Card Of The Week May 30

Swallows manager Shigeru Takada took a "leave of absence" this week, which is essentially the NPB way of saying he was resigning which is also the NPB way of saying he was fired. Stepping in for him will be head coach Junji Ogawa, who I just discovered shares my birthday. Here's a 1990 Takara card of Ogawa when he was still an outfielder for Yakult:

New BBM Stuff

BBM announced three new sets on their website yesterday - team sets for the Lions and Giants and this year's 2nd Version set.

The Lions team set is a 99 card set sold in packs. There are 71 cards for the players, manager and coaches, a checklist card, a five card "Lion Slugger" subset, a four card "Lion Generation" subset, a nine card "Lion Crossing" subset, a three card "Lion Hurlers" subset and six cards for the 20th Anniversary "Cross Stream" cross-set subset. There's a nine card "Lion Dance" insert set and possible autograph cards (including 3-D ones). There's also some sort of parallel issue for the player, cross stream and "Lion Dance" cards. I don't know for sure, but I suspect that there will be several Yusei Kikuchi cards. The set will be released in mid-July.

The Giants team set will be the largest of any of this year's team sets - 141 cards. There are 84 cards for the players, coach and manager (with FIVE different parallel issues). The set also includes a card for the mascot (or mascots), a checklist card, a four card Opening Game Highlights subset, a nine card "continuous photo" subset, a nine card "Future Star" subset, a 27(!) card subset entitled "GIANTS PRIDE 2010" and the six card "Cross Stream" cross-set subset. There are parallel versions of the "GIANTS PRIDE 2010" and "Cross Stream" subsets. There's two insert sets - a 10 card one that I think are some sort of combination card (showing two players) and a "Giants Pride" set (not sure how many cards in this set) and a couple of possible autograph cards. The set will be on shelves in early July.

With these two sets, the sole remaining team set that has not been announced yet is for the Dragons (unless I've somehow missed it).

BBM hasn't released all the details for the 2nd Version set yet, but they listed most of them. There will be 216 "regular" player cards - 18 per team. 72 of these cards (six per team) will have various parallel versions - silver signature, gold signature, holo foil and red foil. There will be a 36 card 1st Version update subset - I don't think that this means that there will be 3 cards per team. There is a 12 card "Best Pitcher" and a 12 card "Strongest Combination" (both feature 1 card per team) and 12 team checklists. There's 36 cards for the "Cross Stream" cross-set subset (and this is three per team). (The "Strongest Combination" and "Cross Stream" subsets have parallel versions.) And finally, there is a subset for first pitch ceremonies - BBM has not announced the number of cards in the subset yet. I'm hoping for a Randy Johnson card. There's only one insert set - a 12 card "Hit Makers" set (yet again, one card per team). There are also possible memorabilia cards - if I'm translating things right, they are patch cards for prominent rookies (so I'd expect a Yusei Kikuchi one). The cards will be released in early August.

Card Of The Week May 23

Last Saturday night, Daisuke Matsuzaka of the Red Sox took a no-hitter into the eighth inning against the Phillies. For those of us who have been forced to endure his 100 pitch, 4 inning outings, it was quite a treat. Here's his 1999 Calbee rookie card (#115), back when he was still a Seibu Lion:

Masahiro Tanaka box set

This was a kind of odd item that BBM put up on their website last week: a box set for Eagles pitcher Masahiro Tanaka. Now, BBM has done box sets for specific players before, but they've all been either for players or managers who are retiring (Atsuya Furuta, Kazuhiro Kiyohara, Shigeo Nagashima, Sadaharo Oh, and Norihiro Akahoshi for example) or coming to America (Hideki Matsui and Masumi Kuwata). (OK, last summer's Masaichi Kaneda set doesn't fit into either of those...) But this is the first time they've done a set for an active player.

The set has 27 "regular" cards plus an insert card that could be a 3D card, an autographed card or a foil autographed card. The set will be released in mid-June.

Card Of The Week May 16

I discovered the other day that Chiba Lotte Marines infielder Kazuya Fukuura actually signed with the Marines as a pitcher back in 1993. Here's his rookie card from the 1994 BBM set (#529):

Trey Hillman

Yesterday, former Fighters manager Trey Hillman became a former Royals manager. Here's a card from a better day in Hillman's career - from the BBM set commemorating the 2006 Nippon Series (#S01) - a Series won by Hillman's Fighters over the Chunichi Dragons.


(Swiped the link for the story from Deanna's post.)

Allons-y Alonzo!

The Mariners promoted former Dragon and Tiger Alonzo Powell from being hitting coach at AAA Tacoma to being hitting coach for the big league club over the weekend. Powell played for the Dragons from mid-1992 through 1997. After Chunichi released him, he was picked up by Hanshin for the 1998 season, but they released him midway through the season. He was the first foreigner to win three consecutive Central League Batting titles (1994-96). He was named to the Best 9 team four times (1993-96) and made the All Star team twice (1994 and 1996). He was also named as one of the 120 greatest 20th Century players by BBM in 2000.

A sampling of his cards:

His first BBM card - #384 from the 1993 set:


1994 Takara Dragons:


1996 BBM All Stars #A33:


1998 BBM #365:


2000 BBM 20th Century Best 9 #238:


Powell was one of the players Rob Fitts interviewed in his oral history "Remembering Japanese Baseball".