Monday, October 30, 2023

RIP Frank Howard

Frank Howard, famed slugger for the Dodgers and Senators in the 1960's and manager for the Padres and Mets in the 1980's, has passed away at age 87.  You may be asking yourself "what has that got to do with Japanese baseball?"  It turns out that Frank Howard ended his playing career in 1974 in Japan as a member of the Taihieyo Club Lions.  

Howard signed with the Lions as part of the team's attempt to build attendance by signing former major league players.  Howard's 382 home runs and 1,119 RBIs in the majors were the most ever by a foreign player entering NPB and would remain so for almost 40 years until Andruw Jones joined the Eagles in 2013 (Jones had 434 home runs and 1,289 RBIs).  The problem, however, is that Howard also brought with him a bad knee which got worse during spring training that year.  By the time Opening Day rolled around Howard was in so much pain he could barely stand.  He was in the lineup for Opening Day against the Nippon-Ham Fighters* but went 0-2 with a walk before being removed from the game.  Howard ended up not playing in anymore games and returned to the US in May.  He was eventually replaced on the Lions roster by another former MLB star - Matty Alou.

*This was the team's first game under this name as the former Nittaku Home Flyers had been sold to Nippon-Ham that winter and renamed the Fighters.

Howard only has a handful of Japanese baseball cards.  He had two cards in the 1974-75 Calbee set - #70 and #127.  Both of these are relatively rare and expensive.  I don't have either of them but I do have images of them that swiped years ago off Yahoo! Japan Auctions for an earlier post:

1974-75 Calbee #70

1974-75 Calbee #127

Luckily, Howard had a couple cards in two BBM sets from the last 15 years or so.  He had two cards in the 2010 BBM Lions 60th Anniversary set.  A large part of that set dealt with the four years of the Taiheiyo Club era in Lions history and Howard's photo is on the card commemorating the 1974 season.  He also had a "regular" card in the set:

2010 BBM Lions 60th Anniversary #79

2010 BBM Lions 60th Anniversary #83

He also appeared in the 2013 BBM Deep Impact (aka Legendary Foreigners 2) set.  The photo on the card looks like it could have been taken around the same time the photo on one of the Calbee cards was taken.

2013 BBM Deep Impact #02

Sunday, October 29, 2023

Card Of The Week October 29

Merrill Kelly of the Diamondbacks had a great pitching performance in Game Two of the World Series last night, going seven innings and striking out nine batters while only giving up three hits (one a solo home run by Mitch Garver) and walking none.  He got the win in Arizona's 9-1 victory over Texas which tied the Series at one game apiece.

Kelly spent four seasons in South Korea, playing for the SK Wyverns of the KBO from 2015 to 2018.  He helped SK win the championship in 2018 before he returned to the US and signed with the Diamondbacks.  I've heard a number of comments on-line that Kelly is the first pitcher to record a win in both the Korean Series and the World Series and I think he could possibly become the first player to ever win both a Korean and World Series championship should Arizona win although I certainly could be wrong about that.

So as this is a baseball card blog, the obvious thing you'd be expecting me to do is to talk about Kelly's Korean baseball cards.  But there's a problem with that.  All of the licensed Korean baseball cards released in the past ten years have excluded any foreign players.  So there are no official KBO cards of Kelly available.

However.

Dan Skrezyna of Korean Cardboard created sets featuring all the foreign KBO players for each of the five seasons between 2015 and 2019.  The sets were called "Foreign Attack" and Dan labeled his card company "Vittum" (I believe named after the park in Chicago he played Little League baseball in).  Mind you, none of them came out the year they cover - the "2015" set was released in 2019, the "2016" set was released in 2017, the "2017" set was released in 2018, the "2018" set was released in 2020 and the "2019" set was released in 2021.  I know Dan has been working on some later sets but I don't know when or if he's going to release them.

Anyway, the point of all this is that Dan's sets are the only ones where you'll find cards of Kelly in his Wyvern uniform.  Dan issued sets for all four years Kelly was in Korea so there are four cards of him:

"2015" Vittum Foreign Attack #16

"2016" Vittum Foreign Attack #39

"2017" Vittum Foreign Attack #35

"2018" Vittum Foreign Attack #16

The print runs for these sets were very low - only 20 sets for each with the exception of the "2017" set which had a print run of 25.  I do not know if Dan has any unsold sets - if you're interested in trying to find one, I would recommend contacting him either through his blog or his Twitter account.

Saturday, October 28, 2023

Adolis Garcia

Texas Rangers star Adolis Garcia is having one hell of a post-season.  He's currently hitting .357 with eight home runs and 22 RBIs in 13 games so far, including a sayonara home run in Game One of the World Series last night.  Garcia is from Cuba originally - he defected in late 2016 and signed with the St Louis Cardinals.  The Cardinals sold him to Texas a couple years later and he became a star in his first season as a regular in 2021, hitting 31 home runs with 91 RBIs (and 194 strikeouts).

