This discussion on Reddit NPB the other day reveals that there is another place to check out live streams of NPB baseball - a Korean site called WinTV24. From what I've seen the last two mornings, the NPB games will appear in the channel list when they are available. Video quality is very good and the streams are from Japanese channels, so you still get to see some of the more entertaining Japanese commercials:
Resist the urge to point out what the "ichi" alien looks like. This is a family blog...'
Can't seem to find the Koshien tournament Opening Ceremony however, so I still do miss Justin.tv...
Friday, August 8, 2014
Tuesday, August 5, 2014
BBM Scuff Marks
I got a message today from Evan Tokunaga who asked me a question that I don't think I can help him with:
I haven't bought much unopened BBM material in years so I don't have much experience with the problem he's talking about. Has anyone else run into this? Does anyone have any suggestions?
Hello, I just bought myself my first box of BBM cards. 2013 BBM 2nd Version to be specific. ... I had a newbie question I was wondering you could help me with... Maybe I got a bad batch but it seems like every now and then I see a card or two with a streak/scuff mark that I assume is from when the cards were printed or packaged. Do you have any advice/tips for either removing them or dealing with them? I'd appreciate any input.
I haven't bought much unopened BBM material in years so I don't have much experience with the problem he's talking about. Has anyone else run into this? Does anyone have any suggestions?
Monday, August 4, 2014
2014 Calbee Series Two
Lately Calbee's sets are all very similar to each other. This is not necessarily a bad thing, it just limits the amount of interesting things I can say about them.
So I'm not going to say much about this year's Series Two. Like Series One, it contains 100 cards in the base set - 84 player cards and 16 cards split between two subsets (or non-premium insert sets). The 84 cards were split evenly between the 12 teams so there are 7 cards per team. They are numbered in continuation of Series One, so the numbers run from 85 to 168. As always, the photography is outstanding:
I really like the way that the orange jumps out on Abe's card.
One minor complaint I have with the set is that 20 of the players appeared in Series One as well -Shunichi Nemoto, Yudai Ohno, Yuya Hasegawa, Yuichi Honda, Takahiro Arai, Shintaro Fujinami, Takashi Toritani, Kenta Maeda, Eishin Soyogi, Masaru Takeda, Yoshihisa Hirano, Yoshio Itoi, Takeya Nakamura, Ginji Akaminai, Takashi Saitoh, Motohiro Shima, Yasuhiro Ogawa, Sho Aranami, Daisuke Miura, and Hayato Sakamoto. Just seems kind of odd to have almost a quarter of the Second Series repeat players in the First Series.
The 16 subset cards are split between the 12 card Opening Game Starting Pitcher set and the 4 card checklists. The Opening Game Starting Pitcher set is pretty much self explanatory - it contains the starting pitcher from Opening Day for each of the twelve teams. The checklists feature scenes from the first week of the season - Motonishi Tanishige's first win as Dragons manager, Seichi Uchikawa's hero interview from Opening Day, and the first wins for two rookie pitchers - Allen Kuri of the Carp and Ayumu Ishikawa of the Marines:
As always you can see all the cards (plus the Star inserts, the "Special Box Limited Edition" AVG Leader cards and the mail-in Lucky cards over at Jambalaya. Ryan did a post on the set a while back as well.
So I'm not going to say much about this year's Series Two. Like Series One, it contains 100 cards in the base set - 84 player cards and 16 cards split between two subsets (or non-premium insert sets). The 84 cards were split evenly between the 12 teams so there are 7 cards per team. They are numbered in continuation of Series One, so the numbers run from 85 to 168. As always, the photography is outstanding:
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| #120 |
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| #113 |
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| #140 |
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| #148 |
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| #088 |
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| #129 |
One minor complaint I have with the set is that 20 of the players appeared in Series One as well -Shunichi Nemoto, Yudai Ohno, Yuya Hasegawa, Yuichi Honda, Takahiro Arai, Shintaro Fujinami, Takashi Toritani, Kenta Maeda, Eishin Soyogi, Masaru Takeda, Yoshihisa Hirano, Yoshio Itoi, Takeya Nakamura, Ginji Akaminai, Takashi Saitoh, Motohiro Shima, Yasuhiro Ogawa, Sho Aranami, Daisuke Miura, and Hayato Sakamoto. Just seems kind of odd to have almost a quarter of the Second Series repeat players in the First Series.
The 16 subset cards are split between the 12 card Opening Game Starting Pitcher set and the 4 card checklists. The Opening Game Starting Pitcher set is pretty much self explanatory - it contains the starting pitcher from Opening Day for each of the twelve teams. The checklists feature scenes from the first week of the season - Motonishi Tanishige's first win as Dragons manager, Seichi Uchikawa's hero interview from Opening Day, and the first wins for two rookie pitchers - Allen Kuri of the Carp and Ayumu Ishikawa of the Marines:
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| #OP-09 |
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| #C-5 |
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| #C-6 |
Sunday, August 3, 2014
Card Of The Week August 3
On Friday, Giants third baseman Shuichi Murata hit his 300th career home run off of Kenta Maeda of the Carp:
251 of Murata's home runs came when he was a member of the Yokahama Baystars between 2003 and 2011. I always mentally pair up Murata and Seichi Uchikawa as the two of them were the main offensive threats in the Baystars lineup through much of the late 00's. Uchikawa left as a free agent before the 2011 season and won a Nippon Series championship that year with Softbank. Murata left a year later and immediately won the Nippon Series with the Giants.
Here's an insert card of Murata from the 2004 BBM Baystars team set (#BN5) . The insert set was called "Baystars Nine" and it paired each member of the set with one of the "traditional" nine planets - Mercury, Venus, Earth, etc including Pluto. Murata (obviously) was paired with Jupiter. Assuming the other cards are paired in number order to the planets, Kazuhiro Sasaki was Mercury, Ryoji Aikwa was Venus, Tyrone Woods was Earth, Uchikawa was Mars, Takuro Ishii was Saturn, Tatsuhiko Kinjoh was Uranus, Takanori Suzuki was Neptune and Hitoshi Tamura was Pluto. The only card I have from this set other than Murata is Suzuki so that's the only other pairing I know for sure.
251 of Murata's home runs came when he was a member of the Yokahama Baystars between 2003 and 2011. I always mentally pair up Murata and Seichi Uchikawa as the two of them were the main offensive threats in the Baystars lineup through much of the late 00's. Uchikawa left as a free agent before the 2011 season and won a Nippon Series championship that year with Softbank. Murata left a year later and immediately won the Nippon Series with the Giants.
Here's an insert card of Murata from the 2004 BBM Baystars team set (#BN5) . The insert set was called "Baystars Nine" and it paired each member of the set with one of the "traditional" nine planets - Mercury, Venus, Earth, etc including Pluto. Murata (obviously) was paired with Jupiter. Assuming the other cards are paired in number order to the planets, Kazuhiro Sasaki was Mercury, Ryoji Aikwa was Venus, Tyrone Woods was Earth, Uchikawa was Mars, Takuro Ishii was Saturn, Tatsuhiko Kinjoh was Uranus, Takanori Suzuki was Neptune and Hitoshi Tamura was Pluto. The only card I have from this set other than Murata is Suzuki so that's the only other pairing I know for sure.
Upcoming Releases
I've been putting off doing a post on upcoming sets because I've been waiting for BBM to put up information on the Dragons team set on their website. They still haven't but I figure that I've waited long enough that if I wait much longer, the other sets will already be out...
- The second half of BBM's celebration of 80 years of professional baseball in Japan, the 80th Anniversary Batters Edition, will be released on August 23. Like the Pitchers Edition, this will be a pack based set with 99 cards in the base set. The 99 cards are split between 90 "regular" player cards and 9 "Leader" cards celebrating single season and career batting records (again like the Pitchers Edition). I don't think there are any insert cards in the set (although there are parallels of all the base cards) but there's any number of autographed inserts included in the set. Just eyeballing the checklist in the latest SCM, I don't think either Ichiro or Hiromitsu Ochiai are in the set,
- The aforementioned Dragons team set will be out in mid-August (Niki says August 21). It's a pack based set with 90 cards in the base set. Now I'm going by the print ad in SCM to determine what the names of the subsets are and (of course) they're all in Japanese (as opposed to the Giants team set where all the subsets are titled in English in the print ad), so I'm going to attempt to make a guess based on the sample cards in the ad. There are 77 cards for the players, coaches and manager, four cards for "Fresh, Local Stars", three cards for veterans(?) and three three card "sequential card series". There's a nine card insert set that I have absolutely no idea what the theme is and some number of autographed cards available. UPDATE - BBM finally put something up on their website for the set.
- I've been kind of expecting that at some point this year BBM's going to do an 80th Anniversary set for the Giants. Maybe they still will, but I was kind of surprised to see that Front Runner is putting out a Giants Stars And Legends box set. This is a 32 card set with 30 base cards plus one serially numbered insert card and one autographed card. The 30 base cards are split between 12 cards of active players (including manager Tatsunori Hara) and 18 cards of OB players. Unlike the Carp Stars and Legends set Front Runner did last year, it looks like Front Runner got most if not all the biggest OB names - Shigeo Nagashima, Sadaharu Oh, Isao Harimoto, Isao Shibata, Suguru Egawa and Masumi Kuwata. Front Runner appears to be marketing this as an 80th Anniversary set but I'm still hoping BBM does a larger set before the end of the year. This set will be released sometime in August.
- The second half of BBM's celebration of 80 years of professional baseball in Japan, the 80th Anniversary Batters Edition, will be released on August 23. Like the Pitchers Edition, this will be a pack based set with 99 cards in the base set. The 99 cards are split between 90 "regular" player cards and 9 "Leader" cards celebrating single season and career batting records (again like the Pitchers Edition). I don't think there are any insert cards in the set (although there are parallels of all the base cards) but there's any number of autographed inserts included in the set. Just eyeballing the checklist in the latest SCM, I don't think either Ichiro or Hiromitsu Ochiai are in the set,
- The aforementioned Dragons team set will be out in mid-August (Niki says August 21). It's a pack based set with 90 cards in the base set. Now I'm going by the print ad in SCM to determine what the names of the subsets are and (of course) they're all in Japanese (as opposed to the Giants team set where all the subsets are titled in English in the print ad), so I'm going to attempt to make a guess based on the sample cards in the ad. There are 77 cards for the players, coaches and manager, four cards for "Fresh, Local Stars", three cards for veterans(?) and three three card "sequential card series". There's a nine card insert set that I have absolutely no idea what the theme is and some number of autographed cards available. UPDATE - BBM finally put something up on their website for the set.
- I've been kind of expecting that at some point this year BBM's going to do an 80th Anniversary set for the Giants. Maybe they still will, but I was kind of surprised to see that Front Runner is putting out a Giants Stars And Legends box set. This is a 32 card set with 30 base cards plus one serially numbered insert card and one autographed card. The 30 base cards are split between 12 cards of active players (including manager Tatsunori Hara) and 18 cards of OB players. Unlike the Carp Stars and Legends set Front Runner did last year, it looks like Front Runner got most if not all the biggest OB names - Shigeo Nagashima, Sadaharu Oh, Isao Harimoto, Isao Shibata, Suguru Egawa and Masumi Kuwata. Front Runner appears to be marketing this as an 80th Anniversary set but I'm still hoping BBM does a larger set before the end of the year. This set will be released sometime in August.
Saturday, August 2, 2014
2014 BBM 80th Anniversary Pitchers Edition Set
NPB is celebrating 80 years of professional baseball in Japan this season and BBM is issuing two separate historic sets as part of the celebration. The first set, called 80th Anniversary Pitchers Edition, came out back in May. To restate the obvious, the set is devoted entirely to pitchers.
The base set contains 99 cards. 90 of these are "regular" player cards. Unlike most of BBM's other OB sets, this one has a decent representation of players from all eras, rather than just the 1970's and later. Most of the major pitching names in history are included in the set, including Eiji Sawamura, Victor Starffin, Masaichi Kaneda, Kazuhisa Inao, Keishi Suzuki, Minoru Murayama, Shigeru Sugishita, Yoshio Sotokoba, Hisashi Yamada, Kimiyasu Kudoh and Masumi Kuwata highlight the retired players. Active players are also included in the set including both NPB players (Masahiro Yamamoto, Kenta Maeda) and MLB players (Yu Darvish, Masahiro Tanaka, Hisaashi Iwakuma, Koji Uehara). Players appear to have been selected because of their performance over their career as well as dominance over short periods of time (Hiroshi Gondoh, Marc Kroon). Foreign players in the set (in addtion to Kroon) include Joe Stanka, Gene Bacque and Taigen and Genji Kaku (who I don't think are related to each other).
There are a couple players who don't often show up in the OB sets who appear in this one. This is only the fourth OB set Masaichi Kaneda has appeared in in the last 10 years (in contrast it's at least the ninth BBM OB set Kazuhisa Inao has appeared in over the same period of time). This is the first OB set that Yu Darvish has appeared in and the first NPB set of any type he's been in since he left for MLB prior to the 2012 season.
There are a couple notable omissions. Hideo Nomo and Choji Murata should be in the set but Nomo hasn't been in an NPB set in 20 years and Murata almost never shows up in an OB set (only one BBM set in the last 10 years). The most surprising omission is Yutaka Enatsu who if nothing else was one of the most interesting pitchers in NPB history. And Enatsu appears in OB sets with some frequency (although he was also a surprising no show in last year's Hawks 75th Anniversary set).
The other 9 cards in the set are for single season and career pitching records. The players included are Akira (Takehiko) Bessho (Most Complete Games in a Season), Hideo Fujimoto (Best ERA), Kazuhisa Inao (Most Wins In A Season), Hitoki Iwase (Most Saves), Masaichi Kaneda (Most Wins), Victor Starfin (Most Wins In A Season), Keishi Suzuki (Most Complete Games w/o BB & HBP), Masahiro Tanaka (Highest Winning % in a Season), and Tetsuya Yoneda (Most Games Pitched). And that's not a typo - Inao and Starffin are tied for most wins in a single season with 42.
For the most part, I really like the set. I like a lot of the photographs used, especially the ones of players from the 1950's and 1960's. And as I mentioned above, I really like the player selection in the set.
Here's some example cards:
I did notice one oddity in the cards. Takehiko Bessho appears in the "regular" cards by that name but in the "Leader" subset as Akira Bessho. I'm not entirely sure, but I think Bessho went by "Akira" when he was with Nankai in the 40's but by "Takehiko" when he was with the Giants in the 1950's. I've seem him listed by either name in previous sets but I think this is the first set I've seen that has him by both names:
Ryan did a write up of this set back when it came out and you can see all the cards at Jambalaya.
The base set contains 99 cards. 90 of these are "regular" player cards. Unlike most of BBM's other OB sets, this one has a decent representation of players from all eras, rather than just the 1970's and later. Most of the major pitching names in history are included in the set, including Eiji Sawamura, Victor Starffin, Masaichi Kaneda, Kazuhisa Inao, Keishi Suzuki, Minoru Murayama, Shigeru Sugishita, Yoshio Sotokoba, Hisashi Yamada, Kimiyasu Kudoh and Masumi Kuwata highlight the retired players. Active players are also included in the set including both NPB players (Masahiro Yamamoto, Kenta Maeda) and MLB players (Yu Darvish, Masahiro Tanaka, Hisaashi Iwakuma, Koji Uehara). Players appear to have been selected because of their performance over their career as well as dominance over short periods of time (Hiroshi Gondoh, Marc Kroon). Foreign players in the set (in addtion to Kroon) include Joe Stanka, Gene Bacque and Taigen and Genji Kaku (who I don't think are related to each other).
There are a couple players who don't often show up in the OB sets who appear in this one. This is only the fourth OB set Masaichi Kaneda has appeared in in the last 10 years (in contrast it's at least the ninth BBM OB set Kazuhisa Inao has appeared in over the same period of time). This is the first OB set that Yu Darvish has appeared in and the first NPB set of any type he's been in since he left for MLB prior to the 2012 season.
There are a couple notable omissions. Hideo Nomo and Choji Murata should be in the set but Nomo hasn't been in an NPB set in 20 years and Murata almost never shows up in an OB set (only one BBM set in the last 10 years). The most surprising omission is Yutaka Enatsu who if nothing else was one of the most interesting pitchers in NPB history. And Enatsu appears in OB sets with some frequency (although he was also a surprising no show in last year's Hawks 75th Anniversary set).
The other 9 cards in the set are for single season and career pitching records. The players included are Akira (Takehiko) Bessho (Most Complete Games in a Season), Hideo Fujimoto (Best ERA), Kazuhisa Inao (Most Wins In A Season), Hitoki Iwase (Most Saves), Masaichi Kaneda (Most Wins), Victor Starfin (Most Wins In A Season), Keishi Suzuki (Most Complete Games w/o BB & HBP), Masahiro Tanaka (Highest Winning % in a Season), and Tetsuya Yoneda (Most Games Pitched). And that's not a typo - Inao and Starffin are tied for most wins in a single season with 42.
For the most part, I really like the set. I like a lot of the photographs used, especially the ones of players from the 1950's and 1960's. And as I mentioned above, I really like the player selection in the set.
Here's some example cards:
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| #13 |
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| #24 |
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| #18 |
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| #72 |
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| #82 |
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| #98 |
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| #06 & #96 |
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