Card Of The Week May 20

1973 Calbee card (#38) of Shozo Doi and Yokinobu Kuroe

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Calbee put information on their website today regarding this year’s Series Two set.  There will be 72 “regular” player cards (6 per team) that are numbered 74-145 (continuing the numbering from Series One).  There will also be three subsets -…

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Friday night’s 3-2 victory by the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles over Orix was the 1000th win in Senichi Hoshino’s managerial career.  He’s the 12th manager in Japan to make it to 1000 wins and the first former pitcher.  He’s been managing off …

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Running late on this, but last week Shinya Miyamoto of the Swallows got career hit number 2000.  Miyamoto and Atsunori Inaba, the other player to reach 2000 hits this season (so far but Hiroki Kokobu of the Hawks is getting close as well), both st…

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Former Dragon and Hawk infielder Noburo Inoue passed away last week.  Inoue played for Chunichi from 1953 to 1961, for the Hawks from 1962 to 1966 and returned to the Dragons for a final season in 1967.  I’m sure Inoue has a number of menko a…

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Masahiro Yamamoto got the win in the Dragon’s 1-0 victory over the Baystars last Monday.  This was win #212 for his career, passing Hall Of Famer Shigeru Sugishita for most in Dragon’s history.  Here’s his 2009 Calbee card (#080):

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Been meaning to mention this since it started last week – there’s a new Prestige Collectibles Auction going on until May 15.  Details are here.One really cool item up for auction is a 1962 menko card of Larry Doby, when he played for Chunichi. &nb…

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Over the last couple weeks, BBM has announced this year’s editions of the Carp, Giants and Marines team sets.  The Carp set has 109 base cards (including apparently one for Kenta Maeda’s no hitter on April 6), a nine card insert set (Soul Of CARP)…

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So it looks like Atsunori Inaba wasted no time in getting hit #2000 – he did it in his first at bat in yesterday’s game against the Eagles:  Looking at the list of milestones on the Yakyu Baka page I linked above, I’m amused to see that he got…

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After Yamakatsu and Nippon Ham, the other big card manufacturer of the late 1970′s (besides Calbee of course) was NST.  Between 1975 and 1983, NST produced four large sets of 2 inch by 2 7/8 inch cards.  Technically I guess the cards are real…

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Sometime this weekend, Atsunori Inaba of the Fighters most likely will get his 2000th hit – he homered yesterday for hit number 1999.  I thought I’d do a little retrospective on him in anticipation of his milestone (since I have time right now but…

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My 2012 BBM Tokyo Big Six Spring Version set showed up in the mail today from AmiAmi.  It’s a 37 card box set featuring 36 “regular” cards and one special card.  As has been fairly standard the past few years, the 36 “regular” cards are split…

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Jason alerted me recently to a fellow going by the name of Taka Tanaka Giants who is an American (I think) living in Japan who is posting videos of himself opening packs of Japanese baseball cards (and showing off stuff he’s won in auctions) on YouTube…

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I hate showing the same player two weeks in a row, but I wanted to mention two things about Darvish.  The first is that he had a very good outing against the Tigers on Thursday, lowering his ERA by over a run.  I’d still like to see his strik…

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I wrote about the Yamakatsu sets from the late 1970′s a couple weeks ago.  Yamakatsu was not the only non-Calbee maker of baseball card sets in that time period.  There were two other companies of note – NST and Nippon Ham.  I plan on ta…

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Yu Darvish had his first two start for the Rangers this past week – Monday vs the Mariners and yesterday vs the Twins.  He’s currently got a 4.76 ERA and opponents are hitting .340 off of him – which considering his opponents so far were the worst…

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BBM released their annual Rookie Edition set in late February.  Like the previous editions, this set showcases the players taken in last fall’s draft.  The set contains 111 cards – 97 cards of the drafted players, a two card sort-of-checklist…

