Japanese Baseball Cards

Monday, October 26, 2009

1949 San Francisco Seals Tour

According to Baseball Reference's Bullpen, today is the 60th Anniversary of the completion of the San Francisco Seal's Asian tour of 1949, which included five games in Japan (Robert Whiting says it was 7 in "You Gotta Have Wa"). The Seals were managed by Frank "Lefty" O'Doul who had a major impact on the development of professional baseball in Japan. The Giants take their name and uniform colors from the New York Giants because that's the team that O'Doul was playing for during his visits to Japan in the early 1930's. The Seals tour was the first visit by a US team to Japan following the war (and at the time, the Pacific Coast League was practically a third major league). According to Rob Fitts' biography of Wally Yonamine: "The Japanese interpreted [the Seals'] presence as a sign of respect, which helped reestablish baseball's popularity after the war". O'Doul's contributions to Japanese baseball were recognized in 2002 by his election to the Japanese Baseball Hall Of Fame.

The Seals' tour was commemorated by several sets of baseball cards - a bromide set called "Yakyu Shonen Sepia Bottom Line Strip" and at least eight menko sets. The bromide set and one of the menko sets had been up for auction in the last Prestige Collectibles auction, so you can still see the pages for them for now.

I don't have any cards from the Seals' sets, so I'll have to settle for the above 1991 Conlon Collection card of O'Doul (#165).

Sunday, October 25, 2009

2009 BBM 2nd Version

It's been out for about two months now and I've had my set for about a month, but I'm finally getting around to blogging about the 2009 BBM 2nd Version set. It's a 255 card set that is numbered as a continuation of this year's 1st Version set.

Like last year's set, this year's set has 180 player cards (15 per team). As usual, BBM has found some outstanding photographs for the cards. Here's a selection:

Card numbers: Kanemoto #673, Iguchi #608, Nakajima #562, Lee #655, Yoshinori #705, Oyama #682

There are 13 players who have "regular" (as opposed to 1st Version Update) cards in the 2nd Version set but did not appear in this year's 1st Version set. They are Atsushi Fujii (Dragons), Keiji Oyama (Dragons), Shinsuke Saitoh (Dragons), Yuya Hasegawa (Hawks), DJ Houlton (Hawks), Yasushi Kamiuchi (Hawks), Satoru Morimoto (Hawks), Atsushi Nohmi (Tigers), Tomoya Yagi (Fighters), Marcus Gwyn (Golden Eagles), Aaron Guiel (Swallows), Satoshi Fukuda (Giants) and Tetsuya Matsumoto (Giants).

One thing I noticed about the cards in this set - they have the player's name in English on the back of the cards. I think that's the first time I've seen that with BBM cards. Typically the name on the back will only be in Kanji for the Japanese players. (UPDATE - I guess I'm not very observant because this is the fourth year in a row that the 2nd Version cards have had the player's names on the back in English.)

In addition to the 13 previously mentioned cards, there's a 17 card "1st Version Update" subset. This subset contains cards that are in the style of this year's 1st Version set (although the text on the front does say "2nd Version"). I'm not quite sure what the difference between these 17 players and the 13 players listed above, but the update subset does contain players who signed later in the season (Craig Brazell), traded players (Ryuji Miyade and Yoshihiro Ichiba) and the BayStars interim manager Tomio Toshiro. But it also includes a card of Edgardo Alfonzo, who was NOT a late signing player.

Here's the list of the 1st Version Update players: Kentaro Hashimoto (Marines), Hiroshi Miyamoto (Marines), Juan Carlos Muniz (Marines), Yoshifumi Okada (Marines), Hayato Douue (Hawks), Jose Ortiz (Hawks), Craig Brazell (Tigers), Kai-Wen Cheng (Tigers), Yasutomo Kubo (Tigers), Scott McClain (Carp), Luis Jimenez (Fighters), Jobu (Golden Eagles), Ryuji Miyade (Golden Eagles), Yasuhiro Ichiba (Swallows), Yuki (Swallows), Tomio Toshiro (BayStars) and Edgardo Alfonzo (Giants). Here's the cards of Miyade (#777) and Toshiro (#787):

The set also contains three 12 card subsets, each featuring one player from each team. The subsets are "Team Specialities" which features one of the top stars from each team - Darvish, Ogasawara, Iwakuma, Kanemoto, etc (and yes, that title is misspelled - don't know if they were going for "Specialists" or "Specialties"); "Golden Age - Around 20" which features a promising early 20-something player like Masahiro Tanaka or Sho Nakata for each team (well, some are more promising than others...:-)); and the "Craftsmanship" subset which features a veteran for each team who's at least in their mid-30's if not older - Kudoh, Komiyama, Takuro Ishii, etc. Here's example cards from each subset:

Card numbers: Ogasawara #741, Maeda #756, Kosaka #763

There are 12 team checklist cards in the set. The pictures don't have any real theme - they are a combination of action shots, mascot interaction pictures and one or two just plain odd pictures. Here for examples are the Giants (#794) and BayStars (#799) cards:

Finally, there is a ten card "Ceremonial First Pitch" subset showing various Japanese celebrities throwing out the first pitch at a game. I was a little bummed (although not surprised) that there was no Tom Hanks card. Not living in Japan, it's usually hard for me to figure out who these people are - not all of them show up in Wikipedia. Here's the list: Hideo Higashikokubaru (Comedian), Sachi Jinno (Actress), Yumi Kobayashi (Model), Hidehiko Masuda (Comedian), Satoko Miyata (Model), Miyuki (?), Mari Motohashi (Curler), Tomoaki Ogura (Newscaster), Keisuke Okada (?), and Shosuke Tanihara (Actor). The only Keisuke Okada that comes up in a Wikipedia search was an Admiral in the Imperial Navy and Prime Minister of Japan in the mid 1930's. I don't think it's him.

I thought it was cool that there was an Olympic Curler in the bunch as my sister-in-law was a curling official at the 2002 Winter Olympics. So here's the card of Motohashi (#804):

Card Of The Week October 25

Kenji Johjima announced this past week that he was opting out of his contract with the Mariners and heading back to Japan. So far both the Tigers and Hawks have expressed interest in signing him. Here's his 2005 BBM 1st Version Best 9 insert card (#BN2):

I'm trying to think now of all the other Japanese players that went to the US, then played in NPB again. Sasaki, Yoshii, Masao Kida, Kaz Ishii, Shinjo, Hideki Irabu, Komiyama, Iguchi, and Fukumori all come to mind off the top of my head. The only Japanese players to go to MLB and retire without returning to play in Japan first that I can think are Hideo Nomo and Shigetoshi Hasegawa.

Saturday, October 24, 2009

And Still More WBC cards?

A couple WBC related items:

- Topps has just released their Update set and (besides a bunch of memorabilia cards) it only has three World Baseball Classic cards. None of the three feature any Japanese players - one shows the US team celebrating after their walk off win against Puerto Rico, one shows Derek Jeter and David Wright and the last shows David Ortiz with Alex Rodriguez (who gets his third WBC card despite not actually playing in it).

- Jason's comment about Konami the other day made me go looking for a website for Konami (which has been added to the list on the right). In browsing their site, I was surprised to discover that it looks like Konami had released WBC cards. I'm not quite sure I follow what's on this page, but those certainly look like WBC baseball cards of David Ortiz, Akinori Iwamura, Jose Lopez, Derk Jeter, and Mark DeRosa. Are the Konami cards used with a video game? I know Deanna wrote something about this once but I don't have time to look for it right now.

Thursday, October 22, 2009

The 500 Pound Gorilla

Frequently when I work on posts for this blog, I feel like I'm shilling for BBM. It seems like all the sets I talk about are BBM ones, and most of the cards that I post are BBM ones. Well, there's a reason for that - BBM has no real competition in the production of baseball cards in Japan.

Now, you're probably saying to yourself - wait a minute, what about Calbee? OK, here are some stats about card sets produced in Japan for 2008. These aren't production numbers (total number of cards printed) but counts of "regular" (cards that aren't insert or memorabilia cards) per set.

First, here's BBM's count per set for 2008:

Set	Cards
1st Version	523
2nd Version	252
All Stars	65
Back To The 70's	144
Baystars 30th	99
Baystars Team Set	99
Buffaloes Team Set	99
Carp Memorial	45
Carp Team Set	99
College National Team	44
Dragons Team Set	99
Eagles Team Set	107
Fighters Team Set	99
Giants Team Set	117
Hakata Lions Memorial	39
Hawks 70th	99
Hawks Team Set	99
Lions 30th	99
Lions Classic	24
Lions Team Set	99
Lotte 40th	99
Marines Team Set	99
Nippon Series	60
Olympic Team	28
Rookie Edition	100
Rookie Premium	48
Swallows Team Set	99
Tigers Team Set	108
Tokyo Big 6 Autumn Version	36
Tokyo Big 6 Spring Version	60
Tomohiro Kuroki Memorial	27
Touch The Game	132

So that's 32 sets for a total of 3246 cards. Now, again, that's just "regular" cards - that doesn't include insert or memorabilia cards.

In contrast, here's what Calbee did in 2008:

Set	Cards
Series One	166
Series Two	160
Series Three	161

So that's 487 cards in three sets. And that count contains all the subset cards in addition to the 288 "regular" player cards.

It's not even close. This is not meant to disparage Calbee, just to point out how dominant BBM is in the Japanese card market. This is a little like the baseball card market in the US in the 1970's - dominated by one company - Topps. Except that BBM makes a hell of a lot more cards in a year than Topps did. And Calbee is basically the equivalent of the Kelloggs 3-D sets.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Wow

I was going to title this "Sledge Hammer" or "the Terrmel-ator", but I'm sure it's already been done. Terrmel Sledge had a really good day today and if you don't know what I'm talking about, you should read Yakyu Baka and the Kyodo New Service's stories, as well as an account from a Fighter's fan (Deanna) as well as an Eagles fan.

Here's Terrmel Sledge's 2009 BBM 2nd Version card (#597):

And just for fun, here's his first professional card ever - his 1999 Grandstand Everett AquaSox minor league baseball card:

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

NPB Pitchers in the Arizona Fall League

Five pitchers from Japanese teams have arrived in Arizona to play for a couple of teams in the Arizona Fall League. They are Hiroshi Katayama from the Eagles; Toshiyuki Yanuki from the Fighters; Tooru Murata and Takanobu Tsujiuchi from the Giants; and Ken Nishimura from the Tigers. Nishimura will be replaced mid-season (around the beginning of November) by fellow Tiger Kenta Abe. Katayama and Yanuki will play for the Phoenix Sea Dogs and the rest will be with the Scottsdale Scorpions. There are more details at both NPB Tracker and MLB.com (where there's a familiar name on the credit for the photo of Katayama).

So if you're going to check out a game and want to try to get an autograph, here's a list of some of the available BBM cards for the players. This is not a comprehensive list. Each player is probably in his team's BBM wax set for each season. If the player played in the past for another team, I'll list those teams after his cards.

Kenta Abe

2003 Rookie Edition #57 (shown above), 1st Version #243
2004 1st Version #73, 2nd Version Hot Prospects subset #832
2005 1st Version #180
2009 1st Version #267
Abe was with Kintetsu in 2003-2004, Orix in 2005-2007 and Hanshin in 2008-09.

Hiroshi Katayama