Most Cards Per Team

I've really been remiss at reading other people's blogs the last few months.  I've been really busy with any number of things and I just haven't gotten around to do it much lately.  Like I haven't gotten around to reading that stack of the print edition of The Onion sitting on my desk.  So I didn't notice a post that Night Owl had done back in March about the most cards he had for each team until I saw Kenny's version of it when I was looking through his blog to see if he said anything about the last batch of cards he sent me.  I don't know if Night Owl had intended this to be a "Blog Bat Around" but Kenny was treating it that way so I decided I'd do a similar one.  For Japanese teams, of course, not MLB ones like Night Owl and Kenny did.

Night Owl had used his listings at TCDB to generate his numbers but since I don't have my cards listed there, I had to use my own database which has some issues.  So I don't think these numbers are completely accurate but they're probably close enough for the purposes of this post.

We'll go through the teams in alphabetical order by their full names which means that first up is the Chiba Lotte Marines:

2006 SCM #71

I was kind of surprised that the 112 cards I have of Kazuya Fukuura was the most for the Marines but he did a 26 year career.  The Lotte Orion that I have the most cards of is Michiyo Arito with 44.

Chunichi Dragons:

2003 Chunichi Sports #34

This was not a surprise - Masahiro Yamamoto played until he was 50.  The 152 cards I have of him does not include his first cards with Vero Beach in 1988 (since those wouldn't be Dragons cards).

Fukuoka Softbank Hawks:

2023 Hawks #23SBH316

I've got 162 cards of 'Gita.  Just for grins, I ran the numbers for the Daiei and Nankai versions of the team and got Koji Akiyama (81) and Hiromitsu Kadota (57) respectively.

Hanshin Tigers:

2012 Coris #22

Not sure who I thought would be top for the Tigers but it wasn't Fujikawa who I have 148 cards for.

Hiroshima Toyo Carp:

2012 Front Runner Carp Starting Lineup #13

I figured the top player for the Carp would have been someone like Koji Yamamoto but, nope, it's Tomonori Maeda with 140 cards.

Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters:

2012 Bandai Owners League 04 #017

I was kind of disappointed that the 127 cards I have of Sho Nakata with the Fighters was the most for that team.  I was hoping it was going to be Shohei Ohtani but I "only" have 107 cards of him with Nippon-Ham.  Like with the Hawks, I ran the numbers for some of the team's earlier incarnations and I have 76 cards of Yukio Tanaka with the non-Hokkaido version of the Hawks and 37 cards of Isao Harimoto with the Toei Flyers.

Orix Buffaloes:

2011 Orix Player Card #9

The 115 cards I have of T-Okada is the most for any and all of the team's names, just beating out Ichiro's 110, the most for the BlueWave version of the team.  I figured the most for the Hankyu Braves would be either Yutaka Fukumoto or Hisashi Yamada and it turned out to be Fukumoto with 67, beating Yamada by two.  Just for grins, I ran the numbers for the Orix Braves and got seven cards for Nobuyuki Hoshino.

Saitama Seibu Lions:

2018 Lions Rookies & Stars #55 (image variant)

This was absolutely not a surprise - I have 223 cards of Takeya Nakamura which is almost 60 cards more than the second place player - Takumi Kuriyama with 166.  The leaders for the Nishitetsu, Taiheiyo Club and Crown Lighter versions of the team were Kazuhisa Inao (60), Osamu Higashio (14) and Akinobu Mayumi (5) respectively.  It's kind of weird that Mayumi's the most of the Crown Lighter cards since he's remembered mostly as a Tiger but I think BBM has taken some perverse pleasure over the years of reminding everyone he came up as a Lion.

Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles

2007 Konami Baseball Heroes 3 Highlights #B07H006

I would have thought that Masahiro Tanaka's seven years in MLB would have allowed someone else to catch up with him for the most Eagles cards but his 163 card total was 40 more than the second place player, Takahiro Norimoto.  

Tokyo Yakult Swallows:

1994 Kanebo #001

Another non-surprise - Atsuya Furuta's 173 cards beats all other Swallows (and Atoms).  Masaichi Kaneda leads the Kokutetsu version with 24 cards.

Yokohama DeNA Baystars:

2016 Kabaya/Epoch Central League Gum #32

Daisuke Miura's 152 cards leads all Baystars/Whales but because his career straddled the last three eras for the franchise - Yokohama Taiyo Whales, Yokohama BayStars and Yokohama DeNA Baystars, he doesn't lead for any of the particular era.  Kazuhiko Endo (36) has the most for the Yokohama Taiyo Whales, Takuro Ishii (94) has the most for the Yokohama BayStars and Yasuaki Yamasaki (112) has the most for DeNA.  Masaji Hiramatsu's 31 leads the pre-Yokohama Taiyo Whales.

Yomiuri Giants:

1962 Doyusha JCM 55

Another non-surprise.  With 261 cards, Shigeo Nagashima leads all the Yomiuri Giants players.  Hell, the 272 total cards I have of him (including cards with Rikkio University, the Japan National Team and in street clothes) is the most I have of any player.

That's the counts for the 12 current franchises but I also ran the number for the Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes:

2001 BBM Preview #P114

I don't know, I guess I was expecting this to be Hideo Nomo but his exit from NPB after 1994 capped his cards at 34, tied for tenth place with Ralph Bryant on the list.  I have 81 cards of Norihiro Nakamura, ten more than for Tuffy Rhodes.

I also ran the numbers for the Japan National Team (including Samurai Japan):

2000 Upper Deck Sydney Olympic Games Japanese Team Cards #213

Actually, I first ran the numbers on "Samurai Japan" and found I had a tie between Shohei Ohtani and Tetsuto Yamada with 17 cards (14 of Ohtani's cards were from the 2023 WBC).  But the Japan National Team has only gone by "Samurai Japan" since 2013 so I decided that I needed to include the previous incarnations as well.  Which resulted in Daisuke Matsuzaka's 27 cards (covering the 2000 Olympics, the 2003 Asian Games and the 2006 and 2009 WBCs) leading the pack.

My Oldest Sports Card

Earlier this week, Comatoad On Cards asked the question "What's Your Oldest Sports Card?"  I don't think he meant is as a "blog bat around" but it sounded like a good one to me so I'm going to take it and run with it.

There's a group of cards that I'm pretty sure are the oldest Japanese cards I have that show individual players (as opposed to just generic players).  There are six bromide cards I have that probably date from 1946 or early 1947.  These six cards represent four different sets but only one of those sets is cataloged.

These two cards - Seizo Furukawa of the Chubu Nippon Dragons and Kazuto Tsuruoka of the Kinki Great Ring (who went by Kazuto Yamamoto at the time) - are from the set Gary Engel has cataloged as "JBR 73 - 1947 Marutoku B&W Bromides".  As the name implies, Engel dates this set to 1947 but he states in his description for the set that "Players are featured in their 1946 uniforms...so it is assumed that this is a pre-season 1947 set, making it the earliest checklisted postwar baseball card set."

Like the JBR 73 cards, the other four cards I have (from three separate, uncataloged sets) feature players in their 1946 uniforms.  This is clear because the two teams represented - Goldstar and Pacific - only went by those names in 1946 (Goldstar became the Daiei Stars who eventually merged with the Mainichi Orions and are now the Chiba Lotte Marines while Pacific became the Shochiku Robins who merged with the Taiyo Whales who are now the Yokohama DeNA Baystars).  

Takashi Eda

Isao Tsuji

Michio Nishizawa

Victor Starffin

Half of these players are Hall Of Famers (Tsuruoka, Nishizawa and Starffin).  The photo on the Starffin card is identical to his JBR 73 card but the text is different and the card is larger than the JBR 73 cards.

These may not be the oldest Japanese cards in my collection however.  I have a small uncut menko sheet depicting generic college baseball players that resembles some cards shown in "Sayonara Home Run!: The Art Of The Japanese Baseball Card" that date from the 1920's:

But the actual oldest cards in my collection are two of the few American cards that I've kept.  The first is a T205 card of Arlie Latham.  I got interested in Latham when I read Bill James' "The Historical Baseball Abstract" because his name seemed to keep popping up.  The 19th century gave us some great nicknames for baseball players (none better of course than Bob "Death To Flying Things" Ferguson).  Latham's reputation as a jokester earned him the nickname "The Freshest Man On Earth".  He played in the majors from about 1880 to 1899 and then spent time in the minors as both a manager and umpire from 1900 to 1908.  In 1909 he returned to the majors as a coach for John McGraw's Giants - the first person to ever be a full time coach for a team.  He actually played in a couple games that season at age 49 and stole a base - becoming the oldest major league player to ever do so.  That record still stands.  He later lived in England and taught King George V about baseball.  Even later he worked in the press box at the Polo Grounds and Yankee Stadium.  He passed away in 1952 at age 92.  It's alway struck me as amazing that a guy who played baseball with the early greats like George Wright and Cap Anson lived to see Mickey Mantle play.

