Big News

I'm going to Japan for the first time ever in March to see Pool One of the Second Round of the World Baseball Classic.  I've been planning this trip for a couple of months, but it wasn't actually until today that all the pieces fell into place that are allowing me to do this.  I booked my airfare, my hotel room and my WBC tickets this afternoon, so I'm all set.  I think I'm equal parts excited and terrified to be doing this - I've never gone overseas before to a country where English wasn't the first language.

I've already gotten a lot of great advice from Ryan on many things, including what card shops to go to. Deanna Rubin and Ralph Pearce have also passed along useful tips as well.

Beyond the WBC games, I'm also planning on seeing a couple open-sen games - a Marines-Lions game up at Seibu Dome and a Dragons-Baystars game down in Yokohama.  Since the Lions and the Dragons are my two favorite teams, I don't think that could have worked out much better.

Posting will probably be pretty light for the next month as I'm going to attempt to do a crash course in Japanese to attempt to at least be able to ask where a bathroom is.  (Of course, I got four sets of cards in the mail today, so that'll distract me for a week or so...)

Boomer Wells

This week's installment of John Gibson's Japan Baseball Weekly podcast features an interview with Greg "Boomer" Wells, who played for a couple teams back in the Eighties and early Nineties.  I say "a couple teams" - it was really just two, but one of them changed their name twice while he was playing for them.  He signed with the Hankyu Braves in 1983 and was with the team when they were sold to Orix following the 1988 season.  The team was known as the Orix Braves in 1989 and 1990, then as the Orix Blue Wave in 1991, his last year with the team.  He spent the 1992 season playing for the Fukuoka Daiei Hawks before calling it a career.  He shows up pretty regularly in the recent OB sets, but I thought I'd show a couple cards from his playing days, one in each team's uniform:

1988 Takara Braves #44

1990 Calbee #98

1991 BBM #359

1992 BBM #364

(In case you were wondering, Mike Laga was #44 for the Hawks in 1991 and 1992 which is why Boomer couldn't get it when he joined Fukuoka.)

Just for grins, I thought I'd also show this:

1982 Topps #203

Two of the three guys on this card went on to play in Japan - Barfield played one season with Yomiuri in 1993, the year after Wells ended his career.

Card Of The Week January 27

The big news out of Japan last week was the trade between the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters and the Orix Buffaloes that sent star outfielder Yoshio Itoi and 2006 Pacific League Rookie Of The Year Tomoya Yago to the Buffaloes for Hiroshi Kisanuki, Keiji Obiki and Shogo Akada.  It has been speculated that the fact that earlier last week Itoi had requested that the Fighters post him probably factored into Nippon Ham's decision to trade him.

Itoi originally signed with the Fighters back in 2003 or 2004 out of Kinki University as a pitcher.  He converted to outfield in 2006 and became a regular (and a star) in 2009.  Here's his rookie card from the 2004 BBM 1st Version set (#150) when he was still a pitcher:

Other Korean Cards

I've learned about some other Korean cards beyond the 1993 and 1994 Teleca cards that I got scans from Robert Shadlow.  Here's a quick list:

- Ralph Pearce sent me a scans of a sheet of 1983 "takji" cards - basically round menko (or pogs).  Here's the scans showing both the  front and the back of the sheet:

It's a good thing the cards are still in the sheets - some of the cards only show a player's legs, belt buckle or upper arm - they only make sense in the full sheet.

It looks like the cards are all of the Samsung Lions except for what I think is a card of Nankai Hawk player Yuji Kubodera.  Neither Ralph or I have any idea why Kubodera has a card on the sheet, unless he was maybe of Korean descent but born in Japan (like Masaichi Kaneda and Isao Haritmoto).

- Teleca did some phone cards in 1991.  Robert sent me scans of those as well:

A couple of these showed up on the sleeve for the Haitai Tigers Teleca cards in 1993.

- I picked up a couple of what appear to be Teleca cards from 1992 from eBay recently.  They have the same number icons on their fronts as the 1993 Teleca cards have on their backs.  I have no idea if they were sold in sleeves or not - the cards I got didn't have sleeves with them.  Here are scans of the fronts and the backs of them:

#3 Han Dae-hwa

Back of card #3

#4 Kim Sang-Hun

Back of card #4

#6 Kim Song-Han

Back of card #6

- In addition to their other 1994 cards, Teleca produced at least one phone cards that year.  Robert also scanned that one for me as well:

It looks like this is to commemorate the Twins winning the KBO that year.

- Finally, Robert also sent me scans for a group of six phone cards for the LG Twins that Teleca produced in 1997.  It looks like the cards came in two sleeves that held three cards each.  The sleeves were tucked into an envelope.  Here are some scans:

Outside of envelope

Open Envelope

Cards in sleeves

Cards out of sleeves

I have no idea who any of the players are.

My thanks to Robert and Ralph for providing me with the scans.

1994 Teleca Korean Cards Part 3 - LG Twins

The LG Twins cards that Teleca produced in 1994 were different from their other KBO cards from that year.  These cards were unnumbered (unless you count the uniform numbers) and had a front and back design that were used for no other team that year.  The backs were colorful, showing a full color team logo along with a yellow background on the player's statistics and a big light green square that I assume was meant for autographs.  The cards were sold the same way as the other cards that year - in sleeves that were meant to be sold one card at a time.

Here's the list of Twins cards, organized by uniform number along with links to their scans on Flickr.  As before, all these scans were done by Robert Shadlow.

