Japanese Baseball Cards

Wednesday, November 6, 2024

Programming Note

I just wanted to mention that I deactivated my Twitter account this morning. I'm available on Bluesky as @npbcardguy.bsky.social and Spoutible as @npbcardguy. There don't seem to be a lot of NPB accounts at either place yet but I'm hoping that will change.

It'll be interesting to see if my posts get less visibility now.

Monday, November 4, 2024

Trip Overview Part 12 - Days 15 & 16 - Yokohama, Tokyo and Departure

I had a full day planned for Saturday, May 25th, which would be my last full day in Japan. I had tickets for that afternoon's Baystars game and I was planning on stopping off at Mint Yokohama on the way to the ballpark. After the game, I had plans to meet up with John E. Gibson of the Japan Baseball Weekly podcast for dinner somewhere in Ikebukuro.

First things first though as I needed to again address my breakfast situation. I had resigned myself to the fact that my hotel was only offering something I found inedible - rice cakes wrapped with seaweed - but luckily there was a Family Mart conbini a block or two away. I wandered over and picked up some food I could eat and took it back to my room - although I did grab coffee in the hotel lobby on the way back.

I took the subway over to Tokyo Station to catch the train to Yokohama. This was the first time I had been in the station on a weekend and it was astonishingly busy. I mean, it was busy on the weekdays that I had been there in the previous two weeks but it was even busier today. I mentally changed my plans for the next day - I had originally intended to store my suitcase at the station for a few hours after checking out of my hotel and then catching the Yamanoto line and monorail to Haneda later. Dealing with the crowds at the station, though, convinced me I'd be better off leaving my stuff at the hotel and taking the subway to the airport instead.

Yokohama Station was almost as busy and I navigated the crowds as best I could to make way over to Marui City Mall and Mint Yokohama. I spent less than a half hour in the store and then dove back into the crowd at the station to take the quick train ride to the ballpark - it's only about a six minute trip to Kannai station which is only about a block from the ballpark. The Baystars were taking on the Hiroshima Carp and the train was full of fans for both teams.

It's not obvious but the entrance to the park that is closest to the train station is actually in the left field corner. My ticket, however, said that I needed to go in at gate 1 which meant I had to walk all away around the ballpark. I didn't mind too much, though, because if I hadn't done that, I wouldn't have seen the display they had commemorating the 2020 Tokyo Olympic baseball and softball events that were held at the stadium in 2021:

As I passed the outfield gate, I noticed a car parked next to it, facing the field. A number of people were taking photos of it but I had no idea what the significance of it was so I didn't take any. Its purpose would be revealed shortly.

Once I finally made it inside the park, I made a beeline for a display about the history of both the current ballpark and the park that previously had stood on the same site. I had seen this display on my first trip to the ballpark back in 2013 but I had recently learned from Deanna that the plaques of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig that used to be by the foul poles had been moved to the display area. The park that had previously been on this site was used in the 1934 All American tour and both Ruth and Gehrig had hit home runs during the game. I had not known about the plaques in 2013 and my visit to the ballpark in 2019 was...uh...not good so I hadn't been able to see them until now.

I picked up a Keita Sano bento box for lunch and made my way to my seat. My seat was behind home plate but up towards the top of the stadium. I had not realized just how steep this part of the seating bowl was - I think it rivaled the bleachers at Koshien. I was texting John during the game and at one point I mentioned needing some pitons, a hammer and a Sherpa to get up and down to my seat. The view was great though:

There were some pregame ceremonies going on with some sort of junior dance team/cheerleader squad routine. At one point it seemed like there was a hundred or so dancers of all ages all over the field. Once they left, the starting lineups were announced. (I was disappointed that Shugo Maki was out with an injury as he's probably my favorite Baystars player.)

After that, things got a little weird. There was an announcement made, some fireworks went off, the center field gate opened and that car I had seen previously came out onto the field. It came all the way onto the infield before stopping and then two men got out and waved to everyone. The crowd went wild. They got handed a microphone and started talking.

