2008 BBM 1st Version

2008 BBM Baseball cards 1st version - these were from a friend who took a trip to Japan. Aesthetics and packaging are pretty good. The cards have a nice, glossy feel to them. The text on the cards are in Japanese, except for the identifying team names, positions and stat categories.

Pack one [8 cards per pack]
#041 Kenichi Nakata - pitches for the Chunichi Dragons

#181 Shigeru Takada - he's apparently a manager [as listed on the card] and it is refreshing to have a baseball manager pictured 'in-action' hitting fungoes.
#331 Kanehisa Arime -
#070 Ken Higuchi -

#519 Keisaburo Tanoue - Good-bye Heroes subset
#098 Shinjiro Hiyama -
#024 Noriyoshi Ohmichi -
#104 Issei Morita -

Pack two [8 cards per pack]

#261 Shingo Ono -
#279 Naotaka Takehara -
#445 Alex Ramirez - statistical leaders subset / when he was with the Cleveland Indians in 1999/2000, he was strictly the poor man's Ramirez.
#017 Tetsuya Yamaguchi -
#354 Akihisa Makida -

#492 Tatsuya Kojima - 2008 Rookie of the Year Candidate subset
#363 Shinya Okamoto

#362 Takayuki Kishi - silver signature parallel? It looks like a facsimile autograph printed on the card.

Comments - with the Internet, it is much easier to look up information on the product as well as the individual players. On the other hand, the names and faces just go over my head. Maybe one or a few of these guys will play Major League Baseball some day. For now, they are just a set of professional ballplayers pictured on foreign trading cards. Yu Darvish is a pitcher over in Japan who I've heard some hype about, but I didn't pull a card of his.