2010 Giants Winning Game Cards

When I did my post about the 2009 BBM Giants Expression set yesterday, I mentioned that Dan had also sent me the complete 2010 Giants Winning Game Card set.  As it sounds, this was a set that contains a card for every victory that the Yomiuri Giants had in the 2010 season.  I know that the Giants did sets like this every year between 2009 and 2014 and it wouldn't surprise me if they did it both before and after that range of years as well.  There used to be a website that you could go on to buy the cards - I think your options were only buying a complete set or a month at time but I'm not sure.  I'm also not sure how much the cards cost.  I do know that at least the Fighters and Lions have also done these kind of sets but I don't know if anyone is still doing them.

The front of each card features an "Impressive Player" from the game in question as well as the date, score and location of the game.  They are unnumbered other than the win number.  The backs have the line score of the game, a "Game Digest" with a brief summary of the game and a "Viewpoint" that I think talks about what the player featured on the card did.  Here's the front and back of the card for the Giants second victory of the season as an example:

The photos on the cards are really outstanding.  There's a great variety of shots and there's a handful of cards that use a horizontal format.  There's a couple of cards that feature alternate uniforms that the team wore that year as well.  Here's a bunch of examples:

By the way, all three of the guys on the front of Chih-Lung Huang's card are Huang.  The sliding player in the foreground of the card of Chono for July 19th is not Chono, it's Yoshinobu Takahashi - Chono's the player behind him.  And Shugo Fujii is a pitcher but is shown batting on the card for October 2nd.

2010 was an unusually close pennant race in the Central League (actually in both leagues) with the Dragons, Tigers and Giants finishing within a game of each other.  The Dragons and Giants both finished the season with 79 wins and the Tigers finished with 78.  Because of ties, however, victories don't determine the standings in Japanese baseball, winning percentage does.  Since the Dragons and Tigers both had three ties each but the Giants only had one, those two teams finished in front of the Giants with the Dragons (.560 winning percentage) in first, the Tigers (.563 winning percentage) in second and the Giants (.562 winning percentage) in third.  The Giants swept the Tigers in the First Stage of the Climax Series two game to none before losing in the Final Stage four games to one to the Dragons.  

So obviously there's 79 cards in this set to account for the Giants' 79 wins.  But there's another 11 "special" or bonus cards in the set to get the total size of the set up to 90.  Unlike the regular cards, these cards all have a "kira" finish to them.  Three of these cards are dedicated to the three wins the Giants got in the post-season - two against the Tigers and one against the Dragons.  Here's the one for their sole Final Stage victory:

Two of the remaining eight cards highlight performances by the Giants in the two All Star games that year - Shinnosuke Abe being MVP of the first game and Tetsuya Matsumoto becoming the first former ikusei player to get a hit in an All Star game in the second.  The last six cards are for highlights of the season - manager Tatsunori Hara's 500th career win; Ryota Wakiya setting a CL record by scoring in 15 consecutive games; Yuya Kubo leading the CL in pitching appearances; Hisayoshi Chono winning the Rookie Of The Year award. Alex Ramirez leading the league in home runs and RBIs and Hayato Sakamoto playing in every inning in the 2010 season.  Here's the Sakamoto card:

Obviously many of the Giants players had multiple cards in this set.  Ramirez has the most with 11 followed by Chono with 10, Sakamoto with 9 and Michihiro Ogasawara with 8.  There are 27 different players who have at least one card in the set (well, 26 players and manager Hara).  Probably the biggest two names on the roster who don't appear in this set are Lee Seung-yeop and Takahiro Suzuki.  (Dan actually had been told by the seller that Lee was in the set which is why he bought it.)

If it's not obvious, I really like this set.  I'd probably like it even more if (1) it was for a season that I followed the team closely and/or (2) it was for a team I liked more.  But still it's a lot of fun.