20 Years Of OB Team Sets

I realized the other day that I was about to let 2024 pass without commemorating the 20th anniversary of that staple of BBM's card issues - the OB team set.  BBM released the first of these in 2004 to celebrate the 70th Anniversary of the founding of the Yomiuri Giants.  I thought I'd update the list of these sets that I did ten years ago to include what BBM's added since then.

So what do I mean by an "OB team set"?  An OB team set is a set of cards that is primarily made up of former (OB) players for a specific team.  These players may be retired or active on another team (in NPB, MLB or elsewhere).  The set may also include active players for the team but they will be in the minority.

BBM has issued these sets fairly steadily over the past twenty years.  There have been 50 of these sets in all with 26 coming in the first ten years (2004-13) and 24 coming in the last ten (2014-23).  There's been a least one set issued in each year with the exceptions of 2007, 2012, 2017 and 2024.  2014 saw the largest number of these sets with seven being issued that year.  Most of these sets have been pack-based but there's been a handful of box sets as well.

The initial sets were mostly in commemoration of anniversaries of one sort or another - team founding, team moving, team getting bought, etc.  There was a stretch around 2012-15 where there were several sets done as part of the "Legend" series which concentrated on a particular time period for a handful of teams.  There was also a series of "Achievement" box sets in 2014-15 that specialized in mostly players from the 1970's for a few teams.  In more recent years, BBM has issued a series of "Team History" sets that don't really commemorate any specific event or era but rather purport to cover the team's entire history (although in reality they mostly contain relatively recent players who are still able to sign autographs).  This series may have run its course after BBM issued these sets for nine of the twelve teams, especially since there was no entry in it in 2024.

Here's a table listing all of the OB team sets that BBM has issued in the past 20 years.  Each team has at least one with the Hawks having the most with seven.  I have added links to posts on my blog about the sets that I've written about (or all but the 2004 Giants 70th Anniversary and 2006 Dragons 70th Anniversary sets).

Team	Year	Set	Commemorates
Chiba Lotte Marines	2008	Lotte 40th Anniversary	Lotte buying Orions in 1968
	2011	Chiba 20th Anniversary	Lotte moving to Chiba from Kawasaki in 1992
	2021	Marines History 1950-2021	Marines team history
Chunichi Dragons	2006	Dragons 70th Anniversary	Dragons 70th Anniversary
	2011	Dragons 75th Anniversary	Dragons 75th Anniversary
	2014	Dragons Legend	Senichi Hoshino's stints as manager (1987-1991, 1996-2001)
	2016	Dragons 80th Anniversary	Dragons 80th Anniversary
	2021	Dragons History 1936-2021	Dragons team history
Fukuoka Softbank Hawks	2008	Hawks 70th Anniversary	Hawks 70th Anniversary
	2013	Hawks 75th Anniversary	Hawks 75th Anniversary
	2013	Fukuoka Legacy	Nippon Series Championships in Fukuoka
	2014	Hawks Achievement	70's era Hawks players
	2015	Softbank 10th Anniversary	10th Anniversary of Softbank buying the Hawks
	2018	Hawks 80th Anniversary	Hawks 80th Anniversary
	2022	Hawks History 1938-2022	Hawks team history
Hanshin Tigers	2005	Tigers 70th Anniversary	Tigers 70th Anniversary
	2010	Tigers 75th Anniversary	Tigers 75th Anniversary
	2013	Tigers Legend	1980's
	2015	Tigers 80th Anniversary	Tigers 80th Anniversary
	2021	Tigers History 1935-2021	Tigers team history
Hiroshima Toyo Carp	2008	Hiroshima Memorial	Closing of Hiroshima Municipal Stadium
	2009	Carp 60th Anniversary	Carp 60th Anniversary
	2015	Carp Legend	Players from Carp pennant winners between 1975 and 1991
	2020	Carp History 1950-2020	Carp team history
Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters	2013	Fighters 10 Years in Hokkaido	10th Anniversary of Fighters moving to Sapporo
Orix Buffaloes	2009	Hankyu Memorial	Players from Hankyu era
	2009	Orix 20th Anniversary	20th Anniversary of Orix buying Braves
	2011	Legend Of The Bs	1970's era Hankyu and Kintetsu
	2014	Orix 25th Anniversary	25th Anniversary of Orix buying Braves
	2014	Braves Achievement	70's Era Braves players
	2021	Buffaloes History 1936-2021	Buffaloes team history
Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes	2009	Kintetsu Memorial	60th Anniversary of founding of Kintetsu team in 1950
	2015	Buffaloes Achievement	70's era Buffaloes players
Saitama Seibu Lions	2008	Lions Memorial	Players from before Seibu bought the Lions in 1978
	2008	Seibu 30th Anniversary	30th Anniversary of Seibu buying the Lions in 1978 (and moving them from Fukuoka to Tokorozawa)
	2009	Lions 60th Anniversary	Lions 60th Anniversary
	2010	Lions Classic	Lions throw-back uniforms
	2014	Lions Legend	80's - 90's Lions players
	2023	Lions History 1950-2023	Lions team history
Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles	2014	Eagles 10th Anniversary	Eagles 10th Anniversary
Tokyo Yakult Swallows	2009	Yakult 40th Anniversary	40th Anniversary of Yakult buying the Swallows in 1969
	2022	Swallows History 1950-2022	Swallows team history
Yokohama DeNA Baystars	2008	Yokohama 30th Anniversary	30th Anniversary of then-Whales moving to Yokohama from Kawasaki
	2013	Baystars 20th Anniversary	20th Anniversary of Whales changing their name to Baystars
	2015	Whales Achievement	70's era Whales players
	2019	Baystars 70th Anniversary	70th Anniversary of the founding of the team that is now the Baystars
Yomiuri Giants	2004	Giants 70th Anniversary	Giants 70th Anniversary
	2013	Giants Legend	Shigeo Nagashima's stints as manager (1975-1980, 1993-2001)
	2014	Giants 80th Anniversary	Giants 80th Anniversary
	2020	Giants History 1934-2020	Giants team history

I had mentioned in my post ten years ago that even though all twelve teams had at least one OB team set, there were great swaths of some team's histories that weren't covered in the sets.  I specifically mentioned the pre-1969 Marines, pre-1970 Swallows, pre-1978 Baystars and the pre-2004 Fighters.  I'm happy to report that two of those four ignored histories - the Swallows and the Baystars - have been dealt with somewhat.  You'd think the Marines one was too but the "Marines History 1950-2021" set pretty much ignores the 19 years of the team's existence before being bought by Lotte in 1969.

2024 In Review - Everything Else (Including Korea)

I'm finishing up the review of 2024's card releases in Japan (and Korea) with everything that wasn't done by BBM, Epoch, Calbee or Topps.

The big addition this year was a collectible card game called DreamOrder from the Japanese game company Bushiroad.  They released a somewhat bewildering number of cards in what should probably be considered twenty unique sets.  In April, they released starter decks for each team that contained 12 unique player cards in each deck.   Additionally, they released the Central League and Pacific League Vol. 1 booster packs sets as pack based sets at the same time.  Each of the two sets had 12 additional player cards per team plus six "tactics" cards per team that show a photo of a player from the team (although they don't identify them).  Bushiroad added two Vol. 2 booster pack sets at the end of June, two Vol. 3 sets at the end of August and two Vol. 4 booster pack sets in mid-October.  I think but I'm not entirely sure that the Vol. 2-4 sets were put together the same way Vol. 1 was.  If so, that would imply that between the starter deck and the four booster packs, each team had 60 player cards plus 24 "tactics" cards for 84 total cards per team or 1008 cards altogether.  That's not taking into account the parallels, of course.  DreamOrder was the first collectible card game for NPB since Konami stopped doing the Baseball Collection cards in 2022.

Bandai did some baseball cards for the first time since 2015 or so.  It was not a return of Owners League, their collectible card game, however.  Instead, they teamed up with Namco to release a 36 card set of caricatures of players.  he cards were given away with bags of what's basically a bar snack called "kaki no tane" which in this case are primarily soy crackers.  The set was called "Pro Baseball Deforme Card Collection 2024". 

TIC (or "Hits" or "Produce 216") did three of their "mini colored paper" or "mini shikishi" team sets this year although I think only two of them - the Hawks and Swallows - were available through the normal outlets.  The third time was the Lions but the cards may have only been available through the team itself - I got two packs at the team store outside Seibu Dome in May.

Also available at the Lions store were packs of their "L Collection, Vol. 1" set, a collaboration they've done with BBM for at least the last three years.  I'm still not clear about why the sets are labeled "Vol. 1" as I've never seen any other volumes.  In past years, Jambalaya has listed these cards but for some reason, they didn't this year (although you can see what I pulled from the packs I bought here).

The Lions weren't the only team to pair up with one of the big card companies for a "team issued" set.  The Eagles worked with Epoch on their two annual sets called "1st Version" and "2nd Version".  I know that were team-issued or fan club related sets for the Marines and Hawks as well as at least one other one for the Lions and I assume that most of the other teams also had one or more sets each.

My count for the total number of NPB sets this year is 60 which is probably a little low.  I'm only counting the DreamOrder stuff as one set and I'm not counting the team sets from the Lions, Marines and Hawks as they weren't "national" as opposed to the Eagles Epoch set and the Lions BBM set.  I'm also not counting any of the on demand sets from Epoch or Topps.  That total is the same as last year, kind of confirming that this year's releases were pretty similar to last year's.

Current and future NPB players appeared on some cards from Panini in North America as well.  For the second year in a row, Tomoyuki Sugano appeared on a couple of their releases - at least the Donruss and Crusade base sets (along with a bazillion parallels of each card, of course).  Also for the first time since 2020, Panini included autograph/memorabilia cards of the members of the 2023 Samurai Japan collegiate team in their USA Baseball Stars & Stripes set.  The 24 players include 15 2023 NPB draft picks (including Pacific League Rookie Of The Year Natsuki Takeuchi) along with four 2024 NPB draft picks.  Panini also released non-autographed memorabilia cards for the team with the box set version of the Stars & Stripes set.

Over in South Korea, SCC released three sets for the KBO.  The "KBO League" set came out in mid-June, followed by the "KBO Rainbow" set in late-July.  The final set, "KBO Karbon", was published at the end of October.  

2024 In Review - Topps

2024 was Topps' fourth year of doing NPB cards and they ended up publishing four sets.  Eventually.  

Topps had been steadily adding a set a year for their first three years.  They published "NPB" and "NPB Chrome" in 2021, added "NPB Bowman" in 2022 and added "NPB 206" in 2023.  This year, however, they replaced "NPB Bowman" with the "NPB Stadium Club" set.

The timing of their sets remains very odd.  They released their "flagship" "NPB" set in May but the other three sets - "NPB Chrome", "NPB Stadium Club" and "NPB 206" - were not released until mid-December.  Like last year, the Chrome set was not just an ugly parallel version of the flagship set - it had a different checklist and different photos.

