The Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters have done the early part of their training camp in Arizona the past four seasons. As a result there have been a number of cards in BBM's 1st Version set the past four years that have featured photographs taken in Arizona. I've done posts in the past on the cards from the
2016,
2017 and
2018 sets so now here's a post on the 2019 cards.
Most of the photos for this year's 1st Version set were taken last year. The only photos taken in training camp are usually for the rookies and players who switched teams over the winter, including foreign players coming to Japan for the first time. Of
the players the Fighters brought to Scottsdale, Arizona this year, only five players fall into this category - new foreign players Po-Jung Wang, Johnny Barbato and Justin Hancock along with former Buffalo Chihiro Kaneko and former Swallow Ryo Akiyoshi.
I found Barbato's photo in
the Fighter's gallery from February 1st so that photo was definitely taken in Arizona:
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| 2019 BBM 1st Version #062 |
Wang's photo is not in
the gallery but it looks like it was taken during the exhibition game against the KBO's NC Dinos at Salt River Fields At Talking Stick on February 11th:
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| 2019 BBM 1st Version #074 |
I couldn't find the photos for Hancock, Akiyoshi or Kaneko in the team's galleries at all but I'm fairly confident based on the backgrounds that they were also taken in Scottsdale:
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| 2019 BBM 1st Version #061 |
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| 2019 BBM 1st Version #063 |
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| 2019 BBM 1st Version #058 |
I'm pretty certain that the photo on Wang's "Cross Sunrise" card was taken after the team went to Okinawa for the second part of training camp. The complete photo on the back of the card looks like it was probably taken
during the inter-squad game on February 16th:
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| 2019 BBM 1st Version #CS09 |
The Fighters team card in each of the past three years has featured a photo taken in Arizona - Peoria in 2016, Mesa in 2017 and Scottsdale in 2018. This year's photo was obviously taken in Okinawa however:
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| 2019 BBM 1st Version #327 |
Calbee's Series One this year features a photo of Kaneko that I'm pretty confident was taken in Arizona. It looks similar to one of the shots in
the team's gallery for February 2nd:
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| 2019 Calbee #016 |
Sadly it looks like this will be the last time I do this exercise, at least for 1st Version and the Fighters. The team has announced that it will be doing all of training camp in Okinawa next year.
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