BBM and Epoch have announced a handful of new sets in the past few weeks:
- The last few years BBM has issued a box set for one of the team's cheerleader/dance team. It was the Hawks in 2014, the Dragons in 2015 and the Giants last year. This year the set is for the Fighters' squad - Fighters Girl. The set actually also highlights the team's mascots so it's official title is something like "Fighters Girl & B * B Family". Each box contains 60 cards - a 58 card base set plus two "special" cards which could be either autographed "cheki" cards. Each box also contains a "raw photograph". The base set contains 24 cards of the cheerleaders in their costumes, 24 cards of the cheerleaders in their street clothes, 1 card with a group photo and nine cards of the team's mascots. The set will be out in mid September.
- Keeping with a Fighters theme, BBM's latest "Authentic Edition" box set is called "Young Fighters" and features Fighter players who were born after April 1990. The box contains 30 cards - a 29 card base set plus one "special" card which could be either a jersey card or an autograph card. I think that like the Carp and Tigers sets that were previously announced, the autograph card could be from a player who isn't in the base set - so you could pull an autograph of say Sho Nakata even though he was born prior to 1990. There are nine players who have jersey cards available including (of course) Shohei Ohtani. The set will be out in late September.
- Epoch is continuing to get back into the high end card sets after issuing a bunch of reasonably priced sets earlier this year. Their next release is called "Pacific League Premier Edition" and is sold in a box of (I think) 8 cards for 16,200 yen (although Discount Niki is selling each box for 14,900 yen). I'm not sure how many of those 8 cards are base set cards and how many are the "special" cards. The base set contains 54 cards (which may be the same 54 players as their other Pacific League set from earlier this year). The possible "special" cards include hologram, silk embossed, autographed and jersey cards. The jersey cards include possible "shadowbox" and combination jersey and letter patch cards. The set will be released on September 30th.
- Epoch will be releasing the "Swallows Premier Edition" or "Luxury Version" on September 30th as well. At 12,000 yen per box this is slightly less expensive than the PL set but I think you only get six cards per box. The base set contains 33 cards (three more than Epoch's Swallows team set from earlier this summer) and there is a parallel version of each card available. There are apparently three different types of autographed cards available for each player and a bat & jersey memorabilia card is available for Tetsuto Yamada. There's at least one multi-player autographed card available as well.
- Epoch is releasing yet another high end team set on October 8, this one is for the Orix Buffaloes (who Epoch did not do a reasonably priced set for earlier this summer). I'm not completely sure of the title of the set - it's either "Premier Edition" or "Luxury Version". Either way it's 12,000 yen for a box of six cards although it's guaranteed that three of those six cards are autographed. The base set has 25 cards and I believe all of them are "holospectra" cards. There's a veritable cornucopia of possible autograph cards including "Record Breaker", "Rookie" and "Star" ones.
Tuesday, September 12, 2017
Sunday, September 10, 2017
Card Of The Week September 10
On Friday Takashi Toritani got his 2000th career hit, becoming the fourth player to do so this year (following Masahiro Araki, Norichika Aoki and Shinnosuke Abe). I'll hopefully get around to doing a post on Toritani later this week but I wanted to mention that there are two other players who are "close" to 2000. One of them is Seiichi Uchikawa of the Hawks who has been stuck at 1970 hits since breaking his thumb in late July. Uchikawa might be able to play some more this season but obviously it's not likely that he'll get 30 hits in the handful of games he'll get into. The other player is Kazuya Fukuura of the Marines who as of today is at 1959 hits. I've found it kind of odd that folks have been treating Fukuura reaching 2000 hits as being imminent - there's a "Fuku-Meter" countdown on Pacific League TV's home page and the Marines were giving away a Fukuura bobblehead with a countdown counter on it a few weeks back. He came into this season needing 67 hits to reach 2000 and he's only had 26 hits since then. It's going to be next year at the earliest that he's going to reach the milestone and maybe not even then. He'll be 42 next year and you wonder if some point either he or the Marines are going to decide it's not worth the effort.