The second is a T206 card of Jack Dunn, the owner and manager of the International Leagues' Baltimore Orioles.  Dunn's biggest claim to fame was discovering a local kid at a reformatory school in Baltimore in 1914 and signing him to a contract.  The player was so raw when it came to anything other than baseball that he got dubbed "Dunnie's Babe" by the other players.  Dunn had a problem that season, however, as the Federal League had placed a rival team in Baltimore literally across the street from his ballpark, causing him to lose enough money that he was forced to sell a bunch of players to major league teams, including selling his "Babe" to the Boston Red Sox where he became a star (and eventually got sold again to the Yankees but that's a different story).  Dunn ended up moving the Orioles to Richmond, Virginia until the Federal League folded.  After returning to Baltimore he built a powerhouse team, winning seven straight International League pennants from 1919 to 1925.  Another Maryland native that he discovered, Lefty Grove, pitched for five of those pennant winning teams.  Dunn passed away from a heart attack in 1928 but his family was involved with baseball in Baltimore for years afterwards.

A to Z Challenge

A week ago the Diamond King issued a challenge to bloggers to do a post featuring an A to Z list of their favorite players.  I decided to take a shot at this with NPB players and was able to get a list together although some letters were much more difficult than others - either there weren't many NPB players whose name started with that letter or there were several players I liked a lot with that letter.  What I probably should have done is picked a player whose name started with each hiragana character but I wasn't prepared to that much work yet.  Maybe later.

Anyway, here's my list.  I don't think anyone with a last name starting with "Q" or "X" has ever played in NPB or if they have, I don't have cards for them.

A - Koji Akiyama

1991 BBM Nippon Series #S58

B - Wladimir Balentien

2013 BBM Swallows #S61

C - Koji Chikamoto

2020 BBM Tigers #T58

D - Yu Darvish

2005 Konami Baseball Heroes New Black Edition #C05B051

E - Yutaka Enatsu

2003 BBM Fighters #107

F - Atsuya Furuta

1998 BBM Diamond Heroes "Hit Leader" #H1

G - Sosuke Genda

2017 BBM Fusion #067

H - Isao Harimoto

1967 Kabaya-Leaf #409

I - Atsunori Inaba

2019 Calbee Samurai Japan #SJ-01

J - Kenji Johjima

2001 Upper Deck #146

K - Hiromitsu Kadota

1985 Calbee #129

L - Lee Dae-Ho

2012 Calbee #024

M - Masato Morishita

2019 Panini USA Baseball Stars & Stripes Japanese Collegiate National Team #JC-MM

N - Takeya Nakamura

2019 Epoch One #401

O - Hiromitsu Ochiai

2011 BBM All Stars #A36

P - Roberto Petagine

1999 Calbee #230

R - Tuffy Rhodes

2001 BBM Nippon Series #S55

S - Hayato Sakamoto

2010 Georgia Coffee #002

T - Motonobu Tanishige

2005 Dragons Official Card

U - Seiichi Uchikawa

2014 Calbee #C-6

V - Dayan Viciedo

2016 Epoch Record Breakers #18

W - Tsutomu Wakamatsu

1977 Yamakatsu JY3

Y - Yuki Yanagita

2015 Calbee #ES-13

Z - Julio Zuleta

2006 BBM Hawks #H052

If I were to do this list again, it might not come out the same way.  Some of the players who I narrowly decided against include Sadaharu Oh, Shigeo Nagashima, Shohei Ohtani, Ichiro Suzuki, Shogo Akiyama, Tetsuto Yamada, Yutaka Fukumoto, Hisashi Yamada, Masahiro Yamamoto, Kazuhiro Kiyohara, Kimiyasu Kudoh and Masahiro Tanaka.