Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese and Minor League Baseball Card Checklists (Online)

(click here to skip the wandering preamble and get straight to the important stuff)

     A few years ago, when I seriously got back into collecting baseball cards, I decided to pick up where I left off on my Hensley Meulens collection.  I had mostly stopped collecting and following baseball after the strike in 1994.  Then came school, marriage, the beginnings of a career, and for awhile there, I was more concerned with just keeping the lights on, the rent paid, gas in the car and food on the table, so I had almost no idea what had happened in the intervening 8-9 years I was away from the hobby.  When I got back into it, I found that Dave Winfield had been elected into the Hall of Fame, Matt Williams was named in the Mitchell Report and Meulens had spent three years in Japan (later making a couple of unsuccessful returns to the Majors).

   As I started to jump back into things, I discovered the joys (and pains) of eBay, online trading sites (SportsCardForum and The Bench Trading being the main two I've settled into, later expanding to Freedom Cardboard, mostly for the conversation), the expansive sites based around statistics (Baseball Almanac, Baseball Reference and The Baseball Cube being my most frequented) and all manner of collector's blogs and hobby news sites.  But that only showed me that there were some glaring gaps in my collection and knowledge from outside the mainstream of the North American hobby.

     As I caught up with lots of the Meulens cards I'd missed, I had to find resources for the Japanese cards about which, up to this point, I knew absolutely nothing.  As I hunted for information on them, I encountered great sites like JapaneseBaseball.com, The Japanese Baseball Card Blog, Rob's Japanese Cards and Prestige Collectibles.  Through Rob Fitts' site, I was able to pick up most of Meulens' BBM and Takara cards, but came up short on the Calbee cards.  I only knew those cards existed because Beckett happened to include a few years of Japanese cards in their online price guide.  However, I knew there had to be more, and just in learning about the BBM and Takara sets, I knew Beckett was far from complete or accurate in their listings.  Everyone I encountered or asked for help suggested I pick up a copy of Gary Engel's Japanese Baseball Card Checklist & Price Guide.  So I picked up the 6th edition.  And learned that there was an enormous world of baseball cards in Japan.  And Hensley Meulens had a few more cards that I needed to find. (A 7th edition was released in early 2010 and is available from Prestige Collectibles.)

2000 Future Bee Power League UL box break (pack 7)

After the Mid-Season hiatus, we now return to the Power League UL box break.


Takeshi Hidaka  - still catching for Orix, only now for the Buffaloes and on a part-time basis.  Hit .279 in  79 games this past season and earned free agency for the second time in his career.
Takeshi Hidaka @ NPB Official Website


Hiroshi Gondoh - in 2000, the manager of the Yokohama BayStars.  In 1961, Gondoh was the recipient of the Eiji Sawamura Award, the NPB equivilent of the Cy Young Award.  While it's well established that Major League pitchers used to throw a lot more innings than they do today, they couldn't hold a candle to the mileage of Japanese pitchers.  Gondoh, a starter, appeared in 69 games in 1961, winning 35, completing 32.  Across those 69 games, Gondoh pitched 429.1 innings with an extremely stingy 1.70 ERA.  That's FOUR HUNDRED TWENTY-NINE.  The Major League leader in innings pitched in 1961 was Whitey Ford with 283.  This season's leader, was naturally iron man Roy Halladay with 250.2 IP.  The last time anyone threw over 400 innings in the Major Leagues was in 1908 when Ed Walsh pitched in an insane 464 innings (with a ridiculous 1.42 ERA), but that was also the dead ball era and the spitball was still legal.


Jun Inoue - part time outfielder with the Yokohama BayStars.  Over the course of his career, he never played more than 83 games in a season.  Granted I'm not doing any research here, but he seemed worth more than that, hitting over .300 several times. Unless he was just injury prone, he seems to have been given the short end of the stick in his career.


Makoto Shiozaki - another Orix mainstay, playing with the BlueWave since 1997, and stuck with the Buffaloes after the team merger.  Only played a handful of full seasons, so he looks to be a utility infielder. 
Makoto Shiozaki @ NPB Official Website


Nobuhiko Matsunaka - One of NPB's heavy hitters, seen here with the Fukuoka Daiei Hawks.  He would stay with the Hawks as the team changed ownership and became the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks in 2005.  This is his card from the Super Rare insert set.  Matsunaka's power output peaked at 46 homeruns in 2005, but has dimmed somewhat over the past five seasons.  He missed a chunk of the 2010 season to a wrist injury.
Nobuhiko Matsunaka @ NPB Official Website


Hiroshi Shibahara - outfielder with the Hawks since 1997.

Hiroshi Shibahara @ NPB Official Website

2000 Future Bee Power League UL box break (pack 6)

From pack #6, we find only two players who are still active this season, Hiroshima's Akihiro Higashide and Naoyuki Shimizu, who is now pitching with the Yokohama BayStars.

2000 Future Bee Power League UL box break (pack 5)

"HEEEEEEEEEEYYYY KIIIIIIIDDDDSSSSS!!!"

This week, Binky wants you to match the players to their names!



George Arias - Takanori Suzuki - Takahiro Saeki - Makoto Kaneko - Tsutomu Iwamoto - Akio Shimizu

2000 Future Bee Power League UL box break (pack 4)

Fumitoshi Takano - backup outfielded for the Buffaloes and later the Rakuten Golden Eagles.

Atsuhiro Motonishi - currently on Marty Brown's staff for Rakuten as the outfield baserunning coach, former Gold Glove winner in 1989 with the Hankyu Braves.

Kiyoshi Hatsushiba - shockingly has a fairly extensive bio over at the BR Bullpen.

Kazuya Shibata - played alongside Hideki Okajima for the Honolulu Sharks during the 1996-97 Hawaii Winter Baseball season.

Syuji [Shuji) Nishiyama - two time Gold Glove winning catcher for the Carp.

Rodney Pedraza - the Victoria Advocate, newspaper of Victoria, Texas, has a good handle on Rodney that you can read here: Catching Up With Rodney Pedraza

2000 Future Bee Power League UL box break (pack 3)

Masao Kida had a less than stellar 2000.

Daisuke Miura. He wins some, he loses some. 135-133 over the last 17 seasons.

Koichi Oshima was, in fact, an infielder, so don't let the photo mislead you. His being labeled as simply "INF" makes me think of a Jose Oquendo-type player who just filled whatever spot was lacking in the lineup. Not a monster with the bat, nor on the bases, but consistent enough to snag a spot in the lineup for the better part of 11 years with the Buffaloes and BlueWave.

Koichiro Yoshinaga is considered one of, if not the best catcher of the 1990s in the Pacific League.

One must imagine that Shinichi Murata made a pretty good pitching target for him to have managed to stck around most of a season while only hitting .204. Yomirui must seriously have been hurting for a decent catcher.




Insert leader card is one Takuro Ishii who led the Central League in steals.

2000 Future Bee Power League UL box break (pack 2)

Pack two is a touch more diverse with the team selection, and another Leader insert.

 Michihiro Ogasawara, one of the biggest stars in NPB to not chase the MLB dream,  led the Pacific League in 2000 with an impressive 182 hits.  In fact, he had an impressive year all around, batting .329, scoring 126 runs, hitting 32 home runs, driving in 102 and even stealing 24 bases which was three time his next highest single season total!

Quite the international assortment in this pack, an American, three Japanese and a Korean.

2000 Future Bee Power League UL box break (pack 1)

I don't think I've ever seen a set that has as great color as this one.  It's a shame that in only two years, Future Bee would cede the baseball CCG market to Konami (who produced much less visually interesting cards).  A set this nice looking demanded larger images:



Interesting that only two teams are represented in the base cards in the pack.  The set checklist is completely organized by team, each team ending in the manager:  Giants 001-016, Dragons 017-032, BayStars 033-048, Swallows 049-064, Carp 065-080, Tigers 081-096, Hawks 097-112, Lions 113-128, Fighters 129-144, BlueWave 145-160, Marines 161-176, Buffaloes 177-192.  It also seems to be standard practice in Japanese card sets to use the leading zeroes, as seen here on the back of the card:



Neat how they used the headshot from the back as the background on the front.  That's the team name at the top and Kinjoh's name in the gold section.  Beyond the obvious vital stats, this being a game card, I have absolutely no idea what the rest says.  But still...very colorful!

The first pack yields the first insert, as we see the 2000 Central League Saves leader, Eddie Gaillard. Unfortunately none of the shiny, chrome-styled cards scan very well on my LiDE scanners.  They look much nicer in person.  I'll see if I can hook up my ancient Umax flatbed and see if I can get a better scan.



That actually points to the UL set being released after the end of the 2000 season, which I guess is appropriate for a booster set.

Here's the action card for use with the actual game:

2000 Future Bee Power League UL box break

      In 2000, Future Bee, Hudson (the software company, formerly HudsonSoft...hardcore, old school Nintendo and TurboGrafx 16 gamers will recognize the name) and Ahomaro Games launched the 2000 Power League Dream Stadium collectible card game. The set was issued largely as starter decks with 25 player cards and 25 action cards for playing the game (20 decks per box).

     They then issued the "booster set" which they called Power League UL which was released in boxes of 20 packs containing 7 cards (6 base, possibly including an insert and 1 action card). The base set contains 195 cards and there were two insert sets for Power League UL, league leaders (25 cards, prefixed with 'T', representing both leagues) and Super Rare (36 cards, prefixed with 'S'). Both are shiny foil style cards that don't scan well (as you can see from the cards below). In addition to the contents of the packs, each booster box also contains one Super Rare Promo insert. The card below came as the insert for this box. The only apparent difference between the regular Super Rare and the Promo versions seems to be that tiny "PROMO" stamped right next to the card number on the back.

Working the math, one box should result in 21 insert cards and 100 base cards.