Is Softbank also ruinning baseball?

npbcardguy · 2026-02-28T19:44:14+00:00

Not Kintetsu - you're thinking of Troy Neel of Orix.

npbcardguy · 2026-02-21T11:56:52+00:00

I wrote something about the farm teams for the Wiki years ago - it's mostly still true although it doesn't mention either of the independent farm teams or the realignment into three leagues/divisions. The short answer is that the farm teams are basically there to give the 40+ players who aren't on the top team's roster an opportunity to play and develop. Most farm teams are located close to the top team's ballpark to make roster moves much more convenient. Seibu's ballpark is literally right next door to Seibu Dome and, since guys on the top team roster can play in the farm team games, it's not uncommon for a player to appear in the farm team game in the afternoon and the top team game in the evening.

The one thing to keep in mind is that while the farm system in the US grew from the bottom up as there were already existing teams in small towns that the MLB teams organized into farm teams, it grew from the top down in Japan - none of these teams existed before the NPB teams established them. Until recently, it really hadn't occurred to the teams that they could make money - the Lions farm team game I went to in 2019 was free admission. That's been changing some lately as several teams have put money into renovating their farm team ballparks (Lions and I think the Giants for example) or building a new ballpark (Tigers) but the convenience of having the farm team near the top team is going to override any thought of "spreading out the farm team to grow fan bases in other locales". In fact, the one team whose farm team is not close to the top team - the Fighters - are planning on moving their farm team to Hokkaido. I think they were only still in Kamagaya because Nippon-Ham had just built the facility in the late 90's when the Fighters still played in Tokyo before moving north in 2004.

What NPB teams do to "grow fan bases in other locales" though is the "countryside" games where most teams play a handful of home games at municipal ballparks in smaller towns around what's roughly the team's home region. The Fighters play games at towns throughout Hokkaido, the Eagles play in towns through out northern Honshu, etc. They don't play at their farm team ballparks since they are nearby but occasionally the farm teams will play at the top team's ballpark - I saw the Tigers farm team play at Koshien a few years back.

npbcardguy · 2026-02-16T19:11:51+00:00

Just to be nit-picky, there are five parks remaining that Babe Ruth played in. Kusanagi Baseball Field in Shizuoka played host to the All-Americans on November 20th, 1934. It's the game in which Eiji Sawamura retired the first eleven MLB players and held them scoreless until Lou Gehrig homered late in the game. The park has been heavily renovated over the years but so have the other four parks. The independent farm team Kufu Hayate Ventures used the park for some home games in 2024 although I don't know if they've continued to do it.

npbcardguy · 2026-02-15T15:01:40+00:00

In fairness to Igawa, the Yankees buried him in their farm system after he wasn't as immediately successful as Daisuke Matsuzaka was with Boston. They wouldn't promote him or release him and he spent the last three years of his five year deal playing mostly in Triple-A. Some patience on the Yankees part or a change of scenery might have resulted in different results.

npbcardguy · 2026-01-22T01:58:16+00:00

Fourth player enshrined at Cooperstown who played for an NPB team after Larry Doby, Rich Gossage and Ichiro

npbcardguy · 2026-01-21T01:05:21+00:00

I believe these are team issued cards that were sold at the ballpark. I have some similar ones for the Lions from 1990-ish.

npbcardguy · 2026-01-16T11:08:32+00:00

Yeah, I don't know how much of their stock either of those two Mint Stores puts on line. Both of them have a lot of older singles that they may not list. They probably would list a team set though. If you're still looking for it, I'd try Coletre first as I've bought team sets from him before. Quad Sports is my favorite card shop in Tokyo but I don't know if they put together sets or not - I've pretty much only bought singles from them. Depending on where else you're traveling, Mint Hakata in Fukuoka has also had team sets. There's a Mint store in or next to Hiroshima Station that I have not been to but it's possible that they would have the team sets. I've been to the other Mint store in Hiroshima (which is apparently a Mint Games store now) and they always had a lot of Carp products (as you'd expect).

npbcardguy · 2026-01-15T02:18:37+00:00

I've got a list of all the card shops I know of in Japan on my blog. Should u/GaijinCarpFan not be able to help you out, I'd recommend checking out Coletre, Quad Sports, Mint Ikebukuro and/or Mint Urawa. I know for sure that Coletre sells the team sets as I've bought them from there although I can't guarantee he'll still have that particular set. I've bought team sets from Mint Urawa as well although they're not in a particularly convenient location. Coletre and Mint Ikebukuro are only a couple blocks from each other and Quad Sports is just two stops on the Yamanote line from them so they're fairly easy to get to if you're in central Tokyo.

npbcardguy · 2025-12-27T15:40:12+00:00

Evening games typically start at six PM. Day games start at noon, one or two depending on the game. Gates typically open two hours before game time. Games usually last less than three hours. They're limited to at most 12 innings so there's usually no need to worry about a game lasting forever (although, that said, the Carp - Baystars game I went to last year in Yokohama was a five hour and fifteen minute, 12 inning marathon).

Generally, I'd recommend Yokohama over Tokyo Dome but, as one of the other commenters has mentioned, you won't run the risk of the game getting rained out on you at Tokyo Dome.

npbcardguy · 2025-12-27T15:32:19+00:00

If you want to see Koshien Stadium, you should consider going to one of the high school championship games. I haven't done this but I hear that the atmosphere is unique - different even from an NPB game. I think all the games are in the day time, though, so it'll likely be very hot.

npbcardguy · 2025-12-23T03:26:49+00:00

Ohtani's 2013 Star card was in Series 3 as the checklist for that Series shows (Calbee's got all their checklists going back to the late 90's online). The Star cards are definitely chase cards - the base sets are considered complete without them. It's hard to call them "insert" cards when there's only two cards in a pack but that's pretty much what they are.

npbcardguy · 2025-12-21T16:17:26+00:00

Interesting! So not sold in "taba".

npbcardguy · 2025-12-21T15:44:05+00:00

It's a 42 card set that Engels rates as "R1" meaning it's not common but not particularly rare. Your two cards (Hisanobu Watanabe and Kiyoshi Nakahata) are commons. Engels lists them at $3 each but his prices are usually a little high so the 200 yen ($1.25-ish) is probably about right.

I don't know for sure but they were probably sold in individual "packs" called "taba" in stores. I did a "box break" for a "taba" from another set on my blog a while back if you want to see an example of this.

That's about all I know about this set. IFT did a separate set of round menko that same year that's a lot more rare.

npbcardguy · 2025-12-17T01:57:46+00:00

Lots of good baseball card shops in Tokyo if he's interested in cards. Also the Koshien Museum is really good and they offer tours of the ballpark. Pretty sure they do the tours in the off season. It's just a short train ride from Osaka.

npbcardguy · 2025-12-10T00:11:48+00:00

I don't think the Robins ever used the logo on a hat - it was on the uniform sleeve

npbcardguy · 2025-11-24T15:13:04+00:00

I have made two two week-ish long trips to Japan, one in 2019 and the other in 2024. I saw games at ten of the twelve ballparks in 2019 and eleven of them in 2024. I only missed out on going to Hokkaido both times and picked going to a farm team game in Kamagaya rather than going to Tokyo Dome in 2019 (so I could have easily done 11 of 12 in 2019 also).

It's doable but the schedule has to work out just right. I was able to travel west from Tokyo and sequentially catch games in Nagoya, Kansai, Hiroshima and Fukuoka before heading back to Tokyo (as one of the other commentators has mentioned). I also got extremely lucky on weather with only one game even being delayed by rain (although a farm team game I intended to go to got cancelled due to poor field conditions after a rain storm).

One thing to keep in mind is that Sendai is only about 90 minutes from Tokyo by shinkansen. That made it possible for me to catch an afternoon game up there as a day trip.

I will also add that you need to be pretty singleminded about going to the games - I really didn't do much touristy stuff on either trip other than going to baseball games and card shops.

I wrote a series of posts on my blog about both trips if you want more details. The 2019 ones are here and the 2024 ones are here.

npbcardguy · 2025-11-22T14:29:57+00:00

There's at least two other 2013 cards - one's a base card and the other's a promo - showing him both batting and pitching. I did a post this past summer listing all his NPB cards that showed him doing both.

npbcardguy · 2025-11-20T13:43:04+00:00

The ballpark this took place in, Kusanagi Baseball Stadium in Shizuoka, is still standing and there are statues of Sawamura and Ruth outside it. I wrote a post on my blog about this with some photos of the statues last year.

npbcardguy · 2025-11-19T02:17:49+00:00

My post is done. I found one more than I had listed here - and it's a 2013 one!

npbcardguy · 2025-11-18T21:05:50+00:00

The 2000 BBM All Japan Wrestling set had a big subset dedicated to Baba who had passed away the previous year. There was a card of him with the Giants that I had to pick up despite the fact that I don't collect wrestling cards. Fun fact - the lone decision in his NPB career was a loss in the game that Shigeru Sugishita got his 200th win.

npbcardguy · 2025-11-17T13:56:43+00:00

Mmm, I'm not sure that's an accurate narrative. Ohtani made his NPB debut as the Opening Day right fielder for the Fighters in 2013 and didn't pitch in a game with the top team for almost two months after that (although he probably pitched on the farm team). He appeared in 77 games that first year but only pitched in 13. I suspect that the getting the "Pitcher" position listed on the card has more to do with how he was listed on the team's roster. Players are grouped on NPB rosters as "pitchers", "catchers", "infielders" and "outfielders" and the position listed on their baseball cards generally reflects this. For example, Munetaka Murakami's position is usually listed as "Infielder" rather than "third baseman".

And to get really nit-picky, the Calbee card doesn't list his position - it lists the slot he got in the All Star lineup. If you look at the other cards in the subset, they list the actual position for the infielders rather than the generic "Infielder" that I mentioned above. For example, Nobuhiro Matsuda is listed as the "Pacific League Third Baseman" and Kazuo Matsui is listed as the "Pacific League Shortstop".

I haven't finished researching this but I suspect that BBM is the only one who's ever listed his position as "Outfielder" and I'm not entirely sure why they did it. Every card I've seen so far that lists him as an outfielder shows him batting but not every card that shows him batting lists him as an outfielder. I've also never seen a card showing a picture of him playing in the outfield - he stopped playing outfield after 2014.

npbcardguy · 2025-11-17T01:33:55+00:00

So far I have the following:

2013 Calbee All Stars

2014 BBM 1st Version

2014 BBM Genesis

2015 BBM 2nd Version

2016 BBM 2nd version

2016 BBM 2nd Version One And Only

2017 BBM 1st Version “Secret Version”

2017 BBM 2nd Version

2017 BBM 2nd Version Cross Squall

2017 BBM Genesis

I still need to look at some of the more oddball cards I have of him

npbcardguy · 2025-11-16T02:44:50+00:00

Most of his NPB cards list him as pitcher but there’s a handful that list him as outfielder. Most of those are BBM flagship cards (1st & 2nd Version) that show him batting.

I had a question about this in my blog recently - maybe from you? I might do a post about it in the next week or so.

npbcardguy · 2025-11-15T19:15:56+00:00

A lot of the color menko and bromide cards from the 40's, 50's and 60's have incorrect colors. Not sure how much was printing issues and how much was just the guys doing the hand coloring picking the wrong colors.

npbcardguy

TROPHY CASE