2008 BBM All Stars

I got this year's BBM All Star set in the mail the other day from YakyuShop. The box set contains 56 player cards, 6 cards for the coaching staff, 2 cards for the MVP's of last year's games (Shinnosuke Abe and Alex Ramirez) and a card for this year's vote leader (G.G. Sato).

As I was afraid of, this year's set is pretty ugly (well, I think so anyway). Each card has the player's picture with no background at all. There's a wide white border on the player and coach cards along with a smaller gold border. In tiny print on the bottom of the card, they list all the names of teams in NPB. I'm really not sure what the point of that was. The MVP cards are gold embossed, which again seems somewhat pointless.

So I'm pretty disappointed with the set. At least this year they didn't mispell Tyrone Woods's name.

Here's some examples from the set:





From top to bottom, that's Tyrone Woods (Tyrone with an 'e'!) (#A19), Koji Akiyama (#A34) (why has Akiyama coached the last two years instead of Sadaharu Oh? Is it Oh's health?), Shinnosuke Abe's MVP card (#65) and G.G. Sato's "No. 1 Vote Getter" card (#63).

Kazuhiro Kiyohara

When I first started collecting Japanese cards, I didn't know much about Japanese baseball or who any of the cards were of. (It can be argued that I have not come far from that point.) There were a couple of names that I kept seeing over and over though that started sinking in. It seemed like anytime I bought a lot of singles or got a BBM All Star set, I would get yet another card of one or more of these guys. I came to be a fan of these players, even though I didn't know a whole lot about them. The players were Atsuya Furuta, Koji Akiyama and Kazuhiro Kiyohara. The last remaining active player of this group, Kiyohara, last week announced that he'll be retiring at the end of the season.

As I've learned more about Japanese baseball, I've learned that there's a lot of mixed opinions on Kiyohara and I'm not sure if he were someone that I watched on a regular basis if I would still be a fan of his. Perhaps I would - I tend to be contrary sometimes in players that I like and end up defending the likes of Milton Bradley and Albert Belle, at least as ballplayers.

Be that as it may, I thought a retrospective of Kiyohara would be appropriate:

He was Pacific League Rookie Of The Year in 1986. Here's his rookie card from Calbee (#225):


1989 Calbee #50:


1992 Calbee #51:


1994 Tomy #82:


In 1997, Kiyohara left the Lions for the Giants, who released Hiromitsu Ochiai to make room for him. 1997 BBM #290:


2000 BBM #414:


He played in 10 Japan Series in his 23 year career. He hit .301 with 15 homers in 60 games. He won an "Outstanding Player" Award in the 1986, 1988, and 2002 Series's and the "Fighting Spirit" award in the 1993 and 1994 Series's. Here's his 2002 BBM Nippon Series card (#S15), his final Series:


On April 29, 2005, he became the eighth player in NPB history to reach 500 home runs. He is currently fifth in history, behind Sadaharu Oh, Katsuya Nomura, Hiromitsu Kadota and Koji Yamamoto. Here's the 2005 BBM 2nd Version card (#826) commemorating his 500th home run:


In 2006, he left the Giants and signed with Orix. He missed a lot of time due to injuries, but when healthy, was still elected to All Star teams. He was named to an All Star team 19 times in 23 seasons. He was named MVP of an All Star game 7 times, in 1986, 1987, 1990, 1993, 1996, 1997, and 2000. Here's his final BBM All Star card, from the 2006 set (#A15):


He was also named to the Pacific League Best 9 teams in 1988, 1990, 1991 and 1992.

Touch The Game & Tokyo Big 6 sets

New stuff coming from BBM. Their high-end set, Touch The Game, will be coming out in late September. The regular set is about 132 cards, along with a bunch of parallels, inserts and memorabilia cards. (Personally, I'll be giving this set a miss because I never like the design and I don't feel like spending that much money. But your mileage may vary.)

As a follow-up to last spring's Tokyo Big Six collegiate set, BBM is coming out with an "Autumn Version" box set for the Tokyo Big Six baseball teams. This set will be out September 13 and will only contain 36 cards (as opposed to the 60 in the earlier set) plus a random insert card.

Card Of The Week August 17

In case you missed it, Deanna Rubin had an interview with Hiram Bocachica of the Lions last week. Here's his 2008 BBM 1st Version card:

Minor League Cards

Back in the 1980's and 1990's, some Japanese teams had working agreements with some US major league teams and the occasional independent minor league teams. (In this case, I mean a team that plays in an affiliated minor league like the California or Carolina league but has no major league affiliation. These teams have become extinct in the past 15 years or so.) These working agreements would usually include the Japanese teams sending players to play in the minors in the US. (I assume that there was a well understood agreement in place to prevent the Murakami incident from being repeated.)

As it happened, many of the minor league teams that the Japanese players appeared on had baseball card sets. I've been looking through my own collection of minor league cards and checklists to see what I can find. Japanesebaseball.com has a partial list of players. If I get a chance, I'd like to update the list and make a couple of corrections (the Masahiro Yamamoto that's listed as being with San Jose in 1988 is not the Masahiro Yamamoto who plays for the Dragons).

San Jose had a working agreement with the Seibu Lions during the 1980's. It looks to me like they originally signed the agreement when San Jose was independent and it continued for a few years after they got a working agreement with the San Francisco Giants. Ken Suzuki was with the 1988 team. Here's his card from the ProCards team set:


Also in 1988, the Miami Marlins had an agreement with the Yomiuri Giants. Masao Kida made his first of three stints in the US with the team that year. Here's his card from the Star team set:


It turns out that there were two Masahiro Yamamoto's playing in the US in 1988. The one with San Jose briefly appeared with the Lions in the early 1990's. The one with Vero Beach (the Dodgers must have had something going with the Dragons) is the one who just got his 200th win. Here's his card from the Star team set:


Yamamoto actually pitched well enough that year to make the Florida State League All Star team. Jason Presley has that card in this gallery, along with some other Japanese players from his minor league sets.

The Hawks had an agreement with the Salinas Spurs of the California League for a couple of years in the early 1990's. In 1990 at least, this included not only providing players but also the manager. Here's the Cal League card of Hide Koga, the first (and possibly only) Japanese manager in US professional baseball:


I think the "study abroad" program petered out in the early 1990's. While US teams still have agreements with NPB teams, it doesn't appear that players come to the US from Japan to play in the minors anymore. However, there is one place where US and Japanese prospects still play together - the Hawaiian Winter League.

The Hawaiian Winter League (HWB) lasted for 5 seasons from 1993 to 1997. It was revived in 2006. In its first incarnation, the league featured NPB players like Ichiro, Kazuo Matsui and Nobuhiko Matsunaka. The only baseball cards for the league were put out for the 1996 season. (In case someone wants to take issue with that statement due to a couple cards that are supposedly from the 1993 season, I'll qualify that statement as "The only team sets that were for sale that were actually available in the year they were produced were for the 1996 season".)

There were four teams that year and each team set had a Japanese player who would go on to greater things. The Maui Stingrays had Kenji Johjima, but I no longer have that set, so I can't show you that card. The Hilo Stars had Tsuyoshi Shinjyo and I still have that card:


Hideki Okajima was a Honolulu Shark:


Atsunori Inaba was a West Oahu Canefire:


There are cards for the teams in the HWB from the last few years. Since I stopped collecting minor league cards, I don't know who's in them. It may take a few years for any Japanese stars to appear out of them (although Joba Chamberlain is in one of the sets).

2008 Calbee Series 3

Calbee's website has added a checklist for this years third series. I don't see a release date, but I would assume it will be out soon.

Card Of The Week August 10

In honor of his role as coach of the Japanese Olympic Baseball team, here's a card of Senichi Hoshino:


BBM 1st Version #408