Officially, professional baseball in Japan dates from the 1934 founding of the Yomiuri Giants (or, to be completely accurate, the Dai Nippon Tokyo Yakyu Kurabu or "Great Japan Tokyo Baseball Club").  This is not exactly the case, as there apparently were some "professional" teams in Kansai in the 1920's but two things have contributed to this being the origin story.  The first is that the team lasted and there's no real gap in its history (other than the cancelled 1945 season) and the second is that Yomiuri runs a big media empire and has popularized this version of events.  So ..read more

Topps is releasing three NPB sets this week - Stadium Club, Chrome and 206 - and there's information up on their Japanese website for all three of them.  The checklists for all three sets are available and from the very limited look that I took, I think all three sets contain the same players.  The base sets are each 216 cards which breaks down to 18 cards per team.   While perusing the checklists today, I noticed something that I'm unsure how to describe my feelings about.  I was going to say "makes my blood boil" but that seems a bit excessive for a baseball card che ..read more

It's funny how things work out sometimes. A couple weeks back when I was researching Rich Duran's brief NPB career, I found what I thought was an interesting story about how the Kintetsu Buffaloes ended up with one of their best foreign players.  After parting ways with Charlie Manuel after the 1980 season, the team had struggled for a few years to find foreign players with productive bats.  Vic Harris, Ike Hamption, Larry Wolfe and Mike Edwards weren't really working out as hoped.  In 1984, the team signed the previously mentioned Duran along with four time All Star Don Money ..read more

I was kind of embarrassed that it took until early last year for me to realize that Calbee's always (or nearly always) had twelve checklist cards across their full set for a reason - there's one checklist card dedicated to each of the twelve NPB teams.  To be clear, what I mean by that is not the checklist cards list each team's cards separately but that each of the twelve cards shows a photo that's related to a different team.  So for example, in the two 2024 Calbee Series, the checklists in Series One showed photos from the Tigers, Buffaloes,  Carp, Marines, Baystars and ..read more

The Toronto Maple Leafs of the semi-pro Intercounty Baseball League announced yesterday that they had signed Madonna Japan's legendary pitcher Ayami Sato to a contract, presumably for the 2025 season.  It's funny - I had never heard of this league before last week when the Hamilton Cardinals announced their signing of Fernando Rodney and now they've had two big news stories in as many weeks. I thought I'd take this opportunity to show off the cards I have of Sato.  I'm pretty sure I've shown all of these before but never in a single post.  All the cards I have of her are from t ..read more

Just wanted to do a quick post to mention that Topps put eight more Samurai Japan Topps Now cards up for sale on their website.  Each card is still 1342 yen ($8.72) if you live in Japan but only 1220 yen ($7.92) if you're in the States although you'll have to pay 4000 yen for shipping in that case (I think shipping is free in Japan).  It looks like there's two cards for sale for the game against the US on November 21st, two cards for the game against Venezuela on the 22nd, three cards for the game against Taiwan on the 23rd and, surprisingly, a card for the championship game from the ..read more

Long time Tokyo Yakult Swallows outfielder Norichika Aoki announced his retirement a few months back.  Aoki had been a pitcher in high school but a broken shoulder made him switch to the outfield when he entered college in 2000. He was a star on a loaded Waseda University team that included Takashi Toritani and Tsuyoshi Wada.  The team won four consecutive titles for the first time in its history during his tenure with the team.  He batted ,332 over his collegiate career (including a league leading .463 in the spring 2003 season) and won three Best 9 awards.  He also set a ..read more

Fumiya Kurokawa of the Eagles is wintering in Australia, spending the first half of the Australian Baseball League's 2024-25 season with the Perth Heat.  This weekend, the Heat were in Adelaide, playing a four game set against the Giants.  The two teams played a double-header on Friday and Adelaide was up 1-0 in the top of the third of the nightcap when Kurokawa came to bat with the bases loaded.  He promptly un-loaded them, hitting a grand slam over the right field wall on the first pitch of the at bat from fellow NPB import Ryusei Yamada (of the Yomiuri Giants): Kurokawa's sl ..read more

2024 marks the 15th straight year that BBM has done some sort of "cross" subset - usually distributed across multiple sets - and the tenth year that it's pretty much been in its current form.  I thought I'd devote a post to what I guess is now a staple of BBM's flagship sets although I personally think it's high time for them to come up with a new gimmick. So what's the "cross" subset?  It's a subset that BBM has issued that is included in multiple sets each year (with one exception) that's called "Cross Something" (again with one exception).  The cards show images of players su ..read more

Long time Hawks pitcher Tsuyoshi Wada, the final active player from the "Matsuzaka Generation" announced his retirement a few weeks ago.  Wada had a stellar collegiate career at Waseda University, setting the career strikeout record for the Tokyo Big Six league, before being signing with the then-Fukuoka Daiei Hawks in the "free acquisition phase" of the 2002 draft. The Hawks immediately put him into their starting rotation and he did not disappoint, going 14-5 with an ERA of 3.38 and 195 strikeouts (in 189 innings).  He capped off what ended up being a Rookie Of The Year winning sea ..read more