June Releases

Here's some information on some upcoming releases:

- The next two of BBM's annual "comprehensive" team set releases are for the Tigers and Buffaloes.  As usual, the base set for each set contains 81 cards.  For the Tigers set those 81 cards break down into 69 "regular" cards (for the manager and players) and four three card subsets - "Newcomer", "Great Record", "Starting Pitcher" and "Rising Stars".  I don't know how the Buffaloes cards break down because BBM hasn't put the information for the set up on their website - all I have is what's on Discount Niki's website.  The Tigers set has 36 insert cards broken up into five sets - "Growing Up" (4 cards), "Friendly Competitors" (5 cards), "Tiger's Fang" (6 cards), "Building Trust" (3 cards) and "Phantom" (18 cards).  The Buffaloes set has 30 insert cards - 12 of which are "Phantom" cards.  Both sets have a bunch of autograph cards randomly inserted into packs.  The Tigers set will be out in mid-June and the Buffaloes set will be out in late June.

- Not to be outdone, Epoch is also releasing two "comprehensive" team sets in June and one of those is for the Tigers also.  The other is for the Baystars.  Both sets have a 90 card base set along with various insert and autograph cards.  The Baystars set will be out on June 9th and the Tigers set will be released two weeks later on the 23rd.

- Seiichi Uchikawa of the Hawks got his 2000th hit last week and Hits wasted no time in announcing they were doing a "Mini color paper" set for him.  The set will contain a total of 16 "cards" for him - 8 "normal" and 8 "gilded print signed".  The set will feature photos of him as both a Hawk and a Baystar.  It will be out in late June.

- Kenny (aka Zippy Zappy) gave me a heads up a few weeks back about a food issue in Japan being given away with some sort of popsicle from Meito.  Meito makes ice cream bars called "Home Run Bars" normally (you can see some of their commercials here) but the cards are only being given away with the "Central League Soda Float Homerun Bars".  There are 36 cards in total and as the name implies they are only for the six Central League teams.  I assume there are six cards per team but I don't know that for sure.  I don't think these cards are being issued by either BBM or Epoch but I could be wrong.  I don't know if they've actually in stores yet or not - I did a quick look on Yahoo! Japan Auctions and didn't see any cards from it.

Card Of The Week May 13

I was watching the Orix Buffaloes game last Friday and I saw what looked like someone holding up a Bryce Harper t-shirt in the Orix cheering section.  I grabbed a screen shot:

He was doing this during the at bat of Masataka Yoshida who also wears uniform number 34 so I'm guessing it's because of that.  But I'm also wondering why it looks like there's an NPB logo at the top of the shirt - maybe this isn't a Nats shirt?  Did someone make a custom Orix shirt for Harper?  I know he's a free agent after this season but Orix is probably a long shot for signing him.  But I guess these are all clown questions, bro.

Anyway, here's Yoshida's card from this year's Calbee set (#023):

1st Version Photos From Arizona, 2018 Edition

As was the case in both 2016 and 2017 there are a handful of photos from this year's edition of BBM's 1st Version set that were taken at the Fighters' early spring training in Scottsdale, Arizona this past February.  I've pointed this out numerous times before but most of the photos for the 1st Version set were actually taken last season.  For the most part the exceptions to this are players who are new to their team this year - rookies, free agents, traded players and new foreign players.

The only rookie that the Fighters brought with them to Arizona was Kotaro Kiyomiya, their first round pick from last fall.  They had four new foreign players with them - Michael Tonkin, Bryan Rodiguez, Nick Martinez and Oswaldo Arcia - and one player who had signed with the Fighters as a free agent over the winter - Shinya Tsuruoka.

Arcia doesn't have a card in the set but the other five do.  I know for sure that Kiyomiya's photo was taken in Arizona because the photo shows up in the team's gallery from Feburary 10th.

2018 BBM 1st Version #129

I don't know if the photo from the "secret" version of Kiyomiya's card was taken in Arizona but it may have been from one of the two exhibition games that they played there.

The photos of the three foreign pitchers all appear to have been taken in a bullpen.  In fact they all may have been taken at around the same time:

2018 BBM 1st Version #115

2018 BBM 1st Version #118

2018 BBM 1st Version #113

And all three of the pitchers ended up on the Fighters team card, also pitching in the bullpen:

2018 BBM 1st Version #329

This could be in Okinawa but I'm pretty sure that this is Arizona as it looks like the wall in the bullpen in some photos from the Fighters' gallery from February 14th.

Tsuruoka's photo is probably from Arizona but again it could be from Okinawa:

2018 BBM 1st Version #120

Seiichi Uchikawa

Seiichi Uchikawa of the Hawks got his 2000th hit today against the Lions in Tokorozawa.   He'd gone hitless in his previous 14 at bats so I'm sure he was happy to get it over with.



Uchikawa was the first round pick of the Yokohama Baystars back in the fall 2000 draft.  He made his NPB debut as an 18 year old in 2001 but he didn't really become a regular for the Baystars until a few years later.  He left Yokohama as a free agent after the 2010 season and signed with the Hawks.  Jim Allen mentioned on this week's Japan Baseball Weekly podcast that Uchikawa was the first Central League star in his prime to use free agency to move to a Pacific League team.  He's the second player ever (after Shinichi Eto) to win a batting crown in both leagues.  He's made the All Star team six times (2008-09, 2011-13, 2017) and been named to the Best 9 team five times (2008-09, 2011-13).  He was the Pacific League MVP in 2011.  He's played in four Nippon Series - all with the Hawks - and was on the winning side in all four (2011, 2014-15, 2017).  He's played for the Japan National Team in three of the four World Baseball Classics (2009, 2013, 2017).

Here's a bunch of his cards from over the years:

2001 BBM Preview #P30

2001 BBM #321

2001 Upper Deck #1

2002 BBM 2nd Version #517

2004 BBM 2nd Version #826

2007 Konami Baseball Heroes 3 Black Edition #B07B238

2008 BBM Baystars #YB59

2009 Bowman Draft Picks WBC #BDPW34

2011 BBM Nippon Series #S23

2012 BBM 1sr Version #325

2013 Calbee #205

2014 Hawks "Special Baseball Card" #1

2014 Calbee #C-6

2015 BBM Memories Of Uniform #095

2016 BBM Hawks #H56

2017 Epoch Pacific League #14

2018 BBM 1st Version Box Break

Jay Shelton recently bought a box of 2018 BBM 1st Version cards and sent me some stats and photos from his box break.

The box contained 20 packs and each pack contained 10 cards so (obviously) each box contained 200 cards.  Jay's cards broke down as follows:

1 Japanism insert card
2 Gemstone insert cards
19 Cross Universe regular cards (17 unique)
1 Cross Universe "Gold Foil" parallel card (084/100)
6 team cards
1 Green Signature Parallel card (Takeya Nakamura 09/10)
4 Silver Parallel cards
1 Gold (or "Foilboard") Parallel Rookie card (Etio Tanaka 138/200)
1 "Secret" parallel card (Hideto Asamura)
164 regular cards (150 unique)

Jay mentioned that the Nakamura Green Signature parallel had a matte finish on it rather than the normal glossy finish that the other cards have.  He also mentioned that each pack had a Cross Universe card in it - either a regular one or a parallel.

Here's the photos Jay sent me:

Thanks for sharing Jay!

Ichiro

As I'm sure everyone's already heard, Ichiro "retired" the other day -  he's moving into some sort of front office job that allows him to stay in uniform (although not in the dugout during games) and take batting practice every day.  He insists that he's not actually retiring but he doesn't want to play for anyone else but Seattle. 

I did a post for Ichiro when he got his 3000th MLB hit a few years back that showed all his "regular" BBM flagship cards.  Here's a bunch of other cards of him:

1993 Tomy #102

1994 Takara Orix BlueWave #51

1995 Calbee Choco #C36

1996 BBM Nippon Series #S63

1997 BBM All Stars #A10

1998 BBM #564

1999 Calbee #265 (Gold Signature Parallel)

2000 Upper Deck Victory #H1

2000 BBM 20th Century Best 9 #117

By 1995 BBM was calling him "Ichiro" on all his card so I'm kind of amused that Calbee still had his full name on front of that Choco card.  What's odd is the back of the card has just his first name.

Ichiro led the Pacific League in Batting and On-Base-Percentage so his final BBM flagship cards were in the Leader subset in the 2001 set:

2001 BBM #4

As far as I can tell, Ichiro has had only three cards in any OB sets since 2001:

2007 BBM Draft Story #031

2009 BBM Orix 20th Anniversary #18

2009 BBM Legend Players #062

And it wouldn't be a player retrospective if I didn't include cards of him with the Japanese National Team.  He played for Team Japan in both the 2006 and 2009 World Baseball Classics:

2006 Upper Deck Inaugural Images #II-25

2009 Konami WBC Heroes #W09R113

Card Of The Week May 6

Daisuke Matsuzaka got the win in last Monday's victory by the Dragons over the Baystars.  He didn't pitch particularly well - he threw 114 pitches in six innings and walked seven but held DeNA to three hits and one earned run while striking out six.  In other words, it was lot like his starts for the Red Sox circa 2010.  What was significant about the win is that it was his win at the ichi-gun level since September 19, 2006 (he had a win with the Hawks' farm team in 2016).  Here's his 2018 BBM 1st Version card (#280), the only card I have (so far) of him as a Dragon:

I was a little amused to notice that BBM has his birthdate wrong on the back of the card.  Instead of September 13, 1980 they have September 13, 1990.  This of course would mean he was 7 years old when he starred in the 1998 Koshien tournament, 8 years old when drafted by Seibu in the fall of 1998 and made his NPB debut in 1999 and 16 when he signed with the Red Sox.  It would also mean that he was born 10 years too late for his namesake "Matsuzaka Generation".  OK, I've probably milked a simple typographical error enough (God knows I've made enough of them on this blog) but here's a look at the back of his card: