Shikoku Island League All Stars 2 - Electric Bugaloo

For the second year in a row the independent Shikoku Island League has sent an all star team to North America to take on teams from the independent Can-Am League.  They kicked off the games last night (June 9) with a 7-1 drubbing of the Sussex County Miners in Augusta, New Jersey.

I thought I'd once again take a look at the roster of the team and see who has NPB baseball cards in case anyone's interested in going out to the ballpark and getting any cards autographed.

Like last year, there actually aren't many players who have NPB cards.  Eight of the players on the team were on last year's team but the only one who has any baseball cards is pitcher Itsuki Shoda from the Ehime Mandarin Pirates.  Terushi Nakajima returns as manager also and he had a large number of NPB cards that I listed last year.  (I'm actually a little disappointed that Kochi Fighting Dogs manager Norihiro Komada is not managing the team as I would love to get an autograph from him.)

It appears that the only other player with any NPB baseball cards is pitcher Junki Kishimoto of the Kagawa Olive Guyners.  Kishimoto was the first pick in the fall 2013 ikusei draft by the Dragons and spent 2014-15 with the team.  He had cards in the 2014 BBM Rookie Edition (#074) and Dragons (#D70) sets.

2014 BBM Rookie Edition #074

The two coaches for the team both have NPB experience.  Pitching coach Hidenori Itoh from Kagawa had been drafted by Yakult in the 1st round of the fall 2006 ikusei draft.  He was moved to the 70 man roster the following spring and was on the Opening Day roster that year.  He spent most of that season at ni-gun however and was released following the 2008 season.  He did however have baseball cards in the 2007 BBM 2nd Version set (#725  in the 1st Version Update subset) the 2007 BBM Rookie Edition Premium set (#RP27) and the 2008 BBM Swallows set (#S24).

2007 BBM 2nd Version #725

Hitting coach Hironori Suguro from the Kochi Fighting Dogs spent 12 seasons in NPB.  He was drafted by the Giants in the fifth round of the fall 1986 draft and debuted with the ichi-gun team in 1988 after spending the entire 1987 season with the farm team.  He was traded to the Orix Blue Wave for Terumitsu Kumano following the 1991 season.  He played in both the 1995 and 1996 Nippon Series for the team before being sold to Kintetsu in time for the 1997 season.  He retired from the Buffaloes following the 1999 season and has coached for the (Kintetsu) Buffaloes, Hawks and Giants as well as a couple independent league teams in the years since then.

The SportsCardForum,com Inventory Manager lists 25 cards for Suguro including three Calbee cards from 1989, Takara team set cards from 1991 to 1998, and BBM flagship set cards from 1992 to 1999.  He also appeared in the 1993 Tomy ID set, the 1995 and 1996 BBM Nippon Series sets and the 1996 BBM Diamond Heroes set.

1997 BBM #355

There's a couple other players of note on the roster.  There are two Westerners - Barrett Phillips and Zach Colby, both from the Kochi Fighting Dogs.  Phillips pitched briefly in the Pirates organization in 2010 and has been in Indy ball ever since.  Colby has had almost no professional experience - he played for Joliet in the Frontier League in 2013.  Yusuke Matsuzaka was drafted in the first round of the ikusei draft last fall by the Giants but did not sign.

All the Shikoku Island League All Star team games (as well as all the games from the Can-Am League) can be seen for free at the canamleague.tv.

Mint Ships Overseas!

Kenny aka Zippy Zappy tweeted to me last week to let me know that the Mint chain of card stores in Japan was now offering overseas shipping.

Apparently the way it works is that you identify items that you want on their on-line store and send them an email with the urls of the items along with your Paypal address.  They'll confirm that the items are in stock and send an invoice to your Paypal address.  You have to pay via Paypal.  Mint will ship cards either through EMS or through International ePacket.  They list the shipping prices as $20 EMS for up to six cards and $10 International ePacket for up to three cards (which looks like the same rate).  I don't know what they would charge for a box or if that's even something they're willing to do.

In addition they mention if the items you're ordering have to be gathered from three or more physical Mint stores, they will charge you an additional $5.

