Card Of The Week January 20

This 1981 Calbee card (#341) shows a play at the plate where Giants outfielder Tadashi Matsumoto is attempting to evade Whales catcher Hisaaki Fukushima and score.  I wonder if he was safe or out?

1994 Teleca Korean Cards Part 2 - Lions, Bears and Dolphins

Continuing the list of the 1994 Teleca Korean cards that Robert Shadlow scanned for me, here's the list the for the Samsung Lions, the OB Bears and the Pacific Dolphins.  (OK, actually this is the list for the cards Robert has between #37 - #71 - there are some gaps in the numbering and card #65 is actually a Lotte Giant.  It looks like it's celebrating Yoon Hak-kil's 100th win maybe.  The card is using the same photo as his regular card - #32).

Number	Player	Team	Front	Back	Sleeve
37	Ryu Jung-il	Samsung Lions	scan	scan	scan
38	Tong Bong-cheol	Samsung Lions	scan	scan	scan
39	Kim Seong-rae	Samsung Lions	scan	scan	scan
40	Lee Man-soo	Samsung Lions	scan	scan	scan
41	Kang Gi-ung	Samsung Lions	scan	scan	scan
42	Lee Jong-du	Samsung Lions	scan	scan	scan
43	Jeong Yeong-gyu	Samsung Lions	scan	scan	scan
44	Kim Sang-yeop	Samsung Lions	scan	scan	scan
45	Yang Jun-hyeok	Samsung Lions	scan	scan	scan
47	Park Chul-sun	OB Bears	scan	scan	scan
48	Lim Hyeong-seok	OB Bears	scan	scan	scan
49	Kim Hyeong-seok	OB Bears	scan	scan	scan
50	Kim Tae-hyeong	OB Bears	scan	scan	scan
51	Kim Sang-jin	OB Bears	scan	scan	scan
52	Kwon Myeong-cheol	OB Bears	scan	scan	scan
53	Lee Myeong-soo	OB Bears	scan	scan	scan
54	Kim Sang-ho	OB Bears	scan	scan	scan
55	Chang Ho-yeon	OB Bears	scan	scan	scan
56	Kim Kyeong-Won	OB Bears	scan	scan	scan
64	Kim Gyeong-gi	Pacific Dolphins	scan	scan	scan
65	Yoon Hak-kil	Lotte Giants	scan	scan	scan
67	Kim Dong-gi	Pacific Dolphins	scan	scan	scan
69	Yun Deok-gyu	Pacific Dolphins	scan	scan	scan
70	Jeong Myeong-won	Pacific Dolphins	scan	scan	scan
71	Chung Min-tae	Pacific Dolphins	scan	scan	scan

I have scans of empty sleeves for the Lions (one horizontal and one vertical), the Bears and the Dolphins.

I'm a little curious if the gap in card numbers between #56 and #64 is where the cards for the one unaccounted for team, the Ssangbangwool Raiders, are.

1994 Teleca Korean Cards Part 1 - Tigers, Eagles and Giants

I want to continue to post about the Teleca cards that Robert Shadlow scanned for me a couple months back.  I covered the 1993 cards a little while back so I thought I'd start on the 1994 ones here.

Like the 1993 cards, the 1994 Teleca cards are phone card size and shaped and appear to have been sold one card at a time.  Each card was inserted into a sleeve that had the team's logo on it.  There appear to be two distinctive Teleca issues in 1994 - the LG Twins set and everybody else.  I'll post about the Twins set later.  I'll start talking about the "everybody else" cards here.

The numbering of the 1994 Teleca cards starts at 13 (apparently starting off where the 1993 set left off but that's complete conjecture) and goes to at least 71, meaning there's at least 59 cards in the set.  The set featured cards for six of the eight teams in the league - the Haitai Tigers, the Hanwha Eagles, the Lotte Giants, the OB Bears, the Pacific Dolphins and the Samsung Lions.  With the LG Twins being covered in the other 1994 Teleca issue, it appears that there are no cards of the eight team in the league, the Ssangbangwool Raiders.

I've started loading Robert's scans into Flickr and setting up sets by team.  So far I've got the Tigers, Eagles and Giants done so I'll list those cards here and do the rest in another post.

Number	Player	Team	Front	Back	Sleeve
13	Sun Dong-yeol	Haitai Tigers	scan	scan	scan
14	Sun Dong-yeol	Haitai Tigers	scan	scan	scan
15	Sun Dong-yeol	Haitai Tigers	scan	scan	scan
16	Lee Jong-Beom	Haitai Tigers	scan	scan	scan
17	Lee Jong-Beom	Haitai Tigers	scan	scan	scan
19	Cho Gye-hyeon	Haitai Tigers	scan	scan	scan
20	Cho Gye-hyeon	Haitai Tigers	scan	scan	scan
21	Cho Gye-hyeon	Haitai Tigers	scan	scan	scan
22	Lee Jeong-hun	Hanwha Eagles	scan	scan	scan
23	Han Yong-deok	Hanwha Eagles	scan	scan	scan
24	Chang Jong-hun	Hanwha Eagles	scan	scan	scan
25	Song Jin-woo	Hanwha Eagles	scan	scan	scan
26	Kong Pil-seong	Lotte Giants	scan	scan	scan
27	Jeon Jun-ho	Lotte Giants	scan	scan	scan
28	Kim Weong-guk	Lotte Giants	scan	scan	scan
29	Kim Min-ho	Lotte Giants	scan	scan	scan
30	Kim Seon-il	Lotte Giants	scan	scan	scan
31	Kim Yong-hui	Lotte Giants	scan	scan	scan
32	Yoon Hak-kil	Lotte Giants	scan	scan	scan
33	Pak Gye-won	Lotte Giants	scan	scan	scan
34	Hyeong-gwang Ju	Lotte Giants	scan	scan	scan
35	Pak Dong-hyi	Lotte Giants	scan	scan	scan

I also have scans for the empty sleeves for the Tigers, Eagles and Giants.

Kensuke Tanaka of the San Francisco Giants

Last week former Hokkaido Nippon Han Fighter infielder Kensuke Tanaka signed a minor league deal with the San Francisco Giants.  Tanaka was drafted by the Fighters in the second round of the 2000 draft and has played for them ever since.

His BBM rookie card was #367 in the 2000 set.  He did not have another card in a BBM "flagship" set again until 2003.  After appearing in 1st and 2nd Version in 2003 and 1st Version in 2004, he didn't appear in either 1st or 2nd Version in 2005 or 2006.  Starting in 2007, he's been a staple of both the 1st and 2nd Versions.  He appears in BBM Nippon Series sets for the 2006, 2007, 2009 and 2012 Series and the BBM All Star sets in 2008, 2010, and 2012.

His first Calbee card appears to be #226 in the 2006 set.  He also appeared in the 2000 Upper Deck Ovation set's "Rising Stars" serially number insert set (#19).

As always, this is just some of the highlights - check out the Inventory Manager over at SportsCardForum.com for a much more complete list.

Here are some cards:

2000 BBM #367

2003 BBM 1st Version #325

2006 Konami Baseball Heroes 2 Black Edition #B06B092

2007 BBM Nippon Series #S44

2010 Calbee #050

2012 BBM All Stars #A22

UPDATE - I was incorrect - he did not appear in the 2012 Nippon Series due to injury so he does not appear in the 2012 BBM Nippon Series set.

Card Of The Week January 13

Following the 1961 season, the Taiyo Whales (who had been the defending Nippon Series champions, having won it all in 1960) played an exhibition series against the Pacific Coast League's Hawaii Islanders.  A small set of three cards were issued by the Union Oil company, who had issued cards for various teams in the PCL off and on from 1958 to 1961.  The three cards were player cards for Akihito Kondo and Gentaro Shimada and a Whales team picture.  The player cards were 3 inches by 4 inches in size, which was the standard size for the other PCL cards issued by Union Oil that year.  At 3 3/4 inches by 5 inches, the team card was a little larger:

2013 Hall Of Fame Class

A year after electing two former Hiroshima Toyo Carp pitchers to the Hall Of Fame, the voters have again elected two former Carp pitchers to the Hall Of Fame - Yoshiro Sotokoba and Yutaka Ono.

Sotokoba pitched for the Carp for 15 seasons from 1965 to 1979.  He threw three no hitters (including one perfect game) in his career, which ties him with Eiji Sawamura for most in Japanese baseball history.  Sotokoba actually had a losing record for his career (131-138) due to having pitched his first nine years or so with some truly bad Carp teams.

2012 BBM No-Hitters #40 - Commemorating his first no-hitter

1975-76 Calbee #222

1976 Yanakatsu JY-1

Ono pitched 22 years for the Carp (1977-1998).  He alternated between starting and relieving throughout his career.  In recent years, he has been a pitching coach for the Japanese National Team at several international tournaments.

1984 Takara Carp #24

1989 Calbee #302

2008 BBM Japanese National Team #JPN04

The Legend Of Hideki Matsui

OK, one more Hideki Matsui post...

As Hideki Matsui prepared to leave Japan for the US following the 2002 season, BBM decided to put out a 55 card box set highlighting his Japanese career.  The set was called "The Legend Of Hideki Matsui" and it was packaged in a box designed to look like a leather bound book.

Each box contains 54 "regular" card plus 1 special card.  The special card could potentially be a game used bat card, a game used jersey card, a game used bat and jersey card, an autograph card, one of two different gold baseball cards or one of six different silver baseball cards.

The 54 "regular" cards were broken into seven subsets.  The first was 11 cards simply called "The Legend Of Hideki Matsui".  These cards simply had photos of Matsui on each side.  The pictures on the front and backs of the cards didn't necessarily have anything to do with each other.

#01

#05

The second subset was entitled "Giants 1993-2002".  These 10 cards commemorate each year he spent with Yomiuri.  I think this is the weakest subset in the set myself.

#20

The next subset is "Road To Giants" and features family photos from when he was growing up.  I have a feeling that he wouldn't be thanking his family for making some of these pictures on these five cards available.

#22

Back of #24

#25

Next up, a 10 card "Memorial Scene" subset showing some highlights from his career.  Card #31 stands out as it shows him playing in the 1996 MLB All Star Japan tour.  I'm not sure who the catcher is on the front of the card, but I'm pretty confident that the guy on the back of the card is his future Yankee teammate Alex Rodriquez.

#27*

* In case you're wondering, the remainder of the Giants 1993 draft class was Ryuji Kimura, Tetsuhiro Monna, Yoshinori Murata and Kazutaka Nishiyama.  Why does Shigeo Nagashima look so shifty in this picture?  

#31

Back of #31

The next subset is the six card "The Title" subset which has card commemorating various individual titles that he won in Japan (MVP, Home Run, etc):

#39

The nine card "Off Shot" subset shows a bunch of candid photos.  Like the "Legend" subset, the photos on the front and back of the cards don't necessarily have anything to do with each other.

Back of #43

#46 (Godzilla meets Gamera!)

#47

The final subset in the set is three reprinted baseball cards.  One is his 1993 BBM rookie card (#423), reprinted at the slightly smaller size that all the 1993 BBM cards were.  The next is the 1997 Diamond Heroes Jersey card (which of course does not have an actual jersey in it) which was one of the first memorabilia cards that BBM did.  The final is his 1999 Yomiuri Shimbun Giants "Special" card:

#54

I did get one of the silver "Special" cards with the box I bought.  While I think the photography is fantastic through much of the regular cards, I can't say I'm real impressed with the silver card:

The box itself is a little pretentious, especially the text on the back of it:  "The memory of his greatness comes flooding back to us as we close our eyes and let our minds drift through the timeless tunnel of the history.  The man, who has had nothing but trials, continues to impress us with superb records.  He is extraordinary and graceful indeed."

I've picked up a couple of BBM's box sets that are dedicated to a single player.  I think this is one of the better ones, despite the pretentiousness, due to the really impressive collection of photographs that BBM included.