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.)

Meulens named Giants hitting coach

     Here's hoping the Mighty Colossus of Curaçao can tame the free swingers of San Francisco. Congratulations, Mr. Meulens!  Don't forget to bring the batting tee.

     While the Giants were mired among the lower levels of runs scored among MLB teams, with the help of Hensley Meulens, the Giants' AAA affiliate, the Fresno Grizzlies (who boast one of the best on-field ground-crew performance groups around...all singing, all dancing, all infield dirt raking!) managed to snag a couple of the top 10 spots in batting average.  Meulens is also credited for turning around the season of Eugenio Velez, who greatly helped the Giants in their pennant chase as the season neared the end (too little, too late, I guess).

     Here he stands, like the mighty Colossus of Rhodes, Meulens holds down the fort in the first base coaching box during a Grizzlies home game on his 2009 MultiAd Sports card from the Grizzlie's team set.  Thanks to Dave Weber, Minor League Singles Master Extraordinaire for providing me with said card for a meager couple of bucks, so I didn't have to drop $17 on the whole team for this one card.