RIP Tony Blanco

Devastating news out of the Dominican Republic today - a roof collapse at a night club in Santo Domingo has left at least 66 people dead and over 150 injured.  Among the dead were merengue musician Rubby Pérez who was on stage when the roof collapsed; Nelsy Cruz, governor of the Montecristi province and sister of former MLB star Nelson Cruz; former MLB player Octovio Dotel and former MLB and NPB player Tony Blanco.

Blanco spent about ten years in the Red Sox, Reds, Nationals and Rockies organizations with only a brief, 56 games stint in the majors with the Nationals in their inaugural 2005 season.  He joined the Dragons in 2009 as a replacement for Tyrone Woods and homered in his first NPB at bat on Opening Day against Daisuke Miura of the Baystars.  He led the Central League in home runs (39) and RBIs (110) that season, was selected for the All Star game and won a Best 9 award.  He again hit over 30 home runs in 2010 and again made the All Star team.  His performance tailed off somewhat the two years (definitely due to injury in 2012 but maybe also in 2011) - although he won a second Best 9 award in 2012 and was again selected for the All Star team although he declined to participate - and he left Nagoya for Yokohama after the 2012 season.

He had an amazing first season with DeNA in 2013, leading the Central League in batting (.333) and RBIs (136) while also hitting 41 home runs.  He probably would have won the Triple Crown had that not been the season that Wladimir Balentien hit 60 home runs.  He won his third and final Best 9 award that year and was once again selected for the All Star team.

Muscle strains in his legs plagued him in 2014, ultimately limiting him to only 85 games.  His performance when healthy resulted in yet another All Star team selection but he lost his spot in the starting lineup to Yoshitomo Tsutsugoh late in the season.

He moved on to the Orix Buffaloes, signing a two year contract in December of 2014.  Injuries limited him to only 52 ichi-gun appearances in 2015 and only 27 in 2016 (I remember that his only card in the 2016 BBM 1st Version set was the Buffaloes team checklist showing him standing in the dugout with a stabilizing boot on his left foot).  He and Orix parted ways when his contract was over and his final days as an active player came in a 7 game stint with Estrellas Orientales of the Dominican Winter League during the 2016-17 season.

Here's a bunch of his cards - I picked at least one for each of the eight years he played in Japan:

2009 Calbee Series Two #180

2010 BBM All Stars #A19

2011 BBM 2nd Version #576

2012 Calbee Series Three #186

2013 BBM 1st Version #149

2013 Front Runner Baystars Season Summary #03

2014 SCM Cosmic Cross #SCM23/#SCM276

2015 Calbee Series Two #098

2016 BBM 1st Version #329

2016 BBM Buffaloes #Bs54

I was fortunate enough to see Blanco play in an open-sen game for the Baystars against the Dragons on my first trip to Japan in March of 2013.  I think it might have been his first game in Yokohama as a member of the Baystars but I don't know that for sure.  I do know that he hit a home run completely out of Yokohama Stadium that afternoon - it was a windy afternoon and the Baystars had four home runs that day along with one by the Dragons but Blanco's was the only one to leave the ballpark.

There was one thing I saw that day that I didn't understand until today.  "Blanco" is similar to the Japanese word "buranko" which means "swing" (as in "swing set") so he was more or less known as "Swing" in Japan.  Which explains this t-shirt I saw for sale at the Baystars shop that day:

Zippy Zapped Yet Again

Got a surprise envelope in the mail from Japan the other day - once again I have been the recipient of the generosity of Kenny - aka Zippy Zappy.  Unlike some of his previous packages, this envelope only had a few cards (plus a 2013 Chunichi Dragons pocket schedule).

The big thing was this "Youth Culture" insert card of Akio Moroyama of the Dragons from the 2023 Bowman NPB set:

2023 Bowman NPB #YC-23

I'm not a big fan of the Bowman NPB sets but this is an attractive card.  It's also a little thicker than the run of the mill cards so it has a little heft to it.

The back shows the usual level of effort and detail that we've come to expect from Topps with their NPB products:

Kenny also included two cards of Dragons rookies from the 2022 Topps NPB set:

2022 Topps NPB #167

2022 Topps NPB #85

The last sports card in the box wasn't something I collect but it was interesting to take a look at.  Earlier this year, Calbee had issued a card set* for the Japan National Football (soccer) Team and Kenny sent me one of the cards from it.  I know nothing about Atsuki Ito but it's kind of neat to see what Calbee does with something other than baseball.  Here's the front and back of the card:

2025 Calbee Japan National Team #17

*I think it's a 2025 set for the 2024 National Team but I could be wrong.

Once again, thanks for the cards, Kenny!

Card Of The Week April 6

Last Thursday, Yasuhiro Ogawa of the Swallows threw a "Maddux" against the Carp.  He had a complete game, 2-hit shutout on only 92 pitches.  What's more, he hit a double and since the Central League is the only league in the world that doesn't use the DH, he's likely to be the only player in the world not named "Ohtani" to throw a "Maddux" and get an extra base hit in the same game.

Ogawa's nickname is "Ryan" due to the fact that his windup resembles Nolan Ryan's.  But I don't think Nolan Ryan ever threw a "Maddux".  Of course, Ryan has six more no-hitters under his belt than Ogawa does.

Here's a couple cards of Ogawa - one showing his windup and the other showing him hitting:

2015 BBM Classic #069

2022 BBM Fusion #50

RIP Hidetoshi Hakamada

The news broke last week that former Lotte Orions catcher Hidetoshi Hakamada had passed away from a cerebral hemorrhage in early February at age 69.

Hakamada was born and raised in Shizuoka and attended Shizuoka Kita Senior High School where he was the cleanup hitter in his senior year.  He was drafted by Lotte in the third round of the 1973 draft but opted to attended Hosei University instead.  He was the starting catcher for Hosei by the spring season of his sophomore year and became somewhat notable for being the battery-mate of Suguru Egawa, the "Monster Of The Showa".  He ended his collegiate career with 6 home runs, 43 RBIs and a .300 batting average in 89 games.  He was named to the Best 9 team four times (keep in mind that there are two separate seasons - spring and autumn - every year for collegiate baseball).

Lotte took him again in the 1977 NPB draft, this time with their first pick.  He spent most of his first four seasons with the farm team as veteran Hiroshi Takahashi* was firmly entrenched as the Orions' starting catcher.  It wasn't until 1982, Takahashi's final season, that Hakamada took over the starting job, which he would not relinquish until 1989.  He would make the All Star team in 1982 and 1985 but did not have an opportunity either time to face Egawa.  He led the Pacific League in sacrifices in 1986.

*Takahashi was one of the other players along with Masanori Murakami that Nankai loaned to the San Francisco Giants' organization in 1964.  He spent the season with the Magic Valley Cowboys of the Pioneer League 

He earned a reputation as good handler of pitchers and became future Hall Of Famer Choji Murata's preferred battery-mate, even after he'd been replaced as the primary catcher by Yoichi Fukuzawa.  He apparently caught Murata without giving him signs as (if I'm understanding his Japanese Wikipedia page correctly) Murata had poor eyesight and couldn't make out the signs.  Hakamada announced his retirement at Murata's final game in 1990.  Murata had also been the pitcher for Hakamada's debut with the top team in 1978.

After retiring, Hakamada coached for Lotte for twenty of the next 22 years, missing only the 1998 and 1999 season.  He sat out a year after the Marines fired him following the 2012 season before spending 2014 and 2015 coaching with the Saitama Seibu Lions.  His final coaching job was with the Musashi Heat Bears of the independent Baseball Challenge league in 2016-17.  He inherited "Retto Koshien", Murata's baseball school, when Murata passed away in 2022.

Hakamada doesn't have a lot of baseball cards from when he was an active player.  He never had a Calbee card as much of his career was from the period of time when Lotte didn't allow Calbee to issue cards of Orions players.  As far as I can tell, his first card is from the 1981 Takara Orions set and most of his active player cards are from other Takara Orions sets - 1983-90 as well as the 1984 Takara Kids Orions set.  His only other card from the 1980's was from the 1989 Lotte set.  He appeared in some of BBM's Marines team sets from the 00's that included cards of the team's coaches and has appeared in a handful of OB sets from both BBM and Epoch over the years.  Here's a handful of his cards:

1984 Takara Kids Orions #12

1987 Takara Orions #12

1989 Lotte #57

1990 Takara Orions #12

2007 BBM Draft Story #004

2008 BBM Lotte 40th Anniversary #34

2011 BBM Legend Of Tokyo Big 6 #057

2021 BBM Marines History 1950-2021 #26

Calbee, Some Team Sets, the return of "Pro Baseball Deforme" and the incredibly shrinking Epoch NPB set

I feel like I just did a roundup of new sets but it's actually been almost five weeks since the most recent one.  There've been a bunch of set announcement since then so let's dig in...

- One of the sets may have already been released.  Volume 2 of the "Pro Baseball Deforme" "metallic placards" was supposed to have been released by the end of March.  These are cards from Bandai that feature player caricatures.  The cards are being given away with bags of what's basically a bar snack called kaki no tane which I have not had myself but I've heard mixed reviews about.  Like the first set that was released last summer, there are 36 cards in this set.  I don't know if these are numbered in continuation of the first set (i.e. if they're numbered 37-72 or just 1-36). (UPDATE - The numbering of the cards is more complicated then I had remembered.)

- As promised, Calbee announced the information about this year's Series One set (including the checklist) a couple days ago.  It will be released on May 5th (about six weeks later than usual) and is roughly the same smaller size that Calbee's sets have been the past few years.  There will be 60 "regular" player cards (five per team), 21 "Title Holder" subset cards and six checklist cards, making the base set just 87 cards.  The theme of the checklist cards is mascots which I find unfortunate.  Not that I have anything against mascots per se but the checklist cards in Calbee sets frequently boasted some of the best photographs but that won't be happening this year.  In addition to the base cards, there are also the insert/premium subset "Star" (24 cards) and "Legend" (three cards for retiring players - Norichika Aoki, Tsuyoshi Wada and T-Okada) cards.    The checklist also lists a twelve card "Most Strikeouts" set that I assume is the box set available through Calbee's Amazon store but there's nothing that actually says that.  I'm guessing the late release date and the fact that there's six checklist cards (Calbee usually does twelve total checklists, one featuring each NPB team) implies that there will again only be two Series this year instead of the three they'd done up from 2004 up until 2022.

- Speaking of disappointingly small flagship sets, Epoch has announced that the 2025 edition of their "NPB" flagship set will only have 240 cards (20 per team).  This is quite the drop from the 432 cards that the set had between 2018 and 2023 and is even less than the 336 that last year's set had (I'm kind of ignoring the 12 OB cards that a number of the sets have as I'm focusing on the cards of the active players).  All 240 cards will have a parallel version and there will be a 24 card "NPB Stars" insert set (which I assume will feature two players from each team).  There will be 12 "GEM" serially numbered insert cards (not sure of what the print runs are for them) and 170 different autograph cards which will feature both active and OB players (despite there not being any OB players in the base set).  The set will be released on June 21st.

- Epoch has also announced the first three of their "Premier Edition" team sets for 2025.  The Swallows set will have a 39 card base set and will be released on April 26th, the Lions set will have a 37 card base set and will be released on May 3rd and the Fighters set will have a 46 card base set and will be released on June 7th.  The Swallows and Fighters sets will include OB players as well as active ones.  All the base cards have a "hologram" parallel version.  Each set has the same batch of inserts - three varieties of "Regular Foil Signature" ("silver", "gold" and "hologram") (18 cards each), two varieties of "Regular Decomori Signature" ("hologram" and "hologram parallel") (18 cards each), five varieties of "Time To Shine" ("A","B","C","D","E") (six cards each) and three varieties of "Decomori Signature" ("gold","green" and "hologram") (six cards each).  I think all the inserts are serially numbered.  There are also the "GEM" and "BLACK GEM" "special insert cards" (nine cards in each) that I think are much more limited.  Finally, each set has a bunch of associated autographed cards that are slightly different between the sets.  The Swallows set has 36 "Authentic Autograph" cards, six "Star Autograph" cards, five "Rookie Autograph" cards, two "Legendary Autograph" cards and two "Combo Autograph" cards.  The Lions set has 37 "Authentic Autograph" cards, five "Star Autograph" cards, seven "Rookie Autograph" cards, eight "Record Breaker Autograph" cards and three "Combo Autograph" cards.  The Fighters set has 37 "Authentic Autograph" cards, five "Star Autograph" cards, six "Rookie Autograph" cards, nine "Legendary Autograph" cards and three "Combo Autograph" cards.  

- Not to be left out, BBM announced the next three of their "comprehensive" team sets for 2025.  I'll pretty much just repeat the general details for the sets that I've said before - each set has a base set of 81 cards, most of which are "regular" player cards featuring the manager and the players on the 70 man roster plus a couple subsets (which may not be fully defined yet) to fill out the set.  Each set also has 18 non-premium insert cards split into a variety of sets which also may not be fully defined yet.  The sets also have two or three types of premium inserts that are serially numbered - Treasure, Esperanza and Eminent.  There will be rare parallel versions of some of the "regular" player cards that will feature photo variants or different backgrounds.

Release Date	Team	Regular Cards	Subsets	Non-Premium Inserts	Treasure	Esperanza	Eminent	Other
Mid May	Dragons	66	Mascot(1), Generation Of Wonders(5), Combination Of Same School (3), To Pitch In 60 games (3), Positive Pink (3)	Core Players (9), Challengers (3), New Uniform Number (3), Rookies (3)	24	15	24	Autograph cards
Late May	Lions	65	Mascot(1), Resurrected Lions (6), Challengers To Change (3), Promising Classmates (3), Attention Units (3)	Claw My Way (9), Batmen Begin (3), Great Again (3), Rookies (3)	24	15		Autograph cards
Late May	Giants	63	Promising Young Species (6), Veterans (3), Combination (3), Three Pillars (3), Main Hitters (3)	Giants Pride 2025(15), Rookies(3)	24	15	12	Additional Premium Insets of Cross Foil Signing (15), Combo Cross Foil Signing (2), Triple Cross Foil Signing (1), Triplex (3), Super Metallic Giants (9) plus memorabilia cards

Remember that the Giants don't allow their players to have authentic autographed cards.

- The Lions are celebrating their 75th Anniversary in 2025 and BBM is commemorating it in a somewhat unique way.  Instead of a single "Lions 75th Anniversary" set, BBM is instead issuing the set in four separate box sets.  The first instance - "Lions 75th Anniversary Series Vol. 1" - will be released in late April and will be followed by additional instances in June, July and September.  I don't know if each volume will have the same make up but Vol. 1 at least will contain 36 cards - a 35 card base set plus one "special insert card" which could be either a facsimile or authentic autograph.  There will be 19 OB players spanning from 1950 to 1990 along with 16 active players.

- Bushiroad has announced expansion packs for two more teams for their DreamOrder collectible card game.  The booser packs for the Swallows and Baystars will be released on May 24th.  Each pack is 500 yen and contains five cards.  I'm entirely sure what cards are available in the packs but it appears for each team there's some number (between 10 and 16) of "super rare" (SR) cards, ten "rare" cards and thirty "common" cards.  I think that some of the cards are "reprints" which I assume means they're essentially duplicates of cards that were previously issued.  There are also parallel and "special" parallel cards.  OB players are available as well as active players.  This leaves only the Marines and Fighters without 2025 booster packs and I assume those will be announced in the near future.

Card Of The Week March 30

NPB's Opening Day was Friday and Hiroya Miyagi of the Buffaloes came within six outs of making history.  He took a bid for a perfect game into the eighth inning against the Eagles before giving up a lead-off single to Ryosuke Tatsumi.  Miyagi ended up giving up a run that inning but left the game with a 2-1 lead.  Unfortunately, closer Andres Machado blew the save, allowing the Eagles to tie the game in the top of the ninth.  Luckily for Orix, Kenya Wakatsuki hit a two-out, sayonara double to win the game:

Wakatsuki's hit made new Orix manager Mamoru Kishida a winner in his debut.

Here are cards for both Miyagi and Wakatsuki:

2022 BBM Buffaloes #MG2

2015 Orix Players Card #37

Oldest BBM Set With An Active NPB Player - 2025 Edition

Time for my OTHER Opening Day tradition (and this one will continue) - which is the oldest BBM flagship set to have a currently active NPB player?

I got confirmation today that Hiroyuki Nakajima has officially retired.  He'd been hoping to catch on with another team after the Dragons released him at the end of last season but it was not to be.  This means that the final NPB player who appeared in the 2001 BBM set (the first one I ever collected) has now retired.  The oldest BBM flagship set with an active NPB player is now the 2002 set (or sets really as that was the first year that BBM issued their flagship set in two parts as the 1st and 2nd Versions).

Surprisingly, there's actually three active NPB players from the 2002 1st Version set - Takumi Kuriyama and Takeya Nakamura of the Lions and Masanori Ishikawa of the Swallows:

2002 BBM 1st Version #269

2002 BBM 1st Version #268

2002 BBM 1st Version #24 Facsimile Autograph Parallel

Ishikawa is the only one of the three who also appeared in the 2002 2nd Version set:

2002 BBM 2nd Version #442 Facsimile Autograph Parallel

I did not realize until I pulled these cards that I had the signature parallel for both of Ishikawa's rookie flagship cards.

I don't have enough Calbee cards to track this very well as I didn't start getting the complete sets until 2012 but since I have Ishikawa's 2002 Calbee card, I know that the 2002 Calbee set is the oldest one with an active NPB player in it:

2002 Calbee #093

You'll notice that I've been careful to say "active NPB player".  That's because there's an active player in Japan who was in a BBM set earlier than 2002 - Munenori Kawasaki is still playing for the Tochigi Golden Braves of the independent Baseball Challenge League.  At 43 years of age, Kawasaki is actually two years younger than Ishikawa but was drafted in 1999 so his first BBM card was in the 2000 set.

Should all three of these players retire after this season (which wouldn't be a huge surprise), the new "oldest set with an active NPB player" would slip three years to the Hideaki Wakui and the 2005 1st Version set.  If I considered MLB player as well, Yu Darvish would be there with Wakui.