Number	Player	Front	Back	Sleeve
1	Jeong Sam-heum	scan	scan	scan
2	Kim Dong-soo	scan	scan	scan
3	Kim Seon-jin	scan	scan	scan
6	Yu Ji-hyeon	scan	scan	scan
7	Kim Jae-hyeon	scan	scan	scan
8	Chou Hun-jae	scan	scan	scan
9	Han Dae-hwa	scan	scan	scan
12	Kim Jeong-min	scan	scan	scan
15	Lee Jong-yeol	scan	scan	scan
17	Pak Jun-tae	scan	scan	scan
18	Cha Dong-cheol	scan	scan	scan
21	Kang Bong-soo	scan	scan	scan
24	Kim Ki-bum	scan	scan	scan
27	Seo Hyo-in	scan	scan	scan
31	Cha Myeong-seok	scan	scan	scan
33 30	No Chan-yeop	scan	scan	scan
35	Kim Tae-won	scan	scan	scan
40	Kim Yeong-jik	scan	scan	scan
41	Kim Yong-soo	scan	scan	scan
42	Jun Il-soo	scan	scan	scan
47	Lee Sang-Hoon	scan	scan	scan
54	Kim Tae-min	scan	scan	scan
61	Pak Cheol-hong	scan	scan	scan
62	Seo Yong-bin	scan	scan	scan
67	Park Jong-ho	scan	scan	scan
77	Lee Kwang-hoan	scan	scan	scan

There are two different sleeves that the cards came in.  The first was the simple logo design with a mostly blank back, similar to the ones that the other team's cards came in.  The other one showed what I think are three Teleca phone cards on the front and had the Twins' 1994 schedule on the back.

12/30/16 UPDATE - I just now realized that No Chan-Yeop wore number 30, not number 33.  I've corrected the list but I didn't resort it.

New Non-BBM sets

A couple of new sets have come to my attention that are either already out or will be out soon:

- Ryan of This Card Is Cool had a post up recently where he put up a card from Hiroshima Athlete Magazine's "Carp Starting Lineup" set.  It's a 28 card boxed set (27 "regular" cards plus one "special" card) featuring (obviously) the Carp.  I think this was released to celebrate the magazine's 10th Anniversary but I'm not sure - it looks like the set only has current players in it so it's not an "Anniversary" set in the manner that BBM has had anniversary sets.  There are apparently possible autographed cards with the set.

- Hiroshima Athlete Magazine will also be releasing another 28 card box set in April called something like "Carp Stars and Legends".  This set will feature both active and OB Carp players in it.  It looks like again that there will be 27 "regular" cards plus one "special" card.  I'm not positive but it may be the case that each set will contain an autograph card.

- In the same post that I mentioned before, Ryan pointed out that Sports Graphic Magazine will be releasing a set dedicated to Kenta Maeda of the Carp (we're just wallowing in Carp sets today).  The set may actually have been released this past week.  It's a box set containing 81 "regular" cards plus one (or more - not really sure) "special" cards which could include autograph or memorabilia cards.

- Ryan also mentioned in that same post that the Japan Baseball Promotion Association (formerly known as the All Japan Baseball Foundation) was releasing "The History Of Best Nine Part Two" boxed set in late February (the 23rd).  It's a 46 card box set (45 "regular" cards plus one autograph card) that follows up the "Part One" set they released in December.

- I found some information online about a Saitama Seibu Lions "Rookies And Young Stars" box set.  I'm not sure who is putting the set out, but it will contain 27 "regular" cards plus an autograph card.  The set will be out in March.

- Jamabalaya added scans this week for a set called something like "Sakura Meikyukai".  This is a 45 card set (I'm guessing it's probably a box set) featuring Meikyukai players.  From looking at the list of Meikyukai players on their website (which oddly doesn't appear to list Masaichi Kaneda who founded it), I think there's 60 current members (including Kaneda).  So there are 15 members who are not in the set.  I didn't do a thorough look through, but it appears that only five active players are included - Michihiro Ogasawara, Tomonori Maeda, Hitoki Iwase, Kazuo Matsui and Masahiro Yamamoto, which leaves out Ichiro, Atsunori Inaba and Shinya Miyamoto.  The recently retired Hideki Matsui, Takuro Ishii and Tomoaki Kanemoto are in the set, but Hiroki Kokubo is not.  Others that I noticed missing were Kazuhiro Kiyohara, Kazuhiro Sasaki and Hideo Nomo.   Choji Murata, who almost never shows up in an OB set, shows up in this one, but Masaichi Kaneda and Katsuya Nomura who also almost never show up in OB sets, are no shows in this one as well.   I assume that "Sakura" is the company releasing the cards but I could be wrong.

I Got Noticed?

Just noticed something - my post about Hideki Matsui's cameo in a Godzilla movie went viral a couple weeks ago.  OK, "viral" is a bit overstating it, but apparently it got noticed by some slightly more serious blogs.  CBS Sport's Eye On Baseball picked up on it, posting an entry about the movie at 2:26 PM on January 3 (and they actually gave me credit with a link back to my post).  A little less than two hours later, Yahoo!'s Big League Stew published a post about the movie.  They credited the Eye On Baseball post with finding the cameo, although they actually quote my original post (but they didn't link to it!).  At some later point on January 3, there was a post on Bleacher Report talking about the cameo.   They credited the Yahoo! post as the source of the story.

So while I would have appreciated a little more credit for it, I'm happy to know that I made a contribution to our national dialogue on sports, even if it was for only a minute or so  (actually, probably just the 25 seconds that Matsui's cameo lasted).