Fukuura has been with the Marines since the 1994 season (he was their 7th round pick in the fall 1993 draft) but he was originally a pitcher - I'm not positive but I don't think he switched to being a batter until 1997. He apparently had some shoulder issues that prevented him from continuing as pitcher. He debuted with the top team in 1997 and was pretty much a regular starting the following season. He lead the Pacific League in batting in 2001 - the first player to lead the PL in batting other than Ichiro since 1993 (of course that might only be because Ichiro was in Seattle in 2001). Here's his rookie card from the 1994 BBM set (#529) when he was still a pitcher:
One quick note - you may have noticed that I haven't been posting as much as usual over the last few months. I hurt my back again in mid-June and it was difficult to sit at my computer much. I had surgery on my back about a week and a half ago and my ability to sit at the computer was pretty much non-existent until late last week. I've been improving a lot in the past few days so I'm hoping that I'll be able to pick up the pace again this week.
Sunday, September 3, 2017
Card Of The Week September 3
Here's a trivia question for you - who was the pitcher who gave up Sadaharu Oh's 756th home run? It was Yasujiro Suzuki of the Yakult Swallows.
Suzuki had a couple good years as a starter with the Swallows in the late 70's going 14-9 in 1977 and 13-3 in the Swallows championship year of 1978 (although he lost both his starts in the 1978 Nippon Series). He made the All Star team both of those seasons. He was originally drafted by Yakult from Nikko Hitachi of the corporate leagues in the fifth round of the 1972 draft. He spent 10 years with the Swallows (although his first two seasons were spent exclusively with the farm team) before they traded him to Kintetsu in the 1982-83 offseason. He worked out of the Buffaloes bullpen for four seasons (making the All Star team again in 1984) before retiring after the 1986 season. He apparently is also known as Kojiro Suzuki - I think it has something to do with different ways of reading the kanji for his name but I'm not sure I'm getting that right.
There were a fair number of cards of Suzuki from his playing days - mostly Takara cards but a handful of Yamakatsu. It looks like he only ever had one Calbee card - it's in the 1982 set and he's under the name Kojiro on it. Oddly enough he doesn't appear to have any cards since his retirement - he doesn't show up in any of BBM's or Epoch's OB sets.
Here's one of his Yamakatsu cards - #127 from the 1979 JY8 set:
Suzuki had a couple good years as a starter with the Swallows in the late 70's going 14-9 in 1977 and 13-3 in the Swallows championship year of 1978 (although he lost both his starts in the 1978 Nippon Series). He made the All Star team both of those seasons. He was originally drafted by Yakult from Nikko Hitachi of the corporate leagues in the fifth round of the 1972 draft. He spent 10 years with the Swallows (although his first two seasons were spent exclusively with the farm team) before they traded him to Kintetsu in the 1982-83 offseason. He worked out of the Buffaloes bullpen for four seasons (making the All Star team again in 1984) before retiring after the 1986 season. He apparently is also known as Kojiro Suzuki - I think it has something to do with different ways of reading the kanji for his name but I'm not sure I'm getting that right.
There were a fair number of cards of Suzuki from his playing days - mostly Takara cards but a handful of Yamakatsu. It looks like he only ever had one Calbee card - it's in the 1982 set and he's under the name Kojiro on it. Oddly enough he doesn't appear to have any cards since his retirement - he doesn't show up in any of BBM's or Epoch's OB sets.
Here's one of his Yamakatsu cards - #127 from the 1979 JY8 set:
September 3, 1977 - Sadaharu Oh Hits Home Run #756
40 years ago today Sadaharu Oh hit his 756th home run to pass Hank Aaron as the "World Home Run" rccord holder. It's kind of funny - Aaron hit his last home run on July 20, 1976 so he only held the record for about 13 and a half months. (UPDATE - Yeah, I'm an idiot. Aaron would have become the record holder when he passed Ruth in April of 1974 so he held the record for roughly three years and five months.)
Here's a clip of Oh's entire at bat that ended with the home run:
As you might expect there have been baseball cards dedicated to this event over the years. Calbee actually issued a 95 card series for Oh in 1977 that gave his career history and covered the actual home run - there's a card of Oh and Aaron in the series that is quite valuable. I don't have any of the cards from this series but I swiped some images from Yahoo! Japan Auctions:
I don't know if there were any cards celebrating the event in the other card manufacturers at the time - NST, Yamakatsu and Nippon Ham. NST had a set dedicated to Oh (although it showed other players as well) in 1977 but I don't know if it came out before or after September 3rd. The event has shown up in a number of OB sets and cards in the "modern" card era however.
The first BBM card I know of that explicitly shows home run #756 is this one from the "Untouchable Records" subset in the 1995 set:
BBM's 2009 biographical set for Oh surprisingly only included two cards for #756 although one of the cards had different photos on each side:
Epoch did a set back in 2010 that was dedicated to the 1977 season. There were five cards in the set dedicated to home run #756:
That photo on the third card (#55) of the Epoch set of Oh with his arms raised in triumph is iconic. It has made at least nine baseball cards that I know of (including the Epoch one):
There may be other cards for home run #756 but I think that these are the only ones that I have in my collection.
Here's a clip of Oh's entire at bat that ended with the home run:
As you might expect there have been baseball cards dedicated to this event over the years. Calbee actually issued a 95 card series for Oh in 1977 that gave his career history and covered the actual home run - there's a card of Oh and Aaron in the series that is quite valuable. I don't have any of the cards from this series but I swiped some images from Yahoo! Japan Auctions:
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| 1977 Calbee Oh #36 |
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| 1977 Calbee Oh #42 |
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| 1977 Calbee Oh #54 |
The first BBM card I know of that explicitly shows home run #756 is this one from the "Untouchable Records" subset in the 1995 set:
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| 1995 BBM #319 |
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| 09 BBM Sadaharu Oh #01 |
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| 09 BBM Sadaharu Oh #01 (Back) |
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| 09 BBM Sadaharu Oh #46 |
Epoch did a set back in 2010 that was dedicated to the 1977 season. There were five cards in the set dedicated to home run #756:
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| 2010 Epoch 1977 #53 |
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| 2010 Epoch 1977 #54 |
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| 2010 Epoch 1977 #55 |
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| 2010 Epoch 1977 #56 |
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| 2010 Epoch 1977 #57 |
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| 2000 BBM O-N #ON-B24 |
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| 2000 BBM 20th Century Best 9 #S-04 |
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| 2004 BBM Giants 70th Anniversary #GB3 |
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| 2008 BBM Home Run Chronicle #01 |
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| 2013 BBM Giants Legends #95 |
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| 2014 BBM NPB 80th Anniversary Batters Edition #94 |
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| 2014 BBM Giants 80th Anniversary #93 |
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| 2016 BBM The Ballpark Stories #005 |
Sunday, August 27, 2017
Card Of The Week August 27
The 99th Japanese High School Baseball Championship (aka Summer Koshien) wrapped up last Wednesday with Hanasaki Tokuharu defeating Koryo 14-4 in the title game. (Koko Yakyu has a great writeup of the game here.) It was the school's first ever championship and actually the first Koshien championship ever won by a team from Saitama. The talk of the tournament, however, was Koryo's catcher Shosei Nakamura who had 19 hits in 28 at bats including 6 doubles and 6 home runs. The numbers work out to a batting average of .679, an OBP of .688 and a slugging percentage of 1.536. He also had 17 RBIs and scored 12 runs. He set new tournament records for home runs, RBIs, and total bases and tied the records for most hits and doubles. Needless to say, he made the tournament Best 9 team.
The previous home run record was set by PL Gakuen's Kazuhiro Kiyohara in 1985. Kiyohara of course went on to have a 22 year career in NPB playing for the Lions, Giants and Buffaloes. He had 2122 hits and 525 home runs in his career. These totals would have made you think he was a shoe-in for the Hall Of Fame and you'd be right except for the fact that he had always been associated with "seedy" elements off the field. I fear that his chances for being enshrined ended last year when he was arrested for use of illegal drugs.
