Delivery From Brisbane

Got a package in the mail yesterday from Australia containing a Brisbane Bandits team issued card of former Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighter and Yomiuri Giant outfielder Daikan Yoh.  Yoh had spent last summer playing for the Lake Country DockHounds of the American Association* where one of his coaches was Dave Nilsson.  I'm sure it was just a coincidence that Yoh spent the winter playing in Brisbane for Nilsson's team.

*The DockHounds play in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, which is where my sister-in-law lives.  We were out that way last summer for a family event and I had hoped to catch a game and see Yoh but we ended up going out the one weekend in August where the team was out of town.

 Anyway, here's the front and back of Yoh's card:

The card back says he was a member of the Taiwan National Team for the 2006 World Baseball Classic - he also was on the team for the 2013 WBC and the 2015 Premier 12.

I got the cards from Shane, a card dealer in Brisbane who sells cards on Ebay under the handle Australian-Baseball-Cards.  I pretty much get all my Australian cards either from Shane or Steve Smith.  Shane included a couple other cards with the Yoh card - two checklist cards for the Bandits team set which was isused in two separate series and a filler card showing sunset over the Bandit's ballpark.  I thought that card looked really nice so I'll share it here:

NPB Down Under Part 3

I've got a small collection of Australian baseball cards.  I've got the set Choice did for the Australian Baseball League (ABL) in 2018/19 but most of my cards are scattered singles of Japanese players who've played Down Under.  I've written about most of these cards in a couple posts last year.

I was a little disappointed this past winter that there was no set for the entire league.  For a while it looked like the only cards for the 2019/20 season would be team sets for the Sydney Blue Sox and Brisbane Bandits, neither of which had any Japanese players.  However some months back I saw on Twitter that the Auckland Tuatara was doing a Go Fund Me campaign to make a team set for the Tuatara.  I was intrigued because the Tuatara had had a couple Japanese pitchers last season but ultimately I decided against getting a set.  Luckily about a month ago I saw that Shane, the seller on Ebay (top-flite-79) who I'd previously bought ABL cards from had broken up one of the Tuatara sets and was selling singles.  I grabbed cards of the two Japanese players for around $10 (including shipping).  It took a little over a month for the cards to get here from Australia but they showed up earlier this week.

Most of the Japanese players in the ABL are there on loan from their NPB teams but neither of the Auckland players fall into that category.

Yujo Kitagata was actually on loan from the Los Angeles Dodgers.  He got into 13 games with Auckland this past season, going 1-0 with a 2.53 ERA in 10 2/3 innings of work.  He struck out an impressive 22 batters (averaging over 2 per inning) but he also walked 22 batters.  He was originally a first round pick of the Baystars in the 2011 draft and spent three years with their farm team, never making it to the ichi-gun squad.  DeNA released him after the 2014 season and he bounced around over the next few years, spending 2015 as an ikusei player with the Hawks, 2016 and 2017 with the Gunma Diamond Pegasus of the Baseball Challenge League, 2017 with the Ehime Mandarin Pirates of the Shikoku Island League, 2018 back in the BC League with the Shinano Grandserows and 2019 with the Tochigi Golden Braves (also BC League).  A Dodger scout discovered him with Tochigi last year and signed him to a contract.  He spent about six weeks playing for the Dodgers Arizona Summer League team, getting into 13 games and going 0-1 with a 7.20 ERA.  He struck out 21 and walked 17 in 15 innings pitched.  Here's the front and back of his Tuatara card along with a card from when he was a Baystar:

2013 Front Runner Baystars Rookies & Young Stars #12

Kyohei Muranaka was no longer a member of any NPB team when he joined the Tuatara last season.  He also had been a first round draft pick, having been selected by the Swallows out of high school back in 2005.  He was a Swallow for 14 seasons (although he only pitched with the top team in 11 of those seasons) and ultimately went 46-55 with an ERA of 4.30 in 199 games.  The Swallows released him after the 2019 season and after he drew no interest at the 12 team tryout in November he signed a deal with Auckland.  He went 2-2 with a 2.73 ERA in nine games during the regular season and (as the back of his baseball card says) he started the Tuatara's first ever playoff game in Melbourne.  For 2020 he has joined the Ryukyu Blue Oceans, the new Okinawa-based independent team.  Here's the front and back of his Tuatara card along with a card of him from his Yakult days:

2011 Swallows Team Set #YsS06

2019 SCC KBO Premium set

The second Korean Baseball Organization (KBO) set from SCC (really Daewoo Media) this year came out about a month ago.  This is SCC's "Premium" set and features a variety of autograph and memorabilia cards.  The base set contains 220 cards (22 per team) - as usual this is what I picked and as usual I got the set through Dan.

Like SCC's earlier set this year, the cards for the base set are split into "normal", "rare", "holo" and "signature" (which are facsimile signatures).  While each team has the same number of total cards (22), they don't necessarily have the same number of each type.  For example, Samsung has 13 "normal" cards, 4 "rare" cards, 3 "holo" cards and 2 "signature" cards while SK has 11 "normal", 5 "rare", 4 "holo" and 2 "signature" cards.

I can't really comment on how well the set represents the KBO.  As always there are no foreign players in the set.  I did notice that two former Cubs farmhands who are returning to Korea make their SCC base set debut in this set.  Ha Jae-Hoon spent 2009 to 2015 as an outfielder in the Cubs organization.  He was a member of the Tokyo Yakult Swallows in 2016 (although I don't know of any NPB cards of him) and then spent the next two seasons with the Tokushima Indigo Socks of the Shikoku Island League where he converted to pitching.  He signed with SK as a pitcher (and I should point out that he had a short-printed rookie card in the earlier SCC set this year).  Rhee Dae-Eun was in the Cubs organization from 2008 to 2014.  He joined the Chiba Lotte Marines in 2015 for two seasons and spent 2017 and 2018 with the Korean Police team in the KBO Futures League.  He joined KT for the 2019 season.

Here's some example cards:

#SCCP1-19/214 Chi Seok-Hoon (Normal)

#SCCP1-19/086 Park Jeong-Eum (Normal)

#SCCP1-19/052 Park Sang-Won (Normal)

#SCCP1-19/039 Oh Jae-Il (Rare)

#SCCP1-19/146 Shin Bon-Ki (Rare)

#SCCP1-19/001 Ha-Jae-Hoon (Holo)

#SCCP1-19/178 Rhee Dae-Eun (Holo)

#SCCP1-19/170 Oh Ji-Hwan (Signature)

#SCCP1-19/095 Yang Hyeon-Jong (Signature)

Unlike the earlier SCC set (and the ones I got last year) the backs of the cards are not identical.  They have a photo of the player and some basic information.  For me the best part of the backs is that they have the player's name in English as my Korean reading skills are worse than my Japanese reading skills and my Japanese reading skills are practically non-existent.

Back of #SCCP1-19/114

I'm not a big fan of he wide borders on the "normal" and "rare" cards but it's still a nice looking set.  Dan has put the checklist up at TradingCardDB.com and has been adding scans of the cards.

Thanks for getting me the set, Dan!

Package From Down Under

I got a package in the mail from Steve Smith yesterday containing a handful of cards from Japan by way of Australia.  Steve lives near Melbourne and is a big fan of the Aces - I think he spent some time working for them.  Since Melbourne has been getting players from the Saitama Seibu Lions almost every season since the Australian Baseball League started back up in 2010 Steve's become a fan of the Lions as well.  Steve sent me some cards he had of the Lions.