I'm not sure how much mention this has gotten in the postseason telecasts (I'm not watching the US broadcasts) but Garcia briefly played in Japan in 2016.  As part of the same program that has allowed other Cuban players such as Frederich Cepeda, Alfredo Despaigne and Livan Moinelo to play in Japan without defecting, Garcia spent part of that season with the Yomiuri Giants.  He didn't do particularly well, hitting .234 with four home runs in 28 games with the farm team and going hitless with three strikeouts in seven plate appearances over four games with the ichi-gun squad.  He joined the team in June but was let go in August - it looks like he defected in France on his way back to Cuba from Japan.

The fact that he played in Japan raises the possibility of an Oscar Colas-type situation where there'd be some Japanese baseball cards of him.  Except there aren't.  He didn't appear in any BBM or Calbee issues that year and Epoch didn't do any Giants-related sets that year (it'd be two years before Epoch started doing their "flagship" 400+ card NPB set).  Topps, of course, didn't have an NPB license until 2021.  It's possible that he had a team-issued card made by the Giants themselves but no such card has surfaced.  I made some enquiries of Japanese card collectors on Twitter (well, one anyway) and no one has seen any NPB cards of him.  

It'd be cool if BBM or Epoch included him in an OB set at some point although it's probably unlikely to happen anytime soon.  I'm still waiting for the first Alphonso Soriano OB card.

Friday, October 27, 2023

Some Pricey Sets Plus Fusion

It's been almost two months since the last time I did a "New Releases" post so I thought it was high time I got caught up on what card sets have been recently announced (or recently released in one case).  All of these except one are in the "ultra high end" category - over $100 for a box containing four to six cards.

- We'll start with the one reasonably priced set.  BBM is releasing their annual Fusion set which is essentially the third and final installment of their flagship set in late November.  The set is the usual four-headed monster that it is every year.  There'll be 99 of the misleading labeled "Record Hall Of Fame" cards which will mostly feature non-Hall Of Fame players.  Instead what this is is basically a review of the past regular season with a card or two commemorating a particular achievement that gets matched with a card or two commemorating a somewhat related event in the past.  For example it wouldn't surprise me to see a card for Shuta Ishikawa's no-hitter matched with a card for Kodai Senga's no-hitter in 2019.  In addition there will be 21 "1st Version Update" cards featuring players who for whatever reason weren't included in either the 1st Version set or the similarly named subset from the 2nd Version set and 24 "Title Holder" cards featuring the statistical leaders for each league in 12 categories.  Those three subsets alone account for 144 cards but in addition there are an unspecified number of short printed "Ceremonial First Pitch" cards.  There's also the usual two non-premium insert sets - "Great Records" (24 cards featuring two individuals from each team reaching some milestone) and "Legendary Players" (12 cards featuring an OB player from each team) along with two premium insert sets - "Treasure" (12 cards featuring an OB player from each team) and "Esperanza" (24 cards featuring two active players from each team).  The premium inserts are serially numbered but I don't know the print runs.  There are also a plethora of autographed cards available including ones for the recently deceased Shigeru Sugishita.  (BBM's promotional site for the set says something about the cards having sticker autographs signed "during his lifetime".  I'm glad they cleared that up because I was wondering if he'd signed via Ouija board.)

- BBM is putting out "Glory", their annual ultra high end set, in late November as well.  Boxes of this will retail for 24,200 yen (~$160) and will contain six cards.  The base set will contain 36 cards (three players per team I assume) which all have multiple serially numbered parallels.  There are two serially numbered insert sets - "Miyabi" (36 cards serially numbered to 50 with a parallel version) and "Glorious 3D" (12 cards serially numbered to 25).  There are a plethora of autograph and memorabilia cards.  The memorabilia cards include both patch cards and bat knob cards.

- Epoch is releasing another of their combination active/OB "Stars & Legends" team sets and this time it's for the Giants.  The set is officially known as the "Giants Stars & Legends with Memorabilia" and four card boxes of it will retail for 22,000 yen (about $145).  The base set will contain 44 cards and there are five insert sets - "Decomori Signature (Gold) (6 cards #'d to 25), "Decomori Signature (Green) (6 cards #'d to 5), "Decomori Signature (Hologram) (6 cards that are 1-of-1), "Gem" (7 cards, not sure of the serial numbering) and "Black Gem" (7 cards #'d to 5) - all of which are serially numbered.  There are four types of autographed cards - "Authentic" (28 players), "Legendary" (28 players), "1 of 1" (27 players) and "Baseball" (7 players) - and six different varieties of player used bat cards - Core, Grip A, Grip B, Barrel, Knob A, Knob B.  There are ten of each bat card available.  The set will be out on November 18th.

