One of the complete sets that Ryan sent was the 2015 AIAIO set for the Japan Women's Baseball League (JWBL). Cards of the league are kind of scarce - Epoch did sets for it in 2016 and 2018 and BBM apparently did sets back in 2010 and 2011 when it was still the Girl's Professional Baseball League (GPBL). An outfit called AIAIO has also done cards for them over the years although I think Ryan's only seen them for 2013, 2015 and 2016 (although their website shows cards from 2019). I was kind of disappointed that I didn't see any of their cards for sale at the game I went to in 2019.
The set Ryan sent me contains 68 cards - 63 player cards, mascot cards for each of the four teams in the league and the "Special Card" above. Unlike the two Epoch sets, there are no cards for the managers or coaches for the teams. I still don't know the league well enough to know who the best players are but the set does contain most of the players that I've heard of - Ayami Satoh, Yuki Kawabata, Minami Takatsuka, Iori Miura, Meguna Furuya, Rina Taniyama and Mari Yamasaki. The photos on the cards are a nice mix of action shots and posed photos. Here's a bunch of examples:
One kind of cool thing as I was going through the cards - I discovered that the card of Yukina Izumi was autographed! Ryan figures that whoever originally owned the set got the card autographed.
Ryan also included two cards from the 2013 AIAIO set:
6 comments:
Nice! Great to see these cards and too bad they are difficult to find, but way to go Ryan for digging them up!
I’ve tracked down so many of these, but the team or league issued cards are hard to find. I’ve managed to obtain 7 cards of Minami Takatsuka and created a Menko card to fill the 8th slot in my Japanese Baseball Book (which I’ve used to happily replace my American Baseball card book)
Seeing that baseballs must be returned during gameplay in Japan, I’ve given up trying to find a game used ball (eBay has one lovingly priced at $129.99)
I don't believe that that's actually the case, at least for NPB. You don't have to give back the balls. I don't know what the rules in the JWBL were, though, as the league folded a few years ago.
I saw a video of a gentleman who went to 5 NPB games in 5 days and he said the foul balls had to be returned. I also read that the fans had to throw the baseballs back for the JWBL and that the ball players threw a few balls into the crowd after games finished. I could be mistaken as you’ve taught me what I know about the cards
I asked a couple friends of mine who've been to MANY (like hundreds if not thousands of) NPB games - Deanna and Steve and their consensus is that it might have been true for NPB games at one point but it is no longer. And if it was true for NPB games, it was a while ago as Steve mentioned that he caught his first foul ball at an NPB game back in 2003 at the Tokyo Dome. Deanna thinks different ballparks may have different rules. She also mentioned that you always have to give back the balls hit in BP. You also have to give balls back at college games.
They both mentioned that staff will usually come over to check if everybody's ok when a foul ball's gone into the stands so the guy in the video you watched may not have understood what was going on and thought he needed to return the ball.
Thanks for the comment. I wouldn't have learned all this without you mentioning it.
That makes much more sense! Your information has been my starting point for collecting Calbee, Menko and the JWBL, along with the Women’s Cup. I’m looking forward to seeing Ayami Sato pitch this year. She’s been in so many tournaments and she seems to be one of the finest pitchers to come out of Japan. Minami was the first woman I ever saw hit a legit home run and she even took one to center field that was amazing to watch. The women are respectful and fun and seeing a player snag a line drive or make a “web-gem” in the infield takes me back to a time before I was jaded by the business end of the sport and the strike of 1994 which still whistles in the breeze whenever I see a new trillion dollar contract
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