Card Of The Week July 12

There were two events last week that I wanted to highlight.  The first one is that there was a combined no-hitter on Thursday when three Swallows pitchers - Nash Walters, Jesús Liranzo and Jose Quijada - held the Carp hitless in Hiroshima.  It was the sixth combined no-hitter in the regular season in Japanese baseball history* but the first ever in the Central League as all the others had either been in the Pacific League (or the pre-NPB Japan Baseball League) or interleague.  It was also the first all foreign pitcher combined no-no.  

* The Tatsuya Imai-Kaima Taira combined no-hitter from last year is not counted in this list as the team that was no-hit - the Hawks - scored a run which meant it was not a "no-hit, no-run" game

The game was pretty close as the Swallows were clinging to a 1-0 lead going into the bottom of the ninth and things got interesting pretty quickly when Quijada walked the lead off hitter Norihiko Nabara and the next batter, Naru Katsuda, sacrificed Nabara to second.  Sandro Fabian grounded out for the second out but Nabara advanced to third on the play.  Shogo Sakura then walked, putting the winning run on first and bringing up pinch hitter Ryosuke Kikuchi.  One of the pitches to him went a bit wild but Swallows catcher Yudai Koga blocked the ball and kept Nabara at third.  Shu Kubo, who was pinch running for Sakura, moved up to second on the play (he's actually credited with a stolen base) so a base hit by Kikuchi would likely win the game for the Carp.  Kikuchi struck out though, ending the threat and the no-hitter.

Previously in a case like this, I'd share cards of the pitchers involved but since foreign players are kind of ephemeral in NPB and all three pitchers joined NPB in since 2024, the last year I have cards for, I don't have any cards of them.  Instead, I'm sharing a card of Koga, who's blocking of the errant pitch in the ninth saved the shutout and potentially the game:

2024 BBM Swallows #S41

The other event I wanted to mention was that on Tueday, Shohei Ohtani hit the 300th home run of his MLB career.  I thought I'd share a card commemorating his first NPB home run some 13 years ago Friday:

2014 BBM Fighters #F79

Most Cards Per Team

I've really been remiss at reading other people's blogs the last few months.  I've been really busy with any number of things and I just haven't gotten around to do it much lately.  Like I haven't gotten around to reading that stack of the print edition of The Onion sitting on my desk.  So I didn't notice a post that Night Owl had done back in March about the most cards he had for each team until I saw Kenny's version of it when I was looking through his blog to see if he said anything about the last batch of cards he sent me.  I don't know if Night Owl had intended this to be a "Blog Bat Around" but Kenny was treating it that way so I decided I'd do a similar one.  For Japanese teams, of course, not MLB ones like Night Owl and Kenny did.

Night Owl had used his listings at TCDB to generate his numbers but since I don't have my cards listed there, I had to use my own database which has some issues.  So I don't think these numbers are completely accurate but they're probably close enough for the purposes of this post.

We'll go through the teams in alphabetical order by their full names which means that first up is the Chiba Lotte Marines:

2006 SCM #71

I was kind of surprised that the 112 cards I have of Kazuya Fukuura was the most for the Marines but he did a 26 year career.  The Lotte Orion that I have the most cards of is Michiyo Arito with 44.

Chunichi Dragons:

2003 Chunichi Sports #34

This was not a surprise - Masahiro Yamamoto played until he was 50.  The 152 cards I have of him does not include his first cards with Vero Beach in 1988 (since those wouldn't be Dragons cards).

Fukuoka Softbank Hawks:

2023 Hawks #23SBH316

I've got 162 cards of 'Gita.  Just for grins, I ran the numbers for the Daiei and Nankai versions of the team and got Koji Akiyama (81) and Hiromitsu Kadota (57) respectively.

Hanshin Tigers:

2012 Coris #22

Not sure who I thought would be top for the Tigers but it wasn't Fujikawa who I have 148 cards for.

Hiroshima Toyo Carp:

2012 Front Runner Carp Starting Lineup #13

I figured the top player for the Carp would have been someone like Koji Yamamoto but, nope, it's Tomonori Maeda with 140 cards.

Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters:

2012 Bandai Owners League 04 #017

I was kind of disappointed that the 127 cards I have of Sho Nakata with the Fighters was the most for that team.  I was hoping it was going to be Shohei Ohtani but I "only" have 107 cards of him with Nippon-Ham.  Like with the Hawks, I ran the numbers for some of the team's earlier incarnations and I have 76 cards of Yukio Tanaka with the non-Hokkaido version of the Hawks and 37 cards of Isao Harimoto with the Toei Flyers.

Orix Buffaloes:

2011 Orix Player Card #9

The 115 cards I have of T-Okada is the most for any and all of the team's names, just beating out Ichiro's 110, the most for the BlueWave version of the team.  I figured the most for the Hankyu Braves would be either Yutaka Fukumoto or Hisashi Yamada and it turned out to be Fukumoto with 67, beating Yamada by two.  Just for grins, I ran the numbers for the Orix Braves and got seven cards for Nobuyuki Hoshino.

Saitama Seibu Lions:

2018 Lions Rookies & Stars #55 (image variant)

This was absolutely not a surprise - I have 223 cards of Takeya Nakamura which is almost 60 cards more than the second place player - Takumi Kuriyama with 166.  The leaders for the Nishitetsu, Taiheiyo Club and Crown Lighter versions of the team were Kazuhisa Inao (60), Osamu Higashio (14) and Akinobu Mayumi (5) respectively.  It's kind of weird that Mayumi's the most of the Crown Lighter cards since he's remembered mostly as a Tiger but I think BBM has taken some perverse pleasure over the years of reminding everyone he came up as a Lion.

Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles

2007 Konami Baseball Heroes 3 Highlights #B07H006

I would have thought that Masahiro Tanaka's seven years in MLB would have allowed someone else to catch up with him for the most Eagles cards but his 163 card total was 40 more than the second place player, Takahiro Norimoto.  

Tokyo Yakult Swallows:

1994 Kanebo #001

Another non-surprise - Atsuya Furuta's 173 cards beats all other Swallows (and Atoms).  Masaichi Kaneda leads the Kokutetsu version with 24 cards.

Yokohama DeNA Baystars:

2016 Kabaya/Epoch Central League Gum #32

Daisuke Miura's 152 cards leads all Baystars/Whales but because his career straddled the last three eras for the franchise - Yokohama Taiyo Whales, Yokohama BayStars and Yokohama DeNA Baystars, he doesn't lead for any of the particular era.  Kazuhiko Endo (36) has the most for the Yokohama Taiyo Whales, Takuro Ishii (94) has the most for the Yokohama BayStars and Yasuaki Yamasaki (112) has the most for DeNA.  Masaji Hiramatsu's 31 leads the pre-Yokohama Taiyo Whales.

Yomiuri Giants:

1962 Doyusha JCM 55

Another non-surprise.  With 261 cards, Shigeo Nagashima leads all the Yomiuri Giants players.  Hell, the 272 total cards I have of him (including cards with Rikkio University, the Japan National Team and in street clothes) is the most I have of any player.

That's the counts for the 12 current franchises but I also ran the number for the Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes:

2001 BBM Preview #P114

I don't know, I guess I was expecting this to be Hideo Nomo but his exit from NPB after 1994 capped his cards at 34, tied for tenth place with Ralph Bryant on the list.  I have 81 cards of Norihiro Nakamura, ten more than for Tuffy Rhodes.

I also ran the numbers for the Japan National Team (including Samurai Japan):

2000 Upper Deck Sydney Olympic Games Japanese Team Cards #213

Actually, I first ran the numbers on "Samurai Japan" and found I had a tie between Shohei Ohtani and Tetsuto Yamada with 17 cards (14 of Ohtani's cards were from the 2023 WBC).  But the Japan National Team has only gone by "Samurai Japan" since 2013 so I decided that I needed to include the previous incarnations as well.  Which resulted in Daisuke Matsuzaka's 27 cards (covering the 2000 Olympics, the 2003 Asian Games and the 2006 and 2009 WBCs) leading the pack.

Card Of The Week July 5

A day late this week due to our house losing power for 25 hours due to a major storm on Saturday night...

I had seen that the Mets had fired manager Carlos Mendoza a few weeks ago but I hadn't realized that they had replaced him with Andy Green on an interim basis.  Green had played in Japan for the Fighters in 2007 and it got me wondering how many of the current MLB managers ever played in NPB.  The answer is two - Green and Diamondbacks manager Tory Lovullo who spent 2000 with the Yakult Swallows.

In contrast, three of the current NPB managers played in MLB - Tigers manager Kyuji Fujikawa (Cubs & Rangers), Fighters manager Tsuyoshi Shinjo (Mets & Giants) and Eagles manager Masato Yoshii (Mets, Rockies, & Expos).  Three other NPB managers played in the US/Canada but not MLB - Fumiya Nishiguchi of the Lions played for the Sioux City Explorers of the independent Northern League in 1995 and both Dragons manager Kazuki Inoue and Hawks manager Hiroki Kokubo played in the Hawaiian Winter League in the 1990's*.

* I know Kokubo was with the Kauai Emeralds in 1994 but I'm not sure when Inoue was with the West Oahu CaneFires.  The Emeralds became the CaneFires when they moved to Waipahu on the island of Oahu after 1994 but I don't know which of the three remaining seasons in the league's first incarnation Inoue was with them.  It's been very frustrating that this is one of the few leagues that Baseball-Reference doesn't have any records for.

Here are NPB cards of both Green and Kokubo:

2007 BBM Fighters #F054

2000 BBM Diamond Heroes #194

Pillbox Hats In NPB

I've been seeing some coverage lately of the pillbox hats that MLB teams wore for the 1976 All Star games (and some teams continued wearing afterwards) and thought it'd be fun to do a quick post about when NPB teams wore similar hats on a couple occasions.  Oddly enough, however, baseball cards showing these hats are almost non-existent.  I only know of two, and, bizarrely, they are both from the same set which was issued 30-ish years after the hats were used.

I'll be relying on my usual uniform references for this post - the book The History of Uniform (HOU) and the mook Professional Baseball Uniform Encyclopedia 1934-2013 (PBU).

Now, obviously, the bicentennial of the United States was not something that merited a major celebration in Japan, but NPB decided to adopt pillbox hats for the 1979 All Star games (there were three that year) to celebrate the league's 30th Anniversary - or, more accurately, the 30th season after the Japan Baseball League (JBL) reorganized itself into the two leagues (Central and Pacific) of Nippon Professional Baseball.  HOU does not appear to mention this anywhere but there's a small blurb on it in PBU's section called "How To Dress For The All-Star Game" (p. 86):

The text here mentions that most teams just added stripes to their regular hats but Kintetsu used a completely new design.

The only baseball card I've found that shows one of these hats is from the 2009 BBM Sadaharu Oh Memorial set.  Oh had hit his tenth All Star game home run in Game One in Osaka, setting a new record.  He took home the MVP award for that game: 

2009 BBM Sadaharu Oh Memorial #50

While there don't appear to be any other baseball cards that show these hats, the interior of one of Calbee's albums that were available as a giveaway in 1979 show a sequence of photos of Tigers pitcher Shigeru Kobayashi wearing it:

The Central League held a post-season East-West All Star game almost every year between 1979 and 1990 (with the exception of 1989).  For the first two years, the players wore special uniforms for this game that included pillbox caps.  Here's the page from HOU describing the uniforms:

The text here erroneously says that this was the first time a pillbox hat was worn in NPB.  The 1979 All Star Series would have been held about three and a half months earlier than the 1979 Central League East-West All Star game.

Here's the blurb from PBU about it:

The 1980 game, held in Nagoya Stadium, was treated as the retirement game for both Sadaharu Oh and Morimichi Takagi.  The photo of Oh's do-age (number three in the above scan) was used on another card in the 2009 BBM Sadaharu Oh Memorial set:

2009 BBM Sadaharu Oh Memorial #55

This is the only card I've ever seen depicting these uniforms although I did see some "Fuji Film Photos" of Oh on Ebay that included shots from this game.

The Pacific League held a similar game off and on between 1981 and 2006 but, as far as I've been able to tell, they never wore the pillbox hats.

The final occurrence that I know about with pillbox hats in NPB was for the 1980 "Junior All Star Game".  This is the minor league All Star game held between the then-two farm leagues - the Eastern and Western Leagues.  (This game is now known as the "Fresh All Star Game").  Normally the players in this game wear their team's uniform but for the 1980 game, they wore special uniforms that included pillbox hats.  Here's the writeup from HOU:

Here's the blurb from PBU:

As far as I know, there are no baseball cards that feature players wearing these uniforms and hats.  

More Calbees From Kenny

I got home from work today to discover I'd received another envelope from Kenny (aka Zippy Zappy) in Japan.  Like the last one I got from him, this one contained several cards from the 2026 Calbee Series One set.  This time, all the cards were base cards from the set:

#008 Kota Tatsu

#014 Kotaro Kurebayashi

#023 Hiroshi Kaino

#021 Shuta Tonosaki

#T-21

#C-03

That final card is one of six checklist cards in the set.  The checklist cards for Calbee used to feature some of the best and most interesting photos in the set but for the past two years have featured images of the mascots instead.  Last year they were drawings but this year they seem to just be dull photos.  It's one of many decisions that the company has made over the past four years or so that make me scratch my head.

But despite that, I'm, as always, very grateful to Kenny for sending me the cards.  Thanks again!

Card Of The Week June 28

Interleague play wrapped up a week and a half ago and, for the first time ever, the Lions were interleague champions.  They went 14-3-1 during the three-ish weeks of interleague play for a winning percentage of .824, the highest mark in the history (that goes back to 2005 with the exception of 2020).  Seibu's Shinya Hasegawa was named interleague MVP, partly because of his getting sayonara hits in back-to-back games a few weeks ago.  

As I mentioned when I featured him two weeks ago, Hasegawa was originally an ikusei player.  He was taken by the Lions in the second round of the development player phase of the 2020 draft and wasn't added to the 70 man roster until mid-season in 2022.  Here's his "1st Version Update" card from the 2022 BBM Fusion set (#620), his first card in anyone's "flagship" set:

Sorry for the lack of posts lately.  I've been ridiculously busy the last couple weeks but I'm hoping things settle down some this week and I can get back to writing somewhat regularly.

Card Of The Week June 21

Normally this week I'd be doing a post for the Interleague MVP but I am currently on the road so I've had to prepare this post a week early.  Last Monday, the Eagles named former Chiba Lotte Marines manager Masato Yoshii as their new manager, replacing interim manager Tatsuya Shiokawa after just a week.  I thought I'd share what I believe to be Yoshii's first ever baseball card from the 1988 Takara Buffaloes set (#36):