2021 BBM Farewell Set

For the 11th edition of their annual set for retiring players, BBM changed things up a little.  It came out in February, a month later than normal (although that could have been COVID-related) and for the first time it included athletes other than baseball players in it.  This is one of the sets that Ryan picked up for me and sent me a few weeks back.

I'm never sure what the actual name of this set is.  In the past it's translated as something like "Regret At Parting Baseball Player" but since it has more than just baseball players in it this time, I think it's more like "Regret At Parting Sports".  I'm still going to refer to it as the "Farewell" set.  This year's edition has a 37 card base set - 31 baseball players, two sumo wrestlers, a pro wrestler, a soccer player, a boxer and a jockey.  This is sold as a box set containing 38 cards - the base set plus an autographed card of one of the players.  Ryan as always just got me the base set - which is why it was around 500 yen as opposed to 8800.  

Pretty much all the big name players (plus a number of the smaller names) who retired during or at the end of the 2020 season are included in the set - Kyuji Fujikawa, Hisashi Iwakuma, Ryota Igarashi, Yoshiyuki Ishihara and Kazuki Yoshimi.  There's only one card for each player which may not sound like a big deal but some of the earlier editions of the set contained two or three cards for certain players.  As has been standard for the last few years, each player is depicted wearing the uniform they wore in 2020, even if it's not the team the player is most associated with.  So Iwakuma is shown in a Giants uniform, not an Eagles uniform and Toru Hosokawa is shown as a Marine rather than a Lion.  The photos on ten of the cards are from the player's retirement ceremony while the photos on the other cards are the more mundane standard "pitchers pitching, batters batting" shots.

I don't know who any of the non-baseball players are - Gotaro Goeido (sumo), Kazuhiro Kotoshogiku (sumo), Kengo Nakamura (soccer), Manabu Nakanishi (pro wrestling), Hirofumi Shii (horse racing) and Akira Yaegashi (boxing) - but I assume they're well known in their sports.  I'm not sure I like this becoming a multi-sport set - as I've said in the past, I'm pretty much only interested in baseball when it comes to sports.  I may have to reconsider if I want to keep getting this set every year if BBM continues to include non-baseball players in it.

Here's some example cards:

#05

#07

#25

#16

#32

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