2013 BBM Giants Legends Set

BBM put out a retrospective set on the Yomiuri Giants a few months back.  Called "Giants Legends", it's a 99 card set featuring Giants players, legends and otherwise.

I picked this up thinking it would be similar to BBM's team anniversary sets from the last few years but it really isn't.  In fact, I'd be hard pressed to say exactly what the point of this set is.  Of the 99 cards, 93 of them are for Giants players (well, 90 for Giants players and three cards for Shigeo Nagashima as manager).  The players are mostly OB with a handful of players active in 2012 in both Japan (Shinnosuke Abe, Hideki Okajma and Yoshibobu Takahashi) and the US (Hideki Matsui and Koji Uehara).  All of the players are from the 1960's and later.  There's a couple odd gaijin in the set - Davey Johnson, Clyde Wright and John Sipin.  I'm going to guess that the set is commemorating the managerial career of Shigeo Nagashima (1975-80, 1993-2001) - all the players would have been players Nagashima managed (and would explain why none of the cards of Nagashima are of him as a player).

The final six cards in the set support this theory.  The cards are entitled "The Great Scenes" and celebrate events from 1976 to 2000.  Nagashima is featured on the front of every card except one - the card for Sadaharu Oh's 756th home run.

Here's some sample cards (go here to see all of them):

#05

#33

#38

#16

#99

That last card commemorates the Giants defeat of the Hawks in the 2000 Nippon Series - the final Championship won by Nagashima.

UPDATE - I don't know why I was convinced Johnson was in the set.  Probably just got confused since Clyde Wright and John Sipin are in both this set and the "Legendary Foreigner" set and I just assumed Johnson was in both of them as well (he's only in the "Legendary Foreigner" set.

2013 BBM "Great Numbers" set

The first 2013 set released by BBM (back in November) is the latest edition in their annual "Historic Collection" sets.  This year's theme is "Great Numbers", highlighting the primary uniform numbers worn by different players.  As always, the 144 cards are split evenly between the active and OB players (72 for each).  Also as always, the OB players include players who were still active in the US in 2012 - Norichika Aoki, Hiroki Kuroda, Hisashi Iwakuma, Tsuyoshi Wada* and Hideki Matsui).

* OK, I guess Wada wasn't exactly "active" in 2012.  But he was on the Orioles roster for the season.

And also as always, the cards for the active players are split evenly between the 12 teams, six cards per team.

The 72 cards for the OB players include a 14 card subset for "The Great Retired Numbers" - the 14 players who have had their numbers officially retired by their teams*.  These 14 do not include Keishi Suzuki, whose #1 was retired by the Kintetsu Buffaloes but has since been un-retired by the Orix Buffaloes.  Both Suzuki and Mitsutaka Gotoh, who currently wears #1 for Orix, are included in the "regular" cards in the set.

* I say "officially retired" because I think there are some numbers that are "unofficially retired" - I don't think anyone other than Atsuya Furuta is ever going to wear #27 for the Swallows again, but it's not recognized as retired.

As for the set itself, it's a typical BBM "Historic Collection" set.  There's the usual mix of guys who seem to always show up in these (Kazuhiro Sasaki, Masumi Kuwata, Kazuhiro Kiyohara) along with a couple odd balls who don't (Daryl Spencer, Punch Sato).  Masaichi Kaneda makes an extremely rare appearance due to his #34 being retired by the Giants.  As usual, the players are predominately from the 1970's to the 2000's, with only a very few from earlier - mostly in the retired number subset, but there's a couple like Shigeru Sugishita and Futoshi Nakanishi.  I did find it odd that there's a couple uniform numbers between 0 and 27 that were not represented in the set - 12 and 24.  I'm not sure why BBM didn't find someone to fill those numbers (Chang-Yong Lim of the Swallows wore #12 for example).  There are no uniform number 42s either - according to the JapanBall Blog, #42 is the most popular number for a foreign player to wear in Japan.  The set does feature a handful of gaijin OB players (the afore-mentioned Spencer, Boomer Wells, Randy Bass) although I don't think there's any active Westerners included.

The highest uniform number in the set is Norihiro Nakamura's #99 - no ikusei (development squad) players were included.

Here's some sample cards (as always, you can see all the cards over at Jambalaya):

#006

#083

#017

#130

#144

I don't think I've ever seen a picture of Tsutomu Wakamatsu with a mustache before.  Or maybe not that noticeable of one.

Card Of The Week February 3

Masanori Murakami, who was the first Japanese player in the majors back in 1964, has been named a Goodwill Ambassador by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees .  He is the first former athlete to be so named.

There's not a lot of Murakami cards out there from when he actually played (1963-1982).  He's got a card in the 1967 Kabaya-Leaf set, one in the 1979 TCMA set and he shows up in the 1981 and 1982 Takara Fighters sets.  It does not appear that he ever had a Calbee card, although I could be wrong (SportsCardForum's Inventory manager doesn't list any, but I think their listings for pre-1981 Calbee is incomplete).  Here's his 1979 TCMA card (#37):

2012 BBM Nippon Series Set

The 2012 edition of BBM's annual Nippon Series set (traditionally the final set of the "card year" for BBM) was released back in December.  It's a 72 card boxed set commemorating the Giants defeat of the Fighters in six games in last year's Series.  There's 32 cards for the Giants players (and manager Tatsunori Hara), 34 cards for the Fighters (and manager Hideki Kuriyama), five cards for the award winners (MVP Tetsuya Utsumi, Fighting Spirit Atsunori Inaba and outstanding players Hisayoshi Chono, John Bowker and Shonnosuke Abe) and one card showing the Giants celebrating (#S72 above).

There's a surprising number of players in the set who did not appear in either the 1st or 2nd Version sets this year - 13 Fighters (Yuji Iiyama, Yuya Ishii, Takahiro Imanami, Manabu Iwadate, Dustin Molleken, Kazuya Murata, Masaru Nakamura, Takuya Nakashima, Haruki Nishikawa, Kenshi Sugiya, Kazuhito Tadano, Toshiyuki Yanuki. and Mitsuo Yoshikawa) and 10 Giants (Satoshi Fukuda, Shigeyuki Furuki, Dicky Gonzalez, Yoshihito Ishii, Ken Katoh, Yuki Koyama, Kazunari Sanematsu, Takahiro Suzuki, Yasunari Takagi, and Kenji Yano) for a total of 23 of the 64 player cards, over a third.  There's probably a number of factors contributing to this high number - the smaller 1st Version set the BBM's been doing lately and I think both teams had a number of injuries coming into the Series (neither Kensuke Tanaka of the Fighters nor Toshiya Sugiuchi of the Giants appeared in the games for example).  Still, that's a lot of guys who were no shows in the "flagship" sets.

The photography is pretty good for the set although I have my usual complaint that it's difficult to see any real evidence that the pictures were taken at the Series.  I was really impressed with the picture of Tetsuya Matsumoto until I realized that BBM used a very similar shot for him in the 2009 Nippon Series set.

Here's some sample cards.  You can see all of them at Jambalaya:

#S30

#S02

#S08

#S51

#S60

#S48

I wonder how much it bothers BBM that Konami sponsors the Nippon Series and they are forced to put a competitor's name on their cards?

Big News

I'm going to Japan for the first time ever in March to see Pool One of the Second Round of the World Baseball Classic.  I've been planning this trip for a couple of months, but it wasn't actually until today that all the pieces fell into place that are allowing me to do this.  I booked my airfare, my hotel room and my WBC tickets this afternoon, so I'm all set.  I think I'm equal parts excited and terrified to be doing this - I've never gone overseas before to a country where English wasn't the first language.

I've already gotten a lot of great advice from Ryan on many things, including what card shops to go to. Deanna Rubin and Ralph Pearce have also passed along useful tips as well.

Beyond the WBC games, I'm also planning on seeing a couple open-sen games - a Marines-Lions game up at Seibu Dome and a Dragons-Baystars game down in Yokohama.  Since the Lions and the Dragons are my two favorite teams, I don't think that could have worked out much better.

Posting will probably be pretty light for the next month as I'm going to attempt to do a crash course in Japanese to attempt to at least be able to ask where a bathroom is.  (Of course, I got four sets of cards in the mail today, so that'll distract me for a week or so...)

Boomer Wells

This week's installment of John Gibson's Japan Baseball Weekly podcast features an interview with Greg "Boomer" Wells, who played for a couple teams back in the Eighties and early Nineties.  I say "a couple teams" - it was really just two, but one of them changed their name twice while he was playing for them.  He signed with the Hankyu Braves in 1983 and was with the team when they were sold to Orix following the 1988 season.  The team was known as the Orix Braves in 1989 and 1990, then as the Orix Blue Wave in 1991, his last year with the team.  He spent the 1992 season playing for the Fukuoka Daiei Hawks before calling it a career.  He shows up pretty regularly in the recent OB sets, but I thought I'd show a couple cards from his playing days, one in each team's uniform:

1988 Takara Braves #44

1990 Calbee #98

1991 BBM #359

1992 BBM #364

(In case you were wondering, Mike Laga was #44 for the Hawks in 1991 and 1992 which is why Boomer couldn't get it when he joined Fukuoka.)

Just for grins, I thought I'd also show this:

1982 Topps #203

Two of the three guys on this card went on to play in Japan - Barfield played one season with Yomiuri in 1993, the year after Wells ended his career.

Card Of The Week January 27

The big news out of Japan last week was the trade between the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters and the Orix Buffaloes that sent star outfielder Yoshio Itoi and 2006 Pacific League Rookie Of The Year Tomoya Yago to the Buffaloes for Hiroshi Kisanuki, Keiji Obiki and Shogo Akada.  It has been speculated that the fact that earlier last week Itoi had requested that the Fighters post him probably factored into Nippon Ham's decision to trade him.

Itoi originally signed with the Fighters back in 2003 or 2004 out of Kinki University as a pitcher.  He converted to outfield in 2006 and became a regular (and a star) in 2009.  Here's his rookie card from the 2004 BBM 1st Version set (#150) when he was still a pitcher: