Josh Lindblom Of The Milwaukee Brewers

Josh Lindblom is returning to MLB after a couple seasons playing in Korea with the Lotte Giants and Doosan Bears.  He signed a three deal with the Milwaukee Brewers.

Lindblom was a second round pick of the Dodgers out of Purdue University back in 2008.  He spent seven seasons in the Dodgers, Phillies, Rangers and Athletics organizations (and getting into over 100 games in the majors) before heading to Korea for the 2015 season.  After two seasons with Lotte he returned to the US and the Pirates (who had selected him off waivers from Oakland in late 2014 but released him less than two weeks later so he could head to Korea) because his daughter had been born with a heart defect that required a couple surgeries.  He was back in Korea half way through the 2017 season though, rejoining Lotte in mid-July.  Following the 2017 season he joined the Doosan Bears and has been dominant with them the last two seasons, going 15-4 with a league leading 2.88 ERA in 2018 and 20-3 with a 2.50 ERA this past season.  In addition in 2019 he won a Korean Series with the Bears and was named KBO MVP.

If you pay any attention to Korean baseball cards then you already know that the card sets that have been issued in Korea since 2014 do not include any foreign players.  This means that none of the official KBO card sets include Lindblom.  However, there are some "unofficial" card sets that do - the "Foreign Attack" sets that Dan Skrezyna has published under his "Vittum" label.  Lindblom appears in the "2015" set (actually published in 2019), the "2016" set (published in 2017) and the "2017" set (published in 2018):

15 Vittum Foreign Attack #17

16 Vittum Foreign Attack #23

17 Vittum Foreign Attack #20

If you are interested in getting one of these cards, contact Dan at either his website or on Twitter to see if he still has any of the sets available.

2019 Calbee Samurai Japan set

For the third time in four years Calbee has issued a team for Samurai Japan.  The set was released while the Premier 12 was going on (which I'm sure was not a coincidence) but the set is not for that version of Samurai Japan.  Instead the set contains all the players on the roster of the Samurai Japan team that played a couple friendlies against Mexico in March of this year as well as some of the players who were on the roster of the team that took on the MLB All Stars in November 2018.

To some degree the Samurai Japan rosters for both events were a little experimental as manager Atsunori Inaba was looking to how some of the younger NPB stars would do in international competition.  As a result there's a number of stars who weren't on the rosters for either of those events and therefore aren't in the set.  This includes Hayato Sakamoto, Yoshitomo Tsutsugoh, Takehiro Norimoto, Tomoyuki Sugano, Kodai Senga, Nobuhiro Matsuda, Yoshihiro Maru, Seiya Suzuki and Sho Nakata.  In addition there's eight players on the MLB All-Star roster that do not appear in the set - Nao Higashihama, Ryosuke Kikuchi, Takuyuki Kishi, Yuki Matsui, Daichi Ohsera, Akitake Okada, Shinsaburo Tawata, and Naoyuki Uwasawa.

So who's in the set?  I should mention there's 44 cards in the set which is 8 cards more than either the 2016 or 2017 versions.  Manager Inaba has a card which also doubles as the set checklist.  Shogo Akiyama, Tetsuto Yamada and Yasuaki Yamasaki are all in the set - they are the only three players who have appeared in all three of Calbee's Samurai Japan sets.  There's a whopping 36(!) players who have never appeared in a Samurai Japan set before which includes a bunch of guys who were on the Premier 12 roster - Tsubasa Aizawa, Sosuke Genda, Shota Imanaga, Takuya Kai, Kensuke Kondoh, Kouhei Morihara, Rei Takahashi, Shota Tonosaki, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Taisuke Yamaoka and Masataka Yoshida.  Other first time Samurai Japan players are Hotoka Yamakawa, Yuki Yanagita, Tomoya Mori and Munetaka Murakami. 

The cards themselves are very attractive.  They have a kira finish like the cards in the two previous sets did but it's not as overpowering as it was in those sets, especially the 2016 one.  The effect is more subtle and the cards look great as a result.  Five of the 44 cards have a horizontal format which works well with the photos Calbee selected for those cards.  I will issue my usual gripe that the photo selection could have used a little more diversity - it's the usual "pitchers pitching, hitters hitting, catchers catching" rut although there are a couple cards where they deviated from this.  Here's some example cards:

#SJ-01Atsunori Inaba

#SJ-09 Kazuto Taguchi

#SJ-34 Hotoka Yamakawa

#SJ-30 Kosuke Tanaka

#SJ-22 Seiji Kobayashi

#SJ-32 Shogo Nakamura

You can see all the cards over at Jambalaya as usual.  There's a gold signature parallel version of all the cards.

