Card Of The Week September 12

The Buffaloes and Marines started last week in a virtual tie for first place in the Pacific League (although Lotte was technically in first since they had a slightly better winning percentage) and as luck would have it they played each other in a three game series in Kobe from Tuesday through Thursday.  Each game was one of those tight, low scoring games that are always so much fun in a pennant race (especially if it's not one of your teams playing).

On Tuesday the Marines got out to an early 3-0 lead after two innings but the Buffaloes scored a run in bottom of the third.   No more runs were scored until pinch hitter Seiichiro Ohshita led off the bottom of the eighth by doing this:

That made the score 3-2 and the Buffaloes went on to tie it up that inning.  Then in the bottom of the ninth, Ohshita (who had remained in the game at first base) batted again with one out and the bases loaded and came through again:

 

The Buffaloes walked off with a 4-3 victory.

On Wednesday Orix got on the board first with a solo home run from rookie Ryoto Kita in the fourth.  The Marines tied it up in the top of the sixth and then in the top of the eighth Leonys Martin stepped up to the plate with runners on first and second:

Martin's three run home run not only was the margin of victory in Lotte's 4-1 win but also was the 8000th home run in Orions/Marines history.

Friday the Buffaloes again got the lead first by scoring single runs in the bottom of the fifth and sixth (the latter coming on a solo home run from Yutaro Sugimoto who has hit half of his 24 home runs this year against Lotte).  But the Marines weren't done yet.  Former Hiroshima Toyo Carp Tetsuya Kokubo, who the Marines had just signed at the end of August after he'd spent most of the year with the Fire Country Salamanders of the independent Kyushu Asian League, homered in the seventh to cut the Buffaloes' lead in half and then Takashi Ogino led off the ninth by doing this:

Ogino's solo home run tied the game at 2.  The Buffaloes nearly walked it off in the bottom of the ninth - with two runners on and two outs Kotaro Kurebayashi hit a shot but Lotte third baseman Ryo Miki speared it for the final out of the 2-2 tie.

So after the series, the situation was roughly the same as it was before the series - the two teams in a virtual tie for first with the Marines having a slightly better winning percentage.  Unfortunately for Orix, the weekend's results weren't as good for them.  The Buffaloes dropped two of three to the Lions while Lotte swept the Eagles.  Still there's a lot of baseball left to be played and I'm still holding out hope that the Buffaloes and Tigers will meet in the Nippon Series.  There's only been one all-Kansai Nippon Series in history (the 1964 Series between the Tigers and the Nankai Hawks who played in Osaka at the time) and I think it'd be cool for there to be another one.

I thought this week I'd share a card of the big heroes from each of the three games:

2020 BBM Fusion #613

2020 Epoch One #505

2020 Calbee "AVG Leader" #AL-04

2021 BBM Dragons History 1936-2021

BBM issued the latest in their OB team set "History" series a few weeks ago.  This one is called "Dragons History 1936-2021" and is the third is in the series following last year's "Carp History 1950-2020" and "Giants History 1934-2020".  This set is basically celebrating the team's 85th Anniversary, making it the fourth Anniversary set for the team following the 70th in 2006, the 75th in 2011 and the 80th in 2016.

I really like this set.  It helps that I'm a Dragons fan but the "History" sets have been really attractive and this one is no different.  It especially helps to make up for the lousy 80th Anniversary set that BBM basically phoned in five years ago.

Like the two previous "History" set, the base set for this set has 90 cards that are split into three parts.  The first is a six card "Dragons History" subset.  Each card features a 12 to 17 year span of the team's history.  The backs list the team's finish and who the manager was.  Card #01 covers 1936-48, Card #02 covers 1949-64, Card #03 covers 1965-1977, Card #04 covers #1978-1991, Card #05 covers #1992-2003 and Card #06 covers 2004-2020.  Here's the 1949-64 card showing the 1954 Nippon Series Champions:

#02

The bulk of the set is reserved for the OB players.  There are 72 cards representing former Dragons players.  I'm pretty sure everyone included in the set is retired - I don't think any of the players are active but playing for other teams.  As we've come to expect from this kind of set, most of the players included are from the 1970's and later.  There's only three players from before 1960 in the set, the most significant being Shigeru Sugishita who turns 96 next week and autographed cards for the set.  Some of the other players included are Morimichi Takagi, Seinchi Hoshino, Kenichi Yazawa, Eiji Bandoh, Hiroshi Gondoh, Yasushi Tao, Yasunori Ohshima, Kazuyoshi Tatsunami, Genji Kaku, Motonobu Tanishige, Kenshin Kawakami and Masahiko Morino.  The only foreign player included is Alonzo Powell (who's currently a coach for the team).

