my feeling about this as "disappointed" but rather "surprised".  Both the Chrome and Bowman sets have been somewhat inexplicably (at least to me) popular so I fully expected Topps to do them again this year.  It IS possible that the sets could be getting delayed into the new year - Topps delayed the 2021 edition of Chrome until early 2022.  Of course, they had just gotten the NPB license in early October of 2021 so it wasn't a surprise the set wasn't out by the end of the year.  Topps has not impressed me with their ability to publish their NPB sets in a timely manner (as I have ranted about on occasion) so it wouldn't surprise me too much if the sets are just delayed.  But it is odd there's been no announcements.

The one thing that I've liked that Topps has done in Japan the past few years are the Topps Now cards for Samurai Japan.  They've done single cards and team sets for the squads for the Australia friendlies in November of 2022, the Asian Professional Baseball Championship tournament in November of 2023 and the Global Games last March.  I'm expecting/hoping that they'll be doing the same for the Premier 12 Samurai Japan team next month but that remains to be seen. 

Bonus Players in 2024 BBM Genesis

I did a post earlier this year about "bonus players in BBM's high end sets" - i.e. players who appeared in BBM's "high end" sets (Diamond Heroes, Touch The Game & Genesis) who didn't appear in BBM's "flagship" sets from the same year (or appeared with a different team).  When this year's Genesis set was released a few weeks ago, I took a look at the checklist and found seven players who were not in this year's 1st or 2nd Version sets:

016 Keisuke Sato, Carp
036 Elier Hernandez, Giants
037 Yasunobu Okugawa, Swallows
056 Kyosuke Saito, Buffaloes
060 Ryo Ohta, Buffaloes
099 Junichiro Kishi, Lions
107 Shun Mizutani, Fighters

This is by far the largest number of non-flagship players in a Genesis set ever and the most of any of the sets since the 2002 Touch The Game set (which also had seven).  I will caveat this by mentioning that there is a pretty good chance that some of these players will end up in the "1st Version Update" subset of this year's Fusion set when it comes out next month.  In fact, I'd be pretty surprised if Mizutani isn't in that set - I was actually surprised he wasn't in 2nd Version when it came out in August.  If Hernandez hadn't suffered a season-ending injury in August, I'd have expected to see in Fusion as well but I'm less sure of it now.  So the number may drop in another month.

My friend Jason has been selling cards from the set on Ebay so I was able to pick up six of the seven cards from him (and he's expecting to get some more boxes in so he's keeping an eye out for the one I still need):

2024 BBM Genesis #016

2024 BBM Genesis #036

2024 BBM Genesis #037

2024 BBM Genesis #056

2024 BBM Genesis #060

2024 BBM Genesis #107

I should mention that Keisuke Sato was drafted as an ikusei player last October and was promoted onto the Carp's 70 man roster in June which is why he gets the "rookie" icon on his card,

"Our Giants Will Live Forever"

Today (yesterday in Japan now) is the 50th Anniversary of Shigeo Nagashima's retirement games.  The then-38 year old Giants legend had announced his retirement a few days earlier when the Giants were eliminated from the pennant race for the first time in ten years (remember that the Giants won nine straight Central League pennants - and Nippon Series championships - between 1965 and 1973).  The Giants hosted the pennant winning Dragons for a double header on the final day of the season and Korakuen Stadium was packed with fans wishing to see Mr. Giants on the field one last time.  After the games, Nagashima stood on the mound and gave a speech thanking the fans for their support over his 17 year career which included a phrase that went something like "Our Giants Will Live Forever".

I wrote a fairly length post about this day ten years ago for the 40th Anniversary of it so I don't need to recap the day's events again.  I mostly wanted to make sure the anniversary didn't go by unremarked and to show off a handful of cards from the day that I've picked up over the past decade.  

I had mentioned in the original post that there was a 36 card "ON Series" included in Calbee's 1974-75 set that I believed was dedicated to this day.  I not as sure about that now.  I have  several of Sadaharu Oh cards from that series that don't appear to have photos from the day.  However, I have picked up several new Nagashima cards that all feature photos from that day.  Here's two kind of generic photos that if the card didn't say, you'd probably never guess were from October 14th:

1974/75 Calbee #398

1974/75 Calbee #406

I had wondered if another card I have showed him hitting his final home run.  I still don't know for sure but I know this card shows him approaching home plate after hitting that homer.  That's obviously Oh among the players waiting at the plate for him:

1974/75 Calbee #414

This last one is one of my favorite cards ever.  It shows Nagashima crouching on the on-deck circle while Oh bats:

1974/75 Calbee #416

The last card I want to share is yet another one featuring the iconic image of Nagashima giving his retirement speech on the Korakuen Stadium mound with the scoreboard behind him.  This is actually a slightly different image than the standard one as he's standing to the right of the mike stand instead of the left and he's not holding the microphone.  I don't know if the photo was taken before or after he finished speaking:

2016 BBM The Ballpark Stories #006

Card Of The Week October 13

It was starting to look dire for the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters today.  Despite being the higher seed in the First Stage of the Pacific League Climax Series, they were on the brink of elimination.  They had lost Game One when Roki Sasaki shut them down and were down 2-1 in today's Game Two going into the bottom of the ninth.  But with the team two outs away from getting swept by the Marines, Chusei Mannami stepped to the plate and did this:

In the bottom of the tenth, the Fighters struck again.  With two outs, Go Matsumoto drew a walk.  Kotaro Kiyomiya followed with a single that moved Matsumoto to third.  Daiki Asama then completed the come-from-behind victory with a walk-off single:

Game Three will be played tomorrow at 14:00 Japan time with the winning team going to Fukuoka to play the Hawks and the loser going home.  Meanwhile in Kansai, the Baystars upset the Tigers in the First Stage of the Central League Climax Series and will be in Tokyo to play the Giants starting Wednesday.

Here are cards of the Fighters who got the big hits today:

2022 Calbee Series Two #C-10 (Mannami)

2016 Calbee Series One #011 (Asama)

One Year Managers

Eagles manager Toshiaki Imae has been let go as manager of the Eagles despite having another year left on his two year contract. By my count, Imae is now the twelfth "one year manager" in NPB over the past 34 years. What's amazing about it is that FIVE of those twelve times were Eagles managers despite the franchise only having been around for twenty years.

I thought it might be interesting to do a post featuring all twelve of the "one year managers" so here they are in chronological order - each card is from the year that the manager was in charge of their team:

1992 BBM #425

1995 BBM #516

1996 BBM #541

2004 BBM 2nd Version #596

2005 BBM 1st Version #165

2005 BBM Eagles Box Set #E03

2006 BBM Buffaloes #Bs01

2010 BBM 1st Version #253

2014 Front Runner Lions Rookies & Young Stars #01

2015 BBM Eagles #E01

2020 Epoch NPB #073

2024 Calbee Series Two #C-10 (Imae)

but first let me explain a little of my methodology. I didn't include in my count anyone who took over as an interim manager mid-season but didn't get the regular job the following season. I think there are only six of these - Ejiri, Whales, 1992; Futoshi Nakanishi, Marines, 1994; Sadayuki Tokutake and Ikuo Shimano, Dragons, 1995 (yeah, that was not a good year for Chunichi); Leon Lee, Buffaloes, 2003 and Hisonobu Watanabe, Lions, 2024. I'm also not counting anyone who started out as an interim manager and then got the regular job for only one season. I think that only leaves out two people - Taira Fujita, Tigers, 1995-96 and Yusuke Hiraishi, Eagles, 2018-19. Including Hiraishi would have made six "one year managers" for the Eagles.

I did include in my count a couple managers who had other stints with the same team that were longer than just one year. There's three of them - Valentine had a second stint with Lotte from 2004 to 2009; Ohgi had previously managed Orix from 1994 to 2001 and Ihara had previously managed the Lions from 2002-03. Additionally Miki is replacing Imae so there'll be a fourth manager with two stints with the team they had a one year stint managing.

Some other comments:

- Ejiri's entire managerial career was the interim stint with the Whales in 1992 and the one year with Lotte in 1996.

- Orix had three "one year managers" in a row from 2004 to 2006 but there's an explanation. Following the 2004 season, Orix and Kintetsu merged to form the Orix Buffaloes and the team replaced Ihara with Akira Ohgi since Ohgi had previously managed both franchises - Kintetsu from 1988-92 and Orix from 1994-2001. Tragically Ohgi passed away in December of 2005, forcing the team to press GM Katsuhiro Nakamura into service. After the Ohgi's eight years at the helm, Orix had seven managers in the next eight years between 2002 and 2009.

- Ihara only managed the Lions for a couple months in 2013 - he abruptly resigned around the beginning of June. It could be argued that he doesn't belong on this list since he didn't make it to a full season.

