The 2024 Japanese Baseball Hall Of Fame class was announced today.  The Player's Division elected former Hiroshima Toyo Carp (and Dodger and Yankee) pitcher Hiroki Kuroda and former Yokohama Taiyo Whale/Baystar and Chunichi Dragon catcher Motonobu Tanishige.  Tanishige was also player-manager with the Dragons for a couple of years in the teens.  The Special Committee elected former umpire Tomoichi Tanimura while the Expert Division didn't elect anyone - former Hanshin Tiger Masayuki Kakefu narrowly missed being selected, getting 109 of the 111 votes he needed to gain admittance. Hiroki Kuroda

1997 BBM #496

2007 Calbee #096

2017 BBM Retirement #02

Motonobu Tanishige

1989 Takara Whales #1

2001 Upper Deck Victory #017

2016 BBM Retirement #03

I updated the spread sheet I have listing all the Hall Of Famers in BBM's flagship sets over the years (the one I used to identify the sets with the most Hall Of Famers and the sets with the most Hall Of Fame players).  1994 is still the set with the most Hall Of Fame players with 17 while 1991 remains the set with the most Hall Of Famers (players and managers) with 25.  Since Kuroda was last active in 2016, that's now the most recent year to feature a Hall Of Fame player. 

The 2023 Japanese Baseball Hall Of Fame inductees were announced today.  Each of the Hall's three voting divisions elected someone with former Swallows, Giants and Baystars player (as well as former Baystars manager) Alex Ramirez getting elected on the Players Division ballot while Hanshin Tigers legend Randy Bass was elected on the Expert Division ballot and the Special Committee elected composer Yuji Koseki who among many other things is known for composing the Tigers' fight song "Rokko Oroshi".  Ramirez and Bass are the first foreign players elected to the Hall Of Fame since Wally Yonamine was elected in 1994.  Here's some cards of the two of them:Randy Bass

1986 Calbee #206

2020 BBM Time Travel 1985 #CT7

2009 BBM The Premium Malts #10

Alex Ramirez

2001 BBM Nippon Series #S22

2010 Calbee #002

2020 BBM 1st Version #190

The Japanese Hall Of Fame inductees for 2022 were announced today.  There were two players elected on the Players Division ballot, Shingo Takatsu and Masahiro Yamamoto.  They were the first players elected on that ballot in three years.  For the second straight year no one was elected on the Experts Division ballot and the Special Committee elected Shigeyoshi Matsumae, the founder of Tokai University.Shingo Takatsu

1991 BBM #387

2002 Calbee #EX-3

2007 BBM 2nd Version #626

Masashiro Yamamoto

1990 Calbee #64

2006 Dragons #34

2015 Epoch Dragons X Mizuno #13

I updated the spread sheet I have listing all the Hall Of Famers in BBM's flagship sets over the years (the one I used to identify the sets with the most Hall Of Famers and the sets with the most Hall Of Fame players).  It didn't make a difference in the standings since Takatsu appeared in the sets from 1991 to 2007 with the exception of 2004 & 2005 when he played in MLB and Yamamoto appeared in the sets from 1991 to 2015.  The set with the most Hall Of Fame players is still 1994 which now has 16 and the set with the most Hall Of Famers (players and managers) is still 1991 which now has 24.  The most recent year to feature a Hall Of Fame player is now 2015.  Since Takatsu has been the manager of the Swallows since 2020, the sets from the last two years now feature three Hall Of Famers (Takatsu, Kimiyasu Kudoh and Tatsunori Hara).  This year's set will also feature three Hall Of Famers - Takatsu, Hara and Kazuyoshi Tatsunami.

I did a post a while back where I looked into which BBM flagship set had the most Hall Of Famers in it.  The answer was the 1991 set which featured 22 Hall Of Famers.  The more I've thought about it since doing that post the less satisfied I am with that answer.  It's not that the numbers are wrong - there are 22 current Hall Of Famers in the 1991 BBM set and that's the most in any BBM flagship set - but there's an aspect that I felt I should take into consideration - managers.