- November 18th is also the date that Epoch will be releasing their annual "Pacific League Premier Edition" set.  Boxes of this set will retail for 17,600 yen (about $118) and contain six cards - three base set cards, an insert card and two "Special Insert" cards.  The base set contains 54 cards - nine players from each team and there's only one insert set, a 24 card "Pacific League Superstars" set (which I think has two parallel versions available).  All the "Special Insert" cards are serially numbered although I don't know the counts.  There's 18 "Gem" cards, 54 "Authentic" autograph cards, 54 "Holospectra" autograph cards (not sure if those are real autographs or facsimile), 15 "Uniform Autograph" cards (which I assume have both an autograph and a uniform piece), 15 "Uniform" cards, 15 "Patch" cards and 15 "Letter" cards.

- A week after those two sets come out, Epoch is releasing their latest collaboration with the OB Club called "Career Achievement 2023".  You'll be forgiven if you thought this set already came out this year - Epoch's 2022 edition of this set got delayed until March of this year.  Each 18,150 yen box (around $122) contains six cards although two of them are autographed cards.  The base set has 54 cards and there's a Hologram parallel of each card.  There's apparently six possible autograph cards - "Authentic" (52 cards), "Tribute To The Past" (19 cards), "Baseball Greats" (16 cards), "Combo" (3 cards), "Baseball Autographs (White)" (24 cards) and "Baseball Autographs (Black)" (12 1-of-1 cards).

- Dan Skrezyna of Korean Cardboard tweeted out something earlier this week about a new retired player set for the KBO.  The SCC KBO Legend set has already been released and boxes retail for W220,000 (about $164).  Each box contains one "encased" card (although it's not clear if this is always an autographed card) and a pack of five cards.  The base set contains 71 cards and each base set card has three serially numbered parallel versions - "Base Blue" (#'d to 60), "National Treasure Silver" (#'d to 10) and "National Treasure Gold" (#'d to 5).  There's a 39 card insert set called "Retro" and I think each of those cards is serially numbered to 27.  Each of the 71 players in the set has six different autographed cards - "Base Autograph Bronze", "Base Autograph Silver" (#'d to 10), "Base Autograph Gold" (#'d to 5), "Base Autograph Platinum" (1-of-1), "Moment Autograph Silver" (#'d to 10) and "Moment Autograph Gold" (#'d to 5).  Additionally 29 players also have "Pine Tree" autographed cards that are serially numbered to 5.  Dan has put the checklist for the set up at the Trading Card Database.

Thursday, October 26, 2023

2023 NPB Draft

The 2023 NPB draft was held today and for the first time since 2018, I don't have any "pre-rookie" cards of any of the players.  For the past four years there were at least three players each year who were in either the 2019 or 2020 Panini USA Baseball Stars & Stripes set as representatives of the 2018 or 2019 Collegiate Samurai Japan team respectively.  The last two players to graduate from college were both drafted last year (Shota Morishita and Ryosuke Kodama Mikiya Tanaka) so I was left to wonder if any of the ten players from the teams who went to the corporate leagues after college would be drafted (assuming any of them are still playing).  None of them were so there's a very good likelihood that all the players from those sets who are going to get drafted have been drafted.  The youngest player from the group is Kento Ogo who turned 25 about a month ago so they're all getting a bit old to be entering professional baseball.

There is, however, another possible source of "pre-rookie" cards for the drafted players.  In 2021 and 2022, JABA (the Japanese Amateur (or possibly Adult) Baseball Association), the organization in charge of the corporate/industrial league, issued baseball card sets.  The 2021 set was supposedly 90 cards but may have actually been a little larger - I've been attempting to put a checklist together and I've seen card numbers as high as 92.  The 2022 set is reportedly 88 cards.  Each set contains players from various teams in the corporate leagues.  I've identified roughly 80% of the 2021 set so I compared the list of players drafted from corporate league teams today with the checklist I have and found exactly one player who already had a card - Shunya Morita of Honda Suzuka, the second round pick of the Yomiuri Giants.  He is card #33 in the set.  I don't have this card but I swiped images of the front and back of it from an auction on Mercari (the auction is for three copies of the card which explains the "x3" on the image of the front of the card:


Morita brings the number of known players from the 2021 set who have been drafted to six.  There may be others - I'd actually be surprised if they're aren't - but until I see or generate a complete checklist, I won't know for sure.


