Card Of The Week July 17

The All Star games were played this weekend in Japan,  The Central League beat the Pacific League 5-4 in Game One on Friday and the two leagues tied 5-5 in Game Two yesterday,  Among the highlights was Takumi Kuriyama of the Lions hitting a two run home run in the bottom of the ninth of Game One.  This was Kuriyama's first ever All Star at bat - he was the 16th player to homer in his first ever All Star plate appearance.

Kuriyama's been around for a while - he was drafted by Seibu in the fourth round of the fall 2001 draft - and he's been a top player for some time now.  He recently passed the 1500 career hit mark and he's only 32.  It's kind of surprising that he's never made the All Star team before this year.

Here's a card of him from the "Young Lions" subset of the 2005 BBM Lions team set (#L075):

Yulieski Gurriel Of The Houston Astros

The Houston Astros signed former Cuban star Yulieski Gurriel to a five year contract today.  Gurriel, who defected from Cuba last winter, was one of four Cuban players who were allowed by the Cuban government to play in Japan in 2014.  Gurriel hit .305 with 11 home runs and 30 RBIs in 62 games with the Yokohama DeNA Baystars.  He had signed a contract with the Baystars for 2015 with his brother Lourdes (who defected with him) but he never actually returned and DeNA eventually voided his contract.

Gurriel (or Gourriel as his last name used to be spelled) already has quite a few baseball cards.  I listed a lot of his World Baseball Classic cards from Upper Deck, Topps and Konami when he signed with Yokohama two years ago and I listed many of his 2014 Japanese baseball cards at the end of the year.  His contract with the Baystars was voided just before the 2015 season started and about two weeks or so before BBM put out their 1st Version set that year so he has two cards in the set:

2015 BBM 1st Version #286

2015 BBM 1st Version Cross Plasma #CP32

Here's what I know exists for him in the way of base set cards from Japan:

2014 Bandai Owners League 03 #111
2014 BBM 2nd Version #439
2014 BBM Classic #063
2014 BBM Genesis #094
2014 Calbee #242
2014 Front Runner Baystars Signature Edition #07
2015 BBM 1st Version #286
2015 BBM 1st Version "Cross Plasma" #CP32

I'm pretty sure he has autograph and/or memorabilia cards in the Genesis and Front Runner sets.  He also appears in a couple of the Baystars team issued sets but I really don't know any details about them.

Card Of The Week July 10

I had written a post a while back about the Yomiuri Giants training in Vero Beach, Florida in March of 1975 and how a number of cards from the 1974/75 Calbee set featured photos from this.  I've discovered recently that Calbee was not the only card manufacturer to use pictures from Florida - NST did as well.

NST's first card/stamp set was released in 1975 and was entitled "Mr Baseball".  It was dedicated to Shigeo Nagashima, who had retired at the end of the 1974 season.  There's a subset of the set that features photos taken during the 1975 spring training although it is not entirely clear to me how large a subset.  Engel's checklist for the set lists a "Nagashima Training Scenes" subset from cards 174 to 191 - this subset includes cards of Nagashima with Stan Wasniak (then manager of the Dodgers AAA team in Albuquerque at the time), Gene Mauch (then manager of the Montreal Expos) and possible Jack McKeon (then manager of the Kansas City Royals).  However there are other cards from the set that were also taken during spring training, like this one showing Tsuneo Horiuchi pitching to Ron Cey of the Dodgers:

This is card #224 from the set which is (clearly) not in the previously mentioned subset so I don't know how many other cards are from spring training.  There do not appear to be any other cards in the set featuring MLB personnel that could have been from 1975 - there's a couple of cards showing Nagashima with members of the Orioles during their 1971 tour of Japan - two with Brooks Robinson and one with Boog Powell.

More Memories Of Uniforms - Swallows Edition

The team now known as the Tokyo Yakult Swallows entered professional baseball as one of the new teams joining the Central League in 1950.  The team was originally known as the Kokutetsu Swallows until halfway through the 1965 season when Kokutetsu sold the team to Sankei.  From May 10th, 1965 to the end of the season the team was known as the Sankei Swallows.  Sankei then decided to attempt to cash in on the popularity of the "Mighty Atom" anime (known in the West as "Astro Boy") and the team became the Sankei Atoms.  In 1969, Sankei jointly ran the team with Yakult and the team was known simply as the Atoms.  Yakult took over full ownership of the team in 1970 and the team became the Yakult Atoms.  In 1974 Yakult reverted the nickname back and the team was known as the Yakult Swallows until 2006 when they added "Tokyo" to the front of the team name.

As always I am using The History Of Uniform and Professional Baseball Uniforms Encyclopedia 1936-2013 as my primary sources as well as Yakyu Baka's Uniform posts.

1950-51 Home

1950-51 Away

2009 BBM Masaichi Kaneda Memorial #01

1951 Home

Uncataloged Bromide

1951 Away

1951-54 Home

1951-54 Away

1953-54 Home

1953-54 Away

1955-59 Home

2009 BBM Masaichi Kaneda Memorial #07

1955-59 Away

2006 BBM Nostalgic Baseball #088

1960 Home

2015 BBM Memories Of Uniform #061

1960 Away

2009 BBM Masaichi Kaneda Memorial #14

1961-62 Home

2009 BBM Masaichi Kaneda Memorial #17

1961-62 Away

1963-65 Home

1964 Fujiya Gum Kaneda

1963-65 Away

1965 Home (Sankei)

1965 Away (Sankei)

1966-68 Home

2002 BBM All Time Heroes #058

1966-68 Away

1969 Home

1969 Away

1969-70 Home

2015 BBM Memories Of Uniform #062

1969-70 Away

1971-73 Home

2007 BBM Draft Story #056

1971-73 Away

2009 BBM Yakult 40th Anniversary #52

1974-77 Home

1975/76 Calbee #656

1974-75 Away

1974/75 Calbee #852

1976-77 Away

2015 BBM Memories Of Uniform #063

1978-89 Home

2015 BBM Memories Of Uniform #064

1978-89 Away

1984 Calbee #356

1990-93 Home

1992 BBM Nippon Series #S30

1990-93 Away

1993 BBM Nippon Series #S13

1994-98 Home

1995 BBM Nippon Series #S10

1994-96 Away

1994 BBM #586

1997-98 Away

2015 BBM Memories Of Uniform #065

1999-2005 Home

2002 BBM 2nd Version #455

1999-2005 Away

2004 BBM 1st Version #308

2006-08 Home

2006 BBM 2nd Version #668

2006-08 Away

2007 BBM 1st Version #302

2008 Throwback

2008 BBM 2nd Version #611

2009-12 Home

2015 BBM Memories Of Uniform #066

2009-12 Away

2009 BBM 2nd Version #716

2009 Throwback

2010 Great Central (Home)

2010 Great Central (Away)

2012 Great Central

2013-15 Home

2014 BBM 1st Version #316

2013-15 Away

2013 BBM 2nd Version #497

2013-14 Alternate

2015 BBM Memories Of Uniform #071

2015 Swallows Crew

2015 Calbee #ES-24

2015 EMPower

2016 Home-

2016 BBM 1st Version #163

2016 Away-

2016 BBM 1st Version #CF19

2016 Swallows Crew

2016 EMPower

Notes:

HOU doesn't distinguish Home and Away for the 1950-51 and 1951 uniforms but PBUE does.

PBUE lists a "1955-59 Away" uniform that's identical to what they've got listed for the 1960 Away uniform so I think they might have made a mistake.

Despite the fact that it appears that the team was known as simply the "Atoms" in 1969, the team did have "Yakult" on the front of the away uniforms.

HOU lists one home and one away uniform between 1990-98 while PBUE lists five due to some subtle differences - the hat changed in 1994, the sleeve caps changed in 1994 for the home uniforms and in 1997 for the away uniforms).  I've used the PBUE listings.

PBUE has two different uniforms for 1999-05 for both home and away - it looks like the only difference is a red bill on the cap.  I just combined these.

PBUE lists a different home uniform from 2009-10 and 2011-12 and a different away uniform from 2009-11 and 2012 but I can't tell the difference in either case so I'm lumping them together.

I'm not positive that the alternate uniform (green with the "YS" logo on the left breast) was the same in both 2013 and 2014 but I'm pretty sure it was.

Card Of The Week July 3

One of the more scarce card issues of the 1970's was the Pino Ice Cream set from 1978.  These were cards on thin laminated stock that were randomly inserted into boxes of "Pino Frozen Dessert Choco Ball".  By randomly inserted I mean that only random boxes had a card in them at all - most boxes did not.  Some of the cards were marked as "winner" cards and could be redeemed for a 3-D card.

I only have one card from this set - Kojiro Ikegaya of the Carp.  Here's the front and back of the card:

Whatever Happened To The Class Of 2015?

