2020 BBM Fusion

Fusion, BBM's final set for 2020, came out a little over a month ago.  This was about a month later than normal.  The base set contains 160 cards split into four separate sections that are unrelated and are separately numbered - the 99 "regular" cards, the 24 "Title Holder" cards, the 24 "1st Version Update" cards and the 13 "Ceremonial First Pitch" cards.

The "regular" cards act as a season summary.  I struggle every year to try to explain how this set works so we'll see if it's any clearer this time.  47 of the "regular" cards feature an active player who achieved some notable feat during the season while the remaining 52 cards feature an OB player who did something in past that was related to what the active players did.

This may make more sense with an example.  Card #03 celebrates Tigers pitcher Yuki Nishi hitting a home run on Opening Day.  Card #04 shows Taiyo Whales pitcher Masaji Hiramatsu who homered on Opening Day in 1975.  Here are the two cards:

#03 (left) and #04 (right)

The cards are ordered by the date that the active players did whatever it was they did.  The active player always comes first in the checklist and then is followed by one (or more) OB players (except for one time where there's two consecutive active players).  As usual I only know the significance of a handful of the cards such as Tomoyuki Sugano's 12 game winning streak, Yasuhiro Ogawa's no-hitter and Yudai Ohno's scoreless innings streak.  There's a couple milestones like Kodai Senga's 1000th strikeout although most of the major milestones are commemorated in the "Great Record" insert set that I'll talk a little later.  Other players featured include Yuki Yanagita, Koji Chikamoto, Seiya Suzuki, Sho Nakata, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Kensuke Kondoh, Tetsuto Yamada, Hayato Sakamoto, Hideto Asamura and Tomoya Mori.  There are two players - Munetaka Murakami and Masao Morishita - who have two cards in the subset.  Departing from most other BBM sets the cards are not split evenly between the teams - each team has between two (Marines, Dragons, Buffaloes, Baystars) and eight (Swallows) cards.  12 of the cards have "secret" versions - short printed photo variations.

#48

#25

#73

#97

#65

The OB players featured include Hall Of Famers Isao Harimoto, Tsutomu Wakamatsu, Yutaka Fukumoto, Masaaki Koyama, Hiroshi Gondoh, Manabu Kittabeppu, Yutaka Ohno and Victor Starffin.  Both Yukio Tanaka's are in the set - the pitcher from the 80's and the more famous batter.  One player -  Makoto Shimada - has two separate cards.  There is one player who was active in MLB in 2020 - Yoshihisa Hirano.  The OB cards also include a card for Kyuji Fujikawa, who was active in NPB in 2020 but his card commemorates something he did in 2017.

#94

#74

#84

#44

I should mention that the final card in this subset that has a unique design - card #99 commemorates Hayato Sakamoto reaching 2000 hits in his career:

#99

The "Title Holder" subset features the 2020 statistical leaders for 12 categories for each league - Batting Average, Home Runs, RBIs, Hits, OBP, Stolen Bases, ERA, Winning Percentage, Wins, Saves, Hold Points and Strikeouts.  If a player led the league in multiple categories then he has multiple cards - for example Kazuma Okamoto led the Central League in Home Runs and RBIs so he has two cards in the subset.  If two or more players share a title, all of them are featured on that card.  There are three cards that show multiple players.  The Leader cards are numbered #TH01 to #TH24.  

#TH02

#TH17

The "1st Version Update" features cards of players who either didn't appear in either the 1st or 2nd Version sets this year or were traded since their appearance.  Actually I think only DJ Johnson of the Eagles falls into that latter category - he had a card with the Carp in the 1st Version set.  At 24 cards this is the largest edition of this subset in the five years that BBM has been doing the Fusion set.  Like the "regular" cards, the 24 cards are NOT divided evenly among the 12 teams.  The Marines have the most with four cards while the Baystars have none.  Players featured in this subset include Wei-Yen Chen, Hirokazu Sawamura, Robert Suarez and Sachiya Yamasaki.  Pacific League Rookie Of The Year Kaima Taira is included as well as Satoshi Nakajima, who took over as the manager for Orix in August.  The cards are numbered #601 to #624 in continuation of the checklist for the 1st and 2nd Version sets.

#601

#611

The numbering for the "Ceremonial First Pitch" cards - #FP14 to #FP26 - is a continuation of the numbering of the "Ceremonial First Pitch History" cards from the 2nd Version set.  The difference is that these cards all feature First Pitch ceremonies from this year while 2nd Version ones featured ones from previous years.  There's one retired baseball player - Choji Murata - and the usual collection of Japanese celebrities from a variety of fields.  There's the usual assortment of Idols - Nonoa Aoi, Shiori Kubo, and Airi Suzuki - along with actress/model Riho Takada, singer/actress Nozomi Nishida and singer Thelma Aoyama.  There's a couple athletes - golfer Mika Miyazato, jockey Reika Sekimoto and rugby player Yuna Sato.  There are also cards for the comedy duo Timon D and male geisha Roland.  My favorite of the cards is for Enka singer Sachiko Kobayashi who threw out the first pitch at a Lions game in October - or more accurately had the Lions mascot throw out the first pitch for her - while dressed in a very elaborate costume.  Kobayashi (2015 2nd Version), Takada (2016 2nd Version) and Suzuki (2019 2nd Version) have appeared in previous "Ceremonial First Pitch" subsets.

#FP15

#FP26

There are two non-premium insert sets for the set - "Legendary Players" and "Great Records" - that I picked up along with the base set.  "Legendary Players" features 12 OB player - one from each team.  Each player appears in the "regular" set although there's a bit of a twist this year - several of the players are pictured with a different team in the insert card than their regular card.  For some this is just the same team going by a different name - Lotte Orions vs Chiba Lotte Marines for Kiyoshi Hatsushiba, Fukuoka Daiei Hawks vs Fukuoka Softbank Hawks for Hiroshi Shibahara, Hanyu Braves vs Orix BlueWave for Nobuyuki Hoshino - although Takashi Saito is pictured with the Eagles on his base set card and the Baystars on his insert card.  The other players appearing in the insert set are Taigen Kaku, Koichi Isobe, Yukio Tanaka (the hitter), Masahiro Kawai, Masaaki Koyama, Manabu Kitabeppu, Kenshin Kawakami and Tsutomu Wakamatsu.

#LP05

The "Great Record" insert set features 24 active players - two from each team - who all reached some milestone in 2020.  This includes Sakamoto's 2000 hits along with Adam Jones' 2000 hits between MLB and NPB, Sugano's 100th win, the 1500th hit for Takeya Nakamura, Yohei Ohshima and Tomotaka Sakaguchi, the 1000th hit for Daichi Suzuki, Jose Lopez (NPB only) and Yuki Yanagita and the 250th home run for Sho Nakata.  I was kind of amused that they had to scramble to come up with a second milestone for the Hanshin Tigers after Yuki Nishi's 1500 innings pitched - they went with Ryuhei Obata's first career hit.

#GR22

As always you can see all the cards over at Jambalaya.  Ryan did a post about this set a couple weeks ago as well.