Kiyohara hasn't appeared in a baseball card set since BBM's "Memories Of Uniform" set was released in late 2014 but BBM did do a biographical set for him when he retired after the 2008 season. Sports Card Magazine #73 that was published in January 2009 included a promo card for this set that was designed to look like a card from the 2009 BBM Rookie Edition set (the magazine also included Rookie Edition cards of Eri Yoshida and Sadaharu Oh - Oh's card was a promo for the biographical set BBM had just released for him). The front of the card (SCM #113) shows Kiyohara as he appeared when the Lions drafted him in the first round of the 1985 draft:
The back of the card is an ad for the set:
The previous home run record was set by PL Gakuen's Kazuhiro Kiyohara in 1985. Kiyohara of course went on to have a 22 year career in NPB playing for the Lions, Giants and Buffaloes. He had 2122 hits and 525 home runs in his career. These totals would have made you think he was a shoe-in for the Hall Of Fame and you'd be right except for the fact that he had always been associated with "seedy" elements off the field. I fear that his chances for being enshrined ended last year when he was arrested for use of illegal drugs.
Kiyohara hasn't appeared in a baseball card set since BBM's "Memories Of Uniform" set was released in late 2014 but BBM did do a biographical set for him when he retired after the 2008 season. Sports Card Magazine #73 that was published in January 2009 included a promo card for this set that was designed to look like a card from the 2009 BBM Rookie Edition set (the magazine also included Rookie Edition cards of Eri Yoshida and Sadaharu Oh - Oh's card was a promo for the biographical set BBM had just released for him). The front of the card (SCM #113) shows Kiyohara as he appeared when the Lions drafted him in the first round of the 1985 draft:
The back of the card is an ad for the set:
2017 BBM 2nd Version Set
2017 BBM 2nd Version Set Summary
Size: 313 cards (cards numbered 337-600, then 13 cards of "Ceremonial First Pitch" subset are separately numbered FP01-FP13 and 36 cards for "Cross Squall" subset are separately numbered CS37-CS72)
Cards Per Team: 19 (team card + 18 players)
Team Card Theme: Mascots
Number Of Leader Cards: N/A
Checklists: 0
Subsets: 1st Version Update (36), Ceremonial First Pitch (13), Cross Squall (36)
Inserts: Bright Stars
Memorabilia Cards: Jersey cards for Seigi Tanaka and Chihiya Sasaki along with a "Combination" jersey card with both of them. The single jersey cards are numbered to 200 while the "Combination" card is numbered to 10. There's a patch version of the Jersey cards that are numbered to 20 (not sure if there's a patch version of the combination card). There are autograph cards of many players available as well as autographed version of many of the Ceremonial First Pitch cards.
Parallels: 12 regular player cards as well as the Marines team card and the Ami Inamura Ceremonial First Pitch card have a "secret" alternate photo version. 10 of the 1st Version Update cards and 54 of the regular player cards have five different facsimile autograph parallels - silver (unnumbered), gold (numbered to 100), hologram (numbered to 50), red (numbered to 25) and green (numbered to 10). There are two parallels for the "Cross Squall" cards - one is numbered to 100 and the other is a "1 of 1". There are two parallels for the Ceremonial First Pitch cards one numbered to 100 and the other to 50. I think there are two different parallels for the Bright Stars insert cards - one numbered to 150 and the other numbered to 50.
Notable Rookies: None
Man, not having the detail promo sheets for the set from Sports Card Magazine really makes it harder to list what parallels there are. I'm basically searching Yahoo! Japan Auctions to see what's there.
I've mentioned this before but I feel like I really don't have much to say anymore about BBM's flagship sets. Especially since the sets have pretty much been the same the past three years.
Like this year's 1st Version set, the big new thing in this year's 2nd Version set is the "secret" version of 12 of the player cards (1 per team). The "secret" version features a different photo than the regular version of the card. BBM extended this a little bit more for this set (although nowhere near as much as Epoch has in their team sets this year) by adding a "secret" version of the Marines team card that shows their new lantern fish mascot rather than Mar-Kun and a "secret" version of Ami Inamura's Ceremonial First Pitch card. So there are a total of 14 "secret" versions. The players featured are different than the 12 players from the 1st Version set but still feature a lot of the big names in NPB - Shinnosuke Abe, Seiya Suzuki, Yuki Yanagida, Yoshio Itoi and T-Okada. I don't have the "secret" versions yet but I swiped images off of Yahoo! Japan Auctions to show the normal and "secret"versions of the cards of Seiya Suzuki, the Marines and Ami Inamura:
The main downside of the "secret" versions of the cards is that BBM is saving their interesting photos for them so the bulk of the cards suffers from my usual complaint - too many photos of pitchers pitching and batters batting. There are a few photos of fielders fielding and runners running but almost no candids. As usual the photos are attractive and the card design isn't bad but it just gets a bit monotonous. Here's a couple examples:
The one exception to this is Kazuo Matsui's card, which shows him celebrating his 200th career NPB home run back on April 22nd:
The last two years BBM's put a card of Shohei Ohtani batting in the 1st Version Update subset of the 2nd Version set. This time they gave him a "regular" 2nd Version card instead - I'm kind of wondering if it's because he had a "secret" version card in 1st Version showing him batting.
I will also voice my usual complaint that the 1st and 2nd Version photos for a couple players are almost identical:
Here's what the back of the cards looks like - stats are through May 28th:
If I've counted right there are 32 players with a "regular" 2nd Version card who did not have a 1st Version card. They are Tomohisa Ohtani and Tatsuya Uchi of the Marines; Atsushi Fujii, Jordan Norberto, Yu Satoh and Daisuke Sobue; Takuya Kai and Hiroaki Takaya of the Hawks; Kentaro Kuwahara, Masahiro Nakatani and Ryutaro Umeno of the Tigers; Yuta Nakamura, Ren Nakata and Ryoma Nishikawa of the Carp; Yohei Kagiya, Luis Mendoza and Hiroshi Urano of the Fighters; Hikaru Itoh, Koji Ohshiro and Kengo Takeda of the Buffaloes; Fumikazu Kimura, Shuta Tonosaki and Naoto Watanabe of the Lions; Japhet Amador and Hiroyuki Fukuyama of the Eagles; Takahiro Araki and Ryota Yachi of the Swallows, Yoshiki Sunada of the Baystars; and Miles Mikolas, Ryosuke Miyaguni, Kan Ohtake and Soichiro Tateoka of the Giants. Since there's no overlap between these guys and the 36 players in the "1st Version Update" subset, the 2nd Version set has added cards for 68 players who didn't have one in 1st Version.
I did notice one oddity about someone who's not in the set - Seigi Tanaka of the Hawks. So one of the two players who has a jersey card in the set doesn't have a "regular" card in it.
The "1st Version Update" subset contains cards for 36 players (3 pet team) that for whatever reason did not appear in the 1st Version set. This includes both late signing players like Munenori Kawasaki, Alfredo Despaigne and Rafael Dolis and just players who I guess BBM just didn't think were significant enough to be in the earlier set like Hitoki Iwase, Takumi Akiyama and Kazuki Yabuta. As I say every time I write about this set, I have no idea what makes BBM decide to put a player in this subset rather than give them a "regular" card - I suspect it's random to some extent.
Most of the players I had noted about being missing in the 1st Version set back at the beginning of July are included in this set. Really the only player who was with their team before the beginning of June that I mentioned who is not in the set is Ramiro Pena of the Carp. None of the players I mentioned who signed with their NPB teams after the beginning of June (Chris Marrero, Xavier Batista) are in the set - as I said in that post I'm really hoping BBM does another Fusion set this fall with an extended "1st Version Update" subset.
The theme of the team cards is mascots. Again.
The 2nd Version set has the second half of the "Cross Squall" cross-set subset. There are 36 cards (3 per team) and they are numbered CS37 to CS72. Shohei Ohtani had a card in the 1st Version's half of this subset showing him pitching and appears in this half batting. (I would show his card but the Fighters cards from this subset were inexplicably left out of the set I got off Yahoo! Japan Auctions and I'm still working the issue with Noppin.)
The last subset for the set is the annual "Ceremonial First Pitch" set. This time around it's 13 cards of various celebrities throwing out the first pitch before games. The cards are numbered separately than the rest of the set - FP01 to FP13. The subset includes actress Haruka Christine, model Nicole Fujita, the aforementioned and ubiquitous Ami Inamura, model/actress Anna Ishibashi, actress Yukiko Kawabe, Tacoyaki Rainbow singer Saki Kiyoi, politician (and first female governor of Tokyo) Yuriko Koike, actress Ayano Kudo, Morning Musume singer Maria Makino, actress/model(?) Chiaki Taguchi, actress/model Rena Takeda, actress Chika Yamane and actress Miyu Yoshimoto.
