1987 Play Ball

Having done a post for the 1979 TCMA set the other day, I thought it'd be good to do one for the other common US made Japanese card set - the 1987 "Play Ball Japan" set.

I'm not sure who actually printed up this set.  It contains 42 cards and like the TCMA set was apparently only sold as a complete set.  Not sure how it was marketed (as I really wasn't paying attention to the hobby in 1987) but again like the TCMA set I doubt it was marketed in Japan.

Like the TCMA set, there is an emphasis on Western players in the set.  20 of the 42 cards are of Western players including Bob Horner, Warren Cromartie, Randy Bass, Leon and Leron Lee, Ben Oglivie, Brad Lesley, Boomer Wells, Pat Putnam and Randy Johnson (this one, not that one).  In fact, according to the list of Westerners playing in Japan in 1987 included in Baseball America's 1988 Almanac, the only ones not included in the set were Jim Adduci of the Whales and Bobby Castillo of the Dragons (and Castillo only appeared in two games). (UPDATE - Baseball America's Almanac apparently does not contain a definitive list of gaijin - Sixto Lezcano appeared in 20 games for the Whales but does not appear in this set.)

There's only five Hall Of Famers in the set - Hiromitsu Kadota, Sachio Kinugas, Manabu Kittabeppu, Hiromitsu Ochiai and Sadaharu Oh (Giants manager).  Kazuhiro Kiyohara is the sole member of the Meikyukai who is not a Hall Of Famer in the set.  There's several other big stars who appear in the set including Masayuki Kakefu, Suguru Egawa, Hiromichi Ishige, Akinobu Mayumi and current Lions manager Hisanobu Watanabe.

With a set this small, however, there's a number of guys missing.  Yutaka Fukumoto, Osamu Higashio, Choji Murata, Yutaka Ono, Tsutomu Wakamatsu and Hisashi Yamada are all in the Hall Of Fame but not in this set.  Meikyukai members Koji Akiyama, Hiromasa Arai, Hideji Kato, Norihiro Komada, Kimiyasu Kudoh and Yasunori Ohshima are also missing as are Tatsunori Hara and Masumi Kuwata.

The design of the set is very simple - full bleed photos with the player name in white text across the bottom of the card.  Like the TCMA set, all the photos are posed shots although I don't think the photography is quite as good.  Here are some sample cards:

#22

#8

#35

#4

#13

This set shows up on Ebay quite often and quite inexpensively.  It's worth picking up but I wouldn't spend more than $10 to $15 on it myself.

UPDATE - just for fun, I decided to compare who was in this set with who was in Epoch's All Japan Baseball Foundation 1987 set from a few years back.  There are 9 players who appear in both sets - Hideo Furuya, Hiromichi Ishige, Kazuhiko Ishimine, Sachio Kinugasa, Hiromi Matsunaga, Sadaharu Oh, Katsuo Soh, Yutaka Takagi and Kazunori Yamamoto.  The Epoch set includes some of the guys I felt were missing from the Play Ball Japan set - Akiyama, Arai, Hara, Kato, Kuwata, and Ono while Play Ball has a hadful of the guys I felt were missing from the Epoch set - the gaijin players and Ochiai.  I feel like these two sets combined are about two thirds of what a good 1987 set would include.

UPDATE #2 - at Jason's request, here's what a card back looks like:

Card Of The Week September 8

Last Saturday, former Tokyo Yakult Swallow pitcher Chang-Yomg Lim made his major debut with the Chicago Cubs.  Lim had signed last winter with the Cubs while he was recovering from an arm injury - as far as I could tell at the time the Cubs didn't expect him to pitch in the majors this year.  He debuted in the Cubs minor league system in mid-June and ended up working his way through four levels (Arizona, Daytona, Tennesse and Iowa) before reaching the ichi-gun Cubs.  One of the batters he faced Saturday was his old team Norichika Aoki, now with the Brewers.

