Dayan Viciedo

I had had a list of players that I had intended to do retirement posts for this past off season but between not having time and not having 2024 cards for them yet, I've pretty much decided against doing any more of them than I've already done.  But when I heard that former Chunichi Dragons import Dayan Viciedo had signed with Tecolotes de Dos Laredos of the Mexican League last week, I figured it was a good time to do a quick post about him.

Viciedo joined the Dragons in 2016 after having played for several years for the Chicago White Sox, the team he'd signed with after defecting from Cuba in 2008.  He had some very good seasons in Nagoya,  with 2018 particularly standing out.  He led the Central League in both batting (.348) and hits (178) that season and also had 26 home runs and 99 RBIs.  He won Best 9 awards in 2018 and 2019 and Golden Glove awards in 2020 and 2021.  He made the All Star team three times - 2016, 2021 and 2022.  He also set a Central League record for most hits in a month with 47 in August of 2018.

His playing time started to diminish due to injuries and ineffectiveness in 2023 and he only got into 15 games with the top team last season, despite the fact that he'd been in NPB long enough that he no longer counted as a foreign player.  The Dragons let him go at the end of the season.

Here's cards of him from across his nine year NPB career:

2016 BBM 2nd Version #570

2016 Epoch Record Breakers #18

2017 Calbee Series One #072

2018 BBM Fusion #098

2019 BBM 1st Version #288

2020 BBM 30th Anniversary #133

2021 Calbee Series Three #198

2022 BBM Dragons #D53

2023 BBM 1st Version #311

2023 Topps NPB #6

2024 Epoch NPB #157

Rookies and Players On New Teams In Calbee Series One

Calbee released this year's Series One last week, about six weeks later than the set usually comes out.  I had wondered back in March when I had learned from Calbee what their release plan for the set was whether they'd take advantage of the delay to include rookies and/or players who had changed teams over the winter in the set.  From what I can tell looking at the cards over at Jambalaya, I don't believe that they did.  

I was pretty confident that Calbee had included rookies and players who had changed teams - let's call the "newcomers" because I'm going to get sick of typing out that phrase pretty quick - in the Series One sets from past years.  I was also pretty confident that they hadn't done so in a while.  But I didn't have a sense for how often they had done it so I decided to do some research.

I decided the best way to do this would be to brute force it.  I have complete Calbee sets from 2012 to 2024 so I basically looked at each card from each set to see if (a) it was from Series One and (b) if the player on the card was a "newcomer" to their team.  This turned out to be a little easier than it sounds due to a feature of Calbee's card backs.  Like BBM's card backs, you can see the teams that a player has belonged to by looking at Calbee's card backs.  It's probably easiest to show an example:

2012 Calbee Series One #038

This card is for Takeshi Yamasaki.  The text I highlighted in the red oval lists that he was an infielder taken in the second round of the 1986 draft and then lists the teams he played for - Aikodai Meiden High School, Chunichi, Orix, Rakuten and then, starting in 2012, Chunichi again.  Only the player's current team has a year associated with it.  This made it pretty straightforward - I just had to check the card backs and look for the year the set was released in this section.  So I looked for "2012" in the 2012 card backs, "2013" in the 2013 card backs, etc.  Then I just had to verify that the card was in Series One which I could tell by the card number (001-072 in 2012-13, 2016-22; 001-084 in 2014-15 and 001-060 in 2023-24).  

What I found didn't really surprise me a lot.  I found a total of 45 "newcomer" cards between 2012 and 2019.  There were five each in 2012 and 2014; nine in 2015; five in 2016; four in 2017; 13(!) in 2018 and four in 2019.  That 13 in 2018 is mostly due to the "Dora-Ichi" subset that included the first round draft picks from the 2017 draft.  Other Calbee sets have had similar subsets (most notably 2013 which has Shohei Ohtani's first Calbee card) but they're usually included the Series Two set (although the 2011 Series One set also had this subset so that Calbee could get a card of Yuki Saitoh out sooner).  If we don't include that subset, the 2018 set would only have one "newcomer" card.