Topps really expanded their on-line, on-demand cards this past year.  Like they've done in both of the previous years, they issued Topps Now cards for the Samurai Japan teams, both the one that played a couple friendlies against a European All Star team in March and the one that played in the Premier 12 in November.  There were eight singles and a 30 card team set available for the March team and 22 singles for the Premier 12 team.  I expect that there will be a 30 card team set available for the Premier 12 squad in early January.  I think there may have also been six singles available for the warm up games against Australia prior to the Premier 12 but, if so, they weren't available for anywhere near the length of time that the others were (which was roughly a month).

Topps also added Topps Now cards for NPB to their line up.  Unlike their MLB counterparts which are only on sale for one day, these are on sale for a week.  They were initially 1,243 yen each (a little less than $8) but the price went up to 1,342 ($8.50-ish) after the first 13 cards.  Bizarrely, it appears that Topps is charging 550 yen for shipping these inside Japan (and will not ship these overseas at all).  They issued 207 of these cards in all and only eight of the twelve NPB teams were represented - the Dragons, Eagles, Fighters, Giants, Hawks, Lions, Swallows and Tigers.  I am somewhat bewildered at Topps' attempt to challenge Epoch at these sorts of cards when the Epoch One cards cost less than what Topps is charging for shipping but I've been struggling for four years to understand the appeal of most of Topps' NPB output to people and failing so maybe there's just something I'm missing.

Topps also issued an on demand 17 card team set celebrating the Hanshin Tigers Nippon Series Championship in 2023.  The set was on sale for 8800 yen (about $56) for less than a week and, like the NPB Topps Now cards, it was not possible to buy it from overseas. 

Card Of The Week December 29

I mentioned when I did my post about the new BBM Fusion set that Gakuto Wakabayashi, who'd been traded from the Lions to the Giants in late June, had appeared in BBM's 2nd Version as a Lion but was a Giant in the "1st Version Update" subset in Fusion:

2024 BBM 2nd Version #570

2024 BBM Fusion #606

I'm curious now how often a player appears with one team in either 1st or 2nd Version and then another in 2nd Version or Fusion.  I'm planning on doing the research for a post about it in the near future.

I had also mentioned in the Fusion post that the player Wakabayashi was traded for - Seiya Matsubara - was not in the Fusion set.  He also was not in either 1st or 2nd Version this year.  He was, however, in the BBM Lions Collection box set that I got at the same time as the Fusion set - it was his first appearance on a BBM baseball card with his new team (although I think he was on at least one Epoch One card with the Lions):

2024 BBM Lions Collection #LC26

2024 In Review - Calbee

Like BBM and Epoch, Calbee pretty much did the same thing in 2024 that they did in 2023.  Unfortunately.

Starting in 2004, Calbee had released three Series each year.  Series One would come out in March, Series Two would come out in June and Series Three would come out in September.  It was probably a coincidence but the releases were in sync with the change of seasons (as Sean pointed out once).  This remained their standard operating procedure for nearly twenty years with the only exception being 2017 when a typhoon the previous year disrupted the potato crop in Hokkaido and limited Calbee to only doing two Series (since the important thing in their eyes were the potato chips and not the cards).  In 2023, however, they unexpectedly only did two Series.  I'm not entirely sure why they ended up not doing the standard three - they basically told me they needed to delay Series Two that year because Series One was so popular - but there was an obvious clue that they had intended to do three Series that year - the checklist cards.  Since 2004, Calbee has included 12 checklist cards - one featuring each NPB team - in their set every year - four in each Series (usually) - with the exception of 2017 and 2023.  Since Calbee had planned on doing all three Series both of those years, there were only eight checklist cards altogether with both of the published Series having four checklist cards each.

The bad news for 2024 was that Calbee again only did two Series.  The worse news is that it was planned this way as there were still 12 checklist cards.  Each Series had six checklist cards so we were back to all 12 teams showing up on one of them.

The "only doing two Series" thing wouldn't be so bad except each Series had fewer cards in it this year than two years ago.  Calbee had standardized the number of "regular" cards in each Series at 72 in 2016 (six cards per team) but lowered it to 60 (five per team) last year and kept it there this year.  The total number of base cards in Series One was 84 with the 60 "regular" player cards, the six checklists and an 18 card "Title Holder" subset.  Series Two had 78 base cards with a 12 card "Player Chairman" subset to go along with the 60 "regular" card and six checklists.  The 2024 Calbee base set then contained a total of 162 cards - 120 "regular" cards, 30 subset cards and twelve checklist cards.

Calbee also had their standard two insert sets with their base set cards.  The "Legend" inserts from Series One typically have several players who retired the previous year but, this year, it only had a single player - Nobuhiro Matsuda.  As usual, there were 24 "Star" insert cards in each Series for a total of 48 overall.  In addition, there were two limited edition 12 card box sets - one for each Series - that could only be purchased through Calbee's Amazon.co.jp store.  The sets were "Home Run Leaders" for Series One and "Opening Day Pitchers" for Series Two.

It was almost comical that with all the other issues with Calbee this past year - fewer Series and fewer cards altogether - that they also had a couple fairly major errors in Series One.  First of all, they listed Hiromi Itoh's height on the back of his card as 176 meters rather than 176 centimeters.  The second issue was that some of the "Star" and "Legend" inserts did not have the "kira" finish that the cards normally have.  The last issue wasn't with the cards themselves but the packaging - they misspelled the word "Lucky" in katakana in their explanation of how to redeem the "Lucky" cards in Series One.  They corrected the Itoh card and the bag so there are two different versions of both out there.  I don't believe either version of the Itoh card is particularly rare but that hasn't stopped folks from trying to get big money for them (although I have not actually seen the corrected card so I could be wrong).  Calbee avoided a repeat of the misspelled "Lucky" on the package for Series Two by not bothering to have a "Lucky" card promotion with it.

I'm spending a lot of time beating up on Calbee in this post so I'll try to end on the one pleasant surprise from them this year.  All of a sudden back at the end of last January, reports started coming out of Kyushu of bags of Calbee chips with baseball cards for the Hawks appearing in stores.  There was eventually an announcement that Calbee was doing a 36 card Hawks team set.  The set was apparently meant to be a 2023 issue as the front design looked like the regular 2023 Calbee cards and the set was supposed to commemorate the 30th Anniversary of the opening of Fukuoka Dome which was in 1993.  It was a regional issue with the cards only being available in Western Japan.  I've picked up all the cards off of auction sites in Japan (well, I mean that Ryan has picked them up for me) but I was unable to find any in the card shops I went to last May.

2024 In Review - Epoch

Epoch's 2024 output was kind of like BBM's - a little on the mundane side with no real surprises.  They only put out 19 sets which was two fewer than 2023.  One of those 19, however, was a set with a 2023 "cover date".  The 2023 "OB Club Holographica" set was not published until February of this past year (and I suspect that the 2024 edition will be similarly delayed since it hasn't been announced yet and there's only a couple days left in the year).

Epoch's flagship "NPB" set was back for the seventh consecutive year but was reduced in size from 444 cards to 348.  For the third year in a row, Epoch released an "NPB Luxury" set that used a similar design but with a smaller checklist and different photos.  Each base card was serially numbered and limited to 86.

Epoch also released their "Pacific League Rookies" box set for the seventh consecutive year.

The number of their "reasonably priced" team sets called "Premier Edition" dropped from ten in 2023 back to eight this past year (like it was in 2022).  Each set had between 38 and 45 cards and some of the cards were for OB players in addition to the active players.  The teams Epoch did sets for were the Baystars, Buffaloes, Carp, Dragons, Fighters, Lions, Swallows and Tigers.  They dropped the Eagles although they collaborated with Rakuten on the Eagles' annual team produced set.  The Hawks were the other team that they did in 2023 but dropped this past year, joining the Marines and Giants.

Oddly enough, though, those three teams - the Marines, Giants and Hawks - were three of the four teams that Epoch did their ultra high-end active/OB "Stars & Legends" team sets for (with the Tigers being the fourth team). 

The remaining sets from Epoch in 2024 were more of their ultra high-end sets, two of which - "Pacific League Premier Edition" and "OB Club Career Achievement" - are pretty much annual issues.  The remaining one was an OB set for Kintetsu called "Memories Of The Kintetsu Buffaloes".

Epoch's on-line, on-demand Epoch One cards were back again for their eighth season.  There were ultimately 1238 cards done in 2024 for ten of the twelve NPB teams - everyone except the Carp and Buffaloes.  The big change Epoch did with the cards this year involved draft picks.  In previous years, Epoch would do Epoch One cards for a couple team's draft picks in the same year that the draft occurred.  For example, in 2018, they issued six cards for the Dragons' 2018 draft picks.  It was kind of neat as these cards then ended up predating BBM's Rookie Edition cards as the earliest cards for the players.  But after doing draft pick cards for six teams in the 2022 edition, they did none in the 2023 set.  For the 2024 cards, they did cards for the 2023 draft picks for all ten teams they did cards for.  I found this to be a lot less interesting than when they did them the same year so I didn't end up getting any of them.

2024 In Review - BBM

2024 was kind of a mundane year with very little difference with what they did in 2023.  Like 2023, they issued 27 baseball (or primarily baseball) sets this year.

The bulk of BBM's 2024 releases - 24 of the 27 sets - were what I refer to as the "perennials" - sets they issue every year although there was a major change in those sets which I'll get to in a minute.  These sets include the three "flagship" sets - "1st Version", "2nd Version" and "Fusion"; the team sets for all 12 NPB teams - the Baystars, Buffaloes, Carp, Dragons, Eagles, Fighters, Giants, Hawks, Lions, Marines, Swallows and Tigers; the "Rookie Edition" (draft pick) set; the high-end "Genesis" set and the ultra-high-end "Glory" set.  They also include the two baseball specific box sets - "Icons" (with a theme of "Generations" this year) and "Rookie Edition Premium".  They also issued three multi-sport sets that primarily featured baseball players - the "Farewell" box set for retiring baseball players and other athletes, the "Infinity" set and the ultra high-end "Crown" set.  The big change this year was instead of issuing their "Dancing Heroine" set for the team's cheerleaders and dance teams as two separate sets (called "Hana" and "Mai"), BBM instead issued it as a single set.  I don't generally pay a lot of attention to this set but it looks like the new set was roughly the size of the two previous sets combined.

The three non-perennial sets all came out late in the year.  The "Professional Baseball 90th Anniversary" set was released in late October.  BBM released two single team box sets in late November - "Hawks - Fly Again" which commemorated the Hawks winning the Pacific League pennant for the first time in four years and "Lions Collection" which commemorated an alternate uniform that the Lions did in collaboration with the Japanese clothing designer "New Yorker".

I was a little surprised that BBM did not issue any of their "Team History" sets although, at this point, there's only three teams they didn't do between 2020 and 2023 - the Eagles, Baystars and Fighters.  The Eagles would have made the most sense since they were celebrating their 20th season this past year.  Instead of a full set, however, BBM expanded the Eagles "comprehensive" team set to include what was basically a 36 card 20th Anniversary subset.

Takumi Akiyama

Long time Hanshin Tigers pitcher Takumi Akiyama announced his retirement back in the middle of September.  Akiyama had been the star player on his Saijo High School squad and led them to the Summer Koshien tournament in 2009.  He beat Yachiyo Higashi in the opening round but Meiho knocked him and the team out in the second round.  The Tigers took him in the fourth round of that fall's draft.

He made his first start with the top team in August of 2010.  He threw a "Maddux" - a complete game shutout on less than 100 pitchs - in his third or fourth start on September 10th.  He ended up going 4-3 with an ERA of 3.35 in seven ichi-gun starts that year.

A neck injury kept him on the farm for most of 2011 but in the off season, the Tigers dispatched him to Australia and the Canberra Cavalry, where he went 1-0 with a 1.23 ERA in four starts.  Over the next few years, he would pitch relatively well on the farm but wasn't as effective with the top team.  It wasn't until 2017 that he really blossomed.  He made the team's starting rotation out of training camp and went 12-6 with a 2.99 ERA in 25 starts.  He made the All Star team that season for the first and only time of his career.

He pitched decently in 2018, posting a 3.86 ERA, but a lack of run support resulted in a 5-10 record.  He took matters into his own hands on May 8th, hitting a home run against the Giants while pitching a shutout against them.  He split 2019 between ichi and ni-gun, going 10-2 with a 2.67 ERA on the farm but only 4-3 with a 4.26 ERA with the top team.  He bounced back with two solid years with big league team, going 11-3 with an ERA of 2.89 in 2020 and 10-7, 2.71 in 2021 but injuries, particularly to his right knee,  kept him on the farm for most of 2022 and 2023 and all of 2024.  Akiyama ended his career with over 1000 innings pitched on the farm team which appears to be a record (at least since NPB started keeping track in 1991).

Akiyama's first BBM cards were in the 2010 Rookie Edition (#029) and 1st Version (#142) sets.  He doesn't have his first Calbee card until 2018 Series One (#045).  He ultimately had only five base Calbee cards - two from 2018, two from 2021 and one from 2022.  He also was one of the rare NPB players who wintered in Australia to have an Australian baseball card - #26 in the 2013-13 Select Canberra Cavalry team set.  Here's some of his cards:

2010 BBM Rookie Edition #029

2010 BBM 1st Version #142

2012-13 Select Canberra Cavalry #26

2015 BBM Tigers #T13

2018 Calbee Series Three #ES-08

2022 BBM 1st Version #032

2024 BBM Tigers #T10

Seiya Inoue

Seiya Inoue, the somewhat rotund slugger from the Chiba Lotte Marines, announced his retirement back at the beginning of October.  Inoue had been a bit of star at Chuo University but decided to play corporate league ball with Nippon Life for a couple years after graduation.  He registered for the 2013 NPB draft and was taken in the fifth round by Lotte.  Inoue's nickname was "Aja" after the heavyset female wrestler Aja Kong

He had an impressive first season on the farm in 2014, hitting .377 with 14 home runs in just 58 games and won the MVP award at the Fresh All Star game, the all star game for the farm leagues.  He'd hit over .300 on the farm in each of the next few seasons but it wasn't until 2018 that he was able to produce with the top team when given the opportunity.  He hit .292 with 24 home runs and 99 RBIs in 133 games that season and followed it up with another 24 home run campaign in 2019 although his average dropped to .252.  His average continued to decline in 2020, dropping to .245 and he only hit 15 home runs (with three coming in one game on July 28th).  Age and injuries cut into his playing time after that with him only having played in 115 games with the top team between 2021 and 2023 and none at all in 2024.

His first BBM cards were in the 2014 Rookie Edition (#021) and 1st Version (#080).  His first Calbee card was surprisingly in the 2014 Series Two set (#104) - I say surprisingly because it's rare for Calbee to include cards of players in their rookie season, especially fifth round picks.  Here's a handful of his cards:

2014 BBM 1st Version #021

2014 BBM 1st Version #080

2016 BBM Marines #M50

2018 Epoch NPB #204

2020 Epoch One #213

2021 Calbee Series One #011

2023 Topps NPB #165

2024 BBM Marines #M52

First Sets Of 2025

The first three sets of the new year have been announced so let's do a quick overview of them...

- Ichiro Suzuki retired in 2019 but apparently missed the game enough that he founded a club baseball team called "KOBE CHIBEN".  He also passed the qualification examination to be coach high school baseball but the rules of the governing organization for high school baseball do not allow anyone working with professional teams to coach at a high school level.  Since Ichiro is still currently employed by the Mariners as some sort of "special assistant", he's apparently only allowed to do high school coaching over the winter.  I'm not clear on all the details but I think he's been primarily working with the women's team from Chiben Gakuen Wakayama High School.  There appears to be an annual game between KOBE CHIBEN and a women's high school baseball team the past four years.  The first game was played in Kobe but the last three have been played in Tokyo Dome.  The 2024 game featured not only Ichiro but also Hideki Matsui and Daisuke Matsuzaka on the KOBE roster.  BBM is putting out a box set for this game.  The official name is something like "High School Baseball Girls Selection VS Ichiro selection KOBE CHIBEN Baseball card set [DREAM]" but I think I'll just call it "Dream".  Each box contains 32 cards - a 30 card base set, one insert card (which is a parallel of one of the base set cards) and one "premium" insert card (which could be a foil signature, memorabilia, autographed or autographed memorabilia card - some of which feature one or more of Ichiro, Matsui and Matsuzaka).  The 30 base set cards have cards of the "three legends" and 20 members of the high school team.  The set will be out in early February.  What's interesting about this to me is that this will be Ichiro's first BBM card since 2009.  I had kind of figured that he had an exclusive deal with Epoch but maybe that ended this year.  It'll be interesting to see if he appears in any additional sets for BBM this coming year.

- "Rookie Edition", BBM's annual draft pick set, is back for its 23rd edition.  There's no real changes from the past few years.  The base set contains 135 cards - 122 cards for the 2024 draft picks, twelve "New Face" subset cards and a single "list of draft picks" card to make the number of cards in the set divisible by three.  The draft picks include both the 69 players taken in the regular phase and the 53 players taken in the ikusei (development player) phase who actually signed with their drafting team (Ryo Furukawa, the first development player pick of the Hawks, did not sign).  The twelve first round picks will again have "secret" versions which are short printed photo variations and all the regular phase draftees will have various foil signature parallels.  There are three types of insert cards - "Starting Point" (12 cards), "Close Relationship" (eight cards) and "Rookie Of The Year" (two cards featuring the 2024 Rookies Of The Year Hiromasa Funabasama and Natsuki Takeuchi).  There are autographed cards available for both the established players in the set (or at least the ones in the "Starting Point" insert set) and the draftees although I believe the draftees are only available as exchange cards.  The set will be released in late-February.

- The Eagles are continuing to collaborate with Epoch on their annual team set.  This set is usually sold in packs (or boxes of packs) at the Eagles' ballpark but also tends to be available nation-wide.  I'm assuming this set that's been announced is the 2025 Eagles 1st Version set although the web page does not say that.   The base set will contain 72 cards of active players on the roster including the development players.  It's unclear if the base set will include the 2024 draft class or not but I'd assume it will not include any players who've left the team since the end of the season (Masahiro Tanaka and Eigoro Mogi) or any players who've joined the team since then.  There are silver and gold foil signature parallels of all the base cards.  There are three types of insert cards - "Baseball Mates" (7 cards), "Keep Smiling" (17 cards) and "Uniform Collection" (22 cards) - and three types of autographed cards - "Authentic", "Record Achievers" and "2025 Rookie Autograph".  In addition, there will be memorabilia cards from game used uniforms of Takahiro Norimoto and Hideto Asamura and the ubiquitous Epoch premium GEM insert cards (both "White" and "Black").  The set will be released on March 1st.

Card Of The Week December 22

With the tragic news of Rickey Henderson's passing this past week, I got to thinking about Yutaka Fukumoto.  I was a big Lou Brock fan when I was a kid so I've kind of naturally been attracted to base stealers like Henderson (not that there's really guys like him), Willie Wilson and Tim Raines.  When I got into Japanese baseball, it was only natural that I'd gravitate towards Yutaka Fukumoto, NPB's career stolen base leader.  I thought I'd do an appreciation post for Fukumoto.

The parallels between Henderson and Fukumoto are striking.  They're the only two players in the world to have had more than 1000 stolen bases in their careers.  Fukumoto led his league in steals 13 times (1970-82) while Henderson did it 12 times.  Both players hold their leagues single season steal record as well, with Fukumoto's 106 in 1972 being the NPB record and Henderson's 130 ten years later being the MLB record.  Both players also had some pop in their bats and hold the record for most lead off home runs in their respective leagues.

Like Henderson, Fukumoto dominates the NPB career stolen base leader board.  His 1065 steals is 469 more than the runner up, Yoshinori Hirose.  Oddly enough, Henderson leads Brock by almost the same amount - 468 steals.  The nearest active player, Haruki Nishkawa, has only 342 steals.  The most by any player in the 21st Century is Norihiro Akahoshi's 381 although that total certainly would have been higher had Akashoshi not been forced to retire relatively young due to injuries.  In addition, Kazuo Matsui would have had more than 363 steals had he not spent seven years in MLB (where he amassed another 102 steals) although I feel it's unlikely he would have gotten much closer to Fukimoto's total than Hirose.

The big difference I see in their careers is the context of when they played.  Henderson was the greatest base stealer in MLB history but he wasn't the only base stealer of his era.  Wilson, Raines, Vince Coleman and later Kenny Lofton and Juan Pierre also had lots of stolen bases.  Fukumoto, on the other hand, seems to have been the only prolific base stealer of his era.  The most steals by a player whose career overlapped significantly with Fukumoto's was Yoshihiko Takahashi's 477, almost 600 behind Fukumoto's total.  

It would have been interesting to see what Fukumoto's total would have been if he'd continued playing a few more years.  He retired after Orix bought the Braves from Hankyu after the 1988 season but it really wasn't his idea.  After Hankyu's final game on October 23rd, manager Toshiharu Ueda meant to say that they'd be bidding farewall to Hisashi Yamada (who was retiring) but continuing on with Fukumoto on the new team but instead said they'd be bidding farewell to both Yamada and Fukumoto.  Although he had contemplated playing for another three years, he decided to go ahead and retire at 40.  There were no hard feelings as he coached for Ueda and Orix for a few years after that.   Given how limited his playing time was in his last couple seasons, I don't see him adding a whole lot more to his total if he'd continued playing..

Fukumoto has a lot of great cards and it was hard trying to decide on one.  Ultimately I punted and decided to show six Calbees in all:

1974-75 Calbee #484

1979 Calbee May Best #11

1980 Calbee #282

1981 Calbee #244

1983 Calbee #395

1984 Calbee #75

That 1981 card shows a scene from one of the All Star games that year.  

Rickey Henderson was aware of Fukumoto and when he passed Fukumoto's total, he signed the base and presented it to him.  That base now resides in the Japanese Baseball Hall Of Fame in Tokyo:

2024 BBM Fusion

2024 BBM Fusion Set Summary

Size: 144 cards numbered 1-99, TH01-TH24, 601-620, 136
Cards Per Team:  Variable
Team Card Theme:  N/A
Number Of Leader Cards:  24
Checklists:  None
Subsets:  Title Holder (24), Rookie Edition Update(1), 1st Version Update (20)
Inserts:  Ceremonial First Pitch (31), Great Record (24), Legendary Player (12), Treasure (12, /25), Esperanza (24, /50)

Memorabilia Cards: There are three different types of autographed card available - "Team Pack Version" (cards in the style of the format for the autograph cards in the player's team set), "Autograph" and "Picturesque".  There are two versions of autographed cards for the "First Pitch Ceremony" cards as well - the "silver paper" version is the more rare of the two - not all the "First Pitch Ceremony" cards have autographed versions though.
Parallels:  12 regular player cards have a "secret" alternate photo version.  36 regular player cards have three facsimile signature parallels - gold (/100), blue (/75) and holo (/50).  "Title Holder" cards have four parallels - "silver paper" (/200), "gold paper" (/100), "silver paper + holo PP" (/50) and "gold paper + holo PP" (/25).  "Great Record" insert cards have six facsimile signature parallels - "kiwi green" (/200), "gold" (/100), "holo blue" (/75), "holo" (/50), "red" (/25) and "royal purple" (/10).  "Legendary Player" insert cards have the same six parallels as the "Great Record" cards but they're not facsimile signatures - I think they're just the finish on the cards.  "Ceremonial First Pitch" cards have five parallels - "Holo PP" (/300), "Silver Paper" (/200), "Gold Paper" (/100), "Silver Paper + Holo PP" (/50) and "Gold Paper + Holo PP" (/25).
Notable Rookies: None 

Fusion, BBM's Frankenstein of a set that serves annually as the third installment of their flagship set as well as a "season in review" set, was the last of the four sets I received last week.  I always like this set but I always hate trying to write about it.

The base set contains 144 cards which this year are separated into four parts (usually it's only three).  There are 99 "Hall Of Records" cards which are pretty much the "regular" player cards (in as much as there are "regular" player cards in this set).  These cards contain both active and OB players and are numbered 01 to 99.  There are 24 "Title Holder" cards which are numbered TH01 to TH24.  There are 20 "1st Version Update" cards that are numbered 601 to 620 which continues the numbering from the 2nd Version set which in turn continued the numbering started in the 1st Version set.  And finally there's a one card "Rookie Edition Update" card that's numbered 136 since this year's Rookie Edition set had 135 cards.  So four different parts, four different numbering systems.  That's not confusing at all, right?

The 99 "Hall Of Records" cards serve as kind of a season summary but it's really not that straight forward.  In general, each event from 2024 that is highlighted on a card is followed in the set by another card highlighting a related event in the past.  Sometimes there are multiple cards from either 2024 or the past in the sequence.  I know this is confusing (although you'd think after nine years I'd be able to come up with a description that wasn't confusing) so let me show an example.  On June 25, Masato Morishita of the Carp threw a complete game shutout against the Swallows while throwing less than 100 pitches - what's called a "Maddux".  In addition, Morishita also had three hits while batting in the game, making him the first pitcher to have three hits in the same game in which he threw a "Maddux" since Kazuhisa Inao in 1968.  Morishita's card is card #50:

#50

Inao's card is the next one, card #51:

 

#51

If I counted correctly, there are 50 "Hall Of Records" cards that represent events from 2024.  As usual, I'm not sure what a lot of the events are (although I'd find out by looking at the cards with Google Translate) although I know that there are cards for both Shogo Togo and Daichi Ohsera's no-hitters.  I was a little disappointed that none of the games I went to last May ended up being included.  

It's kind of weird this year that some of the more prominent players in NPB aren't in the subset.  Munetaka Murakami, Hiroto Takahashi (two cards), Tetsuto Yamada and Tomoyuki Sugano are probably the biggest names.  No Kazuma Okamoto, Yuki Yanagita, Kensuke Kondoh, Yuki Okabayashi or Chusei Mannami.  (Kondoh does appear in the "Title Holder" cards.)  Roki Sasaki appears in the "Hall Of Records" cards but not for any 2024 events - Darwinzon Hernandez broke Sasaki's record for consecutive innings with a strike out to start the season so he's the "historic event" paired with Hernandez.  

Despite the lack of star power, the cards look pretty nice.  There's some good photos and several alternate uniforms are highlighted.  Here's a few of the cards:

#07

#40

#48

#58

#76

#78

Most of the 49 "historic events" in the set are represented by retired players.  I think the only players who are still active are the afore-mentioned Sasaki, Shogo Akiyama, Seiya Suzuki and Ryoji Kurabayashi (who also has a "2024 event" card).  The retired players are also a little lacking in star power with the biggest names being Sadaharu Oh, Hideki Matsui and Shigeru Sugishita.  BBM kept their streak going of having a card of a famous player with a team you don't think of him with - this year it's Kazuhiro Yamauchi with the Carp rather than the Orions or Tigers.  Here's some examples (including Yamauchi):

#06

#24

#20

#10

#61

The Title Holder cards are a throwback to the Leader subset cards BBM used to include in their flagship sets between 1991 and 2013*.  There are a total of 24 cards (numbered TH01 to TH24) that include the leader (or leaders) in twelve statistical categories for each league -  Batting Average, Home Runs, RBIs, Hits, OBP, Stolen Bases, ERA, Winning Percentage, Wins, Saves, Hold Points and Strikeouts.  If a player leads the league in multiple categories then he has multiple cards in this subset - for example, Munetaka Murakami has two cards since he led the CL in home runs and OBP.  Kensuke Kondoh, Hotoka Yamakawa, Tomoyuki Sugano and Hiromi Itoh also have two cards.  If more than one player tie for the lead in a category they all appear on the card so Itoh shares his card for leading the PL in wins with Kohei Arihara.  This year there's only one other card with multiple players - Shinya Matsuyama and Takuma Kirishiki tied for the CL lead in hold points.  Here's a couple of these cards so you can see what they look like:

#TH03

#TH18

* The big difference is that the "Leader" subset used to include award winners like MVP, Rookie Of The Year and Sawamura but the cut off for Fusion's publication is the end of the regular season and the awards aren't announced until roughly two months later.

The "1st Version Update" subset features cards of 20 players who were either not included in this year's 1st Version set or the "1st Version Update" subset from the 2nd Version set or were traded since their earlier appearance.  The only player in that latter category is Gakuto Wakabayashi of the Giants, who appeared in the 2nd Version set (regular card, not "1st Version Update") as a member of the Lions (the player he was traded for, Seiya Matsubara, is not in the set).  There are a couple other players in the subset who changed teams either last off season or during the season but didn't make it into either the 1st or 2nd Version set (Shun Mizutani, Luis Perdomo and Daiju Nomura).  There's several foreign players who didn't sign with NPB teams until mid-season (Dallas Keuchel, Coco Montes and Elier Hernandez).  The bulk of the players in the subset appears to be former ikusei players who graduated to their teams' 70 man rosters this year including some veterans who were rehabbing after injuries (Haruto Takahashi, Haruto Inoue, Sho Iwasaki and Ayumu Ishikawa).  Here's a couple examples:

#611

#601

#620

Normally there are 21 "1st Version Update" cards but this year, BBM decided to add a "Rookie Edition Update" card.  With their first pick in the ikusei portion of the 2023 draft, the Swallows had taken Shosei Takahashi, a high school student from Taiwan who has dual citizenship for Taiwan and Japan (which forces him to have to go through the draft to join NPB).  Takahashi (whose registered name is actually "Shosei") wasn't able to officially join Yakult until he graduated from high school in June which prevented him from being able to appear on a baseball card until now:

#136

The "Ceremonial First Pitch" cards are short printed and not considered part of the base set but I decided to get them anyway, which increased the price I paid for the set quite a bit.  The 31 cards are numbered FP33 to FP63 in continuation of the same subset in the 2nd Version set.  If you're not familiar with this subset, it features various Japanese celebrities throwing out the first pitch at a ballgame.  As usual I don't know who many of these people are but it's always kind of entertaining researching them.  There's the usual group of Gravure Idols including two members of Nogizaka46 (Hazuki Makai and Shiori Kubo) and two members of Aozora (Yui Kudo and Eren Sugiura) and one member of NMB48 (Chihiro Kawakami) along with Yumena Yanei and Kasumi Mori who don't appear to be associated with any group (and I may be mis-categorizing).  There are several singers (and it may be extremely hair splitting about whether these could be considered Idols as well) including two members of Morning Musume (Erina Ikuta and Ayumi Ishida) along with Haruka Nagata of Green-Yellow Society, Ayaka Sasaki of Momoiro Clover Z, Gakuto Oshio (Gackt) and Hitomi Furuya (hitomi).  There were a bunch of voice actors and actresses, several of whom are also singers - Honoko Inoue, Maaya Uchida, Yuri Komagata, Arisa Komiya, Ai Furihata, Minori Suuzki, Natsumi Murakami and Toshiyuki Morikawa - along with several actors and actresses - Yuuka Suzuki, Anna Yamada, Shiori Tamada, Akane Osawa (granddaughter of the late Keiji Ohsawa, who has a couple stints managing the Fighters), and Keito Tsuna.  The subset also includes three gold medal winners from last summer's Paris Olympics and Para-Olympics - Tokito Oda (wheelchair tennis), Coco Yoshikawa (skateboarding) and Shinnosuke Oka (gymnastics).  The last two celebrities are TikToker Hina Kagel and comedian Hideharu Egashira (Egashira 2:50).  I was kind of disappointed (although not surprised) that the actors from "Abunai Deka" that I saw throw out the first pitch in Yokohama weren't in the subset.   Eight of the celebrities have appeared in earlier versions of this subset - Yuri Komagata and Hazuki Makai were both in 2023 Fusion; Yuukai Suzuki was in 2022 Fusion; Anna Yamada and Chihiro Kawakami were both in both 2022 and 2023 Fusion; Ayaka Sasaki was in 2018 Fusion and Akane Osawa was in 2007 2nd Version.  This is Shiori Kubo's fourth appearance in this subset with her previously having been in 2020 Fusion and 2021 and 2023 2nd Version.  Here are the cards of Osawa and Yoshikawa:

#FP46

#FP57

Fusion traditionally has two non-premium insert sets - "Great Record" and "Legendary Players".  I'm really only interested in the "Great Records set but I've never seen a listing that included it without the other set so I ended up getting both of them.

"Great Record" is a 24 card set that features two players from each team who achieved some milestone during the 2024 season.  Some of the milestones commemorated are Munetaka Murakami's 200th career home run, Tomoyuki Sugano's 1500th strikeout, Yoshitomo Tsutsugoh's 1000th hit and Tetsuto Yamada's 1500th hit.  Some teams didn't necessarily have two (or even one) major milestones this past season so the Buffaloes are represented by Taito Takashima's first career win and Seiya Yokoyama's first career hit.  The cards are super shiny this year which make them a little difficult to read both in person and when scanned.  There is a kind of nice, 3-D effect with them though.  Here's a couple examples:

#GR10

#GR13

The "Legendary Players" set has 12 cards - one for each team - showing OB players.  Each OB player also appeared in the "Hall Of Records" subset although not necessarily for the same team as here - for instance, Kazuhiro Yamauchi is a Daimai Orion in the subset rather than a Hiroshima Toyo Carp.  Other players in the set include Seiya Suzuki, Kazuhisa Inao, Matt Winters and Carlos Ponce.  These are also very shiny but a little more readable than the "Great Record" cards.  Here's Winter's card as an example:

#LP12

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