Card Of The Week October 24

It's been a good baseball weekend for me. Friday night, the Rangers defeated the Yankees to advance to the World Series - more importantly to me, it meant that the Yankees wouldn't be advancing to the World Series. Saturday night, the San Francisco Giants defeated the Phillies to join the Rangers in the World Series - the Giants being one of my favorite teams due to my having lived in Silicon Valley back in the 70's (and yes, I realize that one of my readers might not share my joy on this one). But more relevant for this blog is that in Nagoya on Saturday night (or morning here in Maryland), the Dragons defeated the Yomiuri Giants to advance to the Nippon Series - this being good for me because (1) the Dragons are my favorite Japanese team and (2) the Giants, being the Yankees of Japan, are my least favorite Japanese team.

Anyway, the Dragons won Saturday's game in walk-off fashion when Kazuhiro Wada hit a single that scored Ryoji Nakata from second (which if you've ever seen Ryoji Nakata then you're surprised that he could actually score from second on anything less than a double). In honor of this, I present two cards of the week this week, one for Wada and one for Nakata:



The card of Wada is from the 2001 Broccoli set (#093), back when he was a member of the Lions. Broccoli made sets for the Lions from 1999 through 2001, basically to cash in on Daisuke Matsuzaka.

The card of Nakata is a jersey card from the 2008 Upper Deck Team USA set. OK, I guess that needs a little explanation. In 2008, Upper Deck released a box set featuring the 2007 National and Junior National Teams USA. In addition to the regular cards in the set, each box contained possible autograph and memorabilia cards. One of the sets of memorabilia cards were jersey cards for the "2007 Japanese Collegiate All-Stars". There's 22 of them and the checklist contains a handful of guys (like Nakata) who've already gone on to NPB as well as the big prize in the upcoming draft, Yuki Saitoh.

About time

So BBM's website has finally been updated to include information on the Premium Malts and Rookie Edition Premium sets.

Had I known that they were just waiting for me to complain, I'd have posted something sooner...

Georgia Legend Cards

I had mentioned a while back that BBM had produced some cards to be distributed with cans of Georgia coffee, a Coca Cola Japan product. I had pretty much forgotten about these cards completely until I came across an unopened pack of "Vintage" Georgia Coffee cards. Apparently, they issued a couple "Legend" cards. I'm not positive, but I think it's possible to get either a pack with two cards (Masayuki Kakefu and Sadaharu Oh) or a pack with one card (Shigeo Nagashima). (Since their website has most of its text embedded in the graphics, Google translate can't help me out here.)

The cards are a little smaller than normal. Here are the Kakefu and Oh cards:

What's up with BBM's website?

So this is really odd. BBM's website has not been updated in about a month. They still have not had any information about the new Premium Malts or Rookie Edition Premium sets. I have, however, found out about the following new BBM sets from combing AmiAmi and Discount Niki.

- a box set devoted to Kenta Maeda of the Carp: 27 "regular" cards plus an insert/memorabilia card, due out in December.

- a box set devoted to Hisashi Iwakuma of the Eagles (who is going to be posted this offseason): also 27 "regular" cards plus an insert/memorabilia card, not sure of the release date

- some sort of Swallows box set: again 27 "regular" cards plus an insert/memorabilia card, not sure of the release date

- the 2011 "Historic Edition" set, called "Pro Baseball Biographies - Legend of the Prefectural Heroes": I think it's the standard 144 card set with lots of insert/memorabilia cards.

If anyone knows what's going on with BBM's website, please let me know.

Akihiro Yano

Akihiro Yano of the Tigers also retired at the end of the season. Like Arihito Muramatsu, Yano was drafted in the 1991 draft. What many people forget, however, is that Yano was actually drafted and signed by the Dragons. He played sporadically for them through the 1997 season, then was traded to Hanshin. With the Tigers he became a regular. He never lead the league in any offensive category, but he was named to the Best 9 three times (2003,2005,2006) and the All Star team seven times (1999, 2002-2006, 2008). He played in two Nippon Series in losing efforts in 2003 and 2005. He hit .417 in the four games of the 2005 Series and won the "Fighting Spirit" award for the series. He also played for the 2008 Japanese Olympic team.

His 1991 BBM rookie card (#112):


1994 Takara:


2000 Epoch stickers (#197):


2001 Upper Deck (#90):


2002 Calbee (#044):


2004 BBM Tigers (#T46):


2005 BBM Nippon Series "Fighting Spirit" (#59):


2007 BBM 1st Version (#269):


2008 BBM Japanese Olympic Team (#JPN17):

Arihito Muramatsu

Arihito Muramatsu of the Hawks retired at the end of the season. Muramatsu had been drafted by the Hawks in the "1991" draft (which took place in autumn, 1990, of course). He didn't play much at the ichi-gun level until 1995 when he hit .308 in 95 games. He was pretty much a regular for the Hawks then until after 2003 when he left as a free agent for the Orix Blue Wave. He remained with Orix through the merge with Kintetsu in the winter of 2004-05 until he was traded back to the Hawks following the 2008 season.

He wasn't a huge star - the only offensive category he lead the league in was stolen bases in 1996, the year he made his only Best 9 team. He was named to three all star teams (96, 03 and 04) and played in three Nippon Series with the Hawks, winning in 1999 and 2003 and losing in 2000.

The earliest card I have for him is a 1993 Tomy card. I'm not positive what his earliest BBM card is - I know he's got a card in the 1995 set (#446) but it wouldn't surprise me to discover one from the 1994 set (although I haven't found him listed). Similarly with Calbee, I know he's got a card in the 1997 set (#002), but I'm not sure about earlier ones.

Here's a smattering of cards covering his career:

2005 BBM Rookie Edition (#95) showing him as a ni-gun Hawk in 1991 (he didn't make his debut with the big team until 1992):


1993 Tomy (#206):


1997 BBM '96 Stolen Base Leader (#13):


2003 BBM Nippon Series (#21):


2004 BBM All Stars (#A62):


2008 BBM 1st Version (#171):


2010 BBM 1st Version (#319):

Card Of The Week October 17

Colby Lewis of the Texas Rangers had a nice start against the Yankees yesterday afternoon. Lewis pitched for the Carp for two years, going 15-8 in 2008 and 11-9 in 2009 and leading the Central League in strikeouts both years. Here's his 2008 BBM 2nd Version "Title Wars" subset card (#720):