RIP Tsubakuro

A very sad story released by the Tokyo Yakult Swallows today - apparently the person who's worn the costume for their mascot Tsubakuro has passed away suddenly.   It appears that this person - who's not named in either the Swallows press release or the Yahoo! news story - has been wearing the suit since the Swallows debuted the mascot in 1994.  The team said that they're suspending the mascot's activities for now and there's no word on whether they'll be retiring him altogether.

I don't track cards of mascots in my database so I don't know off hand how many cards of Tsubakuro there are.  There have been a seemingly endless number of team checklists from BBM's 1st or 2nd Version sets that featured mascots as well as cards for them in BBM's team sets.  They've shown up on Calbee checklist cards from time to time and frequently have dedicated cards in Epoch's team sets.  Jambalaya lists 68 cards for Tsubakuro but I know that number is low.

I think the first card to feature Tsubakuro was the Swallows checklist card from the 1995 BBM set.  Here's that card along with some others:

1995 BBM #597

2006 Calbee Series Two #C-8

2008 BBM 2nd Version #781

2013 BBM 1st Version #400

2017 Epoch Swallows #29

2020 Epoch Swallows Rookies & Stars #36

2021 Calbee Series Three #C-12 (with Masanori Ishikawa)

2022 BBM Fusion #GR02

2024 BBM 1st Version #329

It's hard to tell but the "Great Record" card from the 2022 BBM Fusion set commemorated the mascot's 2000th appearance at a game on August 8th, 2022.

My favorite of Tsubakuro's cards isn't really a card for him - it's his cameo appearance on Alex Ramirez's card from the 2001 BBM Nippon Series set:

2001 BBM Nippon Series #S22