There's a handful of players who aren't in the set.  It really wasn't a surprise that Hiromitsu Ochiai's not in the set since he hasn't been on a baseball card in 10 years now (although if you squint you can almost make him out in the photo of the 2011 Central League champs on card #06) but I was surprised that both Shinichi Etoh and Michio Nishizawa were not in the set.  Shunichi Amachi (manager of the 1954 champs), Toru Mori, Yasuaki Taihoh and Kaname "Wally" Yonamine were others that I was a little surprised to not see.  There's a couple gaijin like Tyrone Woods, Gene Martin and Leo Gomez who were in the earlier Anniversary sets but not this one.

The cards themselves are beautiful.  The design of the cards is very similar to the two previous "History" sets and BBM continues to dig up new and interesting photos for the players.  Most of the photos are in color - there's only four cards in black and white.  Here's a bunch of examples:

#07

#13

#27

#17

#64

#40

#63

#66

The photo on Iwase's card shows him celebrating the combined perfect game he and Daisuke Yamai threw against the Fighters in the 2007 Nippon Series.  The combined perfect game that won the first Championship for the Dragons since 1954.

The remaining 12 cards in the base set feature members of the 2021 Dragons.  The cards use the same design as the OB cards except that they have a blueish tint on their backgrounds.  This subset includes pretty much who you'd expect including Yudai Ohno, Yota Kyota, Shuhei Ohshima, Shuhei Takahashi, Dayan Viciedo, Ryosuke Hirata and Kosuke Fukudome:

#90

In addition to the base set, I also picked up two of the insert sets - "Dream Team" and "Team Records".

The 12 card "Dream Team" set features an All Time Great lineup for the Dragons, including both a right handed and left handed starting pitcher along with a relief pitcher and a manager.  You can probably nitpick the choices at any of the positions - my biggest challenge would be Senichi Hoshino as manager.  No offense to him, but Hiromitsu Ochiai is the best manager in Dragons history.  But the insert set doesn't include anyone not in the base set.  The set does include two active players - Yohei Ohshima and Kosuke Fukudome.

#DT05

The "Team Records" set contains nine cards showing the Dragons career leaders in a number (well, nine, actually) of statistical categories.  Actually that's not quite true.  No player is shown more than once so there's four times when the second place player for a category is shown instead.  For example, Kazuyoshi Tatsunami is the Dragons career leader in hits, games played and RBIs.  He's on the card for most hits but the second place player for games played (Morimichi Takagi) and RBIs (Kenichi Yazawa) is shown instead.  It's a little odd but the cards are good looking.

#TR4

As always, you can see all the cards (including the inserts) over at Jambalaya.

If like me you like the "History" sets and want to see more of them, you're in luck.  BBM is releasing one for the Marines next week and for the Tigers in October.  I suspect there will be even more in the future.

2021 BBM 2nd Version set

2021 BBM 2nd Version Set Summary

Size: 318 cards (cards numbered 337-600, the 18 cards of "Ceremonial First Pitch" subset are separately numbered FP01-FP18and 36 cards for the "Cross Torrent" subset are separately numbered CT37-CT72)
Cards Per Team: 19 (team card + 18 players)
Team Card Theme: Early Season Candids
Number Of Leader Cards: N/A
Checklists: 0
Subsets: 1st Version Update (36), Ceremonial First Pitch (18), Cross Torrent (36)
Inserts: New Sensation (12), Show Man (12), Phantom (12, #'d to 25), Foil Picturesque (12, #'d to 15)
Memorabilia Cards: Jersey cards for Takahisa Hayakawa and Teruaki Satoh, both of which are #'d to 200 along with patch versions that are #'d to 20 each.  There's also a combination jersey card featuring both Hayakawa and Satoh which is #'d to 10 along with a patch version of the combination card that is #'d to 5.  There are autographed cards for players that use a landscape version of the "Cross Torrent" cards that have print runs between 5 and 60 cards and other autograph cards that are #'d to 5.  There are also autographed "buy back" cards of Tomoya Mori.  There are autographed versions of eight of the "Ceremonial First Pitch History" cards with print runs between 25 and 27 with a silver parallel autographed version that are #'d to 5.  There are also 21 players with autograph cards using the format for the autograph cards in the player's team set - these are mostly for players who BBM was not able to include autograph cards in their team set due to COVID restrictions.
Parallels: 12 cards (one per team) have a "Secret" version which is a short printed photo variation.  12 other cards (also one per team) have an "Ultra Secret" version which is an even shorter printed photo variation.  70-ish of the player cards have four different facsimile autograph parallels - silver (unnumbered), gold (#'d to 100), hologram (#'d to 50), and red (#'d to 25) .  Each "Cross Torrent" card has two parallels - one that's #'d to 100 and a "1 of 1" version.  There are five different parallels for the "Ceremonial First Pitch" cards - holo (#'d to 300), silver (#'d to 200), gold (#'d to 100), silver holo (#'d to 50) and gold holo (#'d to 25).  The "New Sensation" inserts have a parallel version that is numbered to 100 while the "Show Man" cards have one parallel numbered to 150.
Notable Rookies: Yukikazu Sano

After a departure from the norm last year, BBM's 2nd Version set returned to form this year.  Once again there are 216 "regular" cards (18 per team) - unlike the 180 (15 per team) last year - and only the three usual subsets (1st Version Update, Cross Torrent and Ceremonial First Pitch) instead of the six last year - 1st Version Update, Cross Blossom, Ceremonial First Pitch History, Proud Ace, Big Archist and Ground Master.  Oh, and the Ceremonial First Pitch cards show pitches from the current year this time - last year's set had "historic" first pitches since by the time the set went to press the season had only been going on for about a week and a half.

As usual the "regular" cards are pretty attractive.  The photo selection continues the improvement that BBM started in this year's 1st Version set although there's still more "pitchers pitching, batters batting and catcher catching" photos than I'd like although it'd be tough for BBM to not have ANY cards using those poses.  Here's a bunch of examples:

#490

#387

#529

#421

#550

#434

#511

#457

#571

The backs have the player's statistics up until May 17th:

#404

There's 43 players who appear in the "regular" cards of the set who were not in this year's 1st Version set.  I'm not positive but I think that might be the most ever.  It's certainly the most over the past several years.  This I think is partly driven by the number of foreign players who were left out of 1st Version due to their late arrival in Japan this spring.  My reasoning for this is kind of roundabout - there's a whole bunch of foreign players in the 1st Version update subset for this set and I'd guess that that pushed some guys who would have normally been in that subset into the regular set (if that make sense).  There's still several foreigners with "regular" cards who weren't in 1st Version - Brandon Laird, Cy Sneed, Joe Gunkel, Jefry Marte and Reed Garrett.  Most of the other players are simply players who are making more of an impact for their team than BBM expected like Daiki Asama, Yuma Mune, Yuki Takahashi, Chihaya Sasaki and Sho Iwasaki.

The "1st Version Update" subset contains 36 cards (3 per team) using the 1st Version design featuring players who didn't appear in 1st Version.  As I said above, a lot of these are foreign players.  The subset contains 20 Westerners - Adeiny Hechavarria of Lotte; Mike Gerber and Randy Rosario of Chunichi; Nick Martinez, ChrisColin Rea and Carter Stewart of the Hawks; Raul Alcantara and Mel Rojas, Jr. of Hanshin; Kyle Bird, Robert Corniel and Dovydas Neverauskas of Hiroshima; Robbie Erlin of Nippon-Ham; Stefen Romero of Orix, Matt Dermody of Seibu, Brandon Dixon of Rakuten; Jose Osuna and Domingo Santana of Yakult; Fernando Romero and Kevin Shackelford of DeNA and CC Mercedes of Yomiuri.  (I do need to mention that not all of these guys were late arrivals this season).  UPDATE - one thing I forgot to mention:  Justin Smoak of the Giants is NOT one of the foreign players in the set although he was included in some of the early promotional materials for the set.  Smoak had asked for his release from the team in late June, early enough that BBM was able to replace him in the set.  You can sort of see his intended card in Discount Niki's page for the set.

#368

The remaining players are again just guys who are playing a bigger role for their team than BBM had expected - guys like Akira Neo, Aito Takeda and Nien-ting Wu (who's from Taiwan but went to high school and college in Japan and was subject to the draft so he doesn't count as a foreign player).  There's also a couple players who were traded since early March (Takahide Ikeda, Masaki Tanigawa, Taishi Hirooka and Kazuto Taguchi) although none of the appeared in 1st Version with their original team.  As usual I have no idea how BBM decides who gets a "1st Version Update" card and who just shows up in the "regular" cards.

#370

There's a couple players in the subset who are former ikesei players who have been registered to the 70 man roster for the first time - Dan Onodera of Hanshin, Fumiya Motomae of the Marines and Yukikazu Sano of Orix.  Sano was drafted last fall so he's the only one of the three who gets the "Rookie" icon on his card:

#353

The theme for the team checklists is "early season highlights" for lack of a better term.  There's a couple photos of post game celebrations, either on the field or during the "Hero Interviews".  There's also an action shot of Shogo Nakamura of the Marines sliding head first into home and the Dragons' mascot Doala doing his backflip.  Here's the Carp card showing Ryutaro Hatsuki (#69) and Masato Morishita (#18):

#599

Of course this set has the other half of the cross set subset "Cross Torrent" - the first half was in the 1st Version set.  There are 36 cards (three per team) numbered from #CT37 to CT72.

#CT48

BBM's annual ode to Japanese pop culture - the "Ceremonial First Pitch" subset - is back this year after being a "historic" subset last year.  The 18 cards are probably only around half of what BBM will eventually do - there'll likely be more of these cards in the Fusion set later this year.  There's the usual collection of Idols in the subset - Shiori Tamai (from Momoiro Clover Z), Mirei Suganami (from ≠ ME), Rikako Yagi (from Asia Cross), Haruka Momokama, Shiori Kubo and Maria Makino (from Morning Musume).  There's even a male Idol - Yukihisa Tamura.  There's a model (Miyu Ikeda), a pair of comedic brothers (the Tosa Brothers), a kabuki actor (Ukon Onoe), an actor (Fuku Suzuki), a TV announcer (Yumi Nagashima), a baseball You-Tuber (Tokusan) and an anime character (Conan Edogawa).

#FP03

Several of these people have appeared in previous subsets - Tamai appeared in the 2018 Fusion set; Suzuki was in the 2012 2nd Version set (when he was eight!) and Kubo was in last year's Fusion set.  Even the anime character Conan Edogawa was in a previous set - the 2011 2nd Version set.  This is Makino's fourth appearance in one of these subsets - she was previously in the 2017 2nd Version, 2018 2nd Version and 2019 Fusion sets.  That's two fewer than our returning champion, Idol/announcer Ami Inamura, who is appearing in her sixth BBM "Ceremonial First Pitch" subset after previously being in the 2016 2nd Version and Fusion sets, the 2017 2nd Version and Fusion sets and the 2018 Fusion set.  If you include the "secret" version of her 2017 2nd Version card, the six "Sports Card Magazine" insert cards of her and the two Epoch JWBL "First Pitch" cards of her, this is the 15th card of her doing a first pitch ceremony.

#FP15

If you've been counting, you'll have noticed that I've only mention the subjects of 15 of the 18 "Ceremonial First Pitch" cards (the two Tosa brothers share a card).  The remaining three cards feature members of the Hanshin Tigers Women's Team (and former Japan Women's Baseball League players) - Mizuki Bandoh, Asaka Tsuru and Minako Uemura.

#FP07

As usual, you can see all the cards (including the inserts, "secret" versions and parallels) over at Jambalaya.

Card Of The Week September 5

Sorry I haven't posted anything for a week.  I've been working on a couple projects and I was away from home for a couple days.  I'm going to do a quick post today on a card I picked up a few months back and then hopefully get back to a more regular posting schedule this week.

Shogo Akiyama is one of my favorite players and I was somewhat disappointed when he left the Lions for the Reds but I have found one positive about it.  While his NPB autographed cards tend to be priced higher than I'm willing to pay, his MLB ones are pretty reasonable.  I picked this 2021 Topps Stadium Club one up for around $11 on Ebay back in July - I really don't buy any MLB cards but I couldn't resist this one:

For the sake of comparison, I did a quick search on Yahoo! Japan Auctions for autographed Akiyama cards.  The cheapest certified NPB autograph was 5999 yen (around $55).  They aren't completely comparable as the NPB card was serially numbered while the Stadium Club card was not but you get the idea.

