Shinya Miyamoto

Shinya Miyamoto of the Swallows is retiring as of the end of the season (the Swallows have one last game on Tuesday in the Tokyo Dome against the Giants).  The Swallows held a retirement ceremony for him last week at their last home game of the year.  Miyamoto has played his entire career with the Swallows.  He was taken by Yakult in the second round of the 1995 draft (held in the fall of 1994).  He appeared in three Nippon Series with the Swallows winning all three (1995, 1997 and 2001).  He made eight All Star teams in his 19 year career.  He reached 2000 hits last season, becoming a member of the Meikyukai.

I did a post on Miyamoto last season in honor of his 2000th hit so I'm not going to show too many cards here.  I still don't have his rookie card (1995 BBM #553) or his first Calbee card (2000 #054) although I do have the reprint of his first Calbee card from last year's Memorial subset.

2012 Calbee #M-33

Here's a smattering of other cards for him:

1997 BBM Nippon Series #S16

1998 BBM #273

2000 BBM Diamond Heroes #192

2001 Upper Deck Victory #023

2005 Konami Baseball Heroes Old Black Edition #B05B074

2006 BBM Swallows #TY97

2008 BBM 2nd Version #733

2012 BBM 2nd Version #666

Card Of The Week October 6

Lost in all the hub bub surrounding Masahiro Tanaka's undefeated season is the fact that Chihiro Kaneko of the Orix Buffaloes is having a pretty damn good season himself.  Kaneko has gone 14-8 this year with an ERA of 1.96 for a not particularly good team.  He actually has actually given up fewer hits this year in more innings pitched than Tanaka and has more strikeouts than him also.  He's walked about 25 more guys though and given up three more home runs.

Kaneko pitched today.  I suspect that he'll pitch one of the two games that the Eagles and Buffaloes are making up next weekend (during the First Stage of the Climzx Series).  It might be cool if he and Tanaka faced off in one of the games but I would be stunned if Tanaka appears in either of the games with the Final Stage starting the following Thursday.

Here's Kaneko's rookie card from the 2005 BBM 1st Version set (#202):

Former Teammates

I had pointed out this card (#86) from this year's All Star Game Memories 80's set from BBM when I wrote up the set a few weeks back.  It features Masahiro Doi and three players who are labelled former teammates - Akinobu Mayumi, Yoshiharu Wakana and Mitsui Motoi.  I got curious to see when these guys were teammates and why they weren't anymore.  It turns out that they were all teammates with the Lions in the late 1970's.

2013 BBM The Trade Stories #15

Masahiro Doi was originally signed by the Kintetsu Buffaloes in 1961.  He was traded to the then Taiheiyo Club Lions in the 1974-75 off season for (I think) pitcher Yutaka Yanagida.  He would finish his career with the new Seibu Lions following the 1981 season.

2010 BBM Lions 60th Anniversary #71

Akinobu Mayumi was drafted by the Taiheiyo Club Lions in 1972.  By 1977 he was an everyday player for the now Crown Lighter Lions and by 1978 he was a star, making both the All Star squad and the Best 9 team for the first time.

2008 BBM Back To The 70's #058

Yoshiharu Wakana was drafted in by the Lions a year earlier than Mayumi.  He also became a regular for the Lions in 1977, making his first All Star team that year.  

Following the 1978 season, the Lions were bought by the Seibu corporation, who moved the team from Fukuoka to a new ballpark in Tokorozawa near Tokyo.  The new ownership wanted to acquire a "flagship" player and did so by sending Mayumi, Wakana, Masashi Takenouchi, Masafumi Takeda and 20 million yen to the Tigers in a blockbuster trade for Kenji Furusawa and perennial All Star Koichi Tabuchi,   

Mayumi would spend the rest of his career with Hanshin, retiring after the 1995 season.  He would go on to manage the Tigers for three seasons from 2009 to 2011.

Wakana had a little more interesting career following the trade,  He played for the Tigers for four years after the trade, resigning halfway through the 1982 season when it became public knowledge that he was having an affair with an actress.

Bizarrely, 1983 saw him start the season in the United States as a coach with the New York Mets' AAA team in Norfolk, Virginia which was known as the Tidewater Tides.  (And before you ask - yes, there's a card of him in the 1983 TCMA set for the Tides - and even better, there's a scan of the card available on the web courtesy of Jason).  Partway through the season he went back to Japan and joined the Yokohama Taiyo Whales.  He would spent six seasons with the Whales before heading to the Nippon Ham Fighters in 1989.  He retired following the 1991 season.  He went back to Fukuoka to coach for the Hawks from 1997 to 2001 and ended up again embroiled in controversy when he admitted to ordering pitchers to pitch around Tuffy Rhodes as he didn't want a foreigner to break Sadaharu Oh's single season home run record.

2010 Epoch All Japan Baseball Foundation 1977 #35

Mitsuo Motoi was signed as an undrafted player by the then Nishitetsu Lions in 1967.  He made a couple All Star teams and at least one Best 9 team during his years with the Lions but his tenure with the team was marked by his involvement with the "Black Mist Scandal" that rocked professional baseball in Japan between 1969 and 1971.  He was given a "severe warning" - the lightest penalty of a game fixing scandal that resulted in several players being banned for life.  He played for the Lions until Seibu bought the team in 1978.  I have not been able to determine if they simply released him or if they traded him, but either way, Motoi was a Yokohama Taiyo Whale in 1979.  He played for the Whales until he retired following the 1984 season.  He later coached with both the Whales and the Fighters.

Motoi is unique among the four players on the card in that he does not appear on a separate card in the All Star Memories 80's set.  I wonder if the reason that the card is labeled "Masahiro Doi & Former Teammates" is that they didn't get permission to use Motoi on a card but they can get away with using a picture of him as long as they don't identify him.  There's some precedence for this - the card of Wakana in the set clearly shows Warren Cromartie (who's not in the set) and Senichi Hoshino is pretty clearly visible on a "Dragon's History" card in the Dragons 75th Anniversary set from a few years back when he does not have a card in the set.

2013 BBM Deep Impact set

Earlier this year BBM released a set called something like "Legendary Foreigners" that featured foreigners that have played in Japan.  They released another set that only contains foreigners who played in NBP about a month ago.  This one is called "Deep Impact" and, like the earlier set, contains 81 cards - 72 player cards and 9 "Off Shot" cards.

The player selection is interesting.  Of the 72 players featured, there are 18 who also appeared in the earlier set including Tuffy Rhodes, Bobby Rose, Cecil Fielder, Leon Lee (but not Leron), Davey Johnson, Boomer Wells, Randy Bass and Charlie Manuel.  There are several Korean players (there were none in the first set) including Seung Yuop Lee, Chang Yong Lim and Chan Ho Park.  There's cards of three Americans who managed in Japan in the 00's - Marty Brown, Trey Hillman and Bobby Valentine.  And there's several players who made less than positive impressions during their (sometimes quite short) time in Japan - Joe Pepitone, Kevin Mitchell, Mike Greenwell and Reggie Smith, along with Frank Howard (who injured himself in his first game with the Lions in 1974 and never played again).  There are several players who were reasonably big names for a time in MLB who have never had BBM cards before - Roy White, Bill Madlock and Don Money along with at least two players that I'm pretty sure have never had a Japanese card before - Pepitone and Matt Stairs.  As is usual for a BBM OB set, most of the players are from the 1980's and 90's.  I think Pepitone is the earliest player in the set, having played for the then Yakult Atoms in 1973.

#06

#!8

#45

#01

#36

The nine card "Off Shot" subset shows a bunch of candid shots of some of the players.  The two I liked the most were the shot of Roy White and Gary Thomasson when they were both with Yomiuri in the early 80's and the shot of Ralph Bryant surrounded by exuberant Buffalo fans after Kintetsu clinched the Pacific League pennant in 1989:

#74

#79

It's a nice little set but I still wish that BBM would do some of the more rare gaijin that have rarely if ever appeared on cards - Rich Gossage (Hawks 1990), Don Newcombe (1962 Dragons as a 1B/OF), Larry Doby (also 1962 Dragons) and Don Zimmer (1966 Flyers) are just a couple that I can think of off hand that would be neat to see.

Ryan did a couple posts on this set when it got released - one showing all the base cards and one showing a base card along with some example parallels and inserts.  You can also see all the cards (along with inserts, parallels and autograph cards) at Jambalaya.

2013 BBM 2nd Version set

2013 BBM 2nd Version Set Summary

Size:  317 cards (cards numbered 410-690, then 36 cards of "Cross Wind" subset are skip numbered)
Cards Per Team:  19 (team card + 18 players)
Team Card Theme:  Pitchers Batting
Number Of Leader Cards: N/A
Checklists: 0
Subsets: 1st Version Update (36), Ceremonial First Pitch (16), People's Honor Award (1), Cross Wind (36)
Inserts: Strongest, Twin Gem
Memorabilia Cards: autographed "Cross Wind" cards, Rookie "Ball" cards, Patch cards (maybe)
Parallels: silver (unnumbered), gold (numbered to 100), holographic (numbered to 50), red (numbered to 25) facsimile autographed player cards, some sort of parallels for Twin Gem, Ceremonial First Pitch and Cross Wind cards
Notable Rookies: Makoto Aiuchi

Like this year's 1st Version set, this year's 2nd Version set features gorgeous cards.  Like the earlier set, the regular player cards feature full bleed photos with a minimal amount of text - not quite as minimal as Calbee but still pretty unobtrusive.  And like the earlier set, a lot of the photos are beautiful:

#508

#456

#582

#496

#552

#473

#543

#554

I'm amused that Shohei Ohtani is listed as a pitcher but is shown batting.  

My only gripe about the pictures is that like previous years, several players have pictures that are almost identical to their 1st Version cards.  Here's an example with Kazuhisa Makita - at least they changed the card's orientation:

1st Version #199, 2nd Version #579

As usual, there were a number of players who had regular cards in the 2nd Version set who did not appear in the 1st Version set: Shota Ishimine, Taiki Nakagoh and Yuta Ohmine of the Marines;  Atsushi Fujii, Yuta Mutoh,Toshiya Okada of the Dragons;  Koudai Senga of the Hawks; Tomohiro Abe, Ryuhei Matsuyama, Kyohei Nakamura of the Carp; Yuya Ishii of the Fighters; Tomoyuki Kaida and Tatsuya Satoh of the Buffaloes; Shuichiro Osada and Ryo Sakata of the Lions; Brandon Duckworth and Hiroshi Katayama of the Eagles; Keizo Kawashima, Masayoshi Miwa, Ryosuke Morioka, Shinichi Takeuchi,  Ryosuke Yagi and Tetsuya Yamamoto of the Swallows;  Shotaro Ide of the Baystars and Kyosuke Takagi of the Giants.

The backs of the cards show the player's stats through May 13:

#653

As has been standard for the last few years, there's a 36 card (3 per team) "1st Version Update" subset - a subset in the style of this year's 1st Version set (with the small print changed to say "2nd Version") of players who for whatever reason did not appear in the 1st Version set.  Some of these are late signing foreigners (Blaine Boyer, Michel Abreu, Chris Leroux) while others are some fairly big name players  (Masahiro Yamamoto, John Bowker, Yuya Andoh, Takeshi Yamasaki).  This subset also includes the only rookie who was not included in 1st Version - Makoto Aiuchi of the Lions.  Aiuchi was drafted in the second round last fall but ran afoul of the law - he was arrested in December for speeding and driving without a proper license.  He did not finally sign with the Lions until early March, too late to be included in 1st Version.

#432

#423

#415

The team checklist theme is called "Batting Scene" and features a pitcher batting (a theme BBM previously used in the 2010 edition of this set).  The pitchers featured in Masahiro Tanaka, Kenta Maeda, Atsushi Nohmi, Yoshihiro Ogawa and Tomoyuki Sugano.