I'm not entirely convinced that this is a better deal than using a Proxy Bidding company but it is interesting to see a Japanese card chain acknowledge that there's an international market for Japanese cards.

And thanks Kenny for pointing this out to me!

Card Of The Week June 5

Shohei Ohtani threw a pitch at 163 kph (102 mph) today, setting a new NPB velocity record.  Here's the video of it while it lasts (H/T YakyuDB).



Just to remind you that he hits pretty well too, here's one of his 2013 BBM Fighters cards (#F02b):

BBM issued two versions of card #F02 in the Fighters set that year.  Version a showed him pitching while Version b showed him batting.

Sports Card Magazine #117

Sports Card Magazine #117 was published in Japan about a week and a half ago (May 27th).  I got my issue on Tuesday (it was actually in Baltimore on Saturday the 28th but since DHL doesn't deliver on Sunday or holidays, it didn't make it to my house until Tuesday).  I just haven't gotten around to writing about it until now...

Color Section:
- Card Galleries of Rookie, Autographed and Memorabilia cards for Shohei Ohtani and Shintaro Fujinami
- Ads for Carp, Baystars, Lions, Fighters, Buffaloes and Swallows team sets (1 page each), Tatsunori Hara and Shohei Ohtani/Shintaro Fujinami box sets (1/2 page each), Irodori (Sumo) and Dancing Heroine - Hana sets (1 page each), Official J-League Trading Card set (2 pages)

Monthly "Bests":
Best Card Of This Month:  2016 BBM Rookie Edition Shun Takayama autograph card (I think this is actually districbuted in the Tigers team set)
Best Item Of This Month:  2016 BBM 1st Version box

Hot Card Lists
Rookies:
1. 2016 BBM 1st Version Shun Takayama (#238)
2. 2016 BBM 1st Version Louis Okoye (#156)
3. 2016 BBM 1st Version Taiga Hirosawa (#075)
4. 2016 BBM 1st Version Shota Imanaga (#318)
5. 2016 BBM 1st Version Juri Hara (#184)
6. 2016 BBM 1st Version Junpei Takahashi (#022)
7. 2013 BBM 1st Version Shohei Ohtani (#183)
8. 2016 BBM 1st Version Shinnosuke Shigenobu (#210)
9. 2016 BBM 1st Version Eigoro Mogi (#158)
10. 2011 BBM 1st Version Tetsuya Yamada (#265)

Autograph & Memorabilia:
1. 2016 BBM Tigers Shun Takayama Autograph card
2. 2016 BBM Tatsunori Hara Memorial set Autograph card
3. 2016 BBM Icons Taiga Hirosawa Autograph card
4. 2016 BBM Icons Shun Takayama Autograph card
5. 2016 BBM BBM Tigers Masayuki Kakefu/Tomoaki Kanemoto Autograph card
6. 2016 BBM Rookie Edition Louis Okoye Autograph card (distributed in Eagles team set)
7. 2016 BBM Icons Shohei Ohtani Autograph card
8. 2016 Epoch Sayanora Home Run Shigeo Nagashima Autograph card
9. 2016 BBM Icons Louis Okoye Autograph card
10. 2016 BBM Dragons Dash Dylan Viciedo Autograph card

"Newsprint" Section:
- Japanese Olympians(?) (2 pages)
- Box Break Contest - four collectors each open a box of 2016 BBM 1st Version and are rated on what they pulled
- "Card Shop Navi" for Mint Yokohama (which has moved to a new location since I went there)
- New Card List contains checklists for the Carp, Baystars, Lions, Fighters, Buffaloes and Swallows team sets, the Shohei Ohtani/Shintaro Fujinami box set ("Go Higher"), the Irodori Sumo set and the J-League Official Trading Card set
- "Vintage" Checklist and Price Guide is for soccer (J-League) issues (as well as recent sets for all sports)

SCM Original Cards:
Yamaico Navarro BBM Marines bonus card
Jonny Gomes BBM Eagles bonus card
Masahiro Inui BBM Giants bonus card
Shiori Taniguchi BBM Dancing Heroine - Hana bonus card
Hikari BBM Dancing Heroine - Hana bonus card
Amipo BBM Dancing Heroine - Hana bonus card

SCM #368

SCM #369

SCM #370

SCM #372

Notes:

- I'm assuming that that Dancing Heroine - Hana cards are bonus ones as they don't quite look like the regular cards in the set and they don't have set card numbers on the back (only the SCM numbers).  The regular cards have two images of the "heroine" on the front while these only have one image.

- I'm pleased that BBM did at least one card for Jonny Gomes' short stint with the Eagles.  I hope it isn't a shock to him that the back of the card is in Japanese.

- I think that one of the possible autograph cards in some (maybe all) of BBM's team sets this year is an autographed Rookie Edition card of the team's top draft pick.  The two autographed 2016 Rookie Edition cards mentioned in the "Hot Lists" appear to be from the team sets.

RIP Tsuguo Gotoh

Former Tigers catcher-infielder-outfielder, coach and manager Tsuguo Gotoh passed away on Monday at age 92 (H/T NPB Reddit).  Gotoh has joined the Tigers in 1948 from Hosei University and played 10 seasons with them.  He hit .300 or better for four straight seasons (1949-52) but he broke his clavicle midway through the 1953 season.  He missed the entire 1954 season and his numbers never seemed to recover from it.  He retired following the 1957 season and became a coach for the team the next two years.  He came back to the team in 1966 and ended up as manager in 1969,  leading the team to a second place finish.  He was replaced by Minoru Murayama after that one season but he returned to the managerial role a second time in 1978.  This time he was much less successful - the Tigers finished last for the first time ever - and he was replaced by Don Blasingame after the season.

He was born in 1924 so you'd expect that he'd spent some time in the military during the War.  But I don't see anything about it in his Japanese Wikipedia article.

Here's some cards of him:

1950 JCM118 "Transportation Back" menko

1967 Kabaya-Leaf #119

2006 BBM Nostalgic Baseball #024

2010 BBM Tigers 75th Anniversary #14

2011 Epoch/All Japan Baseball Foundation Managers #04

Chips And Cheerleaders

A couple newly announced sets to talk about:

- The checklist for this seasons's Series Two from Calbee went up on their website in the last week or so.  Like Series One, the new set has 72 player cards (six per team) and a 12 card subset featuring a player (or in the case of the Giants and Tigers manager) from each team's first victory of the year.  Along with the four ubiquitous checklist cards, this means the base set has only 88 cards.  There's an additional card for the Legend insert set/premium subset from Series One that featured players retired at the end of last season - the additional card is for Nobuhiko Matsunaka who didn't announce his retirement until the end of February.  There's also the usual 24 card (2 for each team) Star insert set/premium subset included as well.  The official release date of the set is June 27th but as I said for Series One, it would not be a surprise to see the cards available the weekend before.

- The first of BBM's annual cheerleader sets is due out in late June.  Dancing Heroine - Hana is a pack based set with at least 87 cards in the base set split between the cheerleader squads of 9 teams - the Hawks, the Fighters, the Marines, the Lions, the Eagles, the Swallows, the Giants, the Tigers and the Dragons.  Obviously they are not evenly divided among the teams - each team has between 8 and 12 cards.  And if I'm understanding what the translation of the website says, there's actually two other teams included - the Buffaloes and the Baystars - but BBM doesn't know how many cards there will be from those two teams.  Each base set card has a "holo" parallel version available.  There are also autograph and "cheki" random inserts as well.

Card Of The Week May 29

The Hawks crushed the Buffaloes last Tuesday by a score of 22-6.  The sole bright spot for Orix was Tony Blanco, who went three for four with two home runs and five RBIs:



(H/T YakyuDB for the video)

These were his second and third home runs for the year with the ichi-gun team after being called up from the farm team on May 10th.

I mentioned a few weeks ago in my write up for this year's 1st Version set from BBM that Blanco was not in it.  That's not strictly true.  While Blanco does not have a regular player card, he is on the Orix Buffaloes team card (#329):

I believe that the boot on his left leg is probably the reason he started the year with the farm team.