Monday, October 23, 2023

The Infinite Samurai Japan

I've mentioned this before but when it comes to spectator sports I am pretty much only a fan of baseball.  I really don't pay a whole lot of attention to any other sports, either here in the US or in Japan.  So BBM's annual multi-sport set Infinity (or Masterpiece every fifth year) is usually not all that interesting to me.  Oh sure, about a third of the set is usually baseball players but generally I already have dozens of cards of those players.  On rare occasions BBM's included corporate league or JWBL players in the set and I've picked those cards up as singles.  As a matter of fact, I had seen that this year's set was going to include another former JWBL player (Yu Katoh) as well as a member of the Tochigi Golden Braves of the indy Baseball Challenge League (Hiroyuki Takagishi, who's actually a comedian but made the team via a tryout) and I figured those would be the only cards from the set that I'd be trying to pick up.  But two weeks ago I saw this tweet from BBM and everything changed.

There are Samurai Japan cards in the set!

The photo attached to the tweet showed cards of both Hideki Kuriyama and Roki Sasaki wearing Samurai Japan uniforms.  Oddly enough though it also showed a card of Yu Darvish in a Fighters uniform, not a Samurai Japan one.  I suddenly got a lot more interested in this set.

BBM usually makes a pdf of the checklist for each of their sets available a few weeks before the set is released so I ran the one for Infinity through Google translate.  It looked like there were eleven cards for Samurai Japan members (including manager Kuriyama) which I confirmed when the set came out late last week.  The eleven players are Kuriyama, Yuhei Nakamura, Tetsuto Yamada, Yuki Matsui, Ryuji Kuribayashi, Shugo Maki, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Yuki Udagawa, Munetaka Murakami, Hiroya Miyagi and Sasaki.

So it looks like BBM now has the rights to produce Samurai Japan cards in Japan, at least for non-MLB players (which is why Darvish isn't in a Samurai Japan uniform).  They take over from Topps who had it for roughly a year after Calbee had had it from about 2016 to last year (maybe - Calbee's last Samurai Japan set was in 2020).  BBM last had it from about 2001 to 2008 (before the National Team had been dubbed "Samurai Japan").

I'm a sucker for Samurai Japan cards so of course I wanted to get these along with the two cards I had previously wanted (Katoh and Takgishi).  This left me with a dilemma - do I pick up these 13 cards as singles or do I just get the entire set?  I went back and forth a little weighing the pros and cons of each approach.  On the one hand, getting just the singles that I really wanted "should" be cheaper and would mean I didn't have 81 other cards that I wasn't that interested in (including some 64 who aren't baseball players).  On the other, it'd be a lot faster if I just got the set as I could get it through ZenMarket rather than asking Ryan to find them for me during his card shopping.

Ultimately it was this tweet from BITS, a card store in Nagoya, that pushed me to my final decision.  They said that the cards seemed to be in short supply and that it had sold out in pre-orders.  I decided to go with buying a complete set and I picked one up late last week.  I probably overpaid for it but not outrageously so and it wasn't much more than what the singles would have probably run me.  I will mostly likely wait until I get my Fusion set through ZenMarket in late November so I probably won't have the set in hand until early December.  I'll do a post on the set then but in the meantime you can see all the cards over at Jambalaya.

Sunday, October 22, 2023

Card Of The Week October 22

As pretty much expected, the Hanshin Tigers and Orix Buffaloes won their respective playoff series this week, setting the stage for the first all-Kansai Nippon Series since 1964.  If you've ever wondered which team is more popular in the region, consider that there was an increased police presence in the Dotonbori area of Osaka on Friday night after the Tigers won their series but not Saturday night after the Buffaloes won theirs.

One interesting piece of trivia about this matchup - Tigers manager Akinobu Okada will be only the third NPB manager ever to manage in the Series against a team he had previously managed. (H/T NPB Reddit)

The first manager to do this was Osamu Mihara.  Mihara had managed the Yomiuri Giants from 1947 until mid-way through the 1949 season (I believe he was the last manager that the Giants ever fired mid-season).  He took over the Nishitetsu Lions in 1951.  He ultimately led the Lions to three consecutive championships over his former team from 1956 to 1958.

2000 BBM Giants #G91

1958 Maruo JCM 67

It would be 42 years before it happened again.  In 2000, Sadaharu Oh led the Fukuoka Daiei Hawks to the Series against the Giants, the team he had managed from 1984 to 1988.  Oh's Hawks fell to the Giants in six games.

1987 Play Ball #2

2002 BBM Giants #G114

Finally Okada managed the Orix Buffaloes from 2010 to 2012.  We'll know in two weeks if he emulated Mihara (victorious against his former team) or Oh (defeated by his former team).

2011 BBM Pedigree #01

2023 Epoch NPB #289

One other managerial note - Hawks manager Hiroshi Fujimoto stepped down after Monday's stunning loss against the Marines in the first round of the playoffs.  His replacement is former Hawks and Giants slugger Hiroki Kokubo.  Kokubo's only previous managerial experience was in leading the Samurai Japan team from 2013 to 2017, leading them to third place finishes in both the 2015 Premier 12 and the 2017 WBC.

2016 Calbee Samurai Japan #SJ-01