Card Of The Week December 15

This 1987 Calbee card (#107) of Warren Cromartie features one of the greatest photos to ever be on a baseball card:

RIP Yasuhiro Takai

Former Hankyu Braves pinch hitting specialist Yasuhiro Takai passed away yesterday from renal failure at age 74.  Takai graduated from a high school in Ehime Prefecture on Shikoku in 1962 and spent a couple seasons playing with Nagoya Nissan of the corporate leagues.  He frequently broke the roof tiles on the houses beyond the left field wall of the team's ballpark which drew the attention of pro scouts, including one from the Braves.  Takai signed with Hankyu in 1964.

He spent much of the first eight years of his professional career with the Braves' farm team.  He hit reasonably well with the ni-gun team (he won the Western League batting title in 1967) but I think he wasn't very good defensively which limited his ability to play anywhere other than first base and the Braves were well covered at that position first with Daryl Spencer and then later with Hideji Kato.  It wasn't until 1972 that he spent a significant amount of time with the ichi-gun Braves, getting into 86 games.  While he appeared in the field in 64 games that year - the most of any season in his career - he established himself as a pinch hitter.  He continued in this role for the next two seasons, culminating in one of his best seasons in 1974 when he hit a record six home runs as a pinch hitter.  He made the All Star team for the first time that year and made history when he hit a 2 run sayonara home run off Hiromu Matsuoka of the Swallows to win Game One at Korakuen Stadium - it was the first come from behind sayonara home run in All Star game history.  And of course Takai was pinch hitting when he hit the home run.

The Pacific League adopted the Designated Hitter in 1975 which gave Takai an opportunity to play more regularly although he still did a lot of pinch hitting.  He hit his 19th career pinch hit home run in 1975 which put him past the then-MLB leader Jerry Lynch.   He played in over 100 games in 1977 for the first time and was named to the Pacific League's Best 9 team as the DH.  He had probably the best two seasons of his career in 1978 and 1979 when he hit over .300 with more than 20 home runs both seasons.

His numbers dropped off considerably in 1980 and didn't improve much in 1981.  He was banished to the farm team in 1982 and decided to retire.  He ended his career with 27 pinch hit home runs which is still the "world wide" record - the MLB leader is Matt Stairs with 23.  Takai was a radio commentator for a number of years but other than that he doesn't appear to have been involved in baseball after he retired.

Takai had a handful of cards from Calbee, NST and Takara during his playing days.  He's appeared reasonably often in modern card sets - it's been helpful that the 70's era Hankyu teams are very well represented in BBM's OB sets over the past 15 years or so.  Here's a handful of his cards:

1974/75 Calbee #394

2006 BBM Record Makers #071

2010 Epoch OB Club 1977 #33

2011 BBM Legend Of The Bs #38

2014 BBM Braves Achievement #20

2016 BBM Fusion #063

2019 BBM Time Travel 1979 #46

The 2016 Fusion card shows him celebrating the game winning home run from the All Star game in 1974.

RIP Takeo Daigo

Longtime Orions catcher Takeo Daigo has passed away from Acute myeloid leukemia at age 81.  Daigo signed with the then-Mainichi Orions in 1957 after graduating from Waseda Kitsugyo High School (where one of his battery-mates was a pitcher who was two years younger than him - Sadaharu Oh).  Daigo spent the next 18 seasons with the Orions as they became the Daimai Orions in 1958 (after merging with the Daiei Stars), the Tokyo Orions in 1964 and the Lotte Orions in 1969.  He's one of only two players to play for all four versions of the Orions - the other was Hall Of Famer Kihachi Enomoto.  Daigo was a four time All Star (1965, 1968, 1969 and 1971) and played for the Orions in the 1970 Nippon Series. 

It looks like his final appearance in a game was Game One of the 1974 Nippon Series where he appeared in the starting lineup batting second as the shortstop.  He was pinch hit for in the top of the first inning by Keisuke Senga so he never actually appeared in the field at shortstop.  I'm guessing he was announced, stepped up to the plate to take an obligatory (but official) pitch and was then replaced by Senga. 

He became a coach for the Orions after retiring.  He actually had four separate stints coaching with the team - 1974-1979, 1984-1986, 1991-1995 and 2001-2002.  He also scouted for Lotte, worked as a TV commentator and was a Far East scout for the Padres for a couple years in the late 1990's (but after the Hideki Irabu fiasco).

Here's a couple cards of him.  To my knowledge he's only appeared in a handful of modern sets.  Besides what I have here he was in the 2009 BBM Marines and the 2019 Epoch Lotte 50th Anniversary sets.

1958 Marusan JCM 42

2002 BBM All Time Heroes #182

2009 BBM Lotte 40th Anniversary #10

The photo on his 2002 card shows him in a Mainichi uniform so it must have been taken in his rookie season of 1957.

Mandarake Mail Day

I recently placed another vintage baseball card order with Mandarake, the Japanese chain of antique toy stores that will ship to the US.  I got the cards today so I thought I'd do a quick post on them.

I didn't have many Calbee cards from the 1977 and 1978 sets - about 8 from each - so I thought I'd take the opportunity to see what I could find from those years.  I ended up picking up five cards, three from 1977 and two from 1978.

The first 1977 card is of Koji Yamamoto.  It's from the "Path To Stardom" subset - the black and white photo is probably from Yamamoto's rookie year of 1969 (he wore #27 in 1969 and 1970).  I have a bunch of similar cards from the monster 1975/76 Calbee set but I didn't even know Calbee had done them in the 1977 set as well until Sean posted about them earlier this year.  This card was 300 yen.

1977 Calbee "Grey Back" #90

This card of Yasunori Oshima was just 200 yen.  They describe it as being in "good condition" - I think it's in great shape considering how old it is.  Really the only issue I see is a bit of a crease in the card on the lower right edge (which isn't visible in the scan).

1977 Calbee "Grey Back" #170

I really like this card of Masayuki Kakefu, especially with the car in the background.  It was a steal at only 100 yen(!).  Mandarake described its condition as "below average" but I don't think it's that bad.  It's a bit dinged up (especially compared to the Oshima card) but I've paid more for 70's Calbee cards that didn't look as good as this one.

1977 Calbee "Grey Back" 185

This 1978 card of Yasushi Tao shows him making a play in the outfield against the Hanshin Tigers on April 16th, 1978.  This card is in outstanding condition (Mandarake called it "above average") and at 600 yen cost just a little more than the previous cards.

1978 Calbee Yasushi Tao

The 1978 Calbee set is split up into 10 different series, none of which have card numbers.  Most of the cards I have (including the above Tao card) are from the "Regular Type I" series.  One of the other series is called "Swallows V1" and commemorates the Swallows winning either their first ever Central League pennant or their first ever Nippon Series championship.  I picked up this card of Charlie Manuel from that Series.  It was a bit more pricey than the other cards - 1500 yen - but I think that the Series is kind of rare.

1978 Calbee "VI Swallows" Charlie Manuel

In addition to those five cards I also picked up this card of Taira Fujita from the 1975/76 Calbee set.  It shows Fujita being greeted after scoring (not sure if he homered) by Koich Tabuchi (#22) and Hal Breeden (#44).  Mandarake didn't list a condition for the card although it looks great.  I'm not really looking for any more cards from that set but at 200 yen I couldn't resist this.

1975/76 Calbee #593

The last card I got isn't from Calbee.  Nippon-Ham issued two sets of cards in the 1970's - one in 1975 and 1976 and the other in 1977 through 1979.  I don't see these cards very often and the ones I have aren't in great shape (there's magic marker writing on the back of a bunch of them) so I had been happy that Mandarake had a bunch of them.  They were pricier than the Calbee cards and it took me a little bit of time to narrow it down to a card of a player I liked that had an interesting photo and wasn't expensive.  I finally settled on this 1975/76 card of Tsutomu Wakamatsu for 1000 yen.  Mandarake called its condition "average" but I think it's in great shape.  And there's no magic marker on the back!

1975/76 Nippon-Ham Tsutomu Wakamatsu

My total cost for all the cards was 3900 yen, although 2500 of that was the Manuel and Wakamatsu cards.  Shipping via SAL was 690 yen so my total was 4590 yen or about $44.  I placed the order on November 20th and got the cards today, December 10th (although the post office attempted to deliver them yesterday) so it took just under three weeks to get the cards.  I'm sure I'll be doing this again sometime.

Card Of The Week December 8

I recently picked up these two promo cards from BBM Giants team set this year:

I originally thought these cards were giveaways at Giants games on the days indicated on the front of the cards but it turns out that the Giants were playing the Dragons in Nagoya on August 20th and 21st.  I'm not sure what the event was that these were given out at.  The backs of the cards have no clues - they are the same as the backs of the original cards from the Giants set (except that the numbers have been changed to #PR1 for the Sakamoto card and #PR2 for the Maru one).