2009 Konami BBH WBC Edition

Just when you think you've seen every Japanese oddball, there's another one right around the corner.

Today's Japanese oddball is yet another card set originally used for an arcade game. In Japan there are two extremely popular arcade games that issue/use trading cards. One is World Club Champion Football (WCCF) a soccer themed game (remember that soccer is referred to as football outside the US) and the other is Baseball Heroes (BBH) a baseball themed game.

Baseball Heroes is the NPB or Japanese Professional Baseball equivalent of Sega Card Gen. It's been around for a while and it's enormous success gave Sega enough confidence that Sega Card Gen might work out in Japan after an American release was initially scrapped. Sega Card Gen was only in trial/testing mode when today's product came out.

Care to guess where the "Cervin'" in the blog name came from?

Back in 2009 WBC-mania hit Japan harder than... nevermind.
Unlike the US where the World Baseball Classic was seen as a joke, Japan went crazy during the WBC and Japan couldn't be prouder when Japan defeated their hated rival South Korea and won it all.
Baseball Heroes was looking in to cash in on this craze by releasing a set with every team and player that participated in the WBC (the main one anyway). At this point you can't use those cards to play the game anymore (most cards that are over 1/2 years old can't be used in BBH) but they're still pretty interesting cards.

Fronts

Backs

In true gaming card fashion there are a bunch of stats and numbers everywhere to tell the gamer(s) how good a player is. Unlike SCG there isn't a 1-8 scale but rather just how good the players are at certain skills.
Also, there were 2 subsets featuring foil cards. Both had 12 different cards each.
One was known as the "Special" set and the other was known as the "All Tournament" set.

A "Special" card (Left), An "All Tournament" card (Right) 

Unfortunately I don't have a full checklist on me but I'm sure you'll be able to find one with a quick Google or Yahoo search.

Anyway Konami didn't issue a set for the 2006 WBC and I'm pretty sure they never issued one for the 2013 WBC. Maybe because of the lack of big names on Team Japan's roster? Or maybe the 2009 WBC set was a financial failure? Part of me wants it to return, but if it doesn't at least there will always be this set.

As always thanks for reading and take care.