New sets

BBM is behind on updating their website again, but AmiAmi and Discount Niki are listing a couple new sets that BBM hasn't gotten around to listing yet:

- Neo Dragons - a 37 card box set featuring 36 "regular" cards and one insert/memorabilia card.  The set features three cards each for 12 Dragons players.  It will be in stores on December 13.

- Orix Buffaloes Pedigree - another 37 card box set featuring 36 "regular" cards and one insert/memorabilia card.  I think there are three 12 card subsets, one showing the players in their Orix Buffaloes uniforms, one showing them in their retro Kintetsu Buffaloes uniforms and one showing them in their retro Hankyu Braves uniforms.  What I'm not sure about is whether or not it's the same 12 players (well, 11 players plus manager Akinobu Okada) in each subset.  The set will be released in late January.

- 2011 Nippon Series - this year's edition of the annual box set commemorating the Nippon Series.  It will be released in mid December.

- "Player Farewell Ball" - a 28 card box set featuring 27 "regular" cards and one insert/memorabilia card.  This set commemorates the retirement of "significant" players at the end of last season such as Kiyoshi Toyoda and Masahide Kobayashi.  BBM published a similar set last year although it never appeared on their website.  It replaces a subset that was included in BBM's 1st and/or 2nd Version sets from 2002 until 2010.  It will be released in late January.

In addition to the new BBM sets, there's been a new set announced by All Japan Baseball Foundation.  The new set commemorates famous sluggers from NBP.  I think it's a 60 card box set containing 59 "regular" cards and one autograph card.  The player selection is typical of the other AJBF sets in that most of the players were active from the 1960's on: Sadaharu Oh, Shigeo Nagashima, Koji Yamamoto, Sachio Kinugasa, Koichi Tabuchi, etc.  As usual, there's no Katsuya Nomura.  It will be released at the end of December.

UPDATE:  Apparently I shamed BBM into action as information appeared on their website today on the Nippon Series and Neo Dragons sets.  The only really new information about the sets is that there will be 63 cards in the Nippon Series set - 2 cards for the managers, 55 for the players for the two teams, five cards for the award winners and one card for the Champion Hawks.

Card Of The Week December 4

Last week, the Red Sox made it official and hired former Chiba Lotte Marine (and Rangers and Mets) manager Bobby Valentine as their new manager.  Valentine and current Mets manager Terry Collins are two of only three major league managers to have ever managed in Japan (the other being former Royals and Fighters manager Trey Hillman).

There was an interesting article on Valentine in the New York Times last week.  As a Red Sox fan, I'm not sure what I think about all this.  I was very sorry to see Terry Francona go, despite the epic September collapse, so I view any change with trepidation.  On the other hand, it won't be a boring season with Valentine as manager.  We'll see how it goes.

In honor of his hiring, I thought I'd show my favorite Japanese Bobby Valentine card (well, besides this one anyway):

Whoops, that's the front of the card (2006 BBM Marines #M90). Bobby's on the back:

I remember there being some sort of Cha-Cha contest at Chiba Marine Stadium that spring that Bobby took part in but I can't find any video of it.  I did however find this:



I suspect that this is what made the Red Sox pick him over Gene Lamont. I'm hoping that they play this between innings occasionally at Fenway.

2011 Award Winners

This week NBP announced that Seiichi Uchikawa of the Hawks and Takuya Asao of the Dragons were this year's MVPs.  They also announced that Kazuhisa Makita of the Lions and Hirokazu Sawamura of the Giants were the Rookie Of The Year award winners.

And just to round out the major awards, a few weeks back Masahiro Tanaka of the Eagles was named the Sawamura Award winner.

Here's the 2011 BBM 1st Version cards of all the award winners:

#020

#171

#050

#240

#138

Card Of The Week November 27

This is (I think) the oldest card I have in my collection.  It's an uncatalogued bromide card of Chubu Nippon Dragons player Hideo Shimizu.  The uniform he's wearing is the one the Dragons wore in 1948, so I'm assuming that that's how old the card is.

1992 BBM set

1992 In A Box

Size:  498 cards
Cards Per Team:  35 (team card, manager + 33 players)
Team Card Theme:  Team logos
Number Of Leader Cards: 28
Checklists: 8
Subsets: Nostalgic Stars (10 cards featuring players and managers from the 1930's through 1950's); Stadiums (11 cards featuring the primary home parks in the league); Combination Cards (12 cards - one for each team - featuring two players on each card); ON Special (4 cards featuring Sadaharu Oh and Shigeo Nagashima); plus three cards for the commissioner and league presidents
Inserts:  Player holograms.
Notable Rookies:  So Taguchi, Kazuhisa Ishii, Takashi Saitoh, Kenichi Wakatabe, Atsushi Kataoka, Katsuyuki Dobashi
Late Series:  None

Notes:

This is the only set that BBM ever issued in two series of 249 cards each.  The cards were numbered 1-249,251-499.  The player hologram inserts for Series One were assigned number 250.  The ones for Series Two were assigned number 500.

The Nostalgic Stars subset featured Takehiko Bessho, Kaoru Betto, Shigeru Chiba, Tetsuharu Kawakami, Osamu Mihara, Shigeru Mizuhara, Hiroshi Ohshita, Eiji Sawamura, Victor Starffin, Shigeru Sugishita, Kazuto Tsuruoka and Wally Yonamine.

The Stadium subset depicted all eleven primary ballparks used in 1992 (the Giants and Fighters still shared the Tokyo Dome at this time).  Five of the stadiums shown - Nagoya, Heiwadai (in Fukuoka), Hisoshima, Kobe and Fujiidera (in Osaka) - either are no longer standing or no longer in regular use by the ichi-gun teams.  Another stadium - Seibu Lions Stadium - had a dome built over it in the late 90's, leaving only five of the ballparks shown still in use and pretty much looking the same as now.

Here's some sample cards:

#114

#60

#404

#146

#449

#15

#35

#109

#244

#477

#478

#490

Factory Set

Promo For Series 2 

Box For Series 2

Series 2 Wrapper

Back For Card #56 (Hisanobu Watanabe)

According to Gary Engel's "Japanese Baseball Card Checklist and Price Guide", "each [insert] card is a metallic silver hologram of the player's regular issue 1992 BBM card".  If that's meant to imply that the picture on a player's regular 1992 card and his 1992 hologram are the same, then it's inaccurate as  the Hiromistu Ochiai cards will demonstrate:

#500

#315

 UPDATE: Here's images of the packaging materials for Series One:

Box For Series One

Series One Wrapper

Promo For Series 1

RIP Yukio Nishimoto

Hall Of Fame manager Yukio Nishimoto has passed away at age 91.  Nishimoto managed for 20 years in NBP with three different Pacific League teams - the Daimai Orions (1960), the Hankyu Braves (1963-1973) and the Kintetsu Buffaloes (1974-1981).  He won eight Pacific League pennants - one with Daimai, five with Hankyu and two with Kintetsu - but never won a Nippon Series.  The Orions were swept in the 1960 Series by Osamu Mihara's Whales.  His Hankyu pennant winners (1967, 1968, 1969, 1971 and 1972) were fodder for the V9 Giants and his Buffalo pennent winners were defeated in 1978 and 1979 by the "Red Helmet" era Hiroshima Toyo Carp led by Koji Yamamoto and Sachio Kinugasa.  Sometimes it's not enough to be good - you need a little luck as well.

I am curious as to why he only managed Daimai the one season.  None of the biographical information I've seen has an explanation.

Here's a couple recent cards of his:

2011 All Japan Baseball Foundation Managers #26

2011 BBM Legend Of The Bs #52

Some years ago, I picked up a batch of postcards off of eBay that had black and white photos of a number of Japanese players and managers.  I've got written down in my notes that the postcards were made in 1966 by Mel Bailey, a US serviceman stationed in Japan who had imported the 1967 Kabaya-Leaf set to the US.  I don't recall now how or why I made that connection - it's certainly possible that the pictures were made into postcards much more recently than 1966 by someone other than Mel Bailey.  The relevance to this post is that one of the postcards depicts Yukio Nishimoto:

Osamu Mihara

Today marks the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of legendary manager Osamu Mihara.  Born on Shikoku Island, he attended Waseda University and played on the Japanese All Star team that went up against the US All Stars in 1934.  He was the first player ever signed by the Giants, which I think makes him the first professional player in Japan.  He only played three seasons with the team, however, before going into the Army for the next eight years.

His first managerial job was with the Giants, starting in 1947.  He managed them for three years, winning the final "one league system" championship in 1949.  Despite that championship, however, he was replaced as Giants manager by his long time rival, fellow Shikoku native Shigeru Mizuhara.

Mihara took over the newly created Nishitetsu Lions in 1951 (the Lions were formed as a merger of the Nishitetsu Clippers and Nishi-Nippon Pirates) and led them to much success on the field.  He won Pacific League pennants with them in 1954, 1956, 1957 and 1958.  The Lions lost to the Dragons in the 1954 Nippon Series, but beat Mizuhara's Giants in three straight Nippon Series from 1956 to 1958.

In 1960, Mihara became the manager of the Taiyo Whales and led them to their first ever Nippon Series championship (over the Daimai Orions).  The Whales had finished last the previous six seasons, but under Mihara, the Whales finished 4.5 games ahead the Giants in Mizuhara's final season as their manager.

At this point, he had six first place finishes and four Nippon Series championships in 13 years of managing.  Although he would manage another 13 years, this was the high point of his managerial career.

He remained manager of the Whales until 1967, finishing second twice to the Tigers in 1962 and 1964.  He moved to the Kintetsu Buffaloes from 1968 to 1970, finishing second to the Hankyu Braves in 1969.  His final three seasons managing were with the Yakult Atoms from 1970 to 1973, finishing in the second division all three years.  (He was in fact the final manager of the Yakult Atoms - Yakult returned to the name Swallows in 1974.)

He is the all time leader in games managed in Japan with 3248, 40 or so more than Katsuya Nomura.  He is second all time in managerial wins with 1687, more than 100 more than Mizuhara (although in almost 500 more games).  I think he's first all time in managerial losses with 1453 (Japan Baseball Daily's numbers are inconsistent between the listing for his managerial record and the list of all time managerial records).  He was elected to the Hall Of Fame in 1983, one year before he passed away.

I don't have any cards of Mihara from when he was an active manager, but he's shown up with some regularity in the recent OB sets, including the 2004 Giants 70th Anniversary set, both the Buffaloes 2009  Memorial set and this year's "Legend Of The Bs" sets and a number of the recent sets for the Lions.  For whatever reason, he did not show up in the 2009 Yakult 40th Anniversary set.  Here's some sample cards:

1978 NST #74 

2008 BBM Lions Classic #01

2006 BBM Nostalgic Baseball #041

2009 BBM Kintetsu Memorial #20

It's not clear from the uniform if the picture on the NST card was from his playing days with the Giants (1936-38) or his managerial days (1947-49).

I think that the Lions were highlighting the fact that this would be the Mihara's centennial during the Lions Classic games last summer.

Sources for this post include the always useful Japan Baseball Daily's Data Warehouse along with Gary Engel and Rob Fitts' "Japanese Baseball Superstars".

UPDATE:  I don't know why I didn't think to look when I was writing this, but Baseball Reference's Bullpen has an excellent biography of Mihara.