First up are two cards from the 2019 BBM Lions set that Steve is trying to complete:

2019 BBM Lions #L53

2019 BBM Lions #L01

Next are three cards from the 2017 Lions Fan Club set:

There were also three cards from a different Lions team issued set that was also from 2017 (which is also different than the one 2017 Lions team issued card I got from Ryan when I was in Tokyo):

And lastly Steve included an Australian card - it's the card for Koo Dae-Sung from last winter's ABL set from Choice.  Koo was the manager for Geelong Korea, one of the two new expansion teams in the ABL last year.  Since the cards apparently went to press before the season started he is shown in a Sydney Blue Sox uniform instead of a Geelong uniform - he'd been coaching for the Blue Sox for a couple years after he retired as a player (he had also played a few seasons with Sydney).  His was the only card for Geelong that actually depicted a person - the other card simply described the team.

2018-19 Choice ABL #76

Thanks for the cards Steve!  I need to put together some cards to send back to you!

2019 SCC KBO Set

Daewoo Media issued their first set under their SCC moniker for the Korean Baseball Organization this year back in June.  Dan Skrezyna picked up a set for me a while back but I hadn't had a chance to write about until now.

There's 300 total cards available for the set although the base set only has 190 cards (19 per team).  There are also 10 rookie cards (1 per team) that are serially numbered to 100 and 100 autograph cards (which are NOT split evenly between the 10 teams) that are serially numbered to 10.

There are four different flavors of base set cards - "normal" (9 per team), "rare" (5 per team), "holo" (3 per team) and "signature" (2 per team).  The "rare" cards have a shimmering finish (that actually comes through on the scans) while the "holo" cards have a silvery finish.  The "signature" cards feature a facsimile signature done in "holographic ink".

I will defer from commenting how good the player selection is as I don't really know the KBO all that well.  There are (as usual) no foreign players in the set but pretty much every Korean player I know of off hand - Lee Dae-Ho, Park Byung-Ho, Kim Hyun-Soo, Hwang Jae-Gyun, Choi Jeong, Han Dong-Min, Son Ah-Seop, Lee Bum-Ho and Kim Tae-Kyun - are all in the set.

Here's some sample cards:

#SCCR1-19/011 Lee Jae-Won (Normal)

#SCCR1-19/034 Oh Jae-Ii (Normal)

#SCCR1-19/105 Baek Jeong-Hyeon (Normal)

#SCCR1-19/150 Sin Mae-Jae (Normal)

#SCCR1-19/094 Lee Chang-Jin (Rare)

#SCCR1-19/184 Park Jin-Woo (Rare)

#SCCR1-19/058 Kim Tae-Kyun (Holo)

#SCCR1-19/132 Lee Dae-Ho (Holo)

#SCCR1-19/077 Park Byung-Ho (Signature)

#SCCR1-19/179 Kim Baek-Ho (Signature)

Like the SCC sets from last year, the backs of all the cards are identical:

Also like the SCC sets from last year, this is an attractive set.  Dan has added the checklist for the set over at TradingCardDB.com and has added images for all the base set cards. 

I want to thank Dan for picking up a set for me.

"2015" Vittum Foreign Attack Set

Dan Skrezyna has just published his latest "Foreign Attack" set under the "Vittum" label.  These sets feature all the foreign players in the Korean Baseball Organization (KBO) for a particular season - Dan has been filling in the gaps since the official KBO cards do not include the foreign players. 

The newest set is for the 2015 season and contains 42 cards - 41 player cards plus a checklist.  I personally think this is the best looking set Dan's done so far but I've very partial to borderless, full bleed photos on the front of cards.  Here's the front and back of Luis Jimenez's card as an example:

#15

Back of #15

Dan had 20 sets made up and each card of each set has the same handwritten number on the back.

Here's some other examples cards:

#18

#22

#23

#25

#27

#35

Dan has put the entire set checklist online at TradingCardDB.com.  I think he still has a couple sets available so if you're interested, contact him either through his blog or on Twitter.