Card Of The Week August 29

Shugo Maki of the Yokohama DeNA Baystars hit for the cycle in last Wednesday's game against the Hanshin Tigers at Osaka Dome.  Maki is the first rookie in NPB history to hit for the cycle.  Here's the video of his four hits (H/T NPB Reddit):

Here's his "Cross Torrent" card from this year's BBM 2nd Version set (#CT65).  The set came out a couple weeks ago and I got mine on Friday.  I hope to have a post up about it in the next couple days.

September Sets

I wanted to do a quick post about several recently announced sets that will be released in September.

- Epoch will be releasing their latest collaboration with the OB Club, Career Achievement, on September 4th.  This is another of their ultra-high end sets with boxes of six cards selling for 16,500 yen (around $150).  The base set has 45 cards - all players who have at least 500 home runs, 2000 hits, 1000 RBIs, 400 stolen bases, 200 wins or 250 saves.  There are 45 serially numbered parallel cards and six different varieties of autograph cards which are also serially numbered.  I think there's a parallel version of each autograph card as well.

- The latest of Epoch's "Stars & Legends" sets - their team sets with both active and OB players - is for the Hanshin Tigers and will be out on September 25th.  This is another ultra high-end set that also retails for 16,500 yen a box but in this case a box only has four cards.  The base set has 73 cards - 38 active players and 35 OB players.  Each card in the base set is serially numbered although I don't know what the print run is for them.  There are three insert sets -  "Decomori Signature Black Vision" (three cards with parallel versions available), "Gem" (six cards), and "Black Gem" (six cards) - and all the inserts are serially numbered as well.  There are five varieties of autograph cards available - "Authentic", "Legendary", "Star", "Draft #1" and "Baseball" - the last of which I think is the player's autograph on a piece of a cut up baseball.

- Calbee's third set for 2021, which somewhat unimaginatively goes by Series Three, will be released around September 20th although it will likely start showing up on-line a few days before that.  The checklist doesn't really have any surprises as the base set contains 88 cards, just like Series One and Two did.  Those 88 cards break down to 72 player cards (six per team), 12 "Interleague Play" cards (one per team), and the usual four checklist cards.  There are also the usual 24 Star insert cards (two per team).  There's a 12 card "Total Victory" box set that's associated with the set available from Calbee's Amazon.co.jp store.

- BBM annually releases a pair of sets for the team's cheerleader/dance squads.  The first "Dancing Heroine" set for 2021 - Hana - was released today while the second one - Mai - will be in stores in late September.  Mai will have a 78 card base set with each card having a holo parallel version.  There are also autographed cards and "cheki" cards available.  As with the Hana set, the Mai set only have representatives from eight of the eleven teams that actually have cheerleaders - the "Honeys" (Hawks), "M☆Splash!!" (Marines), "bluelegends" (Lions), "Tohoku Golden Angels" (Eagles), "FIGHTERS GIRL" (Fighters), "VENUS" (Giants), "Cheer Dragons 2021" (Dragons) and "Passion" (Swallows).  For some unknown reason, the dance squads for the Baystars, Tigers and Buffaloes are not in the set (the Carp don't have cheerleaders).  I believe that there is no overlap between the cheerleaders in this set and the ones in the earlier set.

Card Of The Week August 22

Takeya Nakamura came up with the bases loaded in the first inning today against the Orix Buffaloes in Osaka and did what he's done 21 times before, more than any other batter in NPB history:

It was Nakamura's 10th home run of the season and the 434th of his career.  

I've been tracking Nakamura's progress towards 500 home runs for a number of years now and I have to say that I'm losing faith that he's going to get there.  He only had 9 home runs in 79 games last year and while he's hitting much better this year than last, he now has 10 home runs in 80 games this year which is essentially the same pace.  He turned 38 a week ago and he's...uh...not someone who immediately impresses you with his physical conditioning (it's not for nothing that his nickname "Okawari-kun" means "another helping").  I'd love to see him prove me wrong - it wouldn't be out of character for him to get those 66 home runs he needs before he turns 40 in two years - but I fear it isn't going to happen.

I thought I'd share the 2009 BBM 1st Version Leader card (#439) commemorating him leading the Pacific League with 48 home runs in 2008.  It was the first of six times that he led the PL in this category.