Late Mail Day

I've been recovering today from a busy week or so - I was in New Mexico for work from last Sunday until very late Thursday night (or really very early Friday morning) and then spent the weekend at a music festival up near Philadelphia.  I've spent most of today dealing with my database server that died last week while I was away - trying to migrate from the raw files of an old postgresql instance is proving more difficult than I would have suspected.

In the midst of all this, I received my latest package from COMC and I thought I'd do a quick post to show off the cards in chronological order.  First up is a card from the 1974/75 Calbee set showing Shigeo Nagashima alongside Tadashi Sugiura when the two of them were teammates at Rikkio University in the 1950's:

1974/75 Calbee #499

It's always kind of amused me that the two ex-teammates and future Hall Of Famers were their respective league Rookies Of The Year in 1958.

Next up is an "MVP" insert card from the 1994 BBM All Star box set.  There were six of these cards in all and two of them were included in every box set.  The cards depicted the MVPs of the All Star games from 1991 to 1993 (the first three years BBM did All Star box sets).  I had gotten two of these with the set I bought years ago (although I honestly couldn't tell you off hand which two) and I've been kind of low-key picking up the other four as opportunities have presented themselves.  This Tom O'Malley card goes with the Atsuya Furata, Hiroo Ishii, Norihiro Komada and Kazuhiro Kiyohara cards I already have, leaving just the Katsumi Hirosawa card left for me to find.

1994 BBM All Stars #E6

I really like the back of the card as well:

Next up is a bit of a departure for me as it's not really a baseball card - it's a pro wrestling card!  Of course, it commemorates a pro wrestler's brief baseball career.  Shohei Baba - aka "Giant Baba" was a pro wrestler in the 1960's but he spent 1955-59 in the Yomiuri Giants organization.  He spent most of his time on the farm team, only getting in three games with the top team in 1957, going 0-1 with a 1.29 ERA in seven innings, striking out three while only giving up five hits and one run along with no walks.  His one loss was Shigeru Sugishita's 200th career win.  After being let go by the Giants, he was picked up by the Taiyo Whales but he suffered an arm injury when he stumbled in the shower and shattered a glass door.  He needed 17 stitches and had issues with numbness in his fingers which ultimately resulted in his retirement from baseball.

Giant Baba passed away at age 61 in 1999 from colon cancer.  The 2000 BBM All Japan Pro-Wrestling set has a relatively large subset of its base set dedicated to him - it looks to me that 34 of the 99 cards in the set are a retrospective on his career.  The only card of this group that I had an interest in was the "Baseball Days" card:

2000 BBM All Japan Pro-Wrestling #64

The back of the card shows him pitching:

The last card I picked up was this jersey card for Tsuyoshi Wada from the 2011 BBM 1st Version set:

2011 BBM 1st Version #M1