BBM has put out a little box set called "Icons" every March since 2013. Basically it's an excuse for them to put out the first cards of the top draft picks that show them on a baseball diamond (as opposed to in the introductory press conference that Rookie Edition's cards are from). Since 2015 each box has contained 37 cards - the 36 card base set (three cards per team) plus one "special insert" card that could possibly be an autographed card. I always get an opened set that just has the base set and not the "special insert" card. This year's edition of the set was one of the items that Ryan had picked up for me and gave me when I met up with him in Tokyo.
The set has a different theme each year and this year's was "Generations". BBM's description of the set on their website says it gathers together "the young stars of the golden generation who will carry the future of professional baseball". I don't know about that but the set does contain cards of a number of NPB's young stars such as Roki Sasaki, Yuki Okabayashi, Chusei Mannami, Hiroya Miyagi and Kotaro Kurebayashi. It also has cards of nine of the twelve first round picks from last year - Kyuto Ueda (Marines), Sho Kusaka (Dragons), Kaito Shimomura (Tigers), Hayato Tsunehiro (Carp), Haruki Hosono (Fighters), Natsuki Takeuchi (Lions), Tatsuki Koja (Eagles), Kota Nishidate (Swallows) and Yuhi Nishidate (Giants).
I'm kind of "meh" about this set. The player selection is OK but the design just doesn't really do anything for me. Here's some sample cards:
#22
#36
#19
#14
#31
#02
The photo selection is kind of "meh" too. Lot's of "pitchers pitching, batters batting" poses but I think the most egregious thing is the photo on Kusaka's card - it 's a posed shot that could have been used for Rookie Edition:
#16
The reason there's no photo of Kusaka on the field is that he was diagnosed with an elbow issue in January and has undergone Tommy John surgery (Shimomura also had TJ surgery but was not diagnosed until April). I have to wonder why BBM didn't pick a different young Dragons player to replace Kusaka in the set.
As usual, you can see all the cards over at Jambalaya.
Son was drafted by the Lotte Giants in 2007 and spent his first 15 seasons in Busan before joining the Dinos as a free agent in the 2021-22 off season. He's led the league in hits four times (2012, 2013, 2017, & 2023) and in batting once (2023). He's played on the Korean National Team for the 2013 and 2017 WBCs and the 2015 Premier 12.
His first baseball card was in the 2014 Ntreev Duael Super Star Season 1 set and he's appeared in at least one KBO set every year since then (including the set that was just released last week). He has not, however, appeared on any WBC cards to the best of my knowledge. Here's a quick assortment of his cards - I don't have any KBO cards after 2021 so I have no cards of him with NC:
2014 Ntreev Duael Super Star Season 1 #SBC01-057
2014-15 Ntreev Duael Superstar Blue Edition #SBCBE-120-AS
2015 Ntreev Duael Super Star Season 1 #SBC1501-130-N
2015 SMG Ntreev Super Star Season 2 - Stickers
2016 SMG Ntreev Baseball's Best Players Forever Ace #LO002
2017 SCC KBO League #SCC-01-LT10/N
2018 SCC KBO League Regular Collection 1 #SCCR-01/072
2019 SCC Regular Collection 2 #SCCR2-01/139
2020 SCC KBO League Premium Collection #SCCP1-20/G18
It's been about six weeks since the last roundup I did for upcoming releases - long enough that one of these isn't "upcoming" any more but was released last week.
- The second part of BBM's annual three part flagship set will be out in early August. As has been pretty standard for the last 10 years, this year's edition of 2nd Version will contain a base set of 300 cards which will break down as 216 "regular" player cards (18 per team), 36 "1st Version Update" cards (3 per team), 12 team checklists and 36 cards (3 per team) making up the second half of the "Cross Earth" cross set subset (with the first half having been in the 1st Version set). There's also a currently unannounced number of "Ceremonial First Pitch" cards which are likely short-printed and not considered part of the base set. There are six insert sets - "Star Portraits" (12 cards), "Coming Heroes" (24 cards), "Fireworks" (24 cards), "Treasure" (12 cards), "Foil Picturesque" (12 cards) and "Combo Cross Foil Signing" (13 cards) - I think the last four are all serially numbered but I'm not positive. The set will also include the usual plethora of facsimile autograph parallels as well as the alternate photo "Secret Versions" of various scarcity. There are a bunch of autographed cards including an autographed Yoshinobu Tsutsugoh card in the style of the autographed cards in the BBM Baystars team set and autographs of rookies and/or prospects Ryuki Watarai, Kengo Matsumoto, Shinnosuke Hada and Keito Mombetsu. There's also memorabilia cards of Watarai and other rookies.
- BBM has announced the last two of their annual "comprehensive" team sets - the Carp and the Eagles. I'm going to split the descriptions of them up because the Eagles set is a departure from BBM's standard team set template. First the Carp set - it'll have a base set of 81 cards, 70 of which are "regular" player cards for manager Takahiro Arai and the players on the team's 70 man roster. The other eleven cards are split between three subsets that are not fully defined yet - "Young Players To Watch" (three cards), "Early Game Highlights" (five cards) and "Classmates" (three cards). There are 18 non-premium insert cards split up into four separate, not quite defined sets - "Core Players" (nine cards), "Up-And-Coming Players" (three cards), "Home-Grown Veterans" (three cards) and "Rookies" (three cards). There are also two serially numbered insert sets - "Treasure" (24 cards) and "Esperanza" (15 cards). There will also be autographed cards available. The set will be out in mid-July.
- The Eagles are celebrating their twentieth season this year and BBM's expanded the base set for their Eagles team set to 117 to commemorate this event. Essentially it looks like they're doing the standard 81 card team set with 67 "regular" player cards for manager Toshiaki Imae and the 70 man roster players and four not fully defined subsets - "Brightest Hope" (two cards), "Main Pitcher" (five cards), "Main Batter" (five cards) and "Record Makers" (two cards) - and then adding an extra 36 cards to cover the Eagles 20th Anniversary. There are 18 cards for "Team Alumni", nine "Team Records" cards, six "Rookie Reprint" cards and three "Team History" cards. There's only the usual 18 non-premium insert cards though, split between "Main Players" (nine cards), "Rookie Players" (three cards), "Rising Tide" (three cards) and "Big Comeback" (three cards) along with the serially numbered sets "Treasure" (24 cards) and "Esperanza" (15 cards). The "Treasure" cards may include OB as well as active Eagles players (or managers - both Katsuya Nomura and Senichi Hoshino appear on the cards). The set will be out in late July.
- BBM's making a change to their annual cheerleader/dance squad set this year. Instead of issuing the "Dancing Heroine" set in two parts - Hana and Mai - BBM is now just issuing a single set. But fear not, cheerleader fans, as the base set will include around 180 cards which was roughly the size you'd get when you put both of the previous sets together. As usual the set only includes members of the squads from the Tigers, Giants, Swallows, Dragons, Marines, Hawks, Eagles, Lions and Fighters - I have no idea why the ones from the Buffaloes and Baystars are not included (the Carp don't have cheerleaders). There a holo parallel of all the base set cards and an 18 card "Two-shot" insert set. There are also autographs and "cheki" cards available. The set will be out in late August.
- Calbee's Series Two set should be hitting the stores any day now. This is a kind of bittersweet announcement since I was initially excited that Series Two was coming out at its usual time this year after being delayed until August last year. I was hoping it meant that there'd be a Series Three in September but Sean (who I have to admit was trying to be more optimistic than me about Calbee this year) pointed out that their announcement said that the cards would be on sale through November, long after Series Three should have been released. So this will probably be the last Calbee set for the year. Like Series One, Series Two has 60 "regular" player cards (five per team) and six checklist cards. Instead of the "Title Holder" subset that Series One had, this one has a twelve card "Player's Association President" subset - because what kid doesn't want a card of their favorite team's Union representative. There's also the usual 24 card "Star" insert set and a 12 card "Opening Pitcher" box set available only through Calbee's Amazon Japan store.
- Epoch announced two more of their "Premier Edition" team sets - the Buffaloes and the Dragons. The Fighters set will be out on August 3rd and will have 42 cards in its base set - I think two of those are OB players. The Dragons set will be released on August 10th and also has a base set of 42 cards which includes three OB players (who I think are coaches) and the mascot Doala. All the base cards have a "holo foil" parallel and both sets have the usual gazillion insert cards that are too numerous to list here. The Buffaloes set features five different types of player autograph cards - "Authentic", "Star", "Rookie", "Legendary" and "Combo". The Dragons set has those same five types plus "Dragons Combo Autographs", "Mascot Combo Autographs", "Rookie Combo Autographs" and "1 of 1 Autographs".
- Finally, the latest KBO set from SCC was released last week on June 12th. I believe they are only being sold at 7-11s in Korea but I don't know that for sure. The base set contains 140 cards - 13 cards for each of the ten teams in the league plus 10 cards featuring retired players. There's also a bunch of parallels and autographed cards available. Dan Skrezyna of Korean Cardboard has put the checklist for the set up at TCDB and he's had a couple Tweets showing examples of the cards.
I had chosen my hotel for the first part of my trip due to its location. It was basically on the far side of Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden from Jingu and was maybe a mile and a half walk away. The collegiate double header was scheduled to start at 10 AM and we made plans to meet outside the ballpark at 9:30.
I set out from my hotel a little after 9, later than I should have. I got distracted by a couple things along the way. First were a pair of old looking markers outside Yotsuya Civic Hall:
The big marker is apparently for a guardhouse for the Tamagawa Aqueduct which dates from the 1650's. The smaller marker that I didn't get a good photo for was created in 1965 from old stone gutters for the aqueduct that were uncovered during the excavation for the Marunouchi subway line.
The other big distraction was the Olympic stadium:
I made the mistake of bearing left here instead of right which probably took me a little out of my way. Although I wouldn't have seen the 1964 Olympic cauldron if I'd gone the other way:
I also walked by the cauldron for the 2020 Olympics too but I didn't notice it at the time. There was some sort of collegiate sporting event going on in or near the stadium (I mean, other than the baseball games I was going to) and it was a bit distracting. There was some sort of related running event on the road between the Olympic Stadium and where the Jingu Secondary Stadium used to be which restricted where I could actually cross the street.
I ended up not getting to the ballpark until about 9:45. I felt bad because Ryan was the only one of us to actually get there by 9:30 so he ended up standing around waiting for me for 15 minutes - Deanna and Noel had messaged me to say they were running late as well. I apologized profusely when we met up and then we bought tickets and headed into the ballpark.
We decided to go up to the second level behind home plate as it had a great view of the ballpark and was under cover in case the sun came out. Not that that really became an issue - it was a kind of overcast and hazy most of the day.
Deanna and Noel joined us around the time the first game got started. It featured perennial Tokyo Big Six doormat Tokyo University (aka Todai) against Hosei University. Hosei took an early lead in the bottom of the second but Todai tied it up in the top of the fourth. Hosei promptly went ahead again with single runs in the bottom of the fourth and fifth but Todai again tied the score with two runs in their half of the sixth. Tokyo actually went ahead in the top of the seventh on a solo home run from Kaito Sugiura and we briefly discussed among ourselves how cool it would be to see a rare win by Tokyo. It was not to be, however, as Hosei scored two in the bottom of the seventh to regain the lead and added another two in the bottom of the eighth to put the game out of reach. The final score was Hosei 7, Tokyo 4.
One thing Deanna pointed out to me during the game was that Kouki Watanabe, son of former Marines pitcher Shunsuke Watanabe, was warming up in Tokyo's bullpen. Like his father, he's a side-armer:
Unfortunately he never got into the game.
There was about a half hour between the end of the first game and the start of the second game between Meiji University and Rikkio University. It was kind of cool to see all four teams on the field at the same time with Tokyo and Hosei packing up while Meiji and Rikkio worked out on the field:
There wasn't a whole lot of drama in the second game. Meiji took a 3-0 lead in the third inning with Rikkio scoring two in the bottom of the fifth to make it a one run game. That was as close as they got though with Meiji scoring another run in the seventh and two more in the ninth to come away with the 6-2 victory.
Deanna pointed out that we could see Skytree beyond the right field corner of the ballpark:
The second game ended around 3 o'clock and we had to exit the ballpark as they started making preparations for that evening's Swallows game. Deanna's friend Kozo had joined us at our seats and he suggested that we wander over Meiji Jingu Gaien, the park across the street from the outfield stands where there was a Swallows team store as well as the house for Tsubakuro, the team's mascot.
As we made our way around the ballpark we passed by where the Meiji team was getting on their bus. I got a quick photo of Yuichiro Yamamoto, their coach as well as one of their buses as it pulled away:
A crowd had gathered by the backside of the scoreboard where the Swallows players were entering the ballpark from the team's training facility across the street. I got a brief glimpse of manager Shingo Takatsu passing by although I didn't get a photo of him:
Ryan and I both checked out the Swallows' team store but didn't find any baseball cards. Tsubakuro's house was kind of cute though:
We parted ways with Kozo as he wasn't going to the Swallows game and made our way back over to the ballpark. Our seats for that evening were in the outfield which was a new experience for me. While I had been to Jingu several times before, I had always sat in the infield. The outfield seats at the ballpark are completely separate from the infield seats - there's no way to get from one section to the other without going outside. They're essentially two separate buildings.
One reason I wanted to sit in the outfield is that Deanna had told me there were markers up for Munetaka Murakami's 56th home run from 2022 and Wladimir Balentien's 60th home run from 2013. The first one I saw was Murakami's because it's kind of hard to miss:
Balentien's is a little more subtle:
Our seats weren't the most comfortable but the view was pretty good:
The Swallows were taking on the Giants that night and the stands were packed. Cy Sneed was on the mound for Yakult while Rei Takahashi (the second side-armer I had seen on the visitor's bullpen mound that day) was pitching for Yomiuri.
The game was scoreless until the top of the sixth when Kazuma Okamoto hit a solo shot to put the Giants up 1-0. Domingo Santana responded with a solo home run of his own to tie the game in the bottom of the inning and the Swallows scored single runs in both the seventh and eighth innings to beat the Giants 3-1.
UPDATE - forgot to include the game highlights video. This is from the Swallows so it only shows action by the Swallows so don't bother watching if you just want to see Okamoto's home run:
We'd been so sardined into our seats that I hadn't felt like trying to get anything to eat during the game. Afterwards Ryan and I said goodbye to Deanna and Noel and headed for Shinanomachi Station - I had decided I was too tired to walk all the way back to my hotel. We parted ways there with him heading for Funabashi and me in the opposite direction to Shinjuku where I switched to the subway line to get back to my hotel. I picked up a late chicken dinner from the Lawson's two blocks from my hotel before finally getting back to my room. I was kind of surprised how tired I was considering I hadn't walked nearly as much as the day before and I was asleep shortly after I finished eating.
I'm not much for celebrating milestones on the blog (which seems to be what I say everytime I do celebrate one) but I had noticed the other day that I was approaching my 3000th post and thought I should mention it. I kind of juggled the order of posts a little so that this would be number 3000 - although it's been a busy couple days so I didn't really have to do much to make it work.
Isao Harimoto is the only player to get 3000 hits in NPB so I thought it'd be appropriate to share a card of him for this post. Here's his card from the 2016 BBM The Ballpark Stories set (#113) commemorating him getting hit #3000 at Kawasaki Stadium on May 28th, 1980:
I question sometimes if I should be tagging posts about cards that I got from Ryan when I was in Japan with the "2024 Trip" tag since these are cards he would have mailed me if I hadn't met up with him as opposed to cards I bought in stores while I was there. But that's probably too much hair-splitting to worry about.
Among the cards that Ryan had picked up for me in the last few months were some 3D cards that Calbee had made available as "Lucky Card" redemption prizes in 2014. I say "3D" but really these are more of the "Sportsflics" style cards with multiple images on them. There were six of these in all with two being given away with each of the three Calbee Series that year. I had seen someone selling a couple of these on Ebay and I almost bought them before I decided to check Yahoo! Japan Auctions. It turned out that I could get four of them much cheaper there than Ebay so I asked Ryan to grab them for me.
The ones for Series One were for the previous year's Rookies Of The Year - Takahiro Norimoto and Yasuhiro Ogawa:
#CH-1
#CH-2
The scans don't show off the cards very well. Each one probably has four separate images on it. I took some photos from different angles to try to capture this:
Series Two had cards of Sho Nakata and Shinnosuke Abe:
#CH-3
#CH-4
These also each have four separate images on them although I had a difficult time trying to capture them with these photos:
Calbee did two 3D cards in 2015 - one in Series One (Sugano again) and one in Series Two (Chihiro Kaneko) (which I also need to start looking for). I'm not positive but I think this might be the last time that Calbee had something more interesting than a card holder as the prize for the "Lucky Cards". Sean has a post about his son redeeming a card a couple years ago and just getting the same cards he could have pulled from packs. And I'm pretty sure at least one of their Series last year didn't even have "Lucky Cards".
