Card Of The Week October 11

Despite leading the Golden Eagles to the post-season for the first time in their five year history, the word out of Sendai is that Katsuya Nomura is out as Rakuten's manager after the season ends. Here's his 2008 BBM 1st Version card (#325):

New BBM Carp Anniversary Set

Well, I've been waiting all year for an Orix 20th Anniversary set from BBM, but I haven't seen one yet. Today, however, BBM released information about a Hiroshima Carp 60th Anniversary set. This is a pack based set that will be released in November. Following the pattern of every other recent Anniversary set, it has 99 regular cards broken into a six card "Carp History" subset, 66 cards of former players (both OB and active, former Carp - I'd expect to see both Hiroki Kuroda and Akira Etoh for example), 18 cards for the 2009 team and a nine card "Team Record" subset. There'll also be a nine card "Best 9" insert set and the usual autographed inserts.

This set will be the ninth team Anniversary set that BBM has done since 2004 (and the sixth in the last two years). The only teams left without an Anniversary set are Orix, the Fighters and the Golden Eagles.

Kazuyoshi Tatsunami

Kazuyoshi Tatsunami announced that he would be retiring after the end of the season. Tatsunami has been a fixture for Chunichi since his rookie of the year winning debut in 1988. He's a member of the Meikyukai, an 11 time All Star and a 5 time Gold Glove winner (at three different positions). He has the record for most career doubles in NPB. His entry at Baseball Reference's bullpen says that he is a player "who does everything well...but has no trademark skill to make him stand out from the crowd". The Dragons have only gone to eight Nippon Series in their history - he's been part of five of those teams (with the possibility of another this year).

Here's an assortment of cards from across his career:








Starting from the top is the 1988 Takara Dragons card, 1989 Mermaid Data (#3), 1994 BBM (#296), 2001 Upper Deck (#55), 2002 Calbee "Sayonora Home Run" (#SH-6), 2007 BBM Nippon Series (#S17) and 2009 BBM 1st Version (#306).

Yakult 40th Anniversary

OK, back to the sets I got a few weeks ago...

The team that is now known as the Tokyo Yakult Swallows has an interesting history. It was born in 1950 as the Kokutetsu Swallows. In 1965, Kokutetsu sold the team to Sankei. The sale occurred during the season. As a result, the team that started the year as the Kokutetsu Swallows finished the year as the Sankei Swallows. Following that season, Sankei changed the name of the team to the Sankei Atoms, attempting to cash in on the popularity of the TV show Mighty Atom (aka Astro Boy). (The Atoms away uniforms from 1966 to 1970 featured Mighty Atom on their left sleeves.) In late 1968, Sankei sold the team to the Yakult company who fielded the team in 1969 as the Yakult Atoms. In 1974, the team changed their name back to the Swallows and in 2006 they added "Tokyo", despite the face that they had played in Tokyo since their beginning. The Swallows won their first Nippon Series in 1978 (in their first ever appearance) and had subsequent victories in 1993, 1995, 1997 and 2001 (along with a loss to the Lions in the 1992 Series).

So to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of Yakult's ownership of the Atoms/Swallows, BBM has released a 99 card anniversary set. This set follows the pattern that BBM has established over the last year - there's a six card "Victories" subset showing the five Nippon Series championships plus the 1992 Central League championship, a 61 card subset of former players, 26 cards for the 2009 team and a six card "Team Records Holder" subset.

As is customary, the former players include OB players (Tsutomo Wakamatsu, Atsuya Furuta, Katsuo Ohsugi, Takehiro Ikeyama, Tom O'Malley) as well as active players with other teams, be it NPB (Alex Ramirex, Kazuhisa Ishii), MLB (Akinori Iwamura) or other (Shingo Takatsu). Didn't see any really obvious players missing - might have been cool to have included Bob Horner, but he only spent one year in Japan. No cards of former managers were included (unless they played for the Swallows like Wakamatsu and Furuta), so the absence of Katsuya Nomura (who managed the team to three championships in the 1990's) isn't surprising (or unexpected, since he wasn't in the Hawks, Lions or Lotte anniversary sets either).

I guess my only disappointment with the set is that the only card showing someone in an Atoms uniform is Wakamatsu's. I think it would have been entertaining to have had a few others.

Here's some example cards. That's the "Victories" subset card for the 1997 Championship (#05); the former player cards for Tsutomu Wakamatsu (#52), Toru Sugiura (#53), Katsuo Ohsugi (#39), and Shingo Takatsu (#25); the 2009 Swallows card for manager Shigeru Takada (#68); and the "Team Records Holder" card for Keishi Asano (#95):

Card Of The Week October 4

Marty Brown is apparently out as manager of the Carp and Kenjiro Nomura is expected to be named the new manager soon. Here's Nomura's 1995 BBM card (#131):

A Restaurant in Osaka

Years ago, there was a day when I was a little burned out on baseball and wanted to do something that didn't involve it. My then-girlfriend (now wife) read a review in the Baltimore Sun about a restaurant in Timonium called Ralphie's Diner and wanted to check it out. Upon arrival, we discovered that the place had a bust of "Ralphie" and it turned out that he was Ralph Salvon, longtime trainer for the Orioles. Without even trying, I had managed to make an innocent trip to a restaurant baseball-related.

I was reminded of this by a recent post of Deanna Rubin's in which she goes out to dinner in Osaka and discovers that the place is owned by a former NPB player, Tadami Nakatani.

Nakatami had had a short career from 1987 to 1994 with the Tigers, Buffaloes and Blue Wave. (Hmm, he moved from the Buffaloes to Blue Wave after 1993 - wonder if there's a connection to Akira Ohgi who left the Buffaloes for the Blue Wave at the same time.) I've got a couple of his cards - none with the Tigers (who he only played in 11 games for in 1987-88). Here's his 1991 and 1994 BBM cards (#72 and 408 respectively):

Ten Years Later

One of Deanna's readers has been asking about Tomohiro Nioka and wants to see baseball cards of him. She suggested he take a look over here. Apparently, he was given Nioka's 1999 card and would like "to see the difference in the cards I have from 1999 to now". So, here goes...

Nioka's 1999 BBM card happens to be his rookie card. It's #330:


His regular card with this year's BBM 1st Version set is #093: