2017 BBM Icons - Japan Pride

BBM has been issuing a box set called "Icons" annually in March for the past several years.  Each year the theme of the set changes.  This year's theme was "Japan Pride" - not coincidentally the release of the set coincided with the World Baseball Classic this year.

Now the set is NOT a set for the WBC team unfortunately.  The base set contained 36 cards (if you know how BBM does most of their sets you know what I'm about to say) which breaks down to three cards per team.  One of those three cards for each team is their top draft pick from the fall 2016 draft.  Of the remaining 24 players, 16 of them were on the WBC team this year - Ayumu Ishikawa of the Marines; Ryosuke Hirata and Toshiya Okada of the Dragons; Seiichi Uchikawa of the Hawks; Shintaro Fujinami of the Tigers; Ryosuke Kikuchi and Seiya Suzuki of the Carp, Hirotoshi Masui and Sho Nakata of the Fighters; Yoshihisa Hirano of the Buffaloes; Kazuhisa Makita of the Lions; Ryo Akiyoshi and Tetsuto Yamada of the Swallows; Yoshitomo Tsutsugoh of the Baystars and Hayato Sakamoto and Tomoyuki Sugano of the Giants.  In addition, Motohiro Shima of the Eagles was originally on the roster but had to be replaced due to injury and Katsuya Kakunaka of the Marines was on the 2013 WBC roster.  Glancing at the back of the cards, it looks like most of the remaining six players - Yusuke Masago of the Hawks; Hiroaki Saiuchi of the Tigers; Kengo Takeda of the Buffaloes; Keisuke Honda of the Lions; Tomohiro Anraku of the Eagles and Tomo Otasaka of the Baystars - played for the U-23 Samurai Japan team last year.  I also think that their card backs indicate if any of the draft picks had played for one of the amateur Samurai Japan teams - for instance Naruki Terashima of the Swallows' card indicates that he played on the U-18 team last year.

The cards themselves are very colorful with the player's image superimposed over an orange and either red, blue or green background.  I've been trying to figure out if the background is supposed to be the outline of a map of some part of Japan but I haven't been able to place it if it is.  The names of the players are only written in Japanese on the cards.  Here's some examples:

#24 (Hayato Sakamoto)

#15 (Motohiro Shima)

#21 (Seiya Suzuki)

#26 (Yoshitomo Tsutsugoh)

#34 (Yuya Yanagi)

As always you can see all the cards in the set over at Jambalaya.