The managerial shuffle for the 2025 season ended late last week with a non-change - Tsuyoshi Shinjyo is returning to manage the Fighters for at least next season. I was kind of surprised as I had felt he had been hired to keep the seat warm for Atsunori Inaba eventually but the team's second place finish this year apparently bought him another season.
So now that the dust's settled, there'll be five teams with a different manager than they started last season with, only one of which - Hajime Miki of the Eagles - has ever managed before. And Miki was only a manager for a single season. The four rookie managers for 2025 will be Kazuki Inoue of the Dragons, Kyuji Fujikawa of the Tigers, Mamoru Kishida of the Buffaloes and Fumiya Nishiguchi of the Lions. All four played played for the teams they'll be managing which isn't a huge surprise for two of the teams. The Tigers haven't had a manager who hasn't played for the team since Senichi Hoshino in 2002-03 and the Lions haven't since Masaaki Mori from 1986-94. Two of the four have experience playing in North America (Fujikawa with the Cubs and Rangers from 2013-15 and Nishiguchi briefly with the Sioux City Explorers in 1995) which means NPB will have five such managers next year, joining Shinjyo, Masato Yoshii of the Marines and Shingo Takatsu of the Swallows. Actually if you include Hawaii in "North America" there's seven in all as both Inoue and Hiroki Kokubo of the Hawks played in the Hawaiian Winter League in the 90's.
My original plans for Friday, May 24th, were pretty open. I was going to meet up with Deanna, Noel and Steve at the Marines game that evening in Chiba but I didn't have any set plans for the day other than that. My expectation was that I would use the day to go to some baseball card shops I hadn't made it to yet like Mint Kichijoji or G-Freak and maybe do a little touristy stuff.
All that changed a few days earlier when I learned from Deanna that there was a corporate league tournament going on in Tokyo. The tournament was the (or "a") Tokyo qualifier for the Intercity Tournament which was held in late July. There were two games being played at Ota Stadium each day - one at 10 AM and the other at 1 PM. Trying to go to both games would make it difficult to get to the Marines game in time but just going to the 10 AM game seemed doable.
My first task that morning, however, was assessing the breakfast situation at my hotel, the Toyoko Inn in Kayabacho. I had discovered the previous day that their only offering for breakfast were rice cakes wrapped in seaweed that I had found inedible. I had hopes that perhaps they changed what they had for breakfast each day, but, alas, it was not to be. I ended up quickly downing a roll and a cup of coffee before heading out with the expectation that I'd be picking up some food somewhere else on the way to the ballgame.
Ota Stadium is located in Southern Tokyo, just north of Haneda Airport. The nearest train station is the Ryutsu Center station on the Tokyo Monorail line. "Nearest" is a bit relative as the ballpark is about a three quarters of a mile walk from the station. It took close to an hour for me to get there from my hotel.
Deanna and Noel had gone to the game between JR East and NTT East the previous afternoon (when I was in Shizuoka) so they were able to give me some idea what to expect when I got to the ballpark. Of course, their experience was very different from mine as they saw two of the more popular teams while I was going to be seeing two of the lesser known teams - Gold's Gym and Revenge99.
One of the things Deanna had mentioned was there was a Family Mart across the street from the ballpark so I stopped there on my way to pick up a late breakfast to eat during the game.
I paid my 1000 yen for a ticket (that would have been good for both games) and headed into the ballpark. Ota Stadium is a single decked ballpark that seats about 2,500 although there weren't anywhere near that many there that morning. There might have been about 100 people in the stands and about half of them were in the Gold's Gym cheering section:
As you can see from the pictures, they had a cheerleader. They also had a very fit man and woman posing during the cheer songs. They had a sound system that played songes like Bon Jovi's "It's My Life" and Timmy Trumpet's "Narco" at times although this was my favorite:
In contrast, the Revenge99 cheering section was a single guy with a drum:
He was into it though. This was his pregame song:
It's normal for the start of non-professional games in Japan to be announced by what sounds like an air raid siren and that was the case with this game. The siren was apparently right by where I was sitting, making me jump a little when it went off.
As I ate my breakfast in the stands, I realized I wasn't the only one doing that. There were several members of the Sega Sammy team sitting near me. They'd be playing Honda in the afternoon's game and they were getting their pre-game meal in:
Some of the Honda players were in the stands as well:
The game itself was pretty good. Gold's Gym took a 1-0 lead in the top of the first but Revenge99 tied it up in the bottom of the second. They scored two more in the bottom of the fourth and another in the fifth to take a 4-1 lead. Gold's Gym cut the lead to 4-3 with two runs in the seventh and then took the lead with two more in the eighth. Revenge99 came back in the bottom of the inning with two more runs with the tying run coming on a throwing error and the winning run coming on a bases loaded walk. Gold's Gym failed to score in the top of the ninth and Revenge99 won the game 6-5.
With the loss, Gold's Gym was knocked out of the qualifying tournament. Revenge99 would play and lose two more games before they were eliminated.
Like the day before in Shizuoka, I moved around a bunch during the game although I didn't take as many photos. Here's a shot of a Revenge99 pitcher doing his best John Pacella impression:
A couple shots of Gold's Gym taking the lead in the top of the eighth:
Here's Revenge99 with the bases loaded in the bottom of the eighth, just before they took the lead on a walk:
I stuck around for a few minutes after the game ended and watched Honda and Sega Sammy start their pregame workouts. I'm sure that the crowd for their game was larger than the game I had seen.
I stopped by the Honda fan table on the way out and asked them if they had a roster for the team. They ended up giving me a full fan packet which made me feel kind of guilty since I wasn't going to the game. It had a plastic folder with the team's roster on it, a pair of fans, a singlet, a cheer towel and a lanyard, all with the Honda logo on it:
I made my way back to the monorail station and headed back towards central Tokyo. I had decided that I would spend the afternoon at G-Freak so I switched to the Yamanote line and got off at Okachimachi. I grabbed a quick lunch at a Sukiya under Yamanote line tracks near the station and then walked the couple blocks to the cards shop.
I spent about an hour going through the boxes at G-Freak, finding random stuff I wanted and having a good time talking with the store owner. I was wearing the Nishitetsu Lions hat I had bought at Seibu Dome a few weeks earlier and he told me how he had grown up in Fukuoka as a Lions fan. He talked about climbing trees in the Fukuoka Castle ruins so that he could peer into Heiwadai Stadium during games. "Although sometimes I paid to get in," he admitted. He and his wife were amused that I only knew how to count to three in Japanese because of the Nobuta Group commercials.
I stopped off at my hotel to drop stuff off and relax a little bit before heading to Chiba. I probably should have left a little earlier as I kind of underestimated how long it was going to take to get to the ballpark.
This was the first time I had taken the Keiyo line train from Tokyo to the ballpark. When I went in 2019, I had stopped by Mint Chiba first so I had come from the opposite direction. I got a pretty good view of where the Arakawa river empties into Tokyo Bay from the train:
I also got a look at Tokyo Disneyland as well although I didn't get a chance to take a picture.
I got to Kaihim Makuhari Station around 5-ish. This is the nearest station to Chiba Marine Stadium but, once again, "nearest" is relative - it's about a 15 minute walk. Luckily for me, Deanna and Steve had alerted me to the bus that runs between the station and the ballpark and it was pretty obvious where the line was for it. Taking the bus easily saved me half the time that walking would have taken me.
The bus let us all off on the left field side of the ballpark and, since we were all going to be sitting in the Marines' cheering section, I needed to get to my gate on the right field side of the ballpark. Instead of doing the smart thing and walking around the back side of the stadium though, I walked around the front side of the ballpark which probably negated most of the time saving that the bus gave me. I eventually found my gate though and then pretty quickly met up with Deanna and Noel in time for us to get dinner (and baseball cards) at the Lotteria stand before making our way to our seats. Steve and his co-worker Shima joined us shortly after that.
The Marines were hosting the Hawks that evening (making it the third time I would see Softbank on this trip) and the exciting thing for me was that Roki Sasaki was starting for Lotte. Steve guaranteed me that there'd be a no-hitter that night. The ballpark was very full - in fact it would end up being a sell out - but the crowd wasn't necessarily there for Sasaki. It was "half price beer" night!
The game started out a little rough for Sasaki and the Marines. Two of the first four batters got hits and a two out single from Kensuke Kondoh brought in the first run of the game. I asked Steve about his guarantee and he replied "I didn't say who was going to throw it!" Things got a little grim when the next batter walked to load the bases but Sasaki stuck out Richard Sunagawa to end the threat.
Sasaki settled down after the first and ended up two more hits and one more walk over the remaining six innings that he pitched. He struck out eight total in seven innings.
Meanwhile the Marines got it done against Livan Moinelo, scoring two runs in the bottom of the second on an infield grounder by Ryusei Ogawa and a single by Hiromi Oka. They added a third run in the fifth when Akito Takabe knocked in Oka although Takabe got himself thrown out at second trying to stretch it into a double.
Koshiro Sakamoto and Naoya Masuda each pitched nearly perfect innings (Masuda gave up a walk) to finish out the 3-1 Marines victory. Here's the highlight video from PLTV:
We stuck around after the game for the hero interviews. I was kind of interesting seeing what the Marines do for this. As they're setting up the stage in the middle of the diamond, the cheerleaders come on the field with lightsticks and lead the crowd in waving their own lightsticks or cell phones:
The three "heroes of the game" were Sasaki, Oka and Takabe and each one of them answered questions (which you can see on the highlight video). I. of course, had no idea what they were saying but it was fun watching it on the scoreboard:
Afterwards the three players walked out to where we were sitting in right field and waved and bowed to the cheering section:
We hung out for a while after all of this while the stadium started to empty. People were coming up to greet Steve (who goes to most Marines home games) and we just had a good time talking with them. Someone from stadium security eventually came by to very politely suggest that we consider leaving but, of course, Steve knew them too so it was all very good-natured. We eventually made our way out of the ballpark before spending a bit of time trying to decide what we were going to do next. We ended up catching a bus back up to Kaihim Makuhari Station. Deanna, Noel and Steve were going to head to a bar (Shima had already left us) but I decided to head back to my hotel as I'm not much of a night owl these days. I also had a pretty full day planned for the next day which would be my last full day in Japan.
UPDATE - I forget to mention that Steve's guarantee actually came true, just not anywhere near us. Shosei Togoh of the Giants threw a no-hitter that evening against the Tigers at Koshien.
The 2024 NPB draft was held today and there's at least eight players who were drafted who already have baseball cards. As always, I'm relying on Deanna's post about the draft while supplementing it with the Japanese Wikipedia page for it as she hasn't gotten around to doing the ikusei portion of the draft yet (she left for Japan today after transcribing the regular phase of the draft).
OK, enough talking about the cards - let's see them. I should mention that I don't have any of these. Yet. Ryan had ordered the Topps Now Samurai Japan team set for me so I'll get that when I get my next shipment from him. All of these images were swiped from the internet - Jambalaya, Ebay and Mercari.
Yumeto Kanemura, Kansai University, Dragons #1
2024 Topps Now Global Games Samurai Japan Team Set #8
Raiku Katayama, NTT East, Buffaloes #6
2023 JABA #23JP109(?)
2024 JABA #24JP006 & #24JP051
Rui Muneyama, Meiji University, Eagles #1
2024 Topps Now Global Games Samurai Japan Team Set #20
2024 Panini Stars & Stripes USA Baseball #JPN-RM
Yuto Nakamura, Aichi Tech, Swallows #1
2024 Topps Now Global Games Samurai Japan Team Set #12
Last week while I was working on a post about several packages I had recently received, I started having a conversation with Jason, the source of one of those packages. He'd gotten some more 2024 Genesis cards in and had picked up the one remaining player card I wanted from the set - Junichiro Kishi, who like six other players, was in Genesis but not BBM's 1st or 2nd Version set. Jason also had several jersey cards available and I decided to get one of them as well.
Now, I feel like it's too much effort for Jason to ship me just two cards so we started having a discussion about what else he had that I'd be interested. I started asking him about "Secret Versions" - BBM's short printed photo variants - from this year's 2nd Version set. It turned out he had a couple. Then he checked 1st Version and discovered he had a couple from that set as well. It kind of snowballed after a while and ultimately I ended up getting fourteen of these cards from the past four years. I received the package today and I thought I'd do a quick post showing off what all he sent me.
The first card isn't actually a "Secret Version" - it's an "Ultra Secret Version". As the name implies, these are even more short printed than the "Secret Versions" (although I don't know how rare either one is). Since I had not gotten any of the "Ultra Secret Versions", I was happy to get this one:
2021 BBM 1st Version #066 (USV)
I still do not have any of the even rarer "Super Ultra Secret Versions".
Here are the remaining "Secrets" he sent me:
2021 BBM 1st Version #041 (SV)
2021 BBM 1st Version #014 (SV)
2021 BBM 1st Version #282 (SV)
2022 BBM 1st Version #230 (SV)
2022 BBM 1st Version #067 (SV)
2023 BBM 1st Version #309 (SV)
2023 BBM 2nd Version #429 (SV)
2024 BBM 1st Version #225 (SV)
2024 BBM 1st Version #299 (SV)
2024 BBM 2nd Version #491 (SV)
2024 BBM 2nd Version #472 (SV)
2024 BBM 2nd Version #367 (SV)
2024 BBM 2nd Version #347 (SV)
Here's the two cards from the Genesis set I also bought from him:
2024 BBM Genesis #099
It wouldn't be a package from Jason without a handful of surprises. He included a couple numbered parallels from the 2021 Epoch Swallows Stars & Legends set and the 2023 Topps 206 set:
2021 Epoch Swallows Stars & Legends #40
2023 Topps 206 #154
He also included a couple signature parallels from the 2020 BBM 2nd Version set:
2020 BBM 2nd Version #366
2020 BBM 2nd Version #539
Finally he included a couple "color variants" parallels from the 2023 BBM Swallows set. I've got the base on the left of each of these images for comparison:
2023 BBM Swallows #S04
2023 BBM Swallows #S28
2023 BBM Swallows #S50
So thanks for the cards, Jason! As always, it's a pleasure doing business with you!
One last, non-baseball related comment. When I came up with the title to this post, I had an old song running through my head. There was a musician in Delaware in the mid-80's named Jones "Woody" Purcell who I'd seen a couple times - in fact it was his band playing at Gallucio's Downtown in Wilmington the night I turned 21 and could legally go to a bar to listen to music. I remember them being very loud and at one point we suddenly realized they were playing "Ode To Billy Joe". I saw him a couple more times over the years and picked up a tape of his stuff that I really liked. The tape included a song called "I've Got A Secret" which is just a fun little pop song. I've long ago gotten rid of the tape but I decided to do some searching on-line today and I discovered two important things. The first is that the song (along with the rest of the tape) is available on SoundCloud:
