Card Of The Week April 9

On Friday Carp rookie pitcher Takuya Kato made his NPB debut and nearly threw a no-hitter - the Swallows didn't get their first hit off of him until there was one out in the ninth.  Only one pitcher has ever thrown a no-hitter in their NPB debut - Shinichi Kondoh of the Dragons did it on August 9, 1987.

Kondoh was the first round pick of the Dragons in the fall 1986 draft.  His no-hitter was all the more astounding as he was just 18 years old at the time and he threw it against the Giants, who would go on to win the Central League pennant that season.  Unfortunately for Kondoh this was not a sign of great things to come - he would develop shoulder and elbow issues during the 1988 season, missed the entire 1989 season due to surgery and ended his playing career after the 1993 season at the age of 25 with a career record of 12-17 in 52 games.  Kondoh would later become a coach for the Dragons and is currently their ichi-gun pitching coach.  His son Hiroki is an outfielder for the Dragons.

Here's a 1987 Calbee card of Kondoh (#204) that I think shows him acknowledging the crowd at Nagoya Stadium after the game.  This is one of the rare instances when a rookie player got a baseball card in the pre-BBM era - generally players would not get baseball cards until they had been in the league a few years and had proved themselves:

Only one MLB pitcher has ever thrown a no-hitter in their MLB debut - Bumpus Jones of the Reds no-hit the Pirates on October 15, 1892.  Jones also didn't have much of a career afterwards - he went 2-4 in only eight appearances in a two year career.

Card Of The Week April 2

As you probably know it was Opening Weekend in NPB this weekend and there were a number of events that I thought of highlighting this week.  Carlos Peguero of the Eagles beat the Orix Buffaloes with a tremendous two run home run in the center field upper deck at Osaka Dome on Friday and then did it again today.  Dennis Sarfate of the Hawks notched his 178th NPB save today which put him past Marc Kroon for most ever by a foreigner in Japan.  Shinnosuke Abe of the Giants hit two runs in the first two games, including a three run sayonara blast yesterday, helping Yomiuri sweep the three game series from the Dragons.  But I decided to highlight this unlikely moment from today's Swallows-Baystars game:



Atsushi Ugumori of the Swallows hit a pinch hit grand slam in the bottom of the tenth to beat DeNA 8-4.  It was only the second walk off grand slam in Swallows history - the only other one was by Masaaki Iwashita on April 6, 1982 (regular season only - Toru Sugiura had one in Game One of the 1992 Nippon Series).  Ugumori's been in the league since 2006 (he was an eighth round pick of the Fighters in the fall 2004 draft) and signed with Yakult before last season after being released by the Fighters.  He had only hit 10 home runs in just of 400 plate appearances in his entire NPB career prior to today.  Even more unlikely - the Swallows had loaded the bases in the bottom of the ninth as well with one out and Tetsuto Yamada and Wladimir Balentien due up and failed to score.

As you might expect from someone with only 400 plate appearances in 11-ish years, there aren't a whole lot of cards of Ugumori around.  He's only had one appearance in a BBM flagship set - his rookie card from the 2005 1st Version set.  Most of his cards are from BBM's team sets for the Fighters or the Swallows starting in 2016.  But I did come across this one of him from the Fighter's team issued "Victory" set from 2011:

This card highlights the Fighter's 5-2 victory over Softbank on August 14th, 2011.  Ugumori hit his second career home run in that game to account for the Fighter's fifth and final run.

I got the link to the video of the home run from a post by user BalvinoGalvez at NPB Reddit.

Kenshin Kawakami

Former Chunichi Dragons pitcher Kenshin Kawakami announced his retirement a few weeks back (although he apparently had also announced his retirement back in October of 2015 - I guess he reconsidered).  Kawakami was the first round pick of the Dragons in the fall 1997 draft out of Meiji University and immediately moved into the starting rotation in 1998 and was named Central League Rookie Of The Year after going 14-6 with a 2.57 ERA.  He was a mainstay of the Dragons rotation for much of the next ten seasons except when missing time for injuries.  He left the Dragons following the 2008 season for a couple seasons in the US in the Atlanta Braves organization but injuries limited his effectiveness with the Braves.  He returned to the Dragons in 2012 but injuries again limited the amount of time he spent with the ichi-gun team.  He was released by the Dragons following the 2015 season, a season that he spent entirely with the farm team.

In addition to the 1998 Rookie Of The Year Award, Kawakami won the Sawamura Award and Central League MVP in 2004, was named to the Best 9 team in 2004 and 2006 and won Golden Glove Awards in 2004, 2006 and 2007.  He lead the Central League in wins in 2004 and 2006 and strikeouts in 2006.  He made the All Star team six times - 1998, 2002, 2004-06, 2008 - and was named MVP of the 1st All Star game he ever played in (1998 Game 1).  He appeared in four Nippon Series (1999, 2004, 2006 and 2007) and won the "Fighting Spirit" Award in two of them (1999, 2006).  He also played for the 2008 Japanese Olympic baseball team.  He threw a no-hitter against the Giants in 2002.

I did a post for Kawakami back when he left for the US.  His rookie cards are #385 from the 1998 BBM set and #091 from the 1998 Calbee set and had a card in the the 1998 Takara Dragons set as well.

1998 BBM #385

1998 BBM #549

1999 BBM All Stars #A67

1999 BBM #34

2003 Chunichi Sports #11

2005 Calbee #B-02

2007 BBM Nippon Series #S02

2011 BBM Legend Of Tokyo Big Six #044

2012 BBM No-Hitters #77

2012 BBM 2nd Version "Cross Blaze" #CB058

2014 Calbee #OP-10

2015 BBM Dragons #D02

New Releases For April

BBM has announced a couple new sets that will be coming out in April -

- The next two of BBM's pack based team sets have been announced - the Tigers and the Marines.  Both sets will have 81 card base sets - the Tigers set has 69 cards for the players, manager and probably mascot, a 3 card "Newcomer" subset, a 3 card "Milestone" subset and an unidentified 6 six card subset while the Marines set also has 69 cards for the players, manager and mascots (likely) plus a 4 card "Seawall Quarter" subset, a 3 card "New Wave" subset and a 5 card "Award Winner '16" subset.  The Tigers set will have 36 insert cards split among six different sets - "Smart Starters" (5 cards), one for outfielders (maybe "Heart of Tigers") (4 cards), "Carry On", (3 cards), "Reputable Veterans" (3 cards), something called "reversal" (3 cards) and "Phantom" (18 cards).  The Marines set has 24 insert cards split among four sets - "Next Sensation" (6 cards), "Brand New Face" (3 cards), "Prime Choice" (9 cards) and "Phantom" (6 cards).  Both sets will also feature randomly inserted autograph cards.  The Tigers set will be out in mid April while the Marines set will be out in late April.

- As a followup to the "Fighters Premium" box set that will be out in the next day or so, BBM is issuing a similar set for the Fighters' opponent in last year's Nippon Series - the Carp.  The "Carp Premium" box set follows the same pattern of the Fighters' set - the box contains 29 cards - a 27 card base set plus one insert card and one autograph card.  The insert card is one of six featuring either one of the Carp who were named to the Central League Best 9 team last year (Yosuke Nomura, Yoshiyuki Ishihara, Takahiro Arai, Seiya Suzuki and Yoshiharu Maru) or CL MVP Arai (so Arai has two of the six possible cards).  The set will be out in late April and retails for 10,000 yen (roughly $100).

- One odd thing going on right now involves something that BBM has not mentioned - normally an issue of Sports Card Magazine is released around March 27th of every year but for some reason there's been no announcement for it.  BBM's website still lists the last issue (#121) that came out in January.  I don't see any announcement for it either at Discount Niki or at Amazon Japan.  I don't know what's going on with it - I would have expected if there was a delay that BBM would make an announcement about it but I don't see anything at their website or on any of their social media.  I've sent a message to BBM's Facebook page but I had to write it in English so it may be ignored.  Hopefully we'll find out what's going on soon.

Card Of The Week March 26

I mentioned earlier that Kodai Senga was named to the All-World Baseball Classic team.  Senga was tied with teammate Tomoyuki Sugano for the most strikeouts in the WBC with 16.  He only gave up one run in 11 innings spread over four outings - unfortunately that run was the game winner for the US in last Tuesday night's game.  His 0.82 ERA was second only to Josh Zeid of Israel's 0.00 ERA for pitchers who had more than 10 innings pitched.  It's not too much of a surprise that he had a good WBC as he was excellent for the Hawks last season - going 12-3 with a 2.61 ERA and 181 strikeouts in 169 innings.

I was surprised to discover when I went looking for Senga cards that he had originally been drafted as an ikusei player for the Hawks out of Gamagori High School in the fall 2010 draft.  He was registered to the Hawks 70 man roster in 2012 and made his NPB ichi-gun debut on April 30th that year.  So his first card was from the 2011 BBM Rookie Edition set but since ikusei players aren't included in the flagship set his first BBM flagship card wasn't until the 2nd Version set in 2012 (in the 1st Version Update subset):

2011 BBM Rookie Edition #009

2012 BBM 2nd Version #407

Senga's not the first or the last player to make it in NPB via this route but it is somewhat unusual.

Speaking of the WBC, I just wanted to mention a couple of things about my trip to Los Angeles last week to see the final round.  I was going to do a post about it but I decided I didn't really have a post's worth of stuff to say and I didn't get any particularly interesting photos.  I had a great time - Monday and Tuesday night's games were very exciting, even if neither had the outcome I was hoping for and Wednesday night was a bit of a blowout but it ended with the team I was pulling for winning and there was the excitement of a no-hitter until the seventh.  I got to hang out with Deanna and Dani,  met up with the guys from Graveyard Ball and even briefly met Jason Coskrey of the Japan Times (who's a friend of Deanna's).  It was a lot of fun and hopefully I'll do it again in 2021.

Topps Now World Baseball Classic Card Addendum

Now that the World Baseball Classic is completed Topps has finished issuing their Topps Now cards for it.  The total number of cards in the set is 64 although there are three cards with Spanish language versions so I've seen the total listed as 67 as well.  The complete checklist is up on TradingCardDB.

There ended up being seven cards featuring members of Samurai Japan.  The first six highlight each of Japan's six wins in the tournament.  The first card is for Japan's victory over Cuba on March 7th and shows Nobuhiro Matsuda (#W-6).  The next card shows Sho Nakata hitting a solo home run to beat Australia on March 8th (#W-9).  Samurai Japan's victory over China on the 9th is the subject of the third card which features both Nakata and Seiji Kobayashi (#W-14).  Nakata is again the featured player on the fourth card which is for Japan's nail biter of a win against the Netherlands on March 12th (#W-25).  The fifth card highlights Tetsuto Yamada's two home run performance against Cuba on March 14th (#W-35).  The sixth card shows Nobuhiro Matsuda again (although he's not identified on the card) and covers the victory over Israel on March 15th (#W-39).  The final card (#W-62) is for Kodai Senga being named to the All-World Baseball Classic Team.

So seven cards but only five different players.  Kind of disappointing that they chose to have Sho Nakata on three cards and Yoshitomo Tsutsugoh on none.  At least the cards look nice.  I ordered the first Matsuda card from someone on Ebay a few weeks back and received it on Friday:

I ordered three of the others from the same seller on Ebay yesterday so I still need to track down the other three at a price I'm willing to pay.

Several other NPB players (both past and present) are also featured on cards in the set.  Wladimir Balentien of the Swallows has two cards - #W-38 showcasing his 2 home run game against Cuba on March 14th (helping the Netherlands knock Cuba out of the tournament for the second straight WBC) and #W-61 commemorating his being named to the All-WBC Team.  Brandon Laird of the Fighters shares card #W-31 with Esteban Quiroz - the card commemorates the two of them hitting three run home runs to help Mexico beat Venezuela on March 12th.  New Fukuoka Softbank Hawk Alfredo Despaigne is on #W-17 for his grand slam that beat Australia on March 10th - this card also has a Spanish language version.  Former Chiba Lotte Marine Tae Kyun Kim is the sole Korean player in the set - #W-12 covers his pinch hit two run home run to beat Taiwan on March 9th.

My hope is that with Team USA winning the WBC that Topps will do some WBC card sets that are reasonably priced (unlike the 2013 Topps Tribute WBC set) and not afterthoughts (unlike the 2013 Topps Series 2 WBC insert set) but I am not terribly optimistic.

Topps Now World Baseball Classic Cards

For the third straight tournament Topps has the license to produce baseball cards for the World Baseball Classic.  I don't know what plans they have for sets later this year (or if they have plans for sets later this year) but I was tipped off by Zippy Zappy a little while back that they were producing Topps Now cards for the tournament.

For those that don't know, Topps Now cards are cards that Topps sells directly on their website that commemorate a particular event.  Each card is usually available for only 24 hours.  Topps has issued roughly 50 for the tournament so far - currently the only ones you can buy from them are three dealing with the US beating the Dominican Republic last night.  Each card is $9.99 although there is usually a deal to buy all the cards issued for a day at a slight discount - for example you can buy all three cards they're selling today for $24.99.  The cards can usually be found slightly cheaper on Ebay - I bought a card for Japan's victory over Cuba on March 7th showing Nobuhiro Matsuda for only $6.50.  I'd love to pick up a complete run but even at $6.50 a card, a 50 card set is going to be $325.  I'll probably just settle for getting the Samurai Japan cards.

In addition to the "regular" WBC cards, Topps is also selling 10 card team sets for each of the four teams that have made it to the final round - Japan, The Netherlands, Puerto Rico and the US.  Each set is $34.99.  The 10 cards for each team are pretty much a batting lineup including DH plus a pitcher.  The preliminary set list for Japan is Tetsuto Yamada, Sho Nakata, Seiji Kobayashi, Yoshitomo Tsutsugoh, Hayato Sakamoto, Nobuhiro Matsuda, Shogo Akiyama, Ryosuke Kikuchi, Nori Aoki and Shintaro Fujinami.  Fujinami is kind of an odd choice for pitcher since he's only appeared in two innings in the tournament but maybe the actual set will have someone else.  Topps says that purchasers of the team sets will earn bonus cards if that particular team advances to the final game, especially if they win it.  The team sets can be bought now but will only remain available until 24 hours after the team has been eliminated or wins the WBC.

Topps had also been selling a six card "Throwback Thursday" WBC set a week or so ago but it is no longer available from them.  The six cards were in the 1988 Topps designed and showed a single player on each card.  Nori Aoki was the only member of Samurai Japan included in the set.  The sets are available on Ebay but unlike the Topps Now cards, they're much more expensive than they were on Topps website.