What I eventually learned is that the two men were actors from a TV show from the 1980's called "Abunai Deka" or "AbuDeka" which translates to "Dangerous Detectives". The show has spawned a series of movies and this event was a promotion for the latest one, "Dangerous Cops: Home Coming". The two actors were Hiroshi Tachi who plays Toshiki "Taka" Takayama (he's the one in the black suit) and Kyohei Shibata who plays Yūji Ōshita.

The two of them did the first pitch ceremony, with Shibata delivering the pitch and Tachi acting as umpire. They then participated in some other pregame hijinks before being presented with their own Baystars jerseys and posing for photos with Daisuke Miura and Yoshitomo Tsutsugoh. Here's a video that the Baystars published on Twitter showing all the festivities:

映画『帰ってきたあぶない刑事』タカ＆ユージ#横浜スタジアムへ！😎🏟️

スペシャルゲストとして、#あぶ刑事のタカこと鷹山敏樹役 #舘ひろしさんとユージこと大下勇次役 #柴田恭兵さんが #レパードで登場！🚗🏟️
セレモニアルピッチに登場し、球場を盛り上げていただきました！⚾️💪#baystars pic.twitter.com/9V1JHnsyso
— 横浜DeNAベイスターズ (@ydb_yokohama) May 25, 2024

Despite not knowing what was going on or understanding what was being said, it was a lot of fun watching it all. The actors were obviously having a blast. I've been holding out hope that this will make it onto a "Ceremonial First Pitch" card but it wasn't in the 2nd Version set and I'm not sure Fusion will have anything that early in the season.

Once everything with the actors was over and everything was pulled off the playing field, the game finally started. Hayate Nakagawa was on the mound for DeNA with Shogo Tamamura pitching for the Carp.

It was quickly obvious that this game was going to be a slog. It seemed like every batter went deep into the count and fouled off several pitches. The Carp scored single runs in the top of both the first and second innings but DeNA scored five runs in the bottom of the second before making an out. I started wondering if I was in for a repeat of Tuesday night's 23-0 Hawks game but they didn't score any more.

The Carp fought their way back slowly, since nothing was happening quickly in this game. They scored a run in the fourth and two in the fifth to tie the score but the Baystars scored once in the bottom of the fifth to take a 6-5 lead.

I was continuing to message John and was starting to get concerned about being able to meet up with him that evening. It had taken something two hours and fifteen minutes to get through the fifth inning. I had originally figured that the game would be over around 5 and I'd be in Ikebukuro by 6 but that was starting to look unrealistic.

There was a scary moment in the top of the sixth when Tyler Austin went after a foul popup and fell into the camera well on the first base side. He caught the ball but apparently bruised his wrist and had to come out of the game. Given that Austin has had issues staying healthy, it could have potentially been really bad but luckily I don't think he missed much time.

It was odd, though, because suddenly it seemed like a switch had been thrown and the pace of the game picked up considerably. There started to be relatively quick, 1-2-3 innings and I started to think it'd be possible for the game to be over by 5:30. But my hopes were dashed when Tomoki Ishihara tied the game with a solo home run off Yasuaki Yamasaki in the top of the eighth.

The game dragged on. John and I eventually decided we'd meet up for coffee on Sunday morning before he went to work since there was no way I was going to get to Ikebukuro before 8 PM. Neither team scored in the tenth or eleventh inning but the Carp exploded for three runs in the top of the twelfth. The Baystars went somewhat quietly in the bottom of the inning (they got one hit but all three of their outs were strikeouts) and the game finally ended around 7:15, some five hours and fifteen minutes after it started. The final game of my trip was a 9-6 Carp victory which kept my streak of always seeing the Carp win intact (they're 4-0 in games I've attended between this trip and the 2019 one). Here's a video of the game's highlights, somehow condensed down to only four minutes:

I can't remember why now, but for some reason, my trip back to Tokyo from Yokohama took forever. It should have only been a little over an hour but I didn't get back until after nine. I hadn't had any dinner yet and was disappointed that the Yoshinoya near my hotel had already closed. At this point I was too tired to consider looking for something else and I ended up picking up some food from a nearby Lawsons and taking it back to my room.