- The Eagles had been doing the "one year managers" on a five year schedule - Tao in 2005, Brown in 2010, Ohkubo in 2015 and Miki in 2020. Imae is the first out-of-cycle one. But he now clears the way for them to be back on schedule to have yet another one in 2025 (which would make Miki be the second guy to do it twice). All of which goes to show that being Eagles manager has the same life expectancy of a Spinal Tap drummer or a security officer on the Enterprise. Come to think of it, those crimson uniforms are a shade of red, aren't they?

BBM Jersey Cards

2017 BBM Genesis

I'd been asked a couple times over the years about BBM's "authentic" jersey cards.  The usual question is about whether the swatch on the card was "game worn" or just "player worn" with "player worn" implying that the player might have worn the item in question but possibly only for a very short period of time.  Until recently I didn't have a good answer for this but I've learned some things over the last few weeks that kind of explain things but also raise some new questions.

The first thing I came across was this tweet.  The author of the tweet had reached out to BBM and asked them about how the acquired the items that were used for the memorabilia cards.  BBM responded that some of the items were possibly game worn but others had been "worn at events" (I'm quoting the Google translation of the response so it may not be accurate).  Ultimately BBM was unable to determine which was the case as the jerseys were being provided to them from the teams and the teams weren't providing any details.

2010 BBM Touch The Game #P12

Shortly after I saw that tweet, I got an email from @FreddyFind who has a YouTube channel about card collecting.  He was interested in picking up an Ohtani jersey card from the 2013 BBM Rookie Edition Premium set but was a little nervous about the details of the card.  He reached out to BBM to ask about it and got a similar answer to the author of the tweet:  "The card contains clothing provided by the team, but we don't know any further details."  

Freddy went a little further and contacted the Fighters to see if they had any information about the jersey used on the Ohtani card.  He and I were a bit surprised that he actually got a response from the team:  "Unfortunately BBM is a separate company from the Fighters so we don't have any information about products that BBM sold. Because it is a very old product, we are unable to research it. Please understand that we cannot answer your questions."

2009 BBM 2nd Version #M08

To recap - BBM says they don't know if a given jersey is game worn or not because the teams don't tell them when they give them the jerseys.  The teams (ok, A team) say they don't know anything about what BBM does.  So basically a lot of buck passing.

I guess I'm a little disappointed by this but, personally, it doesn't really make that much of difference to me.  I usually only pick up memorabilia cards if I can get them super cheap.  I can see, however, that if you're looking to spend the amount of money that a memorabilia card of Ohtani from his NPB rookie year is going to cost, you might want to have some confidence that Ohtani actually touched the jersey at some point.

It might be instructive to contact each team and ask about the jerseys that they currently provide to BBM and Epoch rather than an eleven year old one but I'm not sure if I'm going to a chance to do that any time soon.

Card Of The Week October 6

MLB's post-season started this past week and four teams - the Orioles, Brewers, Braves and Astros - have already been eliminated.  I thought I'd do a quick post about the members of the remaining eight teams that have a chance to join the fairly exclusive club of players who have won a championship in both NPB and MLB.  I believe there are five players in total (in MLB anyway.  I think the only player on an NPB playoff team who has won an MLB championship is Dallas Keuchel of the Marines). 

Let's go through the players in order of most recent championships.  A note before we begin - BBM used to do a box set for each year's Nippon Series that would have been perfect for this post but, unfortunately, they stopped doing it after 2012.  As a result, only one of the cards I'm about to show is from one of those sets.  The other cards are each from the year the player was on the Nippon Series winning team (or for one player, it's the most recent year he won the Series).

Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Dodger - 2022 Orix Buffaloes

2022 Epoch NPB #223

Kodai Senga, Mets - 2015, 2017-20 Fukuoka Softbank Hawks

2020 BBM 1st Version #035

Robert Suarez, Padres - 2019 Fukuoka Softbank Hawks

2019 BBM Hawks #H36

Shohei Ohtani, Dodgers - 2016 Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters 

2016 Calbee #T-03

Yu Darvish, Padres - 2006 Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters

A couple quick notes:  Technically both Senga and Suarez were with the Hawks in other years that they won the Series but I didn't include them since they didn't play in those Series.  If the Dodgers win, Ohtani will be the second player from the 2016 Fighters to win in both leagues as Chris Martin won a World Series with the Braves in 2021.  Should either the Dodgers or Padres win the World Series, they'll be only the third MLB team after the 1978 Yankees and 2007 Red Sox to have two players on the list.