#673

I think at 16 cards, this year's "Ceremonial First Pitch" subset is the largest it's ever been.  Of these 16, 14 of these cards feature celebrities from outside of baseball throwing out the first pitch at games: actress Rika Adachi, figure skater Mai Asada, teacher/commercial actor Osamu Hayashi, actress Seiran Kobayashi, actor Kotaro Koizumi, actor/model Louis Kurihara, model(?) Natsumi, musician Kazumasa Oda, singer Hitomi Shimatani, comedian Eiji "Sugichan" Sugiyama, model (?) Saya Tajima, gymnast Rie Tanaka, actress Kanon Tani and model/actress Ryoko Yonekura.  Rie Tanaka has been featured in a couple BBM products lately - she was on the cover of Sports Card Magazine last winter to promote the Real Venus set and a few months later BBM put out a box set just for her.

#687

In addition to the celebrities, BBM included "Ceremonial First Pitch" cards featuring both Hideki Matsui and Shigeo Nagashima from the Matsui retirement/People's Honor Award ceremony back on May 5th.  In addtion, they added a card commemorating the ceremony itself featuring Matsui, Nagashima, Giants manager Tatsunori Hara and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

#690

Lastly, the set includes the second installment of the cross-set subset "Cross Wind", which started in the 1st Version set and concludes in Genesis.  Like the other two sets, there are 36 cards in this subset (3 per team).  They are numbered separately from the rest of the set.

#CW023

You can see the regular cards, the Cross Wind subset, a lot of the parallels (including the rarer ones), the Twin Gem inserts and promo versions of the "Rookie Ball" cards over at Jambalaya.  In addition, Ryan did a post on the set a few months ago.

Link-O-Rama

Links to interesting stuff:

- Ryan's doing a series of posts on the history Of Calbee that's very interesting.

- Speaking of Calbee, I stupidly forgot that over a year ago Jason had sent me a link to a Japanese collectors site with tons of information about Calbee sets from 1973 to the present.  It's all in Japanese but it's got hundreds of great pictures of cards.

- I was doing some Google searches in the last few days, kind of randomly looking around at stuff and I discovered that someone who has occasionally commented here, Sean, has a blog about baseball cards in general and Japanese cards in particular.

- I found the website for the "Giants Winning Game Cards", a series of cards put out by the Giants for each game they won this season.  I believe that you order the set a month at a time but I'm not positive.  I don't know if you can buy the sets from outside of Japan or not.

- I found an old article from the Los Angeles Times on April 21, 1991 regarding how a new manufacturer of baseball cards was going to change everything in Japan.  Funny thing about the article is that the company in question appears to be Q-Cards, not BBM.  I had not realized that Don Nomura (stepson of Katsuya Nomura and the agent who brought Hideo Nomo to the US) had been behind Q-Cards.  The article implies that Q-Cards would really be the first licensed baseball cards in Japan which I don't think is accurate.

More New BBM Sets

BBM has listed a couple of new sets in the last week or so:

- Not only are the Hawks celebrating their 75th Anniversary as a professional team, they are also celebrating having been in Fukuoka for 25 years.  As a followup to the Hawks 75th Anniversary set they published back in May, BBM is releasing a box set called Hawks 75th Anniversary - Fukuoka Legacy to commemorate this.  The set will contain 37 cards - 36 base set cards along with 1 "special" card which could be an autograph or memorabilia card.  There will be two separate versions of the set - a Kyushu one released on October 4th and a general one released on October 18th.  I think there are only 2500 sets being made - 1000 of the Kyushu and 1500 of the regular.  I believe that the only difference in the two versions are what "special" cards are available in each - I think the base sets will be the same.

- The annual Rookie Edition Premium set will be released in early November.  This is a 50 card box set featuring the top rookies for 2013.  There are 48 cards in the base set - 36 "regular" player cards (3 per team) along with a 12 card "Golden Crop" subset (1 card per team).  There are two "special" cards per box - the usual selection of photo cards, film cards, facsimile autographs, real autographs and memorabilia cards.

- 2014 is coming soon and, as usual, BBM's annual "Historic Collection" set is their first set for the new year.  This year's theme is "Brilliant Teenagers" and, also as usual, the base set will contain 144 cards - 72 active players and 72 OB players.  I'm guessing that the active players don't have to currently be teenagers as I don't think there are 72 teenagers on NPB rosters (and certainly not six per team).  It should be an interesting collection of guys who signed right out of high school.  This pack based set will also feature randomly inserted autograph cards and an 18 card insert set that they don't give any details on.  It will be released in late November.