Seiichi Uchikawa

Seiichi Uchikawa of the Hawks got his 2000th hit today against the Lions in Tokorozawa.   He'd gone hitless in his previous 14 at bats so I'm sure he was happy to get it over with.



Uchikawa was the first round pick of the Yokohama Baystars back in the fall 2000 draft.  He made his NPB debut as an 18 year old in 2001 but he didn't really become a regular for the Baystars until a few years later.  He left Yokohama as a free agent after the 2010 season and signed with the Hawks.  Jim Allen mentioned on this week's Japan Baseball Weekly podcast that Uchikawa was the first Central League star in his prime to use free agency to move to a Pacific League team.  He's the second player ever (after Shinichi Eto) to win a batting crown in both leagues.  He's made the All Star team six times (2008-09, 2011-13, 2017) and been named to the Best 9 team five times (2008-09, 2011-13).  He was the Pacific League MVP in 2011.  He's played in four Nippon Series - all with the Hawks - and was on the winning side in all four (2011, 2014-15, 2017).  He's played for the Japan National Team in three of the four World Baseball Classics (2009, 2013, 2017).

Here's a bunch of his cards from over the years:

2001 BBM Preview #P30

2001 BBM #321

2001 Upper Deck #1

2002 BBM 2nd Version #517

2004 BBM 2nd Version #826

2007 Konami Baseball Heroes 3 Black Edition #B07B238

2008 BBM Baystars #YB59

2009 Bowman Draft Picks WBC #BDPW34

2011 BBM Nippon Series #S23

2012 BBM 1sr Version #325

2013 Calbee #205

2014 Hawks "Special Baseball Card" #1

2014 Calbee #C-6

2015 BBM Memories Of Uniform #095

2016 BBM Hawks #H56

2017 Epoch Pacific League #14

2018 BBM 1st Version Box Break

Jay Shelton recently bought a box of 2018 BBM 1st Version cards and sent me some stats and photos from his box break.

The box contained 20 packs and each pack contained 10 cards so (obviously) each box contained 200 cards.  Jay's cards broke down as follows:

1 Japanism insert card
2 Gemstone insert cards
19 Cross Universe regular cards (17 unique)
1 Cross Universe "Gold Foil" parallel card (084/100)
6 team cards
1 Green Signature Parallel card (Takeya Nakamura 09/10)
4 Silver Parallel cards
1 Gold (or "Foilboard") Parallel Rookie card (Etio Tanaka 138/200)
1 "Secret" parallel card (Hideto Asamura)
164 regular cards (150 unique)

Jay mentioned that the Nakamura Green Signature parallel had a matte finish on it rather than the normal glossy finish that the other cards have.  He also mentioned that each pack had a Cross Universe card in it - either a regular one or a parallel.

Here's the photos Jay sent me:

Thanks for sharing Jay!

Ichiro

As I'm sure everyone's already heard, Ichiro "retired" the other day -  he's moving into some sort of front office job that allows him to stay in uniform (although not in the dugout during games) and take batting practice every day.  He insists that he's not actually retiring but he doesn't want to play for anyone else but Seattle. 

I did a post for Ichiro when he got his 3000th MLB hit a few years back that showed all his "regular" BBM flagship cards.  Here's a bunch of other cards of him:

1993 Tomy #102

1994 Takara Orix BlueWave #51

1995 Calbee Choco #C36

1996 BBM Nippon Series #S63

1997 BBM All Stars #A10

1998 BBM #564

1999 Calbee #265 (Gold Signature Parallel)

2000 Upper Deck Victory #H1

2000 BBM 20th Century Best 9 #117

By 1995 BBM was calling him "Ichiro" on all his card so I'm kind of amused that Calbee still had his full name on front of that Choco card.  What's odd is the back of the card has just his first name.

Ichiro led the Pacific League in Batting and On-Base-Percentage so his final BBM flagship cards were in the Leader subset in the 2001 set:

2001 BBM #4

As far as I can tell, Ichiro has had only three cards in any OB sets since 2001:

2007 BBM Draft Story #031

2009 BBM Orix 20th Anniversary #18

2009 BBM Legend Players #062

And it wouldn't be a player retrospective if I didn't include cards of him with the Japanese National Team.  He played for Team Japan in both the 2006 and 2009 World Baseball Classics:

2006 Upper Deck Inaugural Images #II-25

2009 Konami WBC Heroes #W09R113

Card Of The Week May 6

Daisuke Matsuzaka got the win in last Monday's victory by the Dragons over the Baystars.  He didn't pitch particularly well - he threw 114 pitches in six innings and walked seven but held DeNA to three hits and one earned run while striking out six.  In other words, it was lot like his starts for the Red Sox circa 2010.  What was significant about the win is that it was his win at the ichi-gun level since September 19, 2006 (he had a win with the Hawks' farm team in 2016).  Here's his 2018 BBM 1st Version card (#280), the only card I have (so far) of him as a Dragon:

I was a little amused to notice that BBM has his birthdate wrong on the back of the card.  Instead of September 13, 1980 they have September 13, 1990.  This of course would mean he was 7 years old when he starred in the 1998 Koshien tournament, 8 years old when drafted by Seibu in the fall of 1998 and made his NPB debut in 1999 and 16 when he signed with the Red Sox.  It would also mean that he was born 10 years too late for his namesake "Matsuzaka Generation".  OK, I've probably milked a simple typographical error enough (God knows I've made enough of them on this blog) but here's a look at the back of his card:

2018 BBM 1st Version set

2018 BBM 1st Version Set Summary

Size: 372 cards numbered 1-336, CU01-CU36
Cards Per Team:  28 (team card, manager + 26 players)
Team Card Theme:  Spring Training
Number Of Leader Cards:  N/A
Checklists:  None
Subsets:  Cross Universe (36)
Inserts:  Japonism (12), Gemstone (12), 3D Cross Universe (12)
Memorabilia Cards: Jersey cards for Dennis Sarfate and Yoshihiro Maru (as well as a combination card with both of them).  Each individual jersey card is serially numbered to 200 plus a parallel patch version numbered to 25.  The combination card is numbered to 10 with a patch parallel version numbered to 5.  There are a large number of autograph cards available as well - including ones with multiple autographs
Parallels:  12 regular player cards have a "secret" alternate photo version.  108 regular players cards (9 per team) have facsimile autograph parallels - silver, gold (#'d to 100), holograph (#'d to 50), red (#'d to 25) and green (#'d to 10) - this includes the "secret" versions of the cards as well.  81 of the rookie cards have three numbered parallel versions - "Foilboard" (numbered to 200), "Holo Foilboard" (numbered to 100) and "Lame" (numbered to 50).  There's also a blue foil signature for all 12 first round draft picks that I think are numbered to 21.  The "Cross Universe" cards have three parallel versions - "Gold Foil" (numbered to 100), "Holo Foil" (numbered to 50) and  "1 of 1"..  The Gemstone insert cards also have two parallels - "Holofoil" (numbered to 100) and "Special Holofoil" (numbered to 50).  The Japonism inserts also have two - "Purple" (numbered to 100) and "Pink" (numbered to 50).
Notable Rookies: Kotaro Kiyomiya,  Shosei Nakamura

This is the fourth year in a row that BBM's signature flagship set has followed the same pattern - 324 player (and manager) cards (27 per team), 12 team cards and a 36 card "Cross Something" set that will be continued in the 2nd Version set.  I could make my usual complaints - unimaginative poses for the majority of players and including every non-ikusei rookie causing a deserving player (like Seiya Inoue of Lotte) to not be included in the set - but I'd rather talk about the positives for the set.  Like that fact that it's really gorgeous.  Seriously, BBM put together a nice design and added enough interesting photos (and didn't save all the good ones for the "secret" versions) that the set really shines.

Here's some sample cards.  I think the Daichi Ohsera card has one of the most beautiful photos that BBM's ever used on a card.

#165

#091

#210

#255

#042

#060

#241

I will call them out on one thing though - Norichika Aoki resigned with the Swallows back on February 5th.  BBM's issued their 2018 Swallows team set in late March, at least a week before this set hit the stores.  So why does that set have a card of him playing in a game while his card in this set is from his press conference that announced his return?

#314

The card backs are pretty much the standard BBM 1st Version card backs:

#289 (Yohei Ohshima)

The team checklists show scenes from early training camp.  This is starting to get old as they've done it for three years in a row now but it's still better than doing mascots again (although I expect to see those again with the 2nd Version come August).

#330

I'd don't have much to say about the Cross Universe cards - if you've seen any of the other "Cross" subsets that BBM's done since 2010 than you've pretty much seen these.  I assume there will be 36 more of these in the 2nd Version set.

#CU13

#CU13 (Back)

Ryan did a post on this set yesterday that I heavily relied on to get the details of the parallels and memorabilia cards.  You can see all the cards over at Jambalaya.