Here's a card of Lim from the 2009 Konami Baseball Heroes World Baseball Classic set (#W09R116):

This may be a good time to mention that as far as I've been able to tell and as far as my contacts in Japan have been able to tell, there will be no Japanese World Baseball Classic set this year.

1979 TCMA

Someone asked me about one of the cards in 1979 TCMA set in a comment the other day and it made me think about the fact that I've been meaning to a post about that set ever since I started this blog.  So, here it is:

TCMA was a card company from upstate New York that existed from the early 1970's to the late 1980's.  The company name was formed from the initials of the two guys who started the company (Tom Collier and Mike Aronstein) although Aronstein bought Collier out very early in the company's history.  There was a decision made at some point however that TCMA would stand for The Card Memorabilia Associates.

TCMA is mostly known for three things - the minor league sets they did from the mid-1970's up to around 1985, the "collector" sets they would do for old teams and players and the challenge they made to Topps' monopoly in 1975 with a set marketed under the company name "SSPC".  But in 1979, they did a 90 card set for "Japanese Pro Baseball".

This set was marketed in the US in the same hobby publications that you could order other TCMA products.  It was never marketed in Japan (and has no Japanese printing on any of the cards) - I've been told by a couple of the "pioneers" of the Japanese baseball card collecting hobby that this is actually a great set to take to Japan to sell since the card stores over there don't see it very often.  Like the other TCMA sets it was only sold as a complete set, not as individual cards.

Player selection in the set is a little odd.  There are 15 Hall Of Famers in the set - Kaoru Betto (Whales manager), Isao Harimoto, Tatsuro Hirooka (Swallows manager), Sachio Kinugasa, Takeshi Koba (Carp manager), Shigeo Nagashima (Giants manager), Katsuya Nomura, Sadaharu Oh, Katsuo Ohsugi, Keishi Suzuki, Morimichi Takagi, Tsutomu Wakamatsu, Koji Yamamoto, Kazuhiro Yamuchi (Orions manager) and Wally Yonamine (Giants coach) and another 5 players who are in the Meikyukai but not the Hall Of Fame - Michiyo Arito, Masahiro Doi, Makoto Matsubara, Yasunori Ohshima and Isao Shibata.  Other Japanese stars include Yutaka Enatsu, Senichi Hoshino, Masanori Murakami, Yasushi Tao, Koichi Tabuchi and Masayuki Kakefu.  As you would expect for a set being sold only in the US, there is a large number of Westerners in the set - 27 in all, nearly a third of the set.  This includes Leron and Leon Lee, Bobby Marcano, John Sipin, Gene Martin, Charlie Manuel, Carlos May and Felix Millan.  It also includes Don Blasingame who was in his season as Tigers manager and Vernon Law who was a coach for the Lions from 1979 to 1981.

What's odd about the player selection is who's NOT in the set.  The Hankyu Braves are only represented in the set by two gaijin (Marcano and Bernie Williams - this Bernie Williams, not that Bernie Williams) so there's no Hisashi Yamada or Yutaka Fukumoto.  There's several other Hall Of Famers active at this time who aren't included - Osamu Higashio, Hiromitsu Kadota, Manabu Kitabeppu, Tsuneo Horiuchi, Choji Murata as well as Buffaloes manager Yukio Nishimoto.

I noticed something else a little odd about the set - the Whales had moved from Kawasaki to Yokohama before the previous season, changing their name from the Taiyo Whales to the Yokohama Taiyo Whales.  Three of the ten cards in the set for the Whales however (Makoto Matsubara, Masayuki Nakatsuka and Daisuke Yamashita) show their players in the Taiyo Whale uniform, not the Yokohama uniform - it's pretty obvious because the Taiyo uniforms were green and gold and the Yokohama uniforms were blue and white.  So there's a couple pictures used in the set that were a couple years old at the time.

#7 Yamashita  (left),  #52 Millan (right)

Odd though it may be, it's still a really cool little set.  1979 was the first year that Seibu owned the Lions and they brought in Tabuchi and Nomura for veteran leadership.  It's interesting to see those two in Lions uniforms rather than the Tigers and Hawks uniforms that they wore for most of the previous seasons.  The photography is all posed shots and some of the photos are quite good.  Here's some more sample cards:

#76

#1

#9

#80

#17

#68

#12

#20

This and the 1987 "Play Ball" set are probably the easiest and least expensive pre-BBM sets to get.  I think I've seen complete sets going for less than $50 on Ebay (although I have to admit that I don't pay a lot of attention to it anymore since I have one :-))

Some of the information about TCMA's history (other than my own recollections - I actually had bought this set in 1979 when I was in high school but sold it with the rest of my card collection when I was in college) came from this interview with Mike Aronstein.

You know, if I remember correctly, there was an MLB All Star tour of Japan following the 1979 season that was televised back in the US on HBO - games probably weren't live but with the lack of internet or ESPN it would have been hard to find the results of the games anywhere before they were televised.  I remember sitting in front of the TV with this set in hand, watching the games and figuring out who players were.  At the time, I didn't know who anyone was other than Oh and Murakami and some of the gaijin.

UPDATE - I realized that I had left Hiromitsu Kadota's name off the list of Hall Of Famers who were not included in the set.

Oh Wait, They Have Been Listing New Stuff

I've been a little frustrated lately because I knew BBM had some new stuff coming out but I hadn't seen any updates on their website in almost a month.  Last night I discovered the reason for this - BBM rearranged some stuff on their website and is now listing new sets here instead of here.  The updates have been there - I just have been looking in the wrong place for them.  So without further adieu, here's the new batch of upcoming BBM sets:

- I waited so long on this first one that it actually got released this week - a box set called "Hui Carp" which I think means "Bright Carp" but I'm not positive.  The set contains a mere 19 cards - 18 cards of current Carp players and a "special" card - possible jersey, patch or bat cards along with autograph cards of current as well as OB Carp players.  I don't usually care much for the box team sets but I have to say that I find the base cards in this set pretty attractive.

- To continue the theme with the "Young Lions" and "Young Fighters" sets BBM released last month, BBM is putting out a "Young Tigers" box set.  Like the two earlier sets, this is a box set containing 28 cards - 27 "regular" cards plus one "special" card.  The "special" card could possibly be a photo card, a foil autograph card, a real autograph card or a jersey card.  The set will be out in late September.

- Following the 2003 season, the Nippon Ham Fighters decided to relocate from Tokyo to Sapporo and renamed themselves the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters.  To celebrate the Fighters' 10th anniversary of the move, BBM is putting out a pack based set called something like "10th Season With Hokkaido".  The base set will contain 90 cards but there are no details about any subsets to those cards.  There's a nine card insert set listed but again there aren't any details about it.  It looks like there will be autograph and jersey cards available as well.  This is the first time that the Fighters have had any sort of Anniversary or OB set, leaving the Eagles as the only team not to have had one done by BBM.  Given that next year will be the Eagles' 10th season, I suspect there will be something forthcoming.  The Fighters set will be out in late September.

Calbee also rearranged things on their website so I also discovered last night that they had information about Series Three available.  After increasing the number of "regular" cards in the set to 84 for Series Two, they've gone back to 72 (6 per team) for this set.  There are three subsets available with this set however - a 23 card All Star subset featuring the players elected by the fan vote (which is looking more and more like it'll be the only All Star related set this year as BBM still has not announced their annual set), a 2 card Hideki Matsui Memorial set featuring a reprint of his 2002 Calbee card and a card for his retirement ceremony, and the remaining four cards for the checklist subset which completes the team mascot theme.  There will also (as always) be a 24 card "Star" insert set (2 players per team) and another mail in box set - this time it's a 12 card set featuring a top strikeout pitcher for each team.  As usual, Calbee has put a checklist for the set online.  The set will be out on September 23.

UPDATE - I thought Calbee's website said the cards would be released September 23, but Jambalaya already has the cards listed so maybe it came out earlier than that.

2003 BBM 1st Version

2003 BBM 1st Version Set Summary

Size:  432 cards
Cards Per Team:  32 (team card, manager + 30 players)
Team Card Theme:  Spring Training
Number Of Leader Cards: 33
Checklists: None
Subsets: 2002 Retirement Players (15)
Inserts: Best 9, Golden Gloves, Slugger, MVP (Light Packs only)
Memorabilia Cards: Jersey or windbreaker cards for the 2002 League MVPs - Hideki Matsui and Alex Cabrera; Jersey or windbreaker cards for the 2002 ERA Leaders - Masumi Kuwata and Masahiko Kaneda; Four different Combo Jersey or windbreaker cards - one with Matsui & Cabrera, one with Matsui & Kuwata, one with Cabrera & Kaneda and one with Kuwata & Kaneda.  (When I say Jersey or Windbreaker - I don't know for sure which it is.  Engel is unclear.)
Parallels: 120 cards have black facsimile autographs, 60 cards have a kira version (Light packs only).  There's also an orange parallel of the Leader cards and an autographed (real autographs!) parallel of the Retirement Player cards.  UPDATE - there's also a "silver" version of the Leader subset with the Light Packs.

Notable Rookies: Shuichi Murata, Tsuyoshi Nishioka, Shohei Tateyama, Tsuyoshi Wada

Ahh 2003.  The year it started getting really complicated...

2003 was the year that BBM decided to introduce a second type of pack to sell cards in - the Light Pack.  Up until 2003, BBM had always sold their "flagship" sets in 10 card packs for 200 yen.  The Light Packs were five card packs sold for 100 yen.  There were more differences in the two packs than the amount of cards.  The 10 card packs could have any of the cards 1-432 in them as well as the memorabilia cards, the Best 9, Golden Glove and Slugger inserts and the facsimile autographed parallels.  The Light Packs would only have cards 1-405 in them (no Retirement Players or Team Checklists), no memorabilia cards, only a 2 card MVP insert and only the Kira parallels.

The fact that the Light Packs only have cards 1-405 in them is supported by the back of the Light Pack box:

One other thing to take note of - this was the last "flagship" set until 2013 that BBM sold in packs of 10 cards.  Pack size would drop to 9 cards for the 2003 2nd Version and 8 for 2003 to 2011. In 2012 the number of cards in a pack dropped to 6.  For 2013, the number of cards in a pack returned to 10, however the price per pack jumped from 210 to 315 yen.

After being put in separate sets in 2002, the Best 9 and Golden Glove inserts were reunited again.  Each insert set had two parallel versions - a serially numbered to 300 version and a send away version.

#BN2

#GG15

The twelve cards in the Slugger insert set had a playing card theme.  I'm not sure how the suit was selected for each card but the playing card number is the player's uniform number.  They had a gold parallel that were each serially numbered to 100.

#SG11

After having two levels of facsimile autograph parallels in 2001 and 2002, BBM went back to only a single parallel version in this set.  There are 120 black autograph parallels, 10 per team.

#260

There were 60 cards with Kira parallels in the Light Packs, five per team.  I know I have some but I couldn't find them in time for this post.  I will update this post later when they turn up.

The set only included one subset in addition to the standard "Leaders" subset.  This subset honored 15 players who retired at the end of the 2002 season - Koji Akiyama, Yasuo Fujii, Kenji Furukubo, Mitsuchika Hirai, Takahiro Ikeyama, Hiroo Ishii, Minoru Kasai, Koki Morita, Hiroshi Nagadomi, Hiroki Nomura, Masaji Shimizu, Yasuaki Taihoh, Kazuhiro Takeda, Shoji Tohyama and Yasuyuki Yamaguchi.  Each card shows a picture from the players actual on field retirement ceremony.

#407

This is actually one of my favorite BBM sets.  There's something about the design I really like, even though typically I prefer full bleed photos, not these faux white borders.  In my opinion, this would be the last attractive BBM design until 2006.

#126

#358

#109

#177

Back of #74 (Shigeki Noguchi)

Other cards and ephemera:

#430

#385

Regular Pack Box

Regular Pack Wrapper

Light Pack Box

Light Pack Wrapper

The regular box contained a small poster/information sheet.  Unlike previous years, the front of the sheet was in black and white rather than color.  The back side of the sheet contained a checklist for the set.  There was no information sheet in the Light Pack box.

UPDATE: Still haven't found any of my Kira parallels, but I discovered that I had one of the orange parallels for the leader cards (#392).  Apparently they were numbered to 500:

UPDATE #2 - Found the Kira's:

#200

Not sure the scan really does it justice.  It's basically a "shiny" version of the card with some sort of dotted pattern in the background.

I also discovered another parallel that Engel does not list - there was a silver version of the Leader subset that I'm pretty sure were only found in the Light Packs.  I don't know for sure but I assume that there's a silver version for each Leader card:

#378

These may be considered "kira" as well although they don't have the dotted pattern in the background like the player cards do.  Engel does not list the Leader cards with the kira cards in the checklist however.  I did notice that Jason was already aware of these parallels.

Card Of The Week September 1

This card was included in a lot of blank backed bromide cards that I won on Ebay a while back.  I've been puzzling over it for a while but I think I just had a break through in the past week on who it is and where the picture is from.

Initially when I got the lot of cards, I had no idea what set any of them were from.  Then I got the "Vintage Card Edition" of Gary Engel's "Japanese Baseball Card Checklist And Price Guide".  I was able to identify two of the cards from the lot as being from the 1958 Hinomaru Giants set.  I was pretty confident that most of the remaining cards in the lot were from the 1959 Hinomaru set, even though most of the cards didn't appear in the list in the book (the general appearance of the cards match).  This one, though, still defied identification.

For one thing, I couldn't figure out the team.  The "K" on the hat looks like the Kokutetsu Swallows hat from the 1950's but the emblem on the shirt looks nothing like the Swallows uniforms.

Finally I started trying to figure out the kanji and a couple of things started to click.  First, I assumed that the two kanji in parenthesis identified the team (which is typical of a lot of the old menkos and bromides).  From those kanji, it looks like the team is the Nishitetsu Lions - which is really weird because the Lions never wore a hat with a "K" on it.  But the team name being in parenthesis was a clue in itself - the 1959 Hinomaru cards just had the team name on the front, not the team name in parenthesis.  So this card really wasn't from either of the two sets that the other cards in the lot were from.  However, in Engel's writeup of the 1959 set, he states that there is known to be another Hinomaru set from 1956 that is currently too little known to be checklisted yet.  So (assuming that all the cards in the lot are Hinomaru which could be a stretch) maybe this card was actually from 1956.

The player's name is a single kanji and I think it's "Hata" (I believe that the other two kanji indicate that he's a left handed pitcher).  I took a look at the 1956 Lions roster and discovered that there was a 19 year old left handed pitcher named Takayuki Hata on the team.  There's a good chance then that this is him but that still doesn't explain the uniform.

The final piece in the puzzle may have fallen into place when I looked Hata up in Japan Baseball Daily's Data Warehouse.  Hata had gone to Kokura High School where he played in four Koshien tournaments.  He signed contracts with both the Lions and the Hawks and the commissioner's office ultimately awarded his rights to Nishitetsu.  But he was unable to attend spring training that year (1956) while waiting for everything to settle down.  Is it possible that Hinomaru, being unable to get a picture of him playing for the Lions during spring training, decided to use a picture of him from high school instead?  Is the "K" actually for Kokura?

Great News From Baseball Reference

Baseball Reference has now added Japanese baseball statistics going back to 1936.  The stats are in a separate section from both MLB and the minor leagues, appropriately cataloging NPB as distinct from both entities.  The best part is that the stats are updated daily.

There's still some bugs in the system with how the teams are listed - they seem to be trying to do it by city and getting a little confused about what counts as a city (i.e. Bunkyo isn't a city, it's part of Tokyo).  I'm sure they'll get it all settled soon.