What I should have done that evening was head back to Shinjuku to see the Godzilla version of the light show at the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building but I had completely forgotten about it. I remembered the next day, but obviously it was too late then.

Sunday morning started with a another Family Mart run for breakfast before I got all packed up and ready to go. I checked out of my hotel but was able to have them store my suitcase until the afternoon.

Ryan met me at the subway stop just outside my hotel and we headed for Otemachi station to meet up with John. John had told us to meet him at the Dean & Deluca's near the station but we had some difficulty figuring out which one he meant. We eventually found each other but only had a few minutes to talk - although I did record a question for the podcast.

Once we parted ways with John, Ryan and I had to figure out what we wanted to do. We had considered going to Coletre as I wanted to see if they had the new BBM Giants team set. We took a look at the store's Twitter feed, though, and realized it was going to be closed that day due to a card show elsewhere in Japan. We then considered going to Mint Kichijoji before finally deciding to go to Nakano Broadway to check out the Mandarake shop(s) there. Besides Mandarake, we looked for cards in a couple other shops but didn't see anything.

It became time to get ready to head to the airport all too soon so Ryan and I said our goodbyes and I hopped on the train to go back to the hotel. I picked up my bags and caught a subway to Haneda. Everything went smoothly and my plane left on time around 5:15 that afternoon.

I was a little worried on the plane as I was sitting next to a couple with a small baby but he was a trooper, sleeping a lot during the flight and not being super-fussy. I discovered that the plane's in-flight entertainment system had "The Godfather" and since it's one of those movies I've been somewhat embarrassed that I'd never seen, I finally watched it. I also tried to watch some old Simpsons episodes although I kept nodding off during them which was probably a good thing.

We landed in Chicago and I was a little unhappy about how I had to make my connecting flight. We had (obviously) arrived at the international terminal and customs was pretty easy to get through. What was odd was that I had to pick up my checked luggage, walk though a door and immediately hand it off to someone for it to get on my domestic flight. It seemed like that could have been done by the luggage folks since the bag was already tagged to go to Baltimore. I then discovered that I had to go through security again when I got to the domestic terminal as there was no way to get there from the international one without going outside the secure area.

I had about three hours between flights so while these things were kind of annoying, they weren't any big deal. I had time to get something to eat before I boarded my flight to Baltimore. We were supposed to leave at 6:30 and get into Baltimore around 9:30 but things didn't go as planned. First we were delayed so that a couple people flying into the airport would be able to make their connecting flight (us). Then we couldn't pull away from the gate because of other planes being backed up on the taxiway. Once we were finally able to pull away, we had to go into a weather hold as thunderstorms were moving into the area. There were a bunch of us on the tarmac waiting:

We finally took off around 9:30 Chicago time, nearly an hour after we were supposed to have landed at BWI. The storm had moved off towards Lake Michigan as we took off:

We got into Baltimore a little after midnight. I had arranged for a limo ride home which not only was cheaper than leaving a car at the airport for two weeks, it was probably safer than me trying to drive the hour home after traveling for something like 20 hours. The limo service was aware of my flight delay and was ready to get me as soon as I retrieved my luggage. I finally made it home around 2 AM on the morning of Memorial Day. After we slept for a bit, my wife and I went out for breakfast and then we headed down south of Baltimore so that I could meet (and hold) my granddaughter for the first time.

I don't think this will be my last trip to Japan. While I did a bunch of new things, I still have not seen a Dragons' farm team game, the Buffaloes play in Kobe or the Fighters play in Sapporo. I'm not sure when I'm going to make it back though.

This is obviously the last of the "Monsters Of NPB Tour II" posts (a name that John had given my 2019 trip and I thought was appropriate to adapt for this trip). I can't believe it took me almost six months to finish these. I do have one more trip-related post to do but I'm not sure how soon I'll get around to it.

