2013 BBM 1st Version set

The news for this year's 1st Version set went up on BBM's website today.  This year's set is going to look a lot like the sets from the past two years.  There's going to be 324 player and manager cards (27 per team), 36 cards for the "Leader" subset (2012 statistical leaders and award winners), 19 cards for the 2012 Best Nine winners, 18 cards for the 2012 Golden Glove winners and 12 checklist cards.  There will also be (yet again) a cross-set subset that will be continued in other sets this year.  BBM first did this with the "Cross-Stream" cards in 2010 - the cards featured a water theme and were included in the 1st and 2nd Version, the Touch The Game and the individual team sets.  In 2011, the set was called "Cross-Blast", featured a dirt theme and was only included in the team sets.  Last year, the set was "Cross-Fire", featured a fire theme and was only included in the 1st and 2nd Version and Genesis sets.  Can you guess the theme for this year's set?  Jason called this one last summer - it's called "Cross-Wind" and has a wind/cloud/air theme.  I don't know yet which other sets the cards will be included with.

There will be three 12 card insert sets available (1 card for each team in each set I'm assuming).  I think one of the sets is something like "Young Hope" which I guess would be a young player from each team.  The other two are a rookie one and one called "Lightning".  I'm not sure what "Lightning" highlights but it appears that they are limited to 50 cards each.  There will also be memorabilia and autograph cards available along with parallel autograph versions of 9 player cards on each team and some sort of parallel issue of the Best Nine, Golden Glove and "Cross-Wind" subsets and the "Young Hope" and "Rookie" insert cards.

The big news for the set is that has increased the number of cards in a pack back to ten, which it hasn't been since 2003.  They had lowered it to nine for the 2003 2nd Version set, then eight for the 2004 1st Version set, where it remained until last year when they dropped it to six.  To allow them to return to ten cards in a pack, however, they raised the price of a pack of cards from 210 to 315 yen.  The price of a box of cards stayed at 6300 yen, but the number of packs dropped from 30 to 20.  However, with four more cards in a pack, a box of this year's set will contain 200 cards while a box of last year's will only have 180 cards.

As always, the set will be released in mid-April.

Never Mind The Bolicks, Here's Some More Gaijin

I thought I'd show a bunch of cards of guys who didn't make the new Legendary Foreigner set.  First up, a bunch of guys who had reasonably long NPB careers but were left out for some reason (in Sledge's case it may be because he may return to Japan after he recovers from his injury last season):

1984 Calbee Bobby Marcano (#356)

2000 Victory Phil Clark (#26)

2008 BBM 2nd Version Terrmel Sledge (#639)

Next, one of the handful of Americans to play in Japan in the 1930's, Harris McGalliard (aka "Bucky Harris"):

2000 BBM 20th Century Best 9 Harris McGalliard (#025)

Finally, a bunch of guys more famous for playing in the States (or in one case for the Cuban National team):

1979 TCMA Tony Muser (#4)

1990 Calbee Roy White (#241)

1984 Takara Kids Giants Reggie Smith (#7)

1987 Play Ball Ben Oglivie (#19)

1988 Takara Swallows Doug Decinces (#15)

1989 Lotte Mike Easler (#29)

1991 BBM Phil Bradley (#352)

1992 BBM Mike Marshall (#378)

1993 BBM Jesse Barfield (#312)

1993 BBM Rex Hudler (#327)

1995 BBM Glenn Davis (#454)

1995 BBM Late Series Pete Incaviglia (#636)

1995 BBM Shane Mack (#291)

1997 BBM Mike Greenwell (#440)

2004 BBM 2nd Version Omar Linares (#683)

2013 BBM Legendary Foreigner Set

In December, BBM put out an 81 card set dedicated to the foreigners that have come to Japan to play baseball.  I'm not sure what the "official" name of the set is - Google has translated it as something like "Strongest Legendary Alien" and Ryan thinks it probably should be "All Time Greatest Foreigners" but I'm going with "Legendary Foreigner", at least for now.

Ryan actually covered the set pretty well in a post he did recently so I'm not sure I have a whole lot to add here.  Of the 81 cards in the set, 72 of them are "regular" player cards and the remaining nine are a subset called "Off Shot" which features candid photos.

It is an interesting group that BBM selected to be in the set.  There's a handful of guys who had long careers in Japan - Leron and Leon Lee, Boomer Wells, Tuffy Rhodes, Alex Cabrera, Bobby Rose - and a group of players known better for their MLB careers who only played in Japan for one or two seasons - Davey Johnson, Bob Horner, Larry Parrish, Julio Franco, Cecil Fielder.  Most of the players fall into between.  As is typical for a BBM historic set, most of the players included were active from the 1970's and later, although there's a couple guys from the 1960's.  Many of the pre-1991 players have not appeared on a BBM card before.  The set also includes a couple of Taiwanese players in addition to the Westerners.

As with any set like this, you start to look at it and think about the guys that didn't make the set.  None of the Nisei players from the 1950's (like Wally Yonamine) made the set, nor did any of the handful of Americans to play in the pre-war era (like Harris McGalliard).  It would have been interesting if either of the American Baseball Hall of Famers who had played in Japan (Larry Doby and Rich Gossage) had been included (especially Gossage as I believe there are no Japanese cards of him at all).  I don't think there are any Koreans in the set - Jong-Beom Lee, who played four years with Chunichi in the late 90's might have been a good choice, as well as Dae-Sung Koo who spent a couple years with Orix.   Legendary Cuban slugger Omar Linares would have also be a good choice.  I think the biggest omission, however, was Bobby Marcano, who spent 11 years with Hankyu and Yakult in the 1970's and 1980's.


Here's some sample cards (Ryan has almost all of them scanned with his post and Jambalaya as usual has them as well):

#08

#03

#22

#76

2013 BBM Giants Legends Set

BBM put out a retrospective set on the Yomiuri Giants a few months back.  Called "Giants Legends", it's a 99 card set featuring Giants players, legends and otherwise.

I picked this up thinking it would be similar to BBM's team anniversary sets from the last few years but it really isn't.  In fact, I'd be hard pressed to say exactly what the point of this set is.  Of the 99 cards, 93 of them are for Giants players (well, 90 for Giants players and three cards for Shigeo Nagashima as manager).  The players are mostly OB with a handful of players active in 2012 in both Japan (Shinnosuke Abe, Hideki Okajma and Yoshibobu Takahashi) and the US (Hideki Matsui and Koji Uehara).  All of the players are from the 1960's and later.  There's a couple odd gaijin in the set - Davey Johnson, Clyde Wright and John Sipin.  I'm going to guess that the set is commemorating the managerial career of Shigeo Nagashima (1975-80, 1993-2001) - all the players would have been players Nagashima managed (and would explain why none of the cards of Nagashima are of him as a player).

The final six cards in the set support this theory.  The cards are entitled "The Great Scenes" and celebrate events from 1976 to 2000.  Nagashima is featured on the front of every card except one - the card for Sadaharu Oh's 756th home run.

Here's some sample cards (go here to see all of them):

#05

#33

#38

#16

#99

That last card commemorates the Giants defeat of the Hawks in the 2000 Nippon Series - the final Championship won by Nagashima.

UPDATE - I don't know why I was convinced Johnson was in the set.  Probably just got confused since Clyde Wright and John Sipin are in both this set and the "Legendary Foreigner" set and I just assumed Johnson was in both of them as well (he's only in the "Legendary Foreigner" set.

2013 BBM "Great Numbers" set

The first 2013 set released by BBM (back in November) is the latest edition in their annual "Historic Collection" sets.  This year's theme is "Great Numbers", highlighting the primary uniform numbers worn by different players.  As always, the 144 cards are split evenly between the active and OB players (72 for each).  Also as always, the OB players include players who were still active in the US in 2012 - Norichika Aoki, Hiroki Kuroda, Hisashi Iwakuma, Tsuyoshi Wada* and Hideki Matsui).

* OK, I guess Wada wasn't exactly "active" in 2012.  But he was on the Orioles roster for the season.

And also as always, the cards for the active players are split evenly between the 12 teams, six cards per team.

The 72 cards for the OB players include a 14 card subset for "The Great Retired Numbers" - the 14 players who have had their numbers officially retired by their teams*.  These 14 do not include Keishi Suzuki, whose #1 was retired by the Kintetsu Buffaloes but has since been un-retired by the Orix Buffaloes.  Both Suzuki and Mitsutaka Gotoh, who currently wears #1 for Orix, are included in the "regular" cards in the set.

* I say "officially retired" because I think there are some numbers that are "unofficially retired" - I don't think anyone other than Atsuya Furuta is ever going to wear #27 for the Swallows again, but it's not recognized as retired.

