Glad you enjoy the thread Jay! It never occurred to me to pick a favorite team, but that does seem like a great way to learn more about the game over there. One reason (besides getting bored waiting for the HOFers that I still need) that I decided to chase the Meikyukai too is that it's an excuse to learn about modern Japanese baseball. I could tell you a lot more about Japanese baseball from the 1950s than I could about it from the 2010s, reading up on some of the active players who are Meikyukai members should help with that. Not the same as actually following a team, but it's a start. Let's see your favorite Swallows card, if you've got a scan handy! They've had some pretty good players over the years; aside from Oh, Kaneda may have had the most impressive career of any NPBL player.
It's true that Japanese baseball is a niche interest on Net54, but I don't know of anywhere better to put these posts. At least the folks here are guaranteed to be interested in baseball cards. And besides, even if the number of active collectors is relatively small, somebody is interested, this thread has got plenty of views.
Also: it's time for another card.
Here's another guy that I've written about before.
Manabu Kitabeppu was a star pitcher for the Hiroshima Carp for many years, although a very inconsistent one. Some years he was great, others, not so much. He qualified for the Meikyukai with his 200th win in 1992.
I don't have much to add to what I wrote before, so I'm going to leave you with a few fun Kitabeppu-related links.
He has his own
website. He's got a
Facebook page. And he has his own
blog. All of foregoing are in Japanese, so English monolinguists (or at least non-Japanese speakers) will want to run them through the translator in Chrome or something similar. (Which will give you something that looks a little bit like English. They've still got a ways to go on the computer translators.) Post retirement, Kitabeppu spent a while as a pitching coach, and has been a media personality since c. 2005. He also grows vegetables and posts about it on his blog.
Meikyukai:
Yes - Hall of Fame:
Yes
The card is a part of the "Gold Card" subset from BBM's 1993 issue. (Or maybe 92? It's says 1992 on the front but has a 1993 copyright date.) Apparently this particular subset has no premium attached to it, since I picked up this card for a dollar or two. I'm not really a fan of subsets (old school all-star cards excepted), but that probably just shows that I'm getting to be an old stick in the mud.