2023 BBM Lions History 1950-2023

Since 2020, BBM has been doing a series of team "History" sets.  The ninth team to get this treatment is the Saitama Seibu Lions and BBM released the "Lions History 1950-2023" set a few weeks ago.  Like the earlier sets, this set has 90 base cards split into three categories - "Lions History", OB players (including both retired players and active former Lions) and active players.

The team that is now called the Lions entered NPB in 1950 as the Nishitetsu Clippers and called Fukuoka home.  After one season the team merged with the Nishi Nippon Pirates to become the Nishitetsu Lions.  The Lions enjoyed a lot of success in their first decade or so but by the late 1960's had fallen on hard times - times that were made even harder when a number of their players were implicated in the "Black Mist Scandal".  The team changed their name to the Taiheiyo Club Lions from 1973 to 1976 and then the Crown Lighter Lions from 1977 to 1978 - I think in both cases Nishitetsu (or really a shell company called the Fukuoka Baseball Corporation) had essentially sold the naming rights for the team to golf course developer Taeiheiyo Club and then Crown Gas Lighter.  After 1978, the team was sold to Seibu and moved to Tokorazawa in Saitama prefecture, just outside of Tokyo.  The Seibu Lions were the most successful NPB team of the 1980's and continued that success into the 1990's and 2000's.  The team added "Saitama" to their name in 2008.

Each of the seven "Lions History" cards covers a section of the team's history, anywhere between nine and twelve years at a time.  The front of the card shows a photo from the relevant time period while the back has the list of the team's finishes during that time.  Here's the card covering the 1950's:

#01

The bulk of the set is the 71 card OB player subset.  As is the case with most of BBM and Epoch's OB sets, the contents of this subset skews heavily in favor of more recent players - i.e. guys who can still sign an autograph.  There are only two cards of players who've passed away - Kazuhisa Inao and Futoshi Nakanishi - and one of those two (Nakanishi) only passed away last May.  It looks like every one in the set other than Nakanishi, Inao and 91 year old Tatsuro Hirooka have autographed cards available.  

Given the skew towards more recent players, it's probably no surprise that the majority of them are from the Seibu era.  Only nine players are depicted in pre-Seibu uniforms - three each for Nishitetsu, Taiheiyo Club and Crown Lighter - although obviously some players played for them under multiple team names.  Most of the (living) big names in Lions' history are included in the set - Koji Akiyama, Kimiyasu Kudoh, Hiromichi Ishige, Tsutomu Itoh, Koichi Tabuchi, Masamhiro Doi, Osamu Higashio and Kazuo Matsui for example.  There are three former managers - Hirooka, Masaaki Mori and Haruki Ihara - and three foreign players - Orestes Destrade, Ty Van Burkleo and George Vukovich.  The set also includes a number of OB players who are still active with other teams in both NPB and MLB - Shogo Akiyama (Hiroshima), Yusei Kikuchi (Toronto), Hideto Asamura (Rakuten), Hiroyuki Nakajima (Yomiuri), Hideaki Wakui (Chunichi), Takayuki Kishi (Eagles) and Tomoya Mori (Orix).

As usual there's a couple players who you might expect to see in this set but aren't here.  Beyond the stars of the 50's who aren't around to sign autographs like Yasumitsu Toyoda and Hiroshi Ohshita, I was kind of surprised that Katsuya Nomura wasn't in the set.  I mean, sure, he's no longer with us but he was in both the Swallows and Hawks History sets last year.  The two biggest names I could think of among the living were Kazuhiro Kiyohara and Daisuke Matsuzaka.  Kiyohara really isn't that much of a surprise as he hasn't showed up on a card since his drug bust but I was taken aback by Matsuzaka's absence.  I think it's possible he has some sort of exclusive deal with Epoch as he was in a couple of their sets last year (although he also had a reprinted Calbee card last year too).  I was also a little surprised that Alex Cabrera wasn't in the set.

One of the best things about BBM's team "History" sets is the excellent photos that they've used on the cards and this set continues that tradition.  There's a really good variety of action shots; posed, on-field shots and studio photos.  I think this may be the first "History" set to not use any black and white photos for the OB players (although there are a couple in the "Lions History" subset).  The only thing I don't like about the design of the cards is that there's a much thicker border on the bottom of the card than has been present in the other "History" set.

Here's a bunch of cards as examples:

#08

#16

#17

#30

#25

#54

#73

There are 12 cards of active Lions players that use a slightly different card design.  The players include Takeya Nakamura, Takumi Kuriyama, Shuta Tonosaki, Sosuke Genda, Kona Takahashi and Kaima Taira.  Here's Nakamura's card as an example:

#87

As always all the cards can be seen over at Jambalaya.

Now that BBM's done a "History" set for the Lions, the only teams left that have not had a set yet are the Baystars, Eagles and Fighters.  I was kind of expecting there to be a Fighters set this year to tie in with the team's 20th season in Hokkaido but it's not looking like it's going to happen.