Shukan Baseball Cards

A couple of years ago (about a year after I got serious about learning about Sports Card Magazine and the baseball cards distributed with issues of it) I started looking into the baseball cards that were periodically distributed with Shukan (Weekly) Baseball magazine.  I kind of lost interest however as pretty much everything that's been issued since 2010 appears to just be straight promo cards for BBM's issue - these cards are identical to the equivalent BBM issues except for maybe the color on the card and text on the front saying "Weekly Baseball Promotion".  But I've come across some cards lately that are making me reassess this a little bit.  And of course when I say I've come across some cards lately what I really mean is that I asked Ryan to pick up the cards for me off Yahoo! Japan Auctions.

Baseball Magazine Sha, the magazine publisher that's the parent company of BBM, started publishing Shukan Baseball in 1958.  I don't know for sure when they started including baseball cards in issues but the earliest one I've seen on Yahoo! Japan Auctions was from 2002.  Not every issue has baseball cards and I haven't quite figured out how often they do.  During the 2000's issues that had baseball cards could have anywhere from 2 to 5 cards.  Like the SCM cards, some of the cards were the standard promo cards for BBM sets but a lot of them were completely original cards.  I found a couple cards from this period that I was interested in and were up for auction fairly cheap and asked Ryan to pick them up for me. 

The first two of these are from 2005 and celebrate the alternate uniforms worn by a couple teams during the inter-league games that year (the first year of inter-league play).  There were actually three cards included in the issue but I don't know who the other card is of.

The other card I had Ryan pick up for me was this 2006 "Super Rookie" card of Yoshihisa Hirano:

The numbering scheme used by these cards is confusing.  Let me show you the back of Ogasawara's card as an example:

There's a "4" that I think identifies the issue the cards came out of and then a "2/3".  The "3" I think means that there were three cards in the issue and the "2" means this is the second of the three - the Imaoka card has "1/3".  Now that part seems pretty obvious but the issue number is confusing.  Shukan Baseball is published roughly every week (hence the "weekly" part of the name).  Inter-league in 2005 was in June so these cards must have come out in June or July.  There certainly would have been more than four issues by that time that year.  I suspect that the issue that these cards came out with was the fourth issue that year to have cards.

The turning point for Shukan Baseball's cards not being interesting anymore (at least to me) appears to be around August of 2010.  They issued 12 cards over three issues (cover dates of August 2nd, 9th and 16th) that celebrated their 3000th issue (not sure which of the three that actually was).  Now if you had asked me two weeks ago I would have told you that EVERY Shukan Baseball card since then was just a promo card.  But that turns out not to be quite true. 

Last fall I came across an auction on YJA that was a lot of Shukan Baseball cards from 2010-13.  My curiosity was piqued by it as it showed an alternate version of Hiroyuki Nakajima's 2010 2nd Version card - the card had a different photo than the regular card.  I really couldn't see what the rest of the lot had but it was pretty cheap so again I asked Ryan to pick it up.  It was actually one of the things I was most interested in seeing in the package I got from him two weeks ago (not that there was anything in the box I wasn't interested in). 

The lot had 26 cards in it.  Eight of these cards were from 2010 and were issued after the 3000th issue.  All eight of these cards (which includes the Nakajima card) are alternate versions of cards from BBM sets.  The Nakajima card was one of two that came with issue #36 with a cover date of September 6th - that's issue 36 for the year rather than the 36th issue that year with baseball cards in it.  The other card was an alternate version of Hayato Sakamoto's 2nd Version card.  Here's both of these cards with their original version - in each case the original is on the left (and obviously is NOT marked as "Weekly Baseball Promotion"):

The card numbering scheme changed for these cards.  These two cards are numbered 812 (Sakamoto) and 813 (Nakajima) - it's a continuation of the numbering from the 2nd Version set.

Issue #42 in 2010 had a cover date of October 4th - I have no idea how there were six issues between September 6th and October 4th.  This issue had alternate versions of two cards from the "Cross Stream" subset of the Touch The Game set that year.  I don't have the original version of the cards so I'll just show the Shukan Baseball versions:

Once again the cards were numbered as a continuation of the original set - Chono is #CS181 and Okada is #CS182.  You can see the original Chono and Okada cards at Jambalaya.

The October 25th issue (#47) had alternate versions of two cards from the BBM 20th Anniversary set.  Once again the cards are numbered as a continuation of the original set:

The last issue in 2010 to have baseball cards was #53 with a cover date of November 29th.  The cards were alternate versions of cards from that year's edition of the "Historic Collection" sets - "Hometown Heroes".  The set has a "cover" date of 2011 but was published in November of 2010.  Again the cards were numbered as a continuation of the set.

As far as I can tell, all the Shukan Baseball cards since the beginning of 2011 have been boring (in my opinion) promo cards.  And any issue that contained cards only contained two.  The remaining 18 cards from the lot Ryan got for me off YJA are traditional promo cards.  The sets represented are the 2011 Dragons 75th Anniversary set (2011 Issue #1 with a cover date of January 3rd, 2011), the 2011 Tigers and Giants team sets (not sure which issue), 2011 Tohto 80th Memorial (2011 Issue #47, October 17th), 2012 Strongest Generation (2011 Issue #55, November 28th), 2012 Rookie Edition (2012 Issue #10, February 22nd), 2012 2nd Version (2012 Issue #37, August 13th), 2012 Genesis (2012 Issue #44, September 17th), 2012 Rookie Edition Premium (2012 Issue #51, October 22nd) and 2013 Great Numbers (2012 Issue #57, November 26th).  I thought about scanning these cards in but I'm not convinced there's a compelling need to show them off.

I had started a list of these cards a few years back (which is where I got some of the data above about publication dates) but I kind of lost interest.  I may have to start researching them again.  Even if the recent cards aren't all that interesting I think some of the cards from the 00's might be worth learning about.

2018 BBM Icons - Fanfare

This year's edition of BBM's annual Icons box set is called "Fanfare".  Its theme appears to be players who were considered a big deal when they were drafted.  All the players in the set were taken in the first round of the draft.

The base set has 36 cards which as almost always are split evenly among the 12 teams so there's three cards per team.  There's a number of big stars in the set - Sho Nakata, Yoshitomo Tsutsugoh and Tomoyuki Sugano - along with a bunch of other significant names like Yasuaki Yamasaki, Yuki Matsui, Kosuke Fukudome, Tomoya Mori, Yusei Kikuchi, Yusuke Nomura, Shintaro Fujinami, Daisuke Matsuzaka and Hisayoshi Chono.  There's also five 2018 rookies - Kotaro Kiyomiya, Shosei Nakamura, Hisanori Yasuda, Daiki Tajima, and Munetaka Murakami.  There's a couple guys that I was surprised to not see in the set - Tetsuto Yamada and Hayato Sakamoto being the big ones.  The fact that Yuki Saitoh is not in the set just proves that it's now 2018 rather than 2012 because he was drafted with a great deal of fanfare back in 2010.  And obviously the fact that the set only includes first rounders prevents a bunch of guys like Yuki Yanagita, Shogo Akiyama and Seiya Suzuki from being in the set.

Here's some sample cards:

#18

#25

#06

#21

It's not a bad little set.  I got it mainly to get more cards of Kiyomiya and Nakamura.  And it has the first card of Matsuzaka with the Dragons.

As always the box set came with a "special" card that could include an autograph card and as always I got (well Ryan got for me) an opened box that only had the base set in it.  Ryan did a post about the set that explains all the possible "special" cards.  Jambalaya has all the cards up on their site too.

Fighters Cards

Ryan's job takes him to different areas of Japan for short periods of time and he spent some time late last year up in Sapporo, home of the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters.  I had noticed that the Fighters were one of the few teams that I didn't have any team issued cards for* (other than some Victory cards from 2011) so I asked him to keep an eye out for any while he was up there.  He came through (as always) with a couple along with a handful of Fighters cards issued by the convenience store chain Lawson.

*if you care and even if you don't, the other teams I don't have any team issued cards for are the Dragons, the Carp and the Baystars

First up are the Lawson cards.  I know next to nothing about these - I don't know how long Lawson's been doing them (or even if they are still making them) or how many cards they did each year.  Ryan got me several of them from a variety of years.  The earliest are these two from 2007:

These look like they're from just a basic team set.  Here's the back of Inada's card to show that they had basic biographical information:

Ryan got me one card from 2008.  It's a group shot with a calendar on the front and the Fighters' schedule for August and September on the back:

The remaining seven Lawson cards he got me are all from 2009.  Five of them show Kensuke Tanaka:

Only one of these cards (the WE LOVE HOKKAIDO one) has any actual biographical data on the back of it:

All the rest have schedule information like the 2008 card had:

In fact as far as I can tell Tanaka's name doesn't appear on any of the cards except that one with the biographical information.  If the cards hadn't had his signature with his uniform number on them, I probably wouldn't have figured out it was him.  Which brings us to the problems I had with one of the other cards:

I didn't recognize who this was and since the Tanaka cards didn't have his name on the front I got lazy and didn't try to match up any kanji.  Instead I asked Deanna and Dani if they recognized who this was (I had kind of assumed it was Tanaka) and they told me it was Atsunori Inaba (and pointed out his name was not only on the front in kanji but it also had his initials "ai").  So thanks guys!

The other 2009 card was celebrates the Fighters 2009 Pacific League pennant:

The back of the card has stats for the year:

He got me two cards that were issued by the team (or the team's Fan Club).  The first of these is from 2005*:

*So just to confirm I'm an idiot - I first assumed that this card was from 2017 since it had stats for 14, 15 and 16 on the back.  Of course that didn't make any sense because Kimoto hadn't played in NPB since 2008 and hadn't played for the Fighters since 2007.  The years on the back actually indicate Heisei era years (2002-04)

The other card is from 2017:

I was very disappointed that a card promoting the "Legend Series" in which the Fighters wore throwback uniforms didn't show Sho wearing a throwback uniform.

Card Of The Week June 3

The Australian Baseball League is going through a bunch of changes this year.  One thing that is going on is that they are shifting from having the league own all six teams to having independent ownership of the teams.  They are also looking into possible expansion for the 2018-19 season.  It's not clear how well this process is doing.  So far only there has only been ownership announcements for two of the teams - the Sydney Blue Sox and the Canberra Cavalry - and only one new team revealed.  It is expected that the league will reveal what it will look like this upcoming season after the Baseball Australia board meeting this Tuesday - how many teams will be competing and where the new team will play.  Actually to be fair it was expected that we'd have the reveal this past week on May 31st but it's been delayed for a week.  Which may not be a good sign.

That new team is very intriguing.  It will be an all-Korean player team run by an outfit called Winterball Korea.  As I mentioned above, it has not yet been formally announced where the team will play (although I've seen a couple sources including this article saying it will be Geelong, a city on the southern coast of Australia just southwest of Melbourne, so apparently it's not exactly a secret).  I was a bit surprised to realize that this team will NOT be a developmental team for the KBO.  Instead they will be composed of un-drafted amateurs, players who've been released from their KBO teams and Korea players under contract with MLB teams (as long as their MLB team gives permission).  The team has announced that they've signed their first player - 35 year old Kim Kyeong-eon who was released from the Hanwha Eagles this past season after a 17 year career split between Hanwha and the Kia Tigers.  Here's a card of Kim from the 2015 Superstar Baseball Season One set (#SBC1501-135-N):

The other expansion team is expected to be based in New Zealand but it's not clear that all the obstacles standing in the way of a Kiwi team joining the league have been overcome.  Tuesday should prove interesting.

2018 BBM Farewell Set

Among the items I got from Ryan last week was BBM's annual box set celebrating the players who retired last season.  As I've mentioned probably too many times to count before the official name of this set is something like "Regret at Parting Baseball Players" but I always simply call it "Farewell".

This is the eighth edition of this set and it's pretty much like all the previous ones.  There are 35 cards in the set and since each player only has one card you can make the obvious conclusion that there are 35 players included.  The biggest names in the set are probably Tadahito Iguchi and Masahiko Morino but other prominent players are Ryojo Aikawa, Yuya Andoh, Yuki Iiyama, Yasuyuki Kataoka and Tetsuya Matsumoto.  Five of the cards show something from the player's retirement game - either them being tossed in the air for their traditional do-age or holding a bouquet of flowers - but the rest show the player in action.  Unlike earlier editions of the set all the players are shown in the uniform of their most recent NPB team - so Aikawa is shown as a Giant even though he spent 14 years with the Baystars, six years with the Swallows but only three years with the Giants.  The really silly one is Kohei Shibata who spent eight years with Hanshin before spending last season with Lotte - he's portrayed as a Marine in the set.  There are two players who spent last season in the Baseball Challenge League - Kazuhito Tadano and Shuichiro Osada - and they both are shown wearing the uniform of the last NPB team they played for - the Fighters for Tadano and the Baystars for Osada.

Here's some sample cards:

#01

#04

#06

#35

All the cards can be seen at Jambalaya.

Venus Baseball Players

BBM has issued nine sets highlighting woman athletes over the last 10 years.  The first seven of these were called "Real Venus" and were usually issued late in the year.  The two most recent sets have been called "Shining Venus" and have been issued in January of the last two years.  (Just to beat this to death - "Real Venus" was issued every year from 2009 to 2015.  "Shining Venus" has been issued in 2017 and 2018.)  Each of these sets has featured one or two baseball players.  I asked Ryan to pick up these cards for me and he was able to find most of them for me.

To be clear - each set has three cards for each athlete - a posed shot of the athlete in their uniform (the "Regular" card), a shot of the athlete in action (labeled "Playing Venus" in a couple of the sets) and a posed shot of the athlete in street clothes (labeled "Venus Shot").  I asked Ryan to only pick up the "Regular" and "Playing Venus" cards.  And honestly I probably wouldn't have decided to go after these cards if Epoch had continued to issue Japan Women's Baseball League (JWBL) sets.

I'm going to show all the cards - there are 22 cards in all of 8 different players.  Ryan found 20 of them for me (so far) but I'm going to show images of the other two that I swiped from Jambalaya.

The first "Real Venus" set from 2009 had only baseball player - Ayumi Kataoka of the Ibraki Golden Golds.  I've never quite understood what the Golden Golds are but they appear to be some sort of club team that is made up (maybe) of celebrities and/or former NPB players.  Kataoka has played for them since their inaugural season in 2005 and has been the team's manager since 2011.  These are not her only baseball cards - she's appeared in several Golden Gold team sets (like this one Ryan wrote about) and she's even had her own dedicated set.  She also appeared on a "Ceremonial First Pitch" card from the 2007 BBM 2nd Version set.

2009 BBM Real Venus #05

2009 BBM Real Venus #36

The 2010 Real Venus set had cards for two baseball players.  Kataoka appeared in the set again and was joined by Yuki Kawabata.  Kawabata was one of the first stars of the JWBL when it started in 2010 (and was then called "Girls Professional Baseball League" or GPBL).  She spent her first three seasons with Kyoto Asto Dreams and has been with Saitama Astraia since 2013.  She is the sister of Tokyo Yakult Swallows player Shingo Kawabata.  She's had cards in the various oddball card sets that have been done for the JWBL (Ryan's the go-to resource for these) as well as the 2016 Epoch JWBL set.

2010 BBM Real Venus #02

2010 BBM Real Venus #33 (Image taken from Jambalaya)

2010 BBM Real Venus #03

2010 BBM Real Venus #34

Kawabata was only baseball player featured in the 2011 Real Venus set.

2011 BBM Real Venus #10

2011 BBM Real Venus #11

Knuckle ball pitcher Eri Yoshida was only baseball player featured in the 2012 and 2013 Real Venus sets.  Yoshida has had an interesting career.  She was drafted out of high school by the Kobe 9 Cruse of the Kansai Independent League.  She spent 2010 and 2011 in the US playing for the Chico Outlaws of the Golden State League and Na Koa Ikaika Maui of the North American League.  She returned to Japan in 2012 with the Hyogo Blue Sandars of the Kansai League but went back to Maui mid-season.  She started 2013 with Maui but joing the Ishikawa Million Stars of the Baseball Challenge (BC) League mid-season.  She remained with Ishikawa through the 2016 season (including the year that Julio Franco managed the team) before joining the Tochigi Golden Braves last season.  I'm not quite sure what she's doing this year but I think she's coaching a girl's baseball team in Oyama.  She had a baseball card in a team set for Chico from 2010 but the only other cards I know of for her is a "bonus" 2009 BBM Rookie Edition card from Sports Card Magazine.  Her 2012 Real Venus cards show her in her Blue Sandars uniform while the 2013 cards show her in the uniform for the Million Stars.  I think these are the only cards that exist for these teams.

2012 BBM Real Venus #10

2012 BBM Real Venus #11

2013 BBM Real Venus #04

2013 BBM Real Venus #05 (Image taken from Jambalaya)

Yu Katoh was the only baseball player in the 2014 Real Venus set.  At the time she was playing for the Asahi Trust Women's Baseball team.  She has since joined Saitama Astraia of the JWBL and appears in the 2016 Epoch set.

2014 BBM Real Venus #01

2014 BBM Real Venus #02

The 2015 (and final) edition of Real Venus also featured just one baseball player - Minami Takatsuka of Tohoku Reia of the JWBL.  She goes by just "Minami" now and plays for Kyoto Flora after spending last season with Hyogo Dione.  She also appears in Epoch's 2016 JWBL set.

2015 BBM Real Venus #01

2015 BBM Real Venus #02

BBM changed the name of their woman athlete set to Shining Venus in 2017 but it still featured just one baseball player - Ayoko Rokkaku.  She has played for the Samurai Japan Woman's team in a number of tournaments (I think) but I don't believe she has played professionally.  I also don't know of any other baseball cards of her.

2017 BBM Shining Venus #01

2017 BBM Shining Venus #02

 The most recent edition of Shining Venus featured two baseball players - Iori Miura and Meguna Furuya who are teammates on Kyoto Flora of the JWBL.  Miura has been a star in the league since it started in 2010.  Furuya joined the league in 2015 and originally played for Tohoku Reia.  She started 2017 with Hyogo Dione but was traded to Kyoto in July.  Miura appears in the 2016 Epoch JWBL set (and on some of the various JWBL sets Ryan has mentioned) but I don't think Furuya has appeared on any other cards.

2018 BBM Shining Venus #01

2018 BBM Shining Venus #02

2018 BBM Shining Venus #04

2018 BBM Shining Venus #05