Japanese Baseball Cards: Iconography

Wednesday, March 10, 2021

Iconography

BBM has issued a box set called "Icons" every March since 2013. Each year's edition has a different theme - in 2013 it was "Hope" (young players), 2014 was "Big Guns" (power hitters), 2015 was "Aces" (pitchers, obviously), 2016 was "Speed" (fast pitchers and base runners), 2017 was "Japan Pride" (players who had suited up for some version of the national team), 2018 was "Fanfare" (players who were drafted with much acclaim), 2019 was "Teenage Memories" (players who debuted as teenagers) and 2020 was "Fireballers" (fastball pitchers). (The 2021 set's theme is "Progress" and supposedly features players who "made progress" in 2020.)

The "Icons" sets grew out of some box sets BBM did in 2011 and 2012 called "Platinum Age" and "Diamond Age" that featured players born in 1988 and 1989 respectively. I've always felt the 2011 set was an excuse to put out yet another card of Yuki Saitoh during his rookie year. To some extent that continues to be the purpose of the Icons sets - get cards of rookies onto the market in the period of time between the publication of Rookie Edition (usually February) and 1st Version (April). These sets are the first ones to show the rookies in action - as opposed to their staged photos from the team's draft class introductory press conferences used for Rookie Edition. Not all the players in the sets are rookies, however. I also feel that BBM makes an effort to get cards of players who've changed teams over the winter into these sets as well.

You may have noticed that the above list of Icons sets didn't have links for three of them. That's because I didn't have those sets until Ryan picked them up for me during the past year. I'll spend the rest of this post writing about those last three sets. Also note that I'm only talking about the base sets here - each set was packaged up with a "special" insert card that could be some sort of parallel or autographed card.

As I mentioned, the 2013 set was entitled "Hope" and featured young players. The set has 27 cards - 24 cards for individual players (2 per team) and three combination cards. The player cards include five 2012 draft picks - Shohei Ohtani, Tomoyuki Sugano, Shintaro Fujinami, Nao Higashihama and Koji Fukutani. Other players in the set include Tetsuto Yamada, Yusei Kikuchi, Shuhei Takahashi, Yusuke Nomura, Naruki Nishikawa and Naoya Masuda. The three combination cards are entitled "Koshien Winners" (Shota Dohbayashi and Fujinami), "Michinoku Express" (Kikuchi and Ohtani) and "Age Of Okinawa" (Ryosuke Miyaguni and Higashihama).

2013 BBM Icons-Hope #10

2013 BBM Icons-Hope #01

2013 BBM Icons-Hope #05

2013 BBM Icons-Hope #26

The 2014 "Icons - Big Guns" set was also 27 cards and again featured 24 player cards and three "other" cards (two multiplayer cards plus a card for Wladimir Balentien setting the single season home run record in 2013). The 2015 "Icons - Aces" set grew to 36 cards - all player cards (three per team) - which is the size the set has been ever since.

The 2016 "Icons - Speed" set included both pitchers who throw fast and position players who run the bases fast. It included five players who were rookies in 2016 - Louis Okoye, Shinnosuke Ogasawara, Taiga Hirasawa, Junpei Takahashi and Shun Takayama. Other players in the set include Ohtani, Yamada, Fujinami, Kikuchi, Yuki Yangita, Shogo Akiyama, Shun Yamaguchi, Hirokazu Sawamura, Dennis Sarfate, Yoshio Itoi, Yuki Matsui, Takahiro Norimoto and Takahiro Suzuki. Most of the position players are depicted as baserunners which is a nice deviation from BBM's constant "batters batting" poses.

2016 BBM Icons - Speed #31

2016 BBM Icons - Speed #09

2016 BBM Icons - Speed #22

2016 BBM Icons - Speed #03

The 2020 set - "Fireballers" - has nothing to do with this but instead (like the 2016 set) features players who throw fast. It includes six members of the 2019 draft class - Roki Sasaki, Masato Morishita, Junya Nishi, Miroya Miyagi, Tetsu Miyagawa and Yasunobu Okugawa. It also include Daisuke Matsuzaka, who appears to be the sole example of a veteran player who appears with his new team in one of these three sets (he rejoined the Lions prior to the 2020 season). Other players in the set include Fujinami (who has appeared in seven of the eight Icons sets), Sugano, Sawamura, Matsui, Norimoto, Yudai Ohno, Kodai Senga, Kyuji Fujinami, Kohei Arihara and Yasuaki Yamasaki.