It is much more likely for a star player in NPB to become a manager than it is in MLB.  Let's use the 500 home run club for an example of this.  There are 27 MLB players with more than 500 home runs.  Only four ever managed an MLB team - Mel Ott, Ted Williams, Eddie Mathews and Frank Robinson.  There have only been eight NPB players with more than 500 home runs* and half of them have managed NPB teams - Katsuya Nomura, Sadaharu Oh, Koji Yamamoto and Hiromitsu Ochiai.

*I'm not including Hideki Matsui in this list as his 500 career home runs are split between NPB and MLB

So why does this matter?  There are nine Hall Of Fame managers in the 1991 BBM set.  That means three quarters of the NPB teams were managed by a Hall Of Famer that year!  And 1991 is not alone - there were also nine Hall Of Fame managers in 1998, 1999 and 2001.  So given that there are so many managers in the Hall Of Fame, I thought it'd be interesting to see which BBM sets had the most Hall Of Fame players in them.

Somewhat surprisingly, the answer is the 1994 set with 14.  The 1991, 1992 and 1993 sets each have 13 and the 1995 set has 12.  The numbers drop steadily after that with the 1996-98 sets each having 11, the 1999 set has 9, the 2000 and 2001 sets have 8 each, and so on until 2012 which is the last BBM set to feature a Hall Of Fame player (Tomoaki Kanemoto).

Here's the 14 Hall Of Famers from the 1994 set:

1994 BBM #463

1994 BBM #16

1994 BBM #84

1994 BBM #164

1994 BBM #363

1994 BBM #132

1994 BBM #151

1994 BBM #321

1994 BBM #216

1994 BBM #316

1994 BBM #131

1994 BBM #67

1994 BBM #112

1994 BBM #296

This post was inspired by a post that Night Owl Cards did a month or so ago that calculated how many Hall Of Famers have appeared in each Topps set.  I figured it wouldn't be that hard to do the same thing for BBM sets and I created a spread sheet with the numbers.  I updated it earlier this week with Koichi Tabuchi's selection and thought I'd share the results here.

My criteria for this was that the Hall Of Famer must have a "regular" card as either a player or manager in BBM's "flagship" set(s) for the year.  This means players appearing in an OB subset (like the "Nostalgic Stars" subsets in the 1991-94 sets) don't count.  For "flagship" set I mean the regular BBM set from 1991 to 2001 and the 1st and 2nd Version sets since then.  To be counted the player only needs to be in either 1st or 2nd Version, not both.  Appearances in the Fusion set don't count.

There are a total of 35 Hall Of Famers who appear as either a player or manager in at least one of BBM's "flagship" sets.  They are Koji Akiyama, Motoshi Fujita, Atsuya Furuta, Hiroshi Gondoh, Tatsunori Hara, Osamu Higashio, Tsuneo Horiuchi, Senichi Hoshino, Tsutomu Itoh, Hiromitsu Kadota, Masaichi Kaneda, Tomoaki Kanemoto, Manabu Kittabeppu, Sadao Kondoh, Kimiyasu Kudoh, Hideki Matsui, Masaaki Mori, Shigeo Nagashima, Rikuo Nemoto, Hideo Nomo, Katsuya Nomura, Hiromitsu Ochiai, Sadaharu Oh, Akira Ohgi, Yutaka Ohno, Masaki Saitoh, Kazuhiro Sasaki, Keichi Suzuki, Koichi Tabuchi, Morimichi Takagi, Kazuyoshi Tatsunami, Toshiharu Ueda, Tsutomu Wakamatsu, Hisashi Yamada, Koji Yamamoto and Yoshio Yoshida.  Kudoh has appeared in the most years - 25.  Kaneda and Kondoh each only appeared in one set (1991).

1991 BBM #56

With 22, 1991 is the set with the most Hall Of Famers.  They are Akiyama, Fujita, Furuta, Hara, Hoshino, Itoh, Kadota, Kaneda, Kitabeppu, Kondoh, Kudoh, Mori, Nomo, Nomura, Ochiai, Ohgi, Ohno, Saitoh, Sasaki, Tabuchi, Tatsunami and Yamamoto.

1994 BBM #132

The 1994 set has the second most Hall Of Famers - 21.  They are Akiyama, Furuta, Hara, Itoh, Kanemoto, Kitabeppu, Kudoh, Matsui, Mori, Nagashima, Nemoto, Nomo, Nomura, Ochiai, Ohgi, Ohno, Saitoh, Sasaki, Suzuki, Takagi and Tatsunami.

1992 BBM #146

1993 BBM #130

1995 BBM #50

1998 BBM #520

Four sets are tied for third with 20 Hall Of Famers apiece.  The 1992 set has Akiyama, Fujita, Furuta, Hara, Itoh, Kadota, Kitabeppu, Kudoh, Mori, Nomo, Nomura, Ochiai, Ohgi, Ohno, Saitoh, Sasaki, Tabuchi, Takagi, Tatsunami and Yamamoto.  The 1993 set dropped Fujita, Kadota, Ohgi and Tabuchi and replaced them with  Matsui, Nagashima, Nemoto and Suzuki (literally in one case - Suzuki took over as manager of Kintetsu from Ohgi).  The 1995 set has the same group as the 1994 set except that it dropped Kitabeppu, Mori, Nemoto and Nomo and picked up Higashio, Oh and Ueda.  The 1998 set has Akiyama, Furuta, Gondoh, Higashio, Hoshino, Itoh, Kanemoto, Kudoh, Matsui, Nagashima, Nomura, Ochiai, Oh, Ohgi, Ohno, Saitoh, Sasaki, Tatsunami, Ueda and Yoshida.

There has not yet been a BBM flagship set that didn't feature at least two Hall Of Famers.  Last year's set had Hara and Kudoh (who coincidentally faced off in last year's Nippon Series.  It was the first time that both managers were Hall Of Famers at the time since Nagashima and Oh faced off in 2000 although there have been a number of match ups since then where the manager was elected to the Hall Of Fame after the Series).  Barring any unexpected developments in the next month (like a major sign stealing scandal involving the Giants and/or the Hawks) I would expect that the 2020 set will also include two Hall Of Famers.  The last Hall Of Famer to appear in a BBM set as a player was Kanemoto in 2012.

I intend to do a new instance of this post after the Hall Of Fame vote each year although given the glacial pace of new inductees I don't expect it to change much.  If I get really ambitious I'll try doing it with the Calbee sets!

The 2020 Hall Of Fame Class was announced today.  No one got enough votes on the "Players Division" ballot to be elected (Shingo Takatsu was seven votes shy of the 266 necessary for election) but former Hanshin Tiger and Seibu Lion Koichi Tabuchi was elected on the "Expert Division" ballot.  In addition there were two former Tokyo Big 6 managers elected via the Special Division ballot - Yukichi Maeda of Keio and Renzo Ishii of Waseda.

Tabuchi was the first round pick of the Tigers in the 1968 draft out of Hosei University (and is the fifth Hall Of Famer from that round, following Hisashi Yamada, Koji Yamamoto, Senichi Hoshino and Osamu Higashio.  Meikyukai member Michio Arito was another first rounder that year).  He debuted with the Tigers in 1969 and was named Rookie Of The Year.  He was with Hanshin until after the 1978 season, making the All Star team 9 times and being elected to the Best 9 team five times.  He also led the Central League in home runs in 1975, the only time in the 16 years between 1962 and 1977 that Sadaharu Oh didn't lead the league.  He was traded to the Seibu Lions in the 1978-79 off season in the deal that sent Akinobu Mayumi to Hanshin.  Seibu had just bought the Lions and moved them from Fukuoka to Tokorazawa and I've always felt that they acquired Tabuchi and Katsuya Nomura for the 1979 season to show that they were serious about building a winning team.  He made the All Star team two more times with the Lions and helped them win back-to-back Nippon Series in 1982-83.  He retired following the 1984 season with 474 career home runs, the 11th most in NPB history (and I think he was sixth or seventh on the list when he retired).  He managed the Fukuoka Daiei Hawks from 1990-92 and coached for the Tigers and Eagles as well as the 2008 Olympic baseball team, all with his friend Senichi Hoshino as manager.