Sunday, November 3, 2024

Card Of The Week November 3

The Yokohama DeNA Baystars defeated the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks today 11-2 in Game 6 of the Nippon Series to win the Series four games to two. It was the Baystars' first championship since 1998 and only the third in their history. Their championship leaves the Hiroshima Toyo Carp as the sole NPB team to not win a championship in the 21st century.

I was somewhat amused when I realized that the last team to employ a certain pitcher in both MLB and NPB won their respective championships this year.

BBM used to issue a box set for the Nippon Series from 1991 until 2012 that included all the players who appeared in the Series as well as cards for the the Series MVP, the "Fighting Spirit" award winner (kind of a "MVP for the losing team" award) and the three "Outstanding Player" award winners. Since BBM no longer publishes this set, I've been featuring those award winners in the first "Card Of The Week" post following the end of the Series since 2014 (since I didn't know they weren't going to do a set in 2013):

Series MVP Masayuki Kuwahara (2024 Topps NPB #148)

"Fighting Spirit" Kenta Imamiya (2024 Epoch NPB #237)

"Outstanding Player" Andre Jackson (2024 BBM 1st Version #063)

"Outstanding Player" Anthony Kay (2024 BBM Baystars #DB35)

"Outstanding Player" Yoshitomo Tsutsugoh (2024 BBM 2nd Version #CE45)

It's a pretty amazing way for Tsutsugoh to end his season considering it started with him getting released by the San Francisco Giants in March. He had rejoined the Baystars in April and made his ichi-gun debut in May.

Also on Monday of last week, this year's Korean Series wrapped up with the Kia Tigers defeating the Samsung Lions in five games. Kia infielder Kim Sun-bin was named MVP of the Series:

2018 SCC KBO Collection 2 Black #SCCR-02B/012

Saturday, November 2, 2024

1934 All American Tour 90th Anniversary - Meiji Jingu Stadium

Today is the 90th Anniversary of the first game on the 1934 All American tour of Japan. As Rob Fitts' book Banzai Babe Ruth describes, this tour of Japan by an MLB All Star team that included Hall of Famers Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Charlie Gehringer, Lefty Gomez and Earl Averill was instrumental in the birth of professional baseball in Japan.* I thought it might be interesting to do a handful of posts about some of the places that the tour went (although I won't be doing every place). I'll be using Rob Fitts' book as my primary source so I recommend picking it up if you want to learn more about the tour.

* If I'm remembering what Jim Allen has said on occasion, there were some professional baseball teams in Kansai (I think) in the 1920's but the team that is now the Yomiuri Giants started from the All Nippon team that played against the MLB stars on this tour

That first game was played in Meiji Jingu Stadium in Tokyo, one of three ballparks used on the tour that are still standing. The All Americans would win this game 17-1. This was the first of five games that the All Americans would play here. They'd win 5-1 on November 4th behind home runs by Foxx, Gehrig and two by Averill; 10-0 on November 10th with home runs by Ruth, Averill and Harold Warstler; and 15-6 on November 17th with Ruth homering twice and Gehrig and Foxx both homering.

For the game on November 11th, the US and Japanese teams split into two mixed teams, one team run by Ruth and the other by Bing Miller. Ruth's team won 13-2 with the Babe hitting two home runs and his teammates Foxx and Averill also homering.

I've been to Jingu a number of times now to see the Swallows play as well as corporate league and Tokyo Big Six collegiate games. As far as I can tell, there are no historic markers of any type commemorating Babe Ruth and the All American team playing here. With the future of the stadium in doubt, it's probably unlikely that there ever will be one.

