2024 Topps Now Samurai Japan Global Games Team Set

#1

There was a pair of international friendly games played in Osaka back in March of 2024 between Samurai Japan and "Team Euro" - an All Star team consisting of players from various European countries.  Japan won both games rather handily with scores of 5-0 and 2-0.  That 2-0 score wasn't a close as it looked as six Japanese pitchers combined to no-hit the Europeans.  

Topps issued eight of their Topps Now Samurai Japan cards for members of the team (including a card showing all six of the pitchers involved in the no-hitter) immediately after the games and followed that up a little later with issuing a 30 card team set, also under the "Topps Now" label (which makes sense since it was only available to order on-line and they only printed up the number that were ordered).  This is the third Topps Now Samurai Japan team set issued by Topps Japan in the past few years after the ones for the 2022 Australian Friendlies team and the 2023 Asian Professional Baseball Championship team.  (I'm not counting the 2023 WBC team set as it was not "Topps Now".)

This team lacked a little of the star power of some of the previous incarnations of Samurai Japan but there's still some big names in the set.  Several members of the 2023 WBC champs are in the set - Munetaka Murakami, Kensuke Kondoh, Sosuke Genda, Ryoji Kuribayashi, Hiroya Miyagi, and Takumu Nakano - along with Shota Morishita, Shunpeita Yamashita, Chusei Mannami and Kotaro Kurebayashi.  Here's some examples:

#7 Masato Morishita

#18 Sosuke Genda

#9 Ryoji Kuribayashi

#24 Munetaka Murakami

One of the unique things about this particular Samurai Japan team is that it included four collegiate players on its roster - Yumeto Kanemaru of Kansai University, Rui Muneyama of Meiji University, Yuto Nakamura of Aichi Tech and Mishi Nishikawa of Aoyama Gakuin University.  All four players were first round picks in last fall's draft - Kanemaru by the Dragons, Muneyama by the Eagles, Nakamura bu the Swallows and Nishikawa by the Marines.  Their inclusion in the set means the four of them have pre-rookie cards which is pretty rare in Japan.  Here's all four of their cards:

#8 Yumeto Kanemaru

#20 Rui Muneyama

#12 Yuto Nakamura

#26 Mishi Nishikawa

As you can see, the cards are reasonable attractive, at least on the fronts.  As usual, however, Topps made almost no effort on the backs.  Other than the player's name and position, there's no information about the players on the card backs.  As has been standard for the Samurai Japan team sets, all the backs (except for the "team card" shown at the top of this post that has the team roster on its back) just say when and where the games occurred - they don't even have the scores of the games.  Here's the back of manager Hirokazu Ibata's as an example:

I'm a sucker for Samurai Japan sets so I really like this one.  I feel like these are one of the few things that I've really liked that Topps has done in Japan.  Of course, they don't have the Samurai Japan license anymore which means they won't be doing any more of these.

UPDATE - Almost forgot to mention that you can see all the cards in the set (along with all the other 2024 Topps Now Samurai Japan cards) over at Jambalaya.

More New Releases

Maybe it was because we had a lot going on but I felt like last month lasted a long time.  So I was surprised that it had only been a little more than four weeks since I last did a round up of new set announcements.  I might have put this off a little longer but one of those sets is going to be released very soon so I wanted to make sure I mentioned it ahead of time.

- That set is Calbee's Series Two set which is scheduled to be released in "early August" although it won't be in "major convenience stores" until the 26th.  The set is pretty much the standard Calbee set from the past few years.  The base set has 78 cards - 60 "regular" player cards (five per team), a 12 cards "Opening Day Cleanup Hitters" and six checklist cards featuring cartoon images of team mascots.  There are two insert sets - the usual 24 card "Star" set and a 12 card "Opening Pitcher" set.  The "Opening Pitcher" set used to be the kind of associated set that would be sold a separate set from Calbee's Amazon shop but it looks like they aren't doing that any more.  The set's full checklist can be seen here.

- BBM is releasing the fourth and final installment of their Lions 75th Anniversary set in early September.  Like the Vol.3 (but not like Vol.1 and Vol.2 which were 36 card box sets), Vol.4 will be a 37 card box set that includes a 36 card base set and one "special" card that could be either a foil facsimile autograph card or an actual autograph card.  The base set is split between active players (19 cards) and OB players (17 cards).  I think if you have the base sets for all four boxes, you'd have 142 cards that are split between 69 active players (basically the entire 70 man roster) and 73 OB players.