NPB Down Under Part 2

I did a post a few months back featuring a bunch of cards of NPB players in Australian Baseball League uniforms.  In that post I had mentioned a handful of other cards of NPB players* that I knew about but didn't have (including one that Steve Smith told me about that I had missed).  I have since picked up these other cards so I thought I'd share them.

*I should probably point out that when I say "NPB Player" what I really mean is "Japanese NPB Player".  There are ABL cards of former NPB players like Mitch Dening and Chris Oxspring but I'm not as interested in them.

I previously showed eight cards from the two 2012 Brisbane Bandits team issued sets that featured the five players loaned to the Bandits during the 2011-12 season from the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks - Kenta Imamiya, Taisei Makihara, Keiji Nakahara, Ayatsugu Yamashita and Yohei Yanagawa.  Imamiya, Yamashita and Yanagawa each had an All Star card in the second set to go along with the individual player cards.  There were two additional cards in the second set featuring the players.  First is a card showing the members of the Bandits who were named to the All Star Game in December of 2011:

2012 Brisbane Bandits Team Set II #054

From left to right is Justin Eramus, Alex Maestri, Yanagawa, Imamiya, Paul Gonzalez (Bandits GM), Yamashita and Josh Roberts.

The other card is for Yamashita and is labeled "Non-Stop Action!".  It shows a play at the plate between Yamashita and Travis Scott of the Canberra Cavalry in the game on November 6, 2001.  Here's the front and back of the card:

2012 Brisbane Bandits Team Set II #057

2012 Brisbane Bandits Team Set II #057

Speaking of the Canberra Cavalry, the 2011-12 edition of the team featured five players on loan from the Hanshin Tigers - Takumi Akiyama, Fumiya Araki, Yuhei Kai, Daiki Kiyohara and Masashi Nohara.  Akiyama was included in the Cavalry's 2012 team set from Select.  Here's that card and a recent card of him with the Tigers:

2012 Select #26

2017 Epoch Tigers #14

The Saitama Seibu Lions and Melbourne Aces have had a long partnership that's seen a number of Lions players (including a couple big names in Yusei Kikuchi and Tomoya Mori) spend time in Victoria.  Since I'm a Lions fan I was hoping for some crossover but as far as I've been able to tell (with help from Steve) there's only been one Lions player who's appeared on an ABL card - Toshihiro Iwao was included in the 2013-14 set from Dingo.  Here's his card along with a card of him from the Lions:

2013-14 Dingo #060

2017 BBM Lions #L19

Steve passed on an interesting piece of trivia - "Dingo" cards is owned by former MLB star (and one time Chunichi Dragon) Dave Nilsson along with his brother Gary and (Steve thinks) Paul Gonzalez, the Bandits GM mentioned above.

Kenshi Sugiya of the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters spent a couple weeks with the Brisbane Bandits during the 2017-18 ABL season.  He was included in a team issued set put out by the Bandits in 2018.  He actually has two cards in the set - a base set card and a premium card.  I only got the base set card which I'm showing here along with an NPB card of his from later in 2018:

2018 Brisbane Bandits Team Set

2018 BBM Fighters #F44

I wanted to show one more card.  I mentioned that I've only really been interested in finding cards of Japanese players in the ABL.  There was one exception to this.  Former KBO, NPB and MLB pitcher Koo Dae-Sung was a fixture with the Sydney BlueSox for a number of years - first as an active player for five seasons from 2010-11 to 2014-15 and then as their pitching coach for a couple seasons - before taking over as manager of the Geelong Korea team this past season.  The 2012 BlueSox set from Select is apparently the only set to include a card of Koo with Sydney.  Here's that card along with both a KBO and an NPB card of him:

2012 Select #66

1999 Teleca #151

2001 BBM Late Series #603

I want to mention that I picked up all of these ABL cards as well as the ones in my previous post from Shane who sells on Ebay under the name Top-Flite-79.  Shane carries a lot of ABL cards and cards of Australian MLB players so check him out if you're looking for cards from Down Under.