I came up with three categories for the players on the cards - "Rookie", "New Team" (a player who switched teams over the winter via either free agency or a trade) and "Overseas Return" (a player returning to NPB after playing in North America). I discovered that there was the same number of "Rookie" cards as "New Team" cards - 20 each.  Once again, though, the number of "Rookie" cards includes all twelve of the "Dora-Ichi" cards from the 2018 set.  There were only five "Overseas Return" players which kind of surprised me - it had felt like there were more when I was compiling the list.

I was also surprised that there were no "newcomer" cards in the 2013 set which seemed kind of odd.  It did not surprise me, however, that there have been none since the 2019 set.  As I said above, I'd felt pretty confident that it had been a while since a Series One set had had any of these cards and I think five years (six if you include this year) counts as "a while").

Here's a list of all the cards I found:

Year	Player	Card Number	Type
2012	Lee, Dae-ho	024	New Team
2012	Yamasaki, Takeshi	038	New Team
2012	Sugiuchi, Toshiya	053	New Team
2012	Murata, Shuichi	055	New Team
2012	Ramirez, Alex	070	New Team
2014	Matsui, Yuki	001	Rookie
2014	Mori, Tomoya	010	Rookie
2014	Wakui, Hideaki	017	New Team
2014	Ibata, Hirokazu	043	New Team
2014	Ohsera, Daichi	059	Rookie
2015	Matsuzaka, Daisuke	004	Overseas Return
2015	Nakajima, Hiroyuki	008	Overseas Return
2015	Koyano, Eiichi	012	New Team
2015	Tanaka, Kensuke	015	Overseas Return
2015	Arihara, Kohei	019	Rookie
2015	Anraku, Tomohiro	038	Rookie
2015	Arai, Takahiro	060	New Team
2015	Ohbiki, Keiji	078	New Team
2015	Naruse, Yoshihisa	081	New Team
2016	Wada, Tsuyoshi	004	Overseas Return
2016	Imae, Toshiaki	033	New Team
2016	Okoye, Louis	034	Rookie
2016	Sakaguchi, Tomotaka	041	New Team
2016	Fujikawa, Kyuji	053	Overseas Return
2017	Kishi, Takayuki	027	New Team
2017	Yoh, Daikan	043	New Team
2017	Yamaguchi, Shun	047	New Team
2017	Itoi, Yoshio	057	New Team
2018	Matsui, Kazuo	009	New Team
2018	Yoshizumi, Haruto	D-01	Rookie
2018	Saito, Hiromasa	D-02	Rookie
2018	Kondoh, Hiroki	D-03	Rookie
2018	Tajima, Daiki	D-04	Rookie
2018	Kiyomiya, Kotaro	D-05	Rookie
2018	Yasuda, Hisanori	D-06	Rookie
2018	Nakamura, Shosei	D-07	Rookie
2018	Baba, Kosuke	D-08	Rookie
2018	Azuma, Katsuki	D-09	Rookie
2018	Kuwahara, Takuya	D-10	Rookie
2018	Suzuki, Hiroshi	D-11	Rookie
2018	Murakami, Munetaka	D-12	Rookie
2019	Kaneko, Chihiro	016	New Team
2019	Fujiwara, Kyota	025	Rookie
2019	Neo, Akira	062	Rookie
2019	Nishi, Yuki	069	New Team

One thing that struck me as I was looking at the cards was that it sometimes it became obvious that a card was a "newcomer" card just by looking at the card front.  Since most of the photos on Calbee cards are action shots from games, any photo that looks different really stands out.  For Calbee to get a photo of a "newcomer" into a set being released in mid to late March, that photo would have to be taken at training camp in early February, before even any practice games would be played.  As a result, a lot of the photos show the player practicing or, in a couple cases, just standing around.  Here's an example "newcomer" card from each year:

2012 Calbee Series One #024

2014 Calbee Series One #043

2015 Calbee Series One #004

2016 Calbee Series One #041

2017 Calbee Series One #057

2018 Calbee Series One #009

2019 Calbee Series One #016

Note - I had done a post on Calbee rookies a few years back which is why I decided against using any cards of rookies in this post.

Card Of The Week May 11

There was a no-hitter in Japan last Monday but you may not have heard much about it.  There's two reasons for that.  The first is that it was a combined no-hitter which NPB does not count as an "official" no-hitter.  The second is that it was in the Eastern League, one of NPB's two farm leagues.  Four Fighters pitchers kept the Swallows hitless at Kamagaya Stadium.  Starter Sun Yi-Lei went six innings, striking out four and walking two.  After that three relievers - Kodai Yamamoto, Aneutys Zabala and Takumi Yamamoto - each threw perfect innings to close out the 5-0 victory for Nippon-Ham.  Here are cards of all four pitchers - as Sun and Kodai Yamamoto are both development players (ikusei), they don't have a lot of cards for me to choose from:

2024 Epoch Fighters Premier Edition #25

2023 Bowman NPB #BP-48

2024 BBM 1st Version #306

2024 Epoch NPB #322

I got an email from someone this week asking me about Sun's 2023 Panini USA Baseball Stars & Stripes card.  I didn't know about it before he had asked, but that set contained autographed memorabilia cards for the 2022 Taiwanese collegiate national team (similar to the ones for the Japanese collegiate national team in the 2019, 2020 and 2024 editions of that set).  Sun's card apparently is in high demand and I suspect that will increase when the Fighters move him to the 70 man roster and he makes his ichi-gun debut, probably later this season.

I have to mention another event that happened this past week.  Yesterday's Fighter's 8-7 victory over the Eagles featured an event that had never happened before in NPB history.  In the top of the fourth, with the Eagles trailing 3-2, Itsuki Murabayashi hit a grand slam to put Rakuten up 6-3.  An inning later, Chusei Mannami hit a grand slam (his second home run of the game) to put the Fighters back in the lead, 8-6.  It was the first time ever that two players hit "come-from-behind" grand slams in the same game.  Here are cards of the players:

2021 BBM Eagles #E58

2024 Topps Stadium Club NPB #160

Team Sets Galore!

Once again it's time to do a run-down of the sets that have recently been announced:

- BBM has announced four more of their "comprehensive" team sets for 2025.  I will just repeat the general details for the sets that I've said before - each set has a base set of 81 cards, most of which are "regular" player cards featuring the manager and the players on the 70 man roster plus a couple subsets (which may not be fully defined yet) to fill out the set.  Each set also has 18 non-premium insert cards split into a variety of sets which also may not be fully defined yet.  The sets also have two or three types of premium inserts that are serially numbered - Treasure, Esperanza and Eminent.  There will be rare parallel versions of some of the "regular" player cards that will feature photo variants or different backgrounds.

Release Date	Team	Regular Cards	Subsets	Non-Premium Inserts	Treasure	Esperanza	Eminent	Other
Mid June	Fighters	69	Nicknames (3), Dual Wielding (3), Superstars Parade (6)	Main Players (9), Bright Future (3), Rising Tide (3), Scoring Sources (3)	24	15		Autograph cards
Late June	Buffaloes	68	Osaka Natives (7), Combination (3), Poses Of Joy (3)	Main Players (9),  Ace  Number (1), Monster & Genius (2), Promising Young Players (3), Rookies (3)	24	15	24	Autograph cards, three types of memorabilia cards
Late June	Carp	70	Iron Wall (2), Promising Rising Stars (3), Smiles (3), Famous Scenes (3)	Core Players (9), Pitchers To Watch (3), Young Fielders (3), Rookies(3)	24	15		Autograph cards
Mid July	Baystars	66	Mascot (1), Powerful Catchers (3), Nakayoshi Combi (3), Dash (3), Record Achievers (4)	Core Players (9), Relief (3), Promising Young Players (3), Rookies (3)	24	15	24	Autograph cards

With these four announcements, the only teams left that BBM has not announced their 2025 "comprehensive" sets for are the Hawks and Tigers.

- Epoch has announced another of their "Premier Edition" team sets - this one's for the Carp and will be out on May 31st.  It'll have a 45 card base set and all 45 cards have a hologram parallel.  The set will have the same batch of inserts as the rest of the "Premier Edition" sets which are...deep breath...three varieties of "Regular Foil Signature" ("silver", "gold" and "hologram") (18 cards each), two varieties of "Regular Decomori Signature" ("hologram" and "hologram parallel") (18 cards each), five varieties of "Time To Shine" ("A","B","C","D","E") (six cards each) and three varieties of "Decomori Signature" ("gold","green" and "hologram") (six cards each).  I think all the inserts are serially numbered.  There are also the "GEM" and "BLACK GEM" "special insert cards" (nine cards in each) that I think are much more limited.  There are also four different types of autographed cards available - "Authentic" (45 cards), "Star" (2 cards), "Combo" (4 cards) and "Rookie" (8 cards).

- Bushiroad has announced expansion packs for their DreamOrder collectible card game for the last two teams that they hadn't done yet - the Fighters and Marines.  The cards will be released on June 14th.  Each pack is 500 yen and contains five cards.  I'm entirely sure what cards are available in the packs but it appears for each team there's some number (between 10 and 16) of "super rare" (SR) cards, ten "rare" cards and thirty "common" cards.  I think that some of the cards are "reprints" which I assume means they're essentially duplicates of cards that were previously issued.  There are also parallel and "special" parallel cards.  OB players are available as well as active players.

- "216 Co., Ltd." (aka "Hits" and "TIC") is issuing some sets of something that's not quite baseball cards but rather "mini folding screens".  Each "mini folding screen" is a panel about 24 centimeters (9 1/2 inches) by 13.5 centimeters (around 5 1/3 inches) which is split into three parts.  They've announced three team sets so far - the Giants (released on May 24th), the Dragons (released on May 31st) and the Hawks (June 7th).  Each set has four "normal" screens - each of which shows two to five players.  Each screen has a "gold stamped signature" parallel version.

- The Hanshin Tigers have a promotion going on right now where they are giving away baseball cards with certain meals at Koshien Stadium.  There are 31 total cards available - 21 of which are for manager Kyuji Fujikawa and current Tigers players while the other ten are OB players (including Randy Bass).  The cards were available starting last Friday (May 2nd) and the promotion will continue until May 22nd (although the Tigers will only be home for nine days between now and the end of the promotion).  The cards are randomly distributed so just because you buy the meal associated with a particular player doesn't mean you'll get that player's card.  There are autographed cards available randomly as well - not sure if that's ever been done with a team issued set before.  (H/T NPB On Reddit.) 

Card Of The Week May 4

2004 BBM Golden Arms #008

I came across the above card of Masaaki Koyama when I was preparing the memorial post I did for him last week and I found it very intriguing.  I've had this card for years but I had just now noticed that the batter was a Swallows player.  I had assumed that Koyama was with the Orions when this photo was taken since the logo on his hat was "TO" which had to be for "Tokyo Orions", right?  Since the Orions and Swallows were in separate leagues and there was no inter-league play until 2005, I figured the photo had to either be from an exhibition game or, perhaps, an All Star game.  I had gone so far as to look at which All Star games Koyama had appeared in for the 1964 and 1965 seasons and see which position players for the Swallows had been on the Central League teams in those years to try to identify the batter - my prime candidate was catcher Hiromitsu Negoro.  I figured I would add another bullet point to the list of "quick notes" at the end of the post to include my research.  But there turned out to be one little problem.

That's NOT a Tokyo Orions hat.

As a sanity check, I looked at my copy of History Of Uniform to see what years the Orions wore that hat.  They didn't list it.  It wouldn't be the first time that History Of Uniform didn't list something, though, so I wasn't too deterred by this.  I assumed it was a hat that they had worn in 1964 and 1965 since the team changed the name from Daimai to Tokyo Orions in 1964 and there was a somewhat significant uniform change starting in 1966.  But after doing all the All Star roster research I mentioned above, I had a sudden thought - what if that's a Tigers hat?  I grabbed History Of Uniform again and flipped to the Tigers section and, sure enough, the Tigers wore that hat in 1960, the final year they were known as the "Osaka Tigers".   That "TO" is really an "OT".

In the end I pulled the card from the Memorial post, figuring it was less attractive without the photo being from an All Star game.  But I thought the whole story might be interesting enough for a Card Of The Week post on a weekend when I'm away from home and can't do a post related to something timely.

Mel Bailey Postcards

I got an email a few weeks back from someone who was trying to put together a comprehensive list of Mel Bailey postcards.  Mel Bailey was a US Air Force captain stationed in Japan in the mid to late 1960's who - along with Navy CPO Bud Ackerman - was responsible for importing a number of NPB card sets to the US.  Bailey also took photos at baseball games in both Japan and the US and sold postcards featuring these photos on them.  I had picked up ten of his postcards some time ago and was able to provide the person who contacted me with the list of what I had.

During our email exchange, he mentioned that there was a Mel Bailey postcard of Dick Stuart available on Ebay.  I was sorely tempted by it since there aren't any known baseball cards of Stuart during his two years with the Taiyo Whales.  But I was also trying to keep my vow of not buying anything that wasn't on my want list.  I finally gave in and pulled the trigger right before the auction ended.  Here's the postcard:

I found it interesting that there were some differences between this postcard and the ones I already had.  For one thing, this one is slightly larger than the others - it's 3 3/4 inches wide and 5 1/2 inches high while the others are 3 1/2 inches wide and 5 7/16 inches high.  The other obvious thing is that the other postcards I have seem to have a softer focus - although I'm not sure I'm really using the correct terminology.  Here's the other ten postcards so you can maybe see what I'm trying to talk about:

Yukio Nishimoto

Minoru Murayama

Katsuya Nomura

Futoshi Nakanishi

Katsuo Ohsugi

Katsuo Ohsugi

Masaaki Koyama

Masaichi Kaneda

Masaichi Kaneda

Tetsuharu Kawakami

One other significant difference is the backs of the postcards.  My correspondent said that Bailey mostly printed his postcards on Kodak paper but also used EtchTone and Mitsubishi.  All of the ones that I had already had were on Kodak paper:

I played with the contrast a little in that image to make the writing a little more visible.  I believe that that's Bailey's handwriting identifying the player.

The Stuart card, however, used Mitsubishi paper:

It barely shows up in the scan but Bailey had stamped "Photo By Mel Bailey" just to the left of the line in the center.  I don't know if Bailey wrote "1966" on this but it's not correct - Stuart spent 1966 with the Mets and Dodgers.

Since there were very few NPB baseball cards produced in the late 60's, Bailey's postcards are an intriguing way to maybe fill in some gaps.

Card Of The Week April 27

There were two walk off wins today in NPB and, luckily, they were both in the Pacific League so I can share video of them.  

First up, Takeya Nakamura of the Lions came through in the bottom of the ninth with a pinch hit single with two on and two out to beat the Buffaloes in Tokorozawa:

About an hour later up in Sendai, Yoshiaki Watanabe of the Eagles hit a ball into the left field corner with the bases loaded and nobody out in the eleventh inning to beat the Hawks:

There was some significance to both events.  The 41 year old Nakamura became the oldest player in club history to get a sayonara hit and the Eagles' victory was the 1300th in club history (H/T NPB Reddit).

Here are team issued cards of both players:

2020 Lions Fan Club #60

2020 Eagles Team Cards 1st Version #54