- BBM's annual-ish multi-sports set Infinity will be released in late October.  As usual, BBM hasn't released much information about the set yet so I can't tell you how big the base set is.  Also as usual, it looks like the bulk of the athletes in the set are active and retired baseball players such as Shinya Miyamoto, Atsunori Inaba,Shinnosuke Abe, Hayato Sakamoto and Munetaka Murakami.  The other athletes in the set are from softball, basketball, rugby, volleyball, table tennis, badminton, track and field, swimming, diving, inline speed skating, field hocky, ice hockey, judo, sumo, boxing, pro wrestling, martial arts, auto racing and mahjong.  All the regular cards will have facsimile signature parallels available.  There will also be plastic insert cards called "Lucent" along with some sort of metallic insert and probably some others but it's not clear what they are.

- Bushiroad is issuing two more booster pack sets for their DreamOrder collectible card game.  The first one - Samurai Japan - is listed as a "Premium Booster" which is reflected in its price - 550 yen for a pack of three cards vs 500 yen a pack.  There's 28 players listed on the website with the biggest names probably being Shugo Maki, Shota Morishita, Sosuke Genda and Hiroto Takahashi.  I'm not sure if this is the roster of a specific Samurai Japan team or not.  If it is, it's probably last fall's Premier 12 squad.  There'll be parallel versions of all the cards available.  This set will be available on September 6th.

- The second booster pack - Heroes of 2025 - will be released on September 27th.  I think there's 60 cards in the set with a confusing bunch of parallels but I could be wrong.  Some of what I think are parallels might just be short printed player cards.  Bushiroad makes a big deal in their web page for this set of it being their first set featuring all 12 teams and also how it features photos taken in 2025.  Since none of the earlier booster pack sets from this year included any players who changed teams over the winter or any rookies (I think), I wonder if this set will include them.  

Card Of The Week August 3

There was a huge trade in Korea last week as the NC Dinos sent the KBO's all time hit leader Son Ah-seop to the Hanwha Eagles for a third round pick in next year's draft and around $215,000 in cash.  Son has never played on a Korean Series champion.  He spent the first 15 years of his career with the Lotte Giants who have the longest current championship drought in KBO history - they last won the title in 1999 - and he'd been with NC since 2022, two years after their last championship.  Hanwha is currently in first place while NC is in seventh so this gives him a better shot at a title.  

Since I don't have many KBO cards after 2021, I don't have any cards of Son with NC.  Here's a card of him from his Lotte days:

2019 SCC Regular Collection 2 - Signature #SCCR2-19/139

RIP Jack Bloomfield

Long time scout and former Kintetsu Buffalo and Nankai Hawk Jack Bloomfield passed away this past week at an age of at least 92*.  Bloomfield had spent parts of six seasons in the minor league organizations of the Milwaukee Braves, Cincinnati Reds, Pittsburgh Pirates and Kansas City A's before joining the Kintetsu Buffalo (the name was singular until 1962) in the middle of the 1960 season.  

*The linked Newsweek article says he was 95, his Wikipedia page says he was 94 (born on August 7, 1930) and his Baseball-Reference page says he was 92 (born on August 7, 1932).  I'm inclined to believe Baseball-Reference.

Bloomfield would lead the Pacific League in batting in 1962 and 1963 but he first made headlines in Japan due to an unfortunate incident during the 1961 season.  The Buffalo were playing the Braves in Nishinomiya when a fan stuck his head into Kintetsu's dugout and yelled "Yankee go home!" to Bloomfield.  Bloomfield went into the stands after the fan and punched him.  He was subsequently fined 50,000 yen and suspended for a week.

After four and a half seasons with Kintetsu, Bloomfield transferred to the Buffaloes cross-town rivals the Nankai Hawks in spring of 1965.  He stayed with Nankai for two season before they replaced him with Don Blasingame.   After retiring as a player, he spent a lot of time as a scout in several organizations and coached for the Padres in 1974 and the Cubs from 1975 to 1978 (partly under Jim Marshall, who played in Japan at the same time Bloomfield did).

Bloomfield's career NPB batting average was .315 and he was a five time all star (1961-64, 1966).  He won Best 9 awards each season that he lead the PL in batting.

As you might imagine, Bloomfield doesn't have a lot of NPB cards.  The new Vintage Edition of Engel lists eight - three menko cards, three bromide cards, a gum card and a game card.  All except two of the menko cards are pretty rare.  As far as I can tell, he's only appeared in one modern card set - the 2009 BBM Kintetsu Anniversary set.  Here are the cards I have for him:

1964 Marukami JCM 14g

2009 BBM Kintetsu Annivesary #13

Bloomfield joined Nankai in 1965, just as NPB baseball cards were entering the dead zone - there were very few cards produced between 1965 and 1972.  As a result, there are no known cards of Bloomfield as a Hawk.  However, his photo in the foreign player registry in Wayne Graczyk's annual "Japan Pro Baseball Handbooks" shows him with Nankai:

(H/T NPB Reddit)