The Hanshin Tigers defeated the Orix Buffaloes in Game 7 of the 2023 Nippon Series today, winning the game 7-1 and the series 4 games to 3. The Tigers won their first championship since 1985 and only their second overall. There's a kind of symmetry in the MLB and NPB championships this year as both the Rangers and the Tigers ended what had been the second longest current championship drought in their respective leagues.
I'm pleased that the Tigers won for a selfish reason - at the start of the last six seasons I've done an "Opening Day" post using an idea I stole from Night Owl Cards in which I show a card from the most recent year that each NPB team won the Nippon Series. When I started, I only had six 1985 Hanshin Tigers cards and I've used all six of them in the posts. With the Tigers winning, I know can select any of more than 100 2023 cards for next year's post.
BBM used to issue a box set for the Nippon Series from 1991 until 2012 that included all the players who appeared in the Series as well as cards for the the Series MVP, the "Fighting Spirit" award winner (kind of a "MVP for the losing team" award) and the three "Outstanding Player" award winners. Since BBM no longer publishes this set, I've been featuring those award winners in the first "Card Of The Week" post following the end of the Series since 2014 (since I didn't know they weren't going to do a set in 2013):
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| Series MVP Koji Chikamoto (2019 BBM 2nd Version #585 Secret Version) |
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| "Fighting Spirit" Kotaro Kurebayashi (2023 Topps NPB #150) |
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| "Outstanding Player" Shota Morishita (2023 BBM 2nd Version #531) |
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| "Outstanding Player" Sheldon Neuse (2023 Epoch NPB #317) |
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| "Outstanding Player" Yoshinobu Yamamoto (2020 BBM Icons-Fireballer #18) |
In addition, I wanted to mention that on Thursday, Marwin Gonzalez of the Buffaloes became the fifth player to hit a home run in both a World Series and a Nippon Series game, joining Johnny Logan, Roy White, Hideki Matsui and Andruw Jones.
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| 2023 BBM 2nd Version #338 |
2 comments:
It was a nice series to watch, though a bit anticlimactic with Game 7 ending in a semi-blowout (as opposed to the nice 1-run games in games 3 and 4). I was glad to see the Tigers win.
Now is the time of the year when we have the most time to wait until the next ball game, so I always feel a bit of a downer when the Series ends!
I like that Chikamoto card, its got a nice picture.
I was happy to see the Tigers win as well if for no other reason than maybe we'll stop hearing about the "Curse of the Colonel" so much.
I also feel the same way as you after the Series ends but the Korea Series just started, there's a U-24 Asian Baseball Championship next week and then the Australian Baseball League kicks off. Not to mention the various Caribbean Winter Leagues and the new Baseball United tournament. So there's almost always baseball going on somewhere in the world.
I'm too cheap to buy many of the short-printed, photo variation "Secret Version" cards BBM's been doing for a while now but I really did like this one. As soon as it became clear that Chikamoto was going to win an award (he'd have likely won the "Fighting Spirit" award if Orix had won) I knew I'd be using this card for this post.
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