The Shikoku Island All Stars tour of the CanAm League ends tonight with a game against the Cuban National Team (which has been doing their own similar tour of the league).  The team has gone 8-11 coming into tonight's game which is somewhat better than the 6-10 record they earned last year.  It will be interesting to see if the two leagues continue this tour next season.

I spoke briefly with Shikoku Island League All Star (and Kagawa Olive Guyner) Drew Naylor last year when I saw the All Stars take on the New Jersey Jackals.  Naylor said he was hoping to use both being in the Shikoku Island league and taking part in the tour as an opportunity to audition for a job with an NPB team.  His former Australian National teammate Mitch Dening had just moved from the Niigata Albirex of the Baseball Challenge (BC) League to the Tokyo Yakult Swallows.  Naylor himself was signed by Chunichi shortly after returning to Japan and went 4-3 with an ERA of 3.81 in 8 starts with the Dragons in the last two months of the season.  Naylor started this year with the Dragons but he's been hurt the last two months.  (Dening was released by the Swallows over the winter and is playing with the Ehmine Mandarin Pirates of the Shikoku Island League.  He was not a part of the CanAm League tour.)

Naylor was not alone in using the league as an opportunity to move into NPB.  Six of his teammates on last year's All Star team roster were taken in the NPB draft last October.  In fact the only players from the Shikoku Island League who were drafted last fall were from the All Star team.  The players are Kosuke Akamatsu from Kagawa (Buffaloes, ikusei round 2), Daiki Masuda from the Tokushima Indigo Socks (Giants, ikusei round 1), Naoki Matsumoto from Kagawa (Lions, round 10), Yusuke Matsuzawa from Kagawa (Giants, ikusei round 3), Takamasa Ohki from Kagawa (Marines, ikusei round 1) and Shu Yoshida of Tokushima (Dragons, ikusei round 2.  Matsuzawa did not sign and returned to Kagawa (and was on this year's tour roster).

Kosuke Akamatsu has appeared in 19 games with the farm team for Orix so far this season.  He's batting .281.  Since all of his hits are singles, his slugging percentage is also .281.  Since this year's BBM Rookie Edition included all of the players taken in the ikusei draft, he has a card in that set.

2016 BBM Rookie Edition #050

Daiki Masuda is batting .167 in 16 games with the Giants farm team.

2016 BBM Rookie Edition #074

Naoki Matsumoto of the Lions is the only one of the draftees who was not signed as an ikusei player.  He's made 15 appearances with the Lions farm team, going 2-2 with an ERA of 4.44.  He's only pitched in around 24 innings, striking out 10 and walking 16.  Because he's not ikusei, he actually had a card in this year's BBM 1st Version set as well as a card in the Rookie Edition set (#038):

2016 BBM 1st Version #108

Takamasa Oki is hitting .220 in 60 games with the Marines farm team.

2016 BBM 1st Version #027

As far as I can tell Shu Yoshida has not appeared in any games with the Dragons ni-gun team this year (or the ichi-gun team for that matter).  He's still listed on the Dragons' roster so I don't think he's been released.

2016 BBM Rookie Edition #101

It will be interesting to see if any members of the current team get drafted next fall.

Pro Yakyuu AI Fighters

I made a trade with Dani recently and picked up a couple cards from the "Pro Yakyuu AI Fighters" set that came out in late April.  This set is a little unusual in that all the cards in the set feature photos of the players in street clothes.  Pro Yakyuu AI is a magazine that's pretty much aimed at baseball fangirls - it carried a survey of "loveliest/dreamiest smile" in a recent issue for example.  The set itself has 57 cards in the base set but only 9 players are in it - there's nine cards each for Shoehei Ohtani, Takuya Nakashima, Yuya Taniguchi, and Kenshi Sugiya, six cards each for Haruki Nishikawa and Ryo Ishikawa,  and three each for Kensuke Kondo, Shingo Ishikawa and Hiromi Oka.  There's some insert cards available as well as some "privilege" cards but I don't think there are any autograph or memorabilia cards associated with the set.

Dani had bought a box when it came out and tweeted out a number of pictures of the cards.  She sent me two cards - Yuya Taniguchi (card #26) and Kenshi Sugiya (card #35).  Here's the front and back of each card:

You can see that it looks like some of the backs of the cards form a puzzle.

As always, Jambalaya has images of all the cards (at least the fronts anyway).

I'm kind of amused that this set has apparently inspired BBM to include a 10 card subset in the Fighters team set featuring a number of Fighters players in street clothes.  I think I will stop being amused by it if it actually develops into a serious trend though, as this is not really my cup of tea.

But I do need to thank Dani for making the trade and sending me the cards!