Here's a couple cards showing him after different stages of his career:

2011 BBM Legend Of Tokyo Big 6 #051

1974/75 Calbee #344

1976 Yamakatsu JY1

1984 Calbee #72

1992 BBM #209

My biggest fear about my Japan trip was the one factor that I had no control over - the weather.  I had been quite fortunate for the first two weeks of the trip but my luck appeared to be running out when I woke up on Friday, June 7th.  The forecast for the Kanto region called for rain for that day.  What's worse is that the weekend's forecast wasn't looking a whole better.  I had tickets for Yokohama this evening and Yakult for Saturday afternoon.  I also had plans to see a Fighters farm team game in Kamagaya on Sunday but at least I didn't already have a ticket yet.

There wasn't anything I could do but keep on keeping on so I went ahead with the plans I had for that Friday.  My first item on the agenda that morning was the Japanese Baseball Hall Of Fame over at the Tokyo Dome.  I got over there about a half hour before it opened so I had a little time to walk around near by.

Korakuen Stadium used to stand on the site adjacent to the Tokyo Dome but as far as I can tell there's no marker or memorial for it.  The only thing even close to a remnant of the old park is the Cenotaph that was erected outside it in 1981 that listed the baseball players killed during the war.  This now stands near the Dome - it's at street level between the Dome and the amusement park just north of it:


I had a couple minutes to walk into The Ballpark Store next door to the Hall Of Fame.  This store stocks hats and other apparel for all 12 NPB teams.  I bought a Dragons hat here during my 2013 trip but I didn't get anything this time around.  I was looking to see what they stocked in the way of baseball cards but I didn't see any.


At 10 I headed into the Hall Of Fame.  Admission was just 600 yen.


This was my second ever visit to the Hall - I had been there on my previous trip back in 2013.  I was severely jet-lagged on my last visit so I didn't think I got as much out of it as I could have.  I was much more rested this time but I still managed to spend less than an hour in the museum.

Once you pay your admission you have to go downstairs to get to the museum itself.  At the foot of the stairs is a display commemorating the 2019 Hall Of Fame inductees:


The first room you enter after you come down the stairs and turn left contains "lockers' for each of the 12 NPB teams.  Each "locker" contains a player's uniform and other team paraphernalia:



The second room is dedicated to professional baseball.  It looked like the major exhibits were unchanged from my previous visit so I didn't pay a lot of attention to them.  Instead I looked at some of the smaller items that I had not noticed before - like this poster showing the history of the NPB teams name changes and mergers:


There was also this poster for the 1981 Nippon Series between the Giants and the Fighters.  At the time the two teams shared Korakuen Stadium so the entire Series was played in one ballpark.


The next room was for the "History Of Baseball".  This featured a display of baseball cards:


I think this is the 1949 "Dreaming Of Baseball" Karuta set (JK 1).  This is the same set I saw here in 2013 but now they are also displaying the reading cards as well as the picture cards.

There were also displays here for Japanese players in MLB as well as MLB tours of Japan.  Here's a display they had up for Ichiro:


Another item I noticed here was an autographed base that Rickey Henderson had given Yutaka Fukumoto when he broke Fukumoto's record for most steals (1065):


The next section was for amateur baseball.  There was a display of the jerseys that I think are from the most recent summer Koshien Tournament (at least the Osaka Toin jersey anyway):


I still get a kick out of the Cal Ripken World Series display.  I was at the championship game in 2016 that's celebrated in the frame in the center of the photo.  That was the last year the Series was played in Aberdeen, Maryland, not far from my home.


Just after the amateur baseball materials is displays for Women's Baseball.  There's a case dedicated to the Japan Women's Baseball League (JWBL):


There were also a couple displays for the Women's Samurai Japan team that has dominated the last couple Women's Baseball World Cups:



There were also displays here for the men's National Teams both amateur and professional including displays for the 2006 and 2009 World Baseball Classic champions:



The next room is the Hall Of Fame itself.  The main thing in this room are the plaques on the walls for all the Hall Of Famers:



This room also featured a couple of other items.  There was a display commemorating when Shohei Ohtani hit the roof of the Tokyo Dome a few years back:


There was a display of materials from Shigeo Nagashima's People's Honor Award ceremony in 2013:


My visit was about a month into the Reiwa Era so the Hall had a couple displays dedicated to the end of the Heisei Era and the beginning of the new one.  For their final game of the Heisei Era on April 29th the Orix Buffaloes wore throwback BlueWave jerseys.  Every jersey had Akira Ohgi's number on it as April 29th would have been Ohgi's 84th birthday.  (Ohgi had managed the BlueWave from 1994 to 2001 and was the "merged" Orix Buffaloes' first manager in 2005.  He passed away in late 2005.)  The Hall had a display showing one of the uniforms:


Additionally there was display of baseball's from the final games of the Heisei Era:


And also from the first games of the Reiwa Era:


There was a special exhibit going on dealing with uniforms.  I took a bunch of photos but I'm not entirely sure what was going on.  It's pretty obvious who some of the jersey's in the photos that follow belonged to.










The Hall Of Fame doesn't really have a gift shop but there are a handful of items for sale near the front door.  Mostly what they have are little knick-knacks but they also have a bunch of postcards of the Hall Of Fame plaques.  I think they've added this since my first visit here.  Each postcards is 100 yen.  I'm not sure how many different Hall Of Famers have postcards as it's certainly not all of them.  I kind of got carried away here and ended up buying 20 postcards in all, picking up ones for Koji Akiyama, Yutaka Fukumoto, Atsuya Furuta, Isao Harimoto, Senichi Hoshino, Kazuhisa Inao, Tsutomu Itoh, Tomoaki Kanemoto, Sachio Kinugasa, Kimiyasu Kudoh, Shigeo Nagashima, Futoshi Nakanishi, Katsuya Nomura, Hiromitsu Ochiai, Sadaharu Oh, Akira Ohgi, Shigeru Sugishita, Tsutomu Wakamatsu and Hisashi Yamada.  If you've counted you'll see that's only 19 - I bought two of the Sugishita postcard and sent one to Zippy Zappy when I got home.  Here's the Hoshino, Nomura and Ochiai postcards:




It had started to rain while I was in the Hall Of Fame but I was able to stay under cover after I exited the museum and walked along the concourse outside the Toyko Dome.  Two of the gates for the Dome are named for Nagashima and Oh (despite the fact that neither of them ever played there).  The gates are each marked by a large mural of the namesake player:



I'd seen these murals on my first trip to Japan but I must not have noticed just how ugly the Nagashima one looks.  I know that the image of him losing his helmet is famous but his face looks ridiculously contorted.

The Giants have a team shop right by the Nagashima gate that I took a quick look in.  Again I didn't find any baseball cards.


I checked out the sports book store Oaks in the "Yellow Building" just south of the Dome.  This store occupies the same location as Yamashita, a sports book store that was here from the late 40's until early 2013.  Deanna Rubin had told me a while back that everyone still refers to the store as Yamashita.  The store did stock the latest packs of baseball cards as well as the Calbee team books.  I was looking for the program from the most recent Sumo tournament for a friend of mine but they didn't have it.


It was closing in on noon now and I had plans to meet up with Dan at Wrappers in Jimbocho.  I got down there first but ran into issues finding the store.  Dan showed up a few minutes later and guided me to the store (I'll go into the issue more when I do my post about the store).  After an hour or so at the shop I headed back up the Tokyo Dome (only one stop away on the Mita line) to grab a bite to eat with John E. Gibson of the Japan Baseball Weekly podcast.  John was at the Dome to try to get an interview with someone for that week's podcast - he was able to catch up with Brandon Laird of the Marines who were playing the Giants that evening.  It was great to get a chance to catch up with him.  He dubbed my trip the "Monsters Of NPB Tour" which I'm going to tag all my overview posts with.

It was still raining when I left the Dome and was not showing any signs of heading up.  I checked online and discovered that the Swallows game that evening had been postponed but the Baystars game I had tickets for was still on.  I caught up with Dan at the Akihabara Station and we headed south to Yokohama.  Dan was going to go with me to Mint Yokohama even though he wasn't going to the game.

It's about an hour long trip from Tokyo to Yokohama and Dan and I got off at Yokohama Station in the middle of the evening rush hour.  It was a bit of a mad house getting through the crowd and making our way to the card shop.  I had pretty much finished up at the store when I checked my phone again, fully expecting to see that the Baystars game was postponed.  To my surprise, it wasn't and I realized that it was 1700 and the game was scheduled for 1800 - I needed to get moving.  I said my goodbyes to Dan and headed back to Yokohama Station.  Luckily Yokohama Stadium is only a short train ride from the Station so it wasn't long before I was at the ballpark.

I had really been looking forward to going to the game in Yokohama.  I had really enjoyed the park when I was there in 2013 and I was interested in seeing how the renovations the team was doing to the park were going - some of these renovations were preparations to the park hosting the Olympic baseball games next year.  I had also learned some interesting things about the site itself.  The park that the ballpark sits in was the site of a baseball game in 1896 in which "a team from Tokyo's Ichikō high school convincingly defeated a team of resident foreigners from the Yokohama Country & Athletic Club".  I believe this was the first time a Japanese team had defeated a team of foreigners and it greatly contributed to the popularity of baseball in Japan.  There was a ballpark built in the park on the site of the current park that hosted a game of the MLB tour on November 18th, 1934 (which the All Americans won 21-4).  This park also was the site of the first night game in NPB in August 17th, 1948 between the Giants and the Dragons.  The old park was in bad shape by the 1970's and was torn down in 1977 to make way for the new park.

There are plaques for Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig at the foul poles of the ballpark (Ruth's is at the left field pole while Gehrig is at the right field pole) to commemorate the old park being used in 1934.  I was hoping to be able to see these as well.

So I had been looking forward to going to the ballpark.  But by the time I actually got there I was in a bad mood.  First of all I was tired.  I had had late nights the two previous nights and was anticipating another one this evening.  Secondly I was wet and cold by the time I got to the park.  My bad mood made things that wouldn't have normally bothered me - like the fact that I had to walk all the way around the ballpark to get to where I could enter the park - seem to be major irritations.   It had been raining since 1000 that morning  and I was in disbelief that the Baystars had not called the game, especially once I got to my seat and saw that the tarp was still on the field.


Still I had pretty good seats and the Baystars were playing the Lions so I was trying to make the best of it.  Plus my favorite Baystars pitcher - Shota Imanaga - was starting that night.  The start of the game was delayed a little bit so I walked around a little under the stands.  I was hoping to get something to eat but there were long lines at all the food vendors and my bad mood was making me impatient and not inclined to give the Baystars any money.  I was also unable to figure out how to get over to the foul poles - there was a divider in the stands that prevented me from just walking over from my seats.

I will give the team credit - by the time the game started the rain had stopped and I don't think it rained anymore during the rest of the game.  The Lions scored a couple runs in the top of the fourth and the Baystars responded with two of their own in the bottom of the inning.  But Shuta Tonosaki hit a solo home run in the fifth to put the Lions up for good in the fifth and they scored three more runs in the seventh and eighth innings to win the game 6-2.  Imanaga struck out 12 in seven innings of work but also walked five.  He gave up five runs on seven hits.  Lions starter Kona Takahashi held the Baystars to just two runs on three hits (and two walks) in seven innings.  But I was long gone by the time the game ended.

I hated leaving the game early but again - I was tired, cold and wet.  And for the first time I actually had to deal with rude Japanese fans.  They weren't being rude to me specifically (at least I don't think so) but the fans on the other side of the aisle were my seat was were constantly standing up and screwing around.  And not in a fans cheering way either.  I wouldn't have cared but every time they stood up they blocked my view of the batter.  If I hadn't been in a such a bad mood I probably wouldn't have cared so much but I wasn't having it that evening.  So I left after five innings.

I still hadn't eaten dinner so by the time I had taken the train back up to Tokyo I was starving.  I finally stopped for dinner at a Sukiya restaurant a couple blocks from my hotel.  Sukiya is a chain of gyudon restaurants - I had eaten at one in Odawara with Ryan a week earlier.  By the time the game was over I was sitting in the warm, dry restaurant, eating my three cheese gyudon and nursing a large beer.


Again I hated leaving the game early but I loved getting back to my hotel room probably two hours earlier than I would have otherwise.  This left me well rested for the last two days of my trip.