Hiroki Kuroda

Hiroki Kuroda of the Carp is another player who hung up his spikes at the end of the season - his final appearance was his start in Game Three of the Nippon Series.  His retirement ceremony was at the end of the Carp's Central League Championship parade and the Carp have announced that his number will be retired.  (There was also a bit of a panic in the day trading community in Japan over confusion between Kuroda and Bank Of Japan governor Haruhiko Kuroda who is NOT retiring.)

I've done a couple posts for Kuroda in the past - the first one when he left for the US after the 2007 season and the other last July when he got his 200th win - so I'll just show a handful more cards for him:

1998 BBM #76

2001 BBM #112 (Black Signature Parallel)

2004 BBM 2nd Version "Opening Game" insert #OP11

2006 BBM Carp #C005

2015 Epoch Red Helmet 40th Anniversary #05

2016 Calbee #199

Yudai

Yudai Kawai of the Dragons announced his retirement in late September after being told by the team that he was not in their plans for 2017.  Kawai has had a somewhat odd career since being drafted by the Dragons out of the corporate leagues in the fourth round of the fall 2004 draft.  He had one very good year (2009) in which he went 11-5 while winning his first 11 decisions that year (and obviously then losing his last five).  His career otherwise appears to have been beset by injuries and ineffectiveness.  He made the All Star team once (in 2009 obviously) and pitched in the 2011 Nippon Series (losing Game Four to the Hawks).

His given name is Susumu Kawai but he changed his registered name to "Yudai Kawai" in 2009 and then to just "Yudai" in 2012.

His BBM rookie card is #277 in the 2005 1st Version set along with #37 in that year's Rookie Edition set.  His Calbee rookie card is #272 in the 2009 set.  He only had five appearances in a BBM flagship set over his 12 year career.  Oddly enough he did not appear in a BBM flagship set in 2009 although he did make the All Star set.

Here's a bunch of cards of him - this is actually about half of what I have of him:

2005 BBM 1st Version #277

2005 BBM Rookie Edition #37

2007 BBM Dragons #D026

2009 BBM All Stars #A40

2010 BBM Memory Makers #122

2011 BBM Nippon Series #S29

2016 BBM Dragons #D07

Saburo

Saburo Ohmura of the Marines announced his retirement back on September 1st.  He was drafted out of PL Gakuen High School in the first round of the fall 1994 draft by Lotte.  He registered his name as "Saburo" since there was another player with the Marines with the same last name (Iwao Ohmura) and he continued to go by his first name even after the other Ohmura retired.

He has two rookie cards in the 1995 BBM set - #571 in the regular set and #644 in the Late Series.  His first Calbee card is #152 in the 2002 set.  The only one of these I have is the Late Series card:

1995 BBM Late Series #644

Saburo played for the Marines for almost his entire career.  He was traded to the Giants in the middle of the 2011 season and spent the remainder of the season with them (and changed his registered name to "Saburo Ohmura").  He returned to Lotte that winter however and spent the rest of his career in Chiba.

His best season was probably 2009 when he hit .314 with 22 home runs.  He made the All Star team twice (2002 & 2009) and won two Golden Glove awards (2005 & 2007).  He played in two Nippon Series (in 2005 and 2010, on the victorious side both times) and won an "Outstanding Player" award in the 2005 Series.

Here's more of his cards:

1997 BBM #393

2003 Calbee #065

2005 BBM Nippon Series #22

2008 BBM Lotte 40th Anniversary #96

2009 BBM All Stars #A27

2011 Owners League 04 #093

2013 BBM Marines #M98

2016 BBM 1st Version #071

Daisuke Miura

Things have finally settled down at work - the testing is over and my trips to Arizona have come to an end as well.  Time to start getting caught up on all the guys who retired at the end of the 2016 season - luckily this isn't as long a list as last year - otherwise I might never catch up.