Triple Champs

In the wake of the Dodgers' World Series championship the other day, there was some chatter on Twitter about not only who had won a championship in both NPB and MLB but who on that list had also won a World Baseball Classic championship. The Dodger's victory meant that that group doubled in size as Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto joined Daisuke Matsuzaka and Koji Uehara. Matsuzaka and Uehara were both on the 2006 WBC champs and Matsuzaka repeated in 2009. Between Matsuzaka and Ohtani, the group includes the winners of three of the five WBC MVP awards with Matsuzaka having won in both 2006 and 2009 and Ohtani having won in 2023. Here are WBC cards for all four players:

2009 Konami Baseball Heroes WBC All Tournament Team #W09A001

2006 Upper Deck WBC Moments #CM-22

2023 Topps Samurai Japan #17

2023 Topps Now WBC #WBC-27

There's been some additional comments about Yamamoto having not only an NPB championship, an MLB championship and a WBC championship but also a Premier 12 (2019) championship and an Olympic Gold Medal (officially 2020 but actually 2021). He's obviously the only one with all five of those. Hell, he's the only one with even four of those although Matsuzaka and Uehara have Bronze Medals from the 2004 Athens games and Ohtani has a "bronze medal" for the 2015 Premier 12. And for what it's worth, Matsuzaka's the only one of the four to also have a Summer Koshien championship (1998).

Reading all this made me start wondering how many other players have been on the winning team for the Premier 12, the Olympics and the World Baseball Classic. Luckily, it's not hard to figure out since there's only been two Premier 12s and the only non-Japanese team to win it - South Korea in 2015 - has never won the WBC. So it's pretty quickly obvious that the only guys to win all three are the players who, like Yamamoto, were on the Samurai Japan rosters for the 2019 Premier 12, the 2020 Tokyo Olympics (played in Yokohama in 2021) and the 2023 World Baseball Classic. There are six such players, including Yamamoto:

2023 Topps Now WBC Champions #WBCJPN-6

2020 Calbee Samurai Japan #16 Takuya Kai

2020 Calbee Samurai Japan #SJ-08 Kensuke Kondoh

2023 BBM Infinity #17

2020 Calbee Samurai Japan #10 (facsimile signature parallel) Yoshinobu Yamamoto

2023 Topps World Baseball Classic #91

I wanted to pick cards from the sets for the three tournaments but I had to settle for only two of them because for some unknown reason, there were no cards issued for the Olympic team.

Obviously these six have been in this club for over a year and a half now but until the discussion about Yamamoto, it never occurred to me to see who else had been on the winners for all three tournaments. With the 2024 Premier 12 starting next week, I thought it'd be interesting to see if there's anyone else who might join this club should Japan repeat as tournament champions.

There isn't.

The roster that was originally announced had Hiromi Itoh on it who was on both the Olympic and WBC teams but he's since been scratched. Taisei (Ota), Hiroto Takahashi, Shosei Togo and Shugo Maki were all on the WBC squad but not on the Olympic team while Ryoya Kurihara was on the Olympic team but the WBC one. The only player on the roster who was on both the WBC and Olympic teams is Sosuke Genda, who's already a member of this club.

Topps Is Back!

I had pretty much figured that Topps wasn't going to release any more NPB sets this year, given that there wasn't a whole lot of time left for them to do it in. But I awoke yesterday morning to a couple Tweets from Mint that the Trading Card Journal had just published information on three new Topps NPB sets that would be out in December. There's no other information out there on the sets yet - not even on Topps' Japanese website (that link is currently redirecting to Topps' US site at least for me although this link seems to work for some reason which is how I know there's no information about the sets there) - and the details are kind of lacking but I'll go ahead and tell you what I know about them:

- The NPB Chrome set will be released on December 13th. The base set 216 cards which breaks down to 18 cards per team. Those 18 cards include the manager and three "rookies" (which are the top three 2023 draft picks). I'll be curious who they have as the manager of the Lions since Kazuo Matsui stepped down at the end of May but Topps hasn't been really good about making their sets up-to-date. I am going to assume, though, that like last year's Chrome set, this isn't just an ugly parallel version of the "regular" 2024 Topps NPB set but will have a different checklist and different photos. There are six types of inserts ("a huge increase" according to the website): "Topps 1959", "Chome All Etch", "Bushido", "Ichiro Majestic Moments", "Base Card Kanji Variation" and "Supercharged". The "Topps 1959" obviously are cards of active players using the 1959 Topps format. I assume that "Base Card Kanji Variation" cards are just that - a version of the base card with the player's name in Kanji. I'm also assuming it's a limited number of cards as opposed to the entire set (in which case it'd be a parallel). Speaking of parallels, I assume there's the usual plethora of them but the set information doesn't list anything about them. The big news is that the autographed cards will include active NPB players which is a first for Topps - their previous sets only had autographs for both active and retired players who had played in MLB. The autographed cards also include autographs for Sadaharu Oh and autographed versions of the "Ichiro Majestic Moments" cards.

- The 206 set is back this year and will be sold in packs this year rather than boxes that were only available on-line. I don't know how big the base set is but my guess would be 216 cards, just like last year's set. There are "mini" parallels available but no word on back variations. The inserts include "Base Cards Image Variations", "Base Cards Comic Book Variations", "Mini Base Cards Image Variation" and "Topps 205". I'm going to again assume that the "Topps 205" cards are cards that will show current NPB players in the T205 tobacco card design. There will also be autographed cards featuring both active and "legend" players (although I don't know if "legends" will include retired NPB players who did not play in MLB). The sample images on the website make it look like this is again a "mugshot" set, at least for the base cards. The set will be released on December 20th.

- Also being released on December 20th is a first for Topps in Japan - a Stadium Club set. I've been kind of hoping for something like this since Topps first got am NPB license so I'm looking forward to seeing if they actually get the interesting choices of photos that the MLB version of this set usually has. The website promises that "The photos in the Stadium Club are excellent! This work also contains many picturesque photos such as fine plays and fist pumps!" so the expectations are high. To be fair, one of the few compliments I've had about Topps' NPB products is that they've done a decent job with the photo selection so I'm hoping that trend continues with this. Once again, the website does not say how big the set is but I'd guess either 180 (15 cards per team) or 216 (18 cards per team). There's four types of inserts - "Beam Team", "Special Forces", "Power Packed" and "Hanabi" and, again, autographed cards for active NPB players as well as Sadaharu Oh.

While I wouldn't put it past them to sneak out yet another set announcement, it looks like there will be no NPB Bowman set this year. While it's been a set I've mocked quite a bit, I was kind of looking forward to seeing if they were going to do the "1955 Bowman Anime" inserts like the MLB version had this year.

Friday, November 1, 2024

Dual Champions Revisited

I did a post a few weeks ago that listed the potential new members of the "dual champions" club - players who have won both a Nippon Series and World Series championship. Now that the Dodgers have knocked off the Yankees, there are two new members of this club - Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto.

This means it's time for an updated post. Ohtani and Yamamoto are the first new members since Chris Martin joined in 2021 which was the last time I did a post about this (although third altogether - the first was in 2010 when I first came up with the list and the second was when Koji Uehara joined it in 2013). I'll remind you of my rules for this - to qualify, the player has to appear in the World Series or Nippon Series in question, not just be on the roster or to have played for the team in their winning season. So George Vukovich, who was on the roster for the 1980 World Champion Philadelphia Phillies but didn't play in the Series and then won Nippon Series with the Seibu Lions in 1986 and 1987, doesn't count. Neither do Adrian Garrett (14 games for the 1972 A's, won championship with 1979 Carp), Doug Jennings (4 games for 1989 A's, NPB champ with 1996 Blue Wave), Domingo Martinez (15 games between 1992 & 1993 for Blue Jays, NPB Champ with 2000 Giants) and Munenori Kawasaki (16 games with the 2016 Cubs, NPB Champs with the Hawks in 2003 & 2011) - there may be others like these four. Please note - other folks have lists out there and may have different criteria. I'm not going to argue that they're wrong and I'm right - I'm just explaining why my list is different.

Here's the list of players, more or less in the order that they made the list. Their World Series winning teams are listed first, followed by their Nippon Series winning teams: