Japanese Baseball Cards: 2000 Upper Deck Ovation Rising Stars

I had mentioned a few months back that, thanks to Scott Kaneko, I had completed the "Rising Stars" subset from the 2000 Upper Deck Ovation set. Now that I have the full subset, I decided to take a deeper look at who was in the set and decided to make a post out of the research.

The 2000 Ovation set was the one of the four NPB sets that Upper Deck did in 2000 and 2001. It had a 60 card base set that was numbered from 31 to 90. Why such an odd numbering? Because cards 1 through 30 were the "Rising Stars" subset. Each of these card was serially numbered to 2000 which seemed like a small number at the time (it was certainly less than the /150,000 for the 1990 Classic Draft Picks set).

I'm not going to lie - I'm not a big fan of this set. It made my list of my least favorite sets a few years back. I find it kind of ugly and, to be completely honest, I think the "Rising Stars" cards are kind of ugly as well. I don't much like cards that have the player's photo superimposed over a background (as opposed to the original photo's background) and the player's name is difficult to read on the front of the card. (I know I'm really selling you all on continuing to read this post, aren't I?) But I think my OCD was bothered by the fact that my "complete" Ovation set was missing cards 1 to 30 so I decided to get all the cards. (Which suggests that if Upper Deck had simply made this a separate insert set, I wouldn't have wanted them.) I had considered not collecting them all a couple of times over the past few years but I kept at it until I was down to just the one that Scott sent me.

With all that said, let's take a look at who all is in this set. Here's the list of included players with their team, draft position and career summary - at least all the NPB and MLB organizations they played in.

Card	Player	Team	Draft	Career
1	Daisuke Matsuzaka	Seibu Lions	1998 Lions 1st	Seibu Lions 1999-2006, Boston Red Sox 2007-12, Cleveland Indians 2013, New York Mets 2013-14, Fukuoka Softbank Hawks 2015-17, Chunichi Dragons 2018-19, Saitama Seibu Lions 2020-21
2	Koji Uehara	Yomiuri Giants	1998 Giants 1st	Yomiuri Giants 1999-2008, Baltimore Orioles 2009-11, Texas Rangers 2011-12, Boston Red Sox 2013-16, Chicago Cubs 2017, Yomiuri Giants 2018-19
3	Kosuke Fukudome	Chunichi Dragons	1998 Dragons 1st	Chunichi Dragons 1999-2007, Chicago Cubs 2008-11, Cleveland Indians 2011, Chicago White Sox 2012, New York Yankees 2012, Hanshin Tigers 2013-20, Chunichi Dragons 2021-22
4	Hidetaka Kawagoe	Orix BlueWave	1998 BlueWave 2nd	Orix BlueWave/Buffaloes 1999-2009, Chiba Lotte Marines 2010-11
5	Tomohiro Nioka	Yomiuri Giants	1998 Giants 2nd	Yomiuri Giants 1999-2008, Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters 2009-13
6	Shinobu Fukuhara	Hanshin Tigers	1998 Tigers 3rd	Hanshin Tigers 1999-2016
7	Yuhki Tanaka	Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes	1997 Buffaloes 5th	Kintetsu/Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes 1999-2001, Orix BlueWave/Buffaloes 2002-2008, Tokyo Yakult Swallows 2009-10
8	Ryota Igarashi	Yakult Swallows	1997 Swallows 2nd	Yakult Swallows/Tokyo Yakult Swallows 1998-2009, New York Mets 2010-11, Toronto Blue Jays 2012, New York Yankees 2012, Fukuoka Softbank Hawks 2013-2018, Tokyo Yakult Swallows 2019-20
9	Akihiro Higashide	Hiroshima Toyo Carp	1998 Carp 1st	Hiroshima Toyo Carp 1999-2015
10	Yoshihiro Tateyama	Nippon-Ham Fighters	1998 Fighters 2nd	Nippon-Ham Fighters/Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters 1999-2010, Texas Rangers 2011-13, New York Yankees 2013-14, Hanshin Tigers 2014
11	Naoyuki Shimizu	Chiba Lotte Marines	1999 Marines 2nd	Chiba Lotte Marines 2000-09, Yokohama BayStars/DeNA Baystars 2010-12
12	Shogo Akada	Seibu Lions	1998 Lions 2nd	Seibu/Saitama Seibu Lions 1999-2009, Orix Buffaloes 2010-12, Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters 2013-14
13	Soji Tanaka	Fukuoka Daiei Hawks	1999 Hawks 1st	Fukuoka Daiei Hawks 2000-04
14	Naoki Matoba	Fukuoka Daiei Hawks	1999 Hawks 3rd	Fukuoka Daiei/Softbank Hawks 2000-09, Chiba Lotte Marines 2010-12
15	Hisashi Takayama	Seibu Lions	1999 Lions 1st	Seibu/Saitama Seibu Lions 2000-13, Hanshin Tigers 2013-14
16	Kazuo Yamaguchi	Orix BlueWave	1999 BlueWave 1st	Orix BlueWave/Buffaloes 1999-2009
17	Kaoru Takahashi	Chiba Lotte Marines	1999 Marines 1st	Chiba Lotte Marines 2000-03
18	Itsuki Shoda	Nippon-Ham Fighters	1999 Fighters 1st	Nippon-Ham Fighters/Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters 2000-06, Hanshin Tigers 2007-08, Tokyo Yakult Swallows 2012-13
19	Kensuke Tanaka	Nippon-Ham Fighters	1999 Fighters 2nd	Nippon-Ham Fighters/Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters 2000-12, San Francisco Giants 2013, Texas Rangers 2014, Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters 2015-19
20	Daisuke Miyamoto	Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes	1999 Buffaloes 1st	Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes 2000-04, Orix Buffaloes 2005-09
21	Fumitoshi Takano	Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes	1999 Buffaloes 6th	Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes 2000-04, Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles 2005-08
22	Kenta Asakura	Chunichi Dragons	1999 Dragons 1st	Chunichi Dragons 2000-15
23	Kenshin Kawakami	Chunichi Dragons	1997 Dragons 1st	Chunichi Dragons 1998-2008, Atlanta Braves 2009-10, Chunichi Dragons 2012-15
24	Hisanori Takahashi	Yomiuri Giants	1999 Giants 1st	Yomiuri Giants 2000-09, New York Mets 2010, Los Angeles Angels 2011-12, Pittsburgh Pirates 2012, Chicago Cubs 2013, Yokohama DeNA Baystars 2014-15
25	Kazunori Tanaka	Yokohama BayStars	1999 BayStars 1st	Yokohama BayStars 2000-06
26	Atsushi Kizuka	Yokohama BayStars	1999 BayStars 2nd	Yokohama BayStars 2000-10
27	Yoshiyuki Noguchi	Yakult Swallows	1999 Swallows 1st	Yakult Swallows/Tokyo Yakult Swallows 2000-14
28	Takaya Kawauchi	Hiroshima Toyo Carp	1999 Carp 1st	Hiroshima Toyo Carp 2000-15
29	Tetsuto Tomabechi	Hiroshima Toyo Carp	1999 Carp 6th	Hiroshima Toyo Carp 2000-06
30	Kanichi Matoba	Hanshin Tigers	1999 Tigers 1st	Hanshin Tigers 2000-05

30's kind of a weird number for an NPB set (or subset or insert set) since it's not a multiple of 12 and usually an NPB set has the same number of cards per team. For this set, though, half of the teams (Dragons, Carp, Fighters, Buffaloes, Lions and Giants) have three cards while the other half (Marines, Hawks, Tigers, BlueWave, Swallows and Baystars) only have two cards.

It's a kind of interesting collection of players. The first three cards were probably the biggest "prospects" in NPB in 2000 - Daisuke Matsuzaka, Koji Uehara and Kosuke Fukudome. Matsuzaka and Uehara had been the 1999 Rookies of the Year for the Pacific League and Central League respectively. Those three were the only players in the subset to also have "regular" cards in base set. Kenshin Kawakami was the 1998 Central League Rookie Of The Year. Oddly enough though, the 1998 PL Rookie Of The Year - Tatsuya Ozeki - is not in the subset. Like any other old set of "prospects", it has guys who had really stellar careers, guys who were average players and guys whose careers were pretty short.

Eight of the players spent some time in MLB organizations - Fukudome, Matsuzaka, Uehara, Kawakami, Kosuke Tanaka, Hisanori Takahashi, Yoshihiro Tateyama and Ryota Igarashi. That's not including Itsuki Shoda who went to spring training with the Red Sox in 2011 (and pitched in the Can-Am League for the Shikoku Island All Stars in 2015, 2016 and 2019) or Kazunori Tanaka who spent 2007-08 with the York Revolution of the Atlantic League.

The oldest player in the set was Hidetaka Kawagoe who was 26 when the 2000 season opened (and would turn 27 on June 8th). The youngest player was Takaya Kawauchi who was about 18 and three months on Opening Day that year. Fukudome was the last player in the set to be active in NPB - he retired after the 2022 season (although Shoda was active with the Ehime Mandarin Pirates of the Shikoku Island League the following season). On the other end of the career length spectrum, arm injuries ended Kaoru Takahashi's career after just four years with him never making any appearances with the top team.

Eighteen of the players were "rookies" in the NPB card sense that year (as opposed to the "NPB rookie eligibility" sense), meaning that they had been drafted in the 1999 draft. This includes all twelve of the first round picks that year. Nine of the players had been taken in the 1998 draft, including four first round picks - Matsuzaka, Fukudome, Uehara and Akihiro Higashide. The remaining three players were 1997 draftees although only one of them - Kawakami - was a first round pick.

Here's each "Rising Stars" card along with a card of the player from later in his career. I tried to pick cards from the player's final season but it proved difficult in a couple cases since I didn't start getting the complete BBM team sets for all 12 teams until 2015. And Kaoru Takahashi's final year corresponds to the first year that BBM did a comprehensive team set for the Marines so with the exception of his 2003 BBM Marines card (which I don't have), all his cards are from 2000. So I picked cards from their last season when I could (or from the following year's BBM Retirement sets) and the latest cards I had for them otherwise: