Friday, September 18, 2015

A Quarter Century Of Tanishige

As you probably already know, BBM is celebrating their 25th year of doing baseball cards this year.  Did you know that there's one player who has appeared in every flagship set BBM has done in those 25 years - the 11 "regular" sets between 1991 and 2001 and the 28 1st and 2nd Version sets between 2002 and the present?  That player is Motonobu Tanishige.

Tanishige was drafted out of high school by the then Yokohama Taiyo Whales in the fall of 1988.  He had already spent parts of two seasons with the ichi-gun Whales before BBM published its first set in 1991.  He left Yokohama as a free agent following the 2001 season and landed with the Chunichi Dragons where he's been ever since.  He became player-manager last season and broke Katsuya Nomura's record for most games played in in Japan back in early August.  This is likely his final season as a player so his streak will be broken next season.

With a little help from Ryan I've managed to pick up all 39 of Tanishige's flagship cards:

1991 BBM #200

1992 BBM #93

1993 BBM #189

1994 BBM #126

1995 BBM #250

1996 BBM #131

1997 BBM #229

1998 BBM #69

1999 BBM #52

2000 BBM #210

2001 BBM #85

2002 BBM 1st Version #131

2002 BBM 2nd Version #574

2003 BBM 1st Version #76 (Black Signature Parallel)

2003 BBM 2nd Version #510

2004 BBM 1st Version #231

2004 BBM 2nd Version #676

2005 BBM 1st Version #262

2005 BBM 2nd Version #643

2006 BBM 1st Version #266

2006 BBM 2nd Version #634

2007 BBM 1st Version #232

2007 BBM 2nd Version #599

2008 BBM 1st Version #051

2008 BBM 2nd Version #558

2009 BBM 1st Version #303

2009 BBM 2nd Version #681

2010 BBM 1st Version #053

2010 BBM 2nd Version #536

2011 BBM 1st Version #173

2011 BBM 2nd Version #571

2012 BBM 1st Version #172

2012 BBM 2nd Version #559

2013 BBM 1st Version #038

2013 BBM 2nd Version #473

2014 BBM 1st Version #244

2014 BBM 2nd Version #607

2015 BBM 1st Version #244

2015 BBM 2nd Version #535

4 comments:

Ryan G said...

Ever since you mentioned this to me I've been considering putting together a collection of all of these cards. I'm guessing he'll stay manager, right? Which means he could also continue to appear in both sets as manager for quite some time. I wonder how long this can actually continue...

NPB Card Guy said...

If he stays on as manager, he'll be in next year's 1st Version set but typically managers aren't in 2nd Version (I don't think they've been included since the 2005 edition) so the streak will end there.

Ryan G said...

BBM could put managers in just to keep this up for even longer. Maybe as the team checklist cards instead of those mascots.

NPB Card Guy said...

Anything other than the mascots would be good...

Masahiro Yamamoto has a similar streak going where he's appeared in "a" flagship set all 25 years. There's a number of years when he is in either the 1st Version or the 2nd Version set but not both. I'm missing a couple of his pre-2001 cards, otherwise I could do a similar post for him.