Fuji Film Photos?

I don't usually blog about things I don't actually own but I saw these oddball Sadaharu Oh items on Ebay recently and I decided I should write about them, even though they were priced higher than I was willing to pay for them.  Here they are:

All three items appear to be a Fujicolor snapshot print.  There's no indication in the auctions as to how big they are.  The top one is from 1977 (that's when Oh hit home run 756 and the photo is labeled "Fujicolor 77") while the other two are from 1980.  Based on the other photos in the auctions, the 1977 photo has a blank back while the two from 1980 just have the Fujicolor file markings.  Obviously the 1977 is being sold with a holder - I don't know if the 1980 cards were sold separately with holders or sold as part of a group.

The two photos from 1980 are from the Central League's East-West All Star game that was held after the season every year from 1979 to 1990 (except for 1989).  The East team was put together from the rosters of the Giants, Swallows and Whales while the West team was assembled from the Dragons, Carp and Tigers.  The teams wore special uniforms in 1979 and 1980 but after that they just wore their standard uniforms.

The 1980 games was played at Nagoya Stadium on November 8th.  Oh had announced his retirement four days earlier.  He had four hits in the game including a home run and was named the MVP.  (I don't know if the photo of him batting with Tatsuhiko Kimata of the Dragons catching is from the at bat he homered in).  They held a retirement ceremony for him and Morimichi Takagi of the Dragons after the game.  This was commemorated in a card in the 2009 BBM Sadaharu Oh Memorial set (#55):

Oddly enough this was not his final game - he played in an exhibition game against the Hanshin Tigers in Kumamoto on November 16th.  He homered in his final at bat.

The book History Of Uniform has a page for the uniforms worn in the 1979 and 1980 games:

One additional piece of trivia - the Pacific League did a similar East-West All Star game.  They played it in 1981 and 1982 and then from 1988 until 2006, skipping 2004.  Initially the East teams were the Orions (later Marines), the Fighters and the Lions while the West teams were the Hawks, the Buffaloes (Kintetsu) and Braves (later BlueWave).  After the Kintetsu-Orix "merger" and the addition of the Eagles following the 2004 season, the Lions moved into the West teams and the Eagles joined the East teams.

Card Of The Week February 10

I've written in the past about the Japanese Collegiate All Star cards that were an insert in the 2008 Upper Deck USA Baseball box set.  There were several different varieties of memorabilia cards for the members of the Japanese team for the 2007 Japan-USA College Baseball Tournament - jersey, patch, letter, autograph and flag patch.  I have all 22 of the jersey cards but I didn't have any of the other cards until recently.  I picked up an autographed card of Shirou Mori for a very low price on Ebay a couple weeks back:

Mori never played in NPB - he attended Kinki University and played in the corporate leagues for Matsushita Electric/Panasonic* after graduating.  If this is to be believed (and is kept updated) he played for Panasonic from 2008 to 2014.

*Matsushita Electric changed their name to Panasonic as of October 1, 2008

Oddball Update

After seeing my post the other day about these three odd Teleca Korean cards from 2000 Dan reached out to Thomas St. John to ask about them.  Here's his reply:

They wanted a few cards in English, after some pressure from yours truly, and we made these.  These are normal Teleca issues, not made by me privately.  The card photos are mine though.
The Taiwanese card is of a guy who was crushing it in the US minors and was set to be the first Taiwanese player in the majors.  He had no national team card so I suggested it be made.  The Lee/Hong was made because the photo was great of the two big young stars in the KBO at the time.  Who knew that they both would be so awesome!  I believe these were the only three.  Hope that helps.

It does indeed.  Thanks for the reply Mr. St John and thanks to Dan for asking him the question, passing the answer along to me and getting permission for me to reprint it.

1989 Mermaid Data Cards

In 1989 a candy company called Mermaid (at least that'd be my best guess here) issued a set of baseball cards.  The set featured 50 cards in total - 10 cards for each of the Central League teams except the Swallows.  Each pack (the wrapper of which is seen above) contained one card and one sticker along with a couple pieces of candy.

The cards were slightly smaller than the standard size - 2 3/8 inches by 3 3/8 inches.  The set contains most of the major stars of those teams - Kazuyoshi Tatsunami, Tatsunori Hara, Hiromi Makihara, Masumi Kuwata, Manabu Kitabeppu, Yutaka Ono, Akinobu Mayumi, Akinobu Okada, Masaru Uno, Norihiro Komada, Kozo SHoda, and Akio Saitoh.  Here's some example cards:

#2 (Genji Kaku)

#7 (Kiyoshi Nakahata)

#13 (Kazuhisa Kawaguchi)

#17 (Yutaka Takagi)

#21 (Akinobu Mayumi)

Here's what the card backs look like.  You can see why they're called "Data" cards:

#6 (Tatsunori Hara)

I noticed something odd about the checklist for the set.  The first five cards in the set are for the Dragons, the next five are for the Giants, the next five are for the Carp, the next five are for the Whales and the next five are for the Tigers.  That's the first half of the set.  The pattern then repeats itself for the second half of the set with five cards for the Dragons, five for the Giants, five for the Carp, five for the Whales and five for the Tigers.  The teams are ordered by their finish in 1988 (the Swallows finished fifth between the Whales and Tigers).  I've wondered if the cards were actually issued in two series - cards 1-25 followed later by cards 26-50.  One reason beyond the checklist that makes me wonder this is that while I have 20 cards from this set, I only have cards between 1 and 25.  Are the other 25 a separate series?  Engel doesn't say anything about it so probably not but it is odd that I only have cards from the first half of the set.

The accompanying "stickers" are much smaller - they're squares that are about two inches on a side - and are really decals rather than stickers.  They are essentially a parallel issue to the cards as they appear to have the same checklist - I say appear because Engel doesn't actually include the sticker checklist but the 19 I have match the numbers of the cards (and like the cards I only have stickers between 1 and 25).  The best part of the stickers is that instead of photos they have caricatures of the players instead.  Here's some examples:

#3 (Kazuyoshi Tatsunami)

#4 (Toshikatsu Hikono)

#10 (Katsuhito Mizuno)

#14 (Takehiko Kobayakawa)

#19 (Mitsunori Kakehata)

#22 (Akinobu Okada)

Here's what the sticker backs look like:

#9 (Masumi Kuwata)

The Mermaid Data cards were only issued that one year.  I don't know any more background on these - why they only did cards for those five teams, why they stopped making them, etc.  I don't even know if the company is still in business.  But they are a nice looking set of cards and an entertaining set of decals.

Oddball Teleca Cards From 2000

I recently picked up the above card from a seller on Ebay.  It commemorates Korea winning the 1999 Asian Games (a qualifier for the 2000 Olympics) in September of 1999.  The manufacturer is Teleca who published a handful of sets for the KBO during the 1990's - including pack based sets in 1999 and 2000.  This card is not from their 2000 set however.  It has a different design, it's unnumbered and most importantly the back is in English:

The "Thomas St. John" photo credit is interesting.  Thomas St. John is (or at least was in 2000) a journalist living in South Korea (he was Baseball America's correspondent for Korea).  I had bought another couple oddball cards from him on Ebay years ago:

The photo on the Lee/Oh card appears in the 2000 Teleca insert set for the 1999 Korea-Japan Super Games but this card is not from that set.  Chin-Feng Chen was a top prospect for the Dodgers in the late 90's - he was the first Taiwanese player to play in the majors when he debuted in 2002.  He played for the Taiwanese team in the 1999 Asian games so I assume that where this photo was taken.

I've no idea what the story is behind these cards.  I'm guessing that since they're in English St. John had them printed up for the US market but I've don't think I've ever seen any for sale here (Rob Fitts might have had the Lee/Oh card but I don't remember for sure).  And it probably goes without saying that I don't know if there are any additional cards like these that he did.  I've had some contact with him in the past but it's been a while since the last time I've gotten a reply from him.  Dan's had some contact with him more recently - maybe he can find out the story.

Card Of The Week February 3

The Heisei Period will be drawing to a close in a few months and I got curious about something.  One of the original prerequisites for a player joining the Meikyukai (or "Golden Players Club") is that the player was born during the Showa Period which ended in 1988 (although I think the Japanese wikipedia page for the club says that players born in the Heisei Period will now be eligible).  No one born in the Heisei Period had reached the milestones necessary for Meikyukai membership (2000 hits, 200 win or 250 saves) yet but I got curious about who was the closest.  I just looked at hitters and I did it very unscientifically - I basically guessed at who might be the right age and have the most hits.  The first batch of players I thought of (Yuki Yanagita, Shogo Akiyama, Hayato Sakamoto) all turned out to have been born during the Showa Period (Sakamoto was born about three weeks from the end of the Period).  I'm not positive but I think the right answer is Ryosuke Kikuchi of the Carp who has 974 hits.  Here's a card of Kikuchi from the 2012 Front Runner Carp Starting Lineup set (#16):

I don't know remember where I read this but I'm pretty sure the Showa Period birthday requirement was specifically instituted to exclude Tetshuharu Kawakami from being able to join.  Apparently club founder Masaichi Kaneda (the 400 game winner for the Swallows and Giants) didn't like Kawakami much and wanted to keep him out.

Yuki Kawabata

Saitama Astraia infielder Yuki Kawabata announced her retirement at the end of December.  Kawabata played softball in high school and after graduation played for Shionogi Pharmaceutical in what I'm guessing is basically corporate league women's softball.  She tried out for the Japan Women's Baseball League (then called the GPBL - Girl's Professional Baseball League) when they started up in 2009 and joined the Kyoto Asto Dreams.  When the league reorganized (and renamed itself) after the 2012 season she joined the East Astraia team that was renamed Saitama Astraia in 2015.  She's pretty much been the face of women's professional baseball in Japan for the past 10 years and one of the best players in the league.  She led the league in batting three times, hitting .393 in 2010, .406 in 2011 and .417 in 2013.  She also led the league in OBP three times with a value of .497 in 2011, .537 in 2013 and .509 in 2017.  She was league MVP once (in 2013), won a Golden Glove Award once (in 2017) and was named to the Best 9 team three times (2011, 2013 and 2017).  She did not actually play in the JWBL last season (although she's in Epoch's card set for the league) but she did play in the Women's Baseball World Cup for Japan last August.

I have a number of cards of her, most of which I've shown before (a couple as recently as earlier this month) but I thought I'd show all of them here.  Ryan has at least one other card of hers and I suspect there are others in some of the other JWBL/GPBL sets he's come across.

2010 BBM Real Venus #03

2010 BBM Real Venus #34

2011 BBM Real Venus #10

2011 BBM Real Venus #11

2016 Epoch JWBL #22

2018 Epoch JWBL #42

 2018 BBM Infinity #036

2018 BBM Infinity #096

That last card shows her with her brother, Shingo Kawabata of the Swallows.