Long time Yokohama pitcher Daisuke Miura announced his retirement on September 19th.  Miura was drafted out of Takada Shogyo high school in the sixth round of the fall 1991 draft by the then Yokohama Taiyo Whales (Takashi Saitoh was the first round pick).  He debuted with a two inning appearance against the Giants on October 7, 1992.  He was the final Yokohama Taiyo Whale still playing as the Whales changed their name to the Baystars that offseason.  While he didn't have any cards showing him with the Whales in 1992, there have been a couple since then showing him in their uniform:

2003 BBM Rookie Edition #117

2014 BBM Brilliant Teenagers #041

His BBM rookie card was #124 in the 1994 set.  His Calbee rookie card (which I don't have) is #79 from the 1996 set.

1994 BBM #124

Miura was the workhorse of the Baystars staff for 21 seasons, starting at least 15 games for the team from 1995 until 2015.  He lead the league in Winning Percentage in 1997 and in ERA and Strikeouts in 2005.  He made the All Star team six times (2002, 2004, 2006, 2009, 2012 and 2013) but he never made a Best 9 team.  He played in one Nippon Series - 1998 which the Baystars won although he lost the game he appeared in - and was a member of the Bronze medal winning Japanese team for the 2004 Olympics (which there unfortunately are no cards for).

Here's some other cards of his from throughout his career:

1998 BBM Nippon Series #S6

2001 Upper Deck #26

2004 BBM Baystars #YB71

2006 BBM 1st Version #455

2009 BBM 1st Version #523

2012 BBM All Stars #A51

2015 BBM Baystars "Blue Flash" insert #BF02

2016 Calbee #142

Card Of The Week November 13

Samurai Japan played four "friendly games" over the last four days at the Tokyo Dome - two with Mexico on Thursday and Friday and two with the Netherlands yesterday and today.  They went 3-1 over the four games, losing only the first game to Mexico.  The two games against the Netherlands were particularly exciting - both were come from behind victories that went into extra innings (and featured the WBC's new extra inning tie breaker rule where each team starts the inning with runners on first and second).  Hard to pick just one highlight - Shohei Ohtani hit a bomb in yesterday's game and lost a ball in the ceiling of the Tokyo Dome today for a ground-rule double; Hayato Sakamoto had a bases loaded double that knocked in all three runs yesterday while Yasutomo Tsutsugoh hit a couple doubles to deep center field both yesterday and today.  Japan scored the tying run in the bottom of the ninth yesterday on two errors by the Dutch infielders and Shoto Ohno had the game winning single an inning later.  But the one I'm picking was Seiya Suzuki in the 10th inning today with the bases loaded:



Suzuki's Grand Slam combined with the two run double he hit in the seventh gave him half of the RBIs in Japan's 12-10 victory today.  Here's a card of him from the "Rising" subset from this year's BBM Carp team set (#C75):

A Couple New Items

A couple new items that got announced/released while I wasn't looking...

- BBM's latest "Authentic Edition" box set is for the Baystars.  It's called Evolution and will contain 28 cards - 27 cards in the base set and 1 "special" card that could be an autograph or memorabilia card.  The set will be released at the end of the month (Jambalaya says the 30th).

- There hasn't been much in the way of cards for the KBO this year - just two team sets for Samsung and Doosan and the Baseball's Best Players set that came out last spring.  Another set has finally been released - it's another edition of the Baseball's Best Players set.  I don't know any details for sure about it but it looks similar to the previous two editions of the set so I assume it will have 100 cards in the set with some parallel issues but no autograph or memorabilia cards.  I'm not sure when the set was actually released but boxes can be ordered from Gmarket using the link - with shipping the cost is around $35.

Card Of The Week November 6

Former Fighters and Royals manager Trey Hillman was named manager of the KBO's SK Wyverns a couple of weeks ago.  Hillman is the second foreign manager in the KBO, following Jerry Royster's stint running the Lotte Giants from 2008 to 2010.  Hillman is obviously the first former MLB and NPB manager to manage in Korea.  Here's his 2003 BBM 2nd Version card showing him managing the Fighters when they were still in Tokyo.

2003 BBM 2nd Version #743

I was under the mistaken impression that Marines manager Tsutomo Itoh had managed in Korea as well.  He was a coach with the Doosan Bears in 2012 but not their manager.