As always you can see all the cards (including parallels, insets and "secret" versions) at Jambalaya.
Size: 313 cards (cards numbered 337-600, then 13 cards of "Ceremonial First Pitch" subset are separately numbered FP01-FP13 and 36 cards for "Cross Squall" subset are separately numbered CS37-CS72)
Cards Per Team: 19 (team card + 18 players)
Team Card Theme: Mascots
Number Of Leader Cards: N/A
Checklists: 0
Subsets: 1st Version Update (36), Ceremonial First Pitch (13), Cross Squall (36)
Inserts: Bright Stars
Memorabilia Cards: Jersey cards for Seigi Tanaka and Chihiya Sasaki along with a "Combination" jersey card with both of them. The single jersey cards are numbered to 200 while the "Combination" card is numbered to 10. There's a patch version of the Jersey cards that are numbered to 20 (not sure if there's a patch version of the combination card). There are autograph cards of many players available as well as autographed version of many of the Ceremonial First Pitch cards.
Parallels: 12 regular player cards as well as the Marines team card and the Ami Inamura Ceremonial First Pitch card have a "secret" alternate photo version. 10 of the 1st Version Update cards and 54 of the regular player cards have five different facsimile autograph parallels - silver (unnumbered), gold (numbered to 100), hologram (numbered to 50), red (numbered to 25) and green (numbered to 10). There are two parallels for the "Cross Squall" cards - one is numbered to 100 and the other is a "1 of 1". There are two parallels for the Ceremonial First Pitch cards one numbered to 100 and the other to 50. I think there are two different parallels for the Bright Stars insert cards - one numbered to 150 and the other numbered to 50.
Notable Rookies: None
Man, not having the detail promo sheets for the set from Sports Card Magazine really makes it harder to list what parallels there are. I'm basically searching Yahoo! Japan Auctions to see what's there.
I've mentioned this before but I feel like I really don't have much to say anymore about BBM's flagship sets. Especially since the sets have pretty much been the same the past three years.
Like this year's 1st Version set, the big new thing in this year's 2nd Version set is the "secret" version of 12 of the player cards (1 per team). The "secret" version features a different photo than the regular version of the card. BBM extended this a little bit more for this set (although nowhere near as much as Epoch has in their team sets this year) by adding a "secret" version of the Marines team card that shows their new lantern fish mascot rather than Mar-Kun and a "secret" version of Ami Inamura's Ceremonial First Pitch card. So there are a total of 14 "secret" versions. The players featured are different than the 12 players from the 1st Version set but still feature a lot of the big names in NPB - Shinnosuke Abe, Seiya Suzuki, Yuki Yanagida, Yoshio Itoi and T-Okada. I don't have the "secret" versions yet but I swiped images off of Yahoo! Japan Auctions to show the normal and "secret"versions of the cards of Seiya Suzuki, the Marines and Ami Inamura:
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| #498 |
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| #591 |
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| #FP05 |
The main downside of the "secret" versions of the cards is that BBM is saving their interesting photos for them so the bulk of the cards suffers from my usual complaint - too many photos of pitchers pitching and batters batting. There are a few photos of fielders fielding and runners running but almost no candids. As usual the photos are attractive and the card design isn't bad but it just gets a bit monotonous. Here's a couple examples:
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| #411 |
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| #572 |
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| #532 |
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| #461 |
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| #388 |
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| 2017 BBM 1st Version #031 (left) and 2nd Version #393 (right) |
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| 2017 BBM 1st Version #171 (top) & 2nd Version #486 (bottom) |
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| #561 (Hirofumi Yamanaka) |
I did notice one oddity about someone who's not in the set - Seigi Tanaka of the Hawks. So one of the two players who has a jersey card in the set doesn't have a "regular" card in it.
The "1st Version Update" subset contains cards for 36 players (3 pet team) that for whatever reason did not appear in the 1st Version set. This includes both late signing players like Munenori Kawasaki, Alfredo Despaigne and Rafael Dolis and just players who I guess BBM just didn't think were significant enough to be in the earlier set like Hitoki Iwase, Takumi Akiyama and Kazuki Yabuta. As I say every time I write about this set, I have no idea what makes BBM decide to put a player in this subset rather than give them a "regular" card - I suspect it's random to some extent.
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| #365 |
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| #358 |
The theme of the team cards is mascots. Again.
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| #594 |
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| #CS47 |
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| #FP02 |
Sunday, August 20, 2017
Card Of The Week August 20
Osaka Toin is one of the power houses of Japanese high school baseball. They've won the Summer Koshien tournament three times in the past ten years and they've also won the Spring (Invitational) Koshien tournament twice in same time period (this year and also 2012 when they became only the seventh team to win both tournaments in the same year). Still - winning three times in 10 years means that they didn't win it seven times so it wasn't a huge surprise that they got eliminated yesterday. What was a surprise was how they got eliminated.
They were matched up against Sendai Ikuei in what was the third game of the tournament for both teams. The game was surprisingly tight - scoreless until the top of the eighth when Osaka Toin finally rode a double and a single to score a run. The game moved into the bottom of the ninth with Toin still up 1-0. They got two quick outs but then a single and a walk put runners on first and second for Sendai Ikuei. But the next batter hit a ground ball to shortstop who quickly threw to first and it looked like the game was over. But the umpire called the runner safe - the first baseman had left the bag before he caught the throw. Given new life, the next batter lined a shot to left center that scored two runs, winning the game for Sendai Ikuei in dramatic fashion. Here's a couple photos I swiped from Kyodo News Service's Photo twitter feed (@kyodo_photo) showing the agony and the ecstasy:
For more details about the game, check out the Koko Yakyu blog's post for the game. The box score for the game can be found here.
There are a number of NPB players who are Osaka Toin alumni. The school didn't add the baseball team until 1988 so all the players are relatively recent. The list of alumni includes Hideto Asamura, Takeya Nakamura and Tomoya Mori of the Lions, Tsuyoshi Nishioka and Shintaro Fujinami of the Tigers, Sho Nakata of the Fighters and Ryosuke Hirata of the Dragons.
In recent years BBM has issued a couple of cards that highlight the Osaka Toin connection between players. Here's a card from the 2014 Icons - Big Guns set showing Nakamura, Nakata, Asamura and Hirata:
The 2015 BBM Lions set featured a subset of "combo" cards that featured two players on each card. One of the cards was for Nakamura and Mori being from the school:
There's a variant version of this card that was available as an insert to Sports Card Magazine #112 that added Asamura to the other two. It's actually labeled as #L82 from the Lions sets as well as SCM card #336:
They were matched up against Sendai Ikuei in what was the third game of the tournament for both teams. The game was surprisingly tight - scoreless until the top of the eighth when Osaka Toin finally rode a double and a single to score a run. The game moved into the bottom of the ninth with Toin still up 1-0. They got two quick outs but then a single and a walk put runners on first and second for Sendai Ikuei. But the next batter hit a ground ball to shortstop who quickly threw to first and it looked like the game was over. But the umpire called the runner safe - the first baseman had left the bag before he caught the throw. Given new life, the next batter lined a shot to left center that scored two runs, winning the game for Sendai Ikuei in dramatic fashion. Here's a couple photos I swiped from Kyodo News Service's Photo twitter feed (@kyodo_photo) showing the agony and the ecstasy:
For more details about the game, check out the Koko Yakyu blog's post for the game. The box score for the game can be found here.
There are a number of NPB players who are Osaka Toin alumni. The school didn't add the baseball team until 1988 so all the players are relatively recent. The list of alumni includes Hideto Asamura, Takeya Nakamura and Tomoya Mori of the Lions, Tsuyoshi Nishioka and Shintaro Fujinami of the Tigers, Sho Nakata of the Fighters and Ryosuke Hirata of the Dragons.
In recent years BBM has issued a couple of cards that highlight the Osaka Toin connection between players. Here's a card from the 2014 Icons - Big Guns set showing Nakamura, Nakata, Asamura and Hirata:
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| 2014 BBM Icons - Big Guns #27 |
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| 2015 BBM Lions #L71 |
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| SCM #336 |
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