As for the set itself, it's a typical BBM "Historic Collection" set.  There's the usual mix of guys who seem to always show up in these (Kazuhiro Sasaki, Masumi Kuwata, Kazuhiro Kiyohara) along with a couple odd balls who don't (Daryl Spencer, Punch Sato).  Masaichi Kaneda makes an extremely rare appearance due to his #34 being retired by the Giants.  As usual, the players are predominately from the 1970's to the 2000's, with only a very few from earlier - mostly in the retired number subset, but there's a couple like Shigeru Sugishita and Futoshi Nakanishi.  I did find it odd that there's a couple uniform numbers between 0 and 27 that were not represented in the set - 12 and 24.  I'm not sure why BBM didn't find someone to fill those numbers (Chang-Yong Lim of the Swallows wore #12 for example).  There are no uniform number 42s either - according to the JapanBall Blog, #42 is the most popular number for a foreign player to wear in Japan.  The set does feature a handful of gaijin OB players (the afore-mentioned Spencer, Boomer Wells, Randy Bass) although I don't think there's any active Westerners included.

The highest uniform number in the set is Norihiro Nakamura's #99 - no ikusei (development squad) players were included.

Here's some sample cards (as always, you can see all the cards over at Jambalaya):

#006

#083

#017

#130

#144

I don't think I've ever seen a picture of Tsutomu Wakamatsu with a mustache before.  Or maybe not that noticeable of one.

Card Of The Week February 3

Masanori Murakami, who was the first Japanese player in the majors back in 1964, has been named a Goodwill Ambassador by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees .  He is the first former athlete to be so named.

There's not a lot of Murakami cards out there from when he actually played (1963-1982).  He's got a card in the 1967 Kabaya-Leaf set, one in the 1979 TCMA set and he shows up in the 1981 and 1982 Takara Fighters sets.  It does not appear that he ever had a Calbee card, although I could be wrong (SportsCardForum's Inventory manager doesn't list any, but I think their listings for pre-1981 Calbee is incomplete).  Here's his 1979 TCMA card (#37):

2012 BBM Nippon Series Set

The 2012 edition of BBM's annual Nippon Series set (traditionally the final set of the "card year" for BBM) was released back in December.  It's a 72 card boxed set commemorating the Giants defeat of the Fighters in six games in last year's Series.  There's 32 cards for the Giants players (and manager Tatsunori Hara), 34 cards for the Fighters (and manager Hideki Kuriyama), five cards for the award winners (MVP Tetsuya Utsumi, Fighting Spirit Atsunori Inaba and outstanding players Hisayoshi Chono, John Bowker and Shonnosuke Abe) and one card showing the Giants celebrating (#S72 above).

There's a surprising number of players in the set who did not appear in either the 1st or 2nd Version sets this year - 13 Fighters (Yuji Iiyama, Yuya Ishii, Takahiro Imanami, Manabu Iwadate, Dustin Molleken, Kazuya Murata, Masaru Nakamura, Takuya Nakashima, Haruki Nishikawa, Kenshi Sugiya, Kazuhito Tadano, Toshiyuki Yanuki. and Mitsuo Yoshikawa) and 10 Giants (Satoshi Fukuda, Shigeyuki Furuki, Dicky Gonzalez, Yoshihito Ishii, Ken Katoh, Yuki Koyama, Kazunari Sanematsu, Takahiro Suzuki, Yasunari Takagi, and Kenji Yano) for a total of 23 of the 64 player cards, over a third.  There's probably a number of factors contributing to this high number - the smaller 1st Version set the BBM's been doing lately and I think both teams had a number of injuries coming into the Series (neither Kensuke Tanaka of the Fighters nor Toshiya Sugiuchi of the Giants appeared in the games for example).  Still, that's a lot of guys who were no shows in the "flagship" sets.

The photography is pretty good for the set although I have my usual complaint that it's difficult to see any real evidence that the pictures were taken at the Series.  I was really impressed with the picture of Tetsuya Matsumoto until I realized that BBM used a very similar shot for him in the 2009 Nippon Series set.

Here's some sample cards.  You can see all of them at Jambalaya:

#S30

#S02

#S08

#S51

#S60

#S48

I wonder how much it bothers BBM that Konami sponsors the Nippon Series and they are forced to put a competitor's name on their cards?