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BBM has released information about a couple of sets in the last week or two.The first one is called “Diamond Age 1989″.  This is a 28 card box set with 27 “regular” cards of players born in 1989 like Sho Nakata and Yusuke Nomura plus one additiona…

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Hiroshima Toyo Carp pitcher Kenta Maeda threw a nohitter against the hapless Yokohama DeNA Baystars last Friday.  It was third of four consecutive shutout losses for the Baystars – so far the new ownership is getting the same results.Here’s Maeda’…

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Some of the most interesting (to me anyway) Japanese card sets were those produced by the Yamakatsu company in the late-1970′s. Yamakatsu produced 10-20 sets between 1976 to 1981 – I’m giving a range rather than an exact number as it’s not entirely cl…

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On Opening Day Friday, Masanori Ishikawa of the Swallows took a no-hitter into the ninth against the Giants at the Tokyo Dome before Hayato Sakamura broke it up with a one out single.  It was the first time the Giants had ever been shutout on Open…

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Just to prove that I’m not the only one who fancies himself a comedian on April Fool’s Day…

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In the same vein as the Hideki Matsui home run set comes the Yuki Saitoh pitch set.  Cards in this set will be issued for every pitch Yu-Chan throws.  Each card will show a picture of him throwing the pitch and will contain information about …

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Former Orion player Kihachi Enomoto passed away two weeks ago from colon cancer, although the news was just made public in the last couple days.  He played for the Orions from 1955 to 1971 (during which they were known as the Mainichi, the Daimai,…

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I won this card with a couple other mid-1950′s bromides a few months ago on eBay.  They don’t appear to be listed in Gary Engel’s Checklist so I’m pretty much at a loss for identifying anyone on the cards.The uniforms the Carp players are wea…

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1995 BBM Set SummarySize:  655 cardsCards Per Team:  42 (team card, manager + 40 players)Team Card Theme:  Oendan Sections?Number Of Leader Cards: 31Checklists: 12Subsets: 95 Record Breakers (9 cards); 10 Best Hi…

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I recently discovered that Arihito Muramatsu spent most of his first year in professional baseball with the Salinas Spurs of the California League in 1991. The Spurs had a working agreement with the Hawks in the early 1990′s and had a number of Japane…

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While I was listening to the radio today, I heard a promo for this week’s edition of Only A Game that mentioned that they’d be discussing Babe Ruth’s 1934 Tour of Japan.  I turned to my daughter and said “Hey, I know the guy they’re going to …

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As I expect, I’ve gotten behind in doing the posts for the regular sets.  I’ll get back to them in the next few weeks.One thing that I’ve realized, however, is that if I really want them to be the “definitive” posts for the sets, I should include …

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There was a question in the comments to this post the other day asking if the commemorative cards celebrating the 40th Anniversary for Calbee (and reprinting older cards) were the same size as the current cards since Calbee’s card sizes have changed se…

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BBM announced the first four 2012 team sets last week – the Swallows, the Buffaloes, the Hawks and the Golden Eagles.  Each set is a pack-based set featuring 99 cards along with insert and memorabilia (jersey and autograph) cards.  There’s al…

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I finally finished my 2007 Japanese Collegiate All Star set (which were jersey card inserts into boxes of the 2008 Upper Deck Team USA set) a few months back.  As expected, this card (#JN-16) is the one that set me back the most:Yu-chan ran me aro…

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Calbee posted information the other day about their first series for 2012.  As usual, they’ve put the checklist on line.  The unusual thing about this year’s “regular” Calbee cards is that there are 73 of them which is NOT evenly divisible by…

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One of my all time favorite movies is The Big Lebowski.  There’s a scene in the movie where The Dude (Jeff Bridges) is wearing a shirt showing a baseball player along with a couple Japanese characters.  Jeff Bridges apparently really likes th…

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Former Lion GG Satoh has signed to play in Italy this year with Fortitudo Bologna.  (I’m a little amused at the fact that the article on the team’s website shows a card of him from the 2008 Seibu 30th Anniversary set – hmm, wonder where they got t…

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