KBO Top 40 players of all-time

 I recently stumbled across this article where the Korean Baseball Organization put out their list of the Top 40 players of league history (it's the 40th anniversary of the league this year). I know almost nothing about Korean baseball, but I thought the artwork was too well done (regrettably, I haven't been able to find who the artist is to credit them yet), and fit the Showdown cards too well to not make a fun little mini set. 

Defensive stats are non-existent (or at least I wasn't able to find any) so I basically gave them great defense if they won the Gold Glove that season. Although, I learned rather late in the game that the Golden Glove Award in Korea is more equivalent to NPB's Best 9 (best player at each position) rather than the MLB Gold Glove which only awards defense (although we know that's not always true). Anyway, I wasn't too concerned about defense for this mini set, just something to bear in mind. 


I think they turned out really fun and there are a few players with MLB and/or NPB experience so there may be a few familiar names and faces. 

40. Chang-yong Lim - Pitched 6 games for the Cubs in 2013

Eurobasket 2022

 For me basketball is my favorite season, and since the season ended I spend more time thinking about the upcoming season. I started watching the Eurobasket as multiple of my favorite players are participating in this tournament. So as I kept getting more locked in to this incredible tournament, and making cards, I thought I should honor these players in showdown form. So I made cards of the NBA players that are participating in the Eurobasket. As a basketball fan I highly recommend to any of you with an ESPN plus subscription and some free time to watch some games to tune in when you have a chance.

2 Time EuroBasket MVP Pau Gasol

NPB Legends and Super Seasons Japanese Baseball Post 2 of 2

 One thing I failed to mention was the "Legend" vs "Super Seasons" distinction. Simply out, before 1990 and the card, got the NPB Legend logo and look and after 1990 they got the Super Season logo and look. Rather arbitrary. Just like the order these cards are presented in. 

Struggled to get going in his short time with the Mariners and Reds, but had a long productive career in Japan. His 2013 season is legendary (although the juiced balls they secretly introduced may have inflated his numbers...although he still easily outpaced any other hitter that year). As he broke Sadaharu Oh's sacred home run record. 60 home runs in 130 games. He never quite reached those heights again, but his .917 career OPS speaks for itself. 

Shohei Ohtani. Enough said. 

NPB Legends and Super Seasons Japanese Baseball Post 1 of 2

 This, like most of my projects, started as a small idea to make a few Super Season cards and then spiraled out of control into me making a full set (with eyes on a second set already...). This is not meant to be a comprehensive list of all the best seasons in Japanese baseball history, but rather a mix of legends and some fun Super Seasons. With an emphasis on players that played in both MLB and NPB, and/or players with cards in the original sets. While making the set, I found a nice YouTube video (link) with a list of the 100 best NPB players ever and the best offensive seasons ever (link). I leaned heavily on these both to fill out the set, with each of the 100 players earning at least one card. I used the defensive and WAR stats from this website as well. A truly invaluable (if slightly dubious when it comes to old defensive stats) resource, as when I started I was going off of reputation for the defensive ratings.  

For players with a single card, I generally picked their best WAR season, although sometimes I just picked their best overall offensive season. For players with multiple cards, I mostly tried to pick two seasons that were good, but different enough to make two unique cards. For example, Hiromitsu Kadota's two best seasons by OPS were 1981 and 1988, but his slash lines in those years were, .313/.431/.655/1.086 and .311/.429/.633/1.062 respectively, so it wouldn't be that fun to make two almost identical cards. So he has some "worse" seasons for cards because they are more unique. Also, if they had long careers with multiple teams, I tried to represent each. 

I went back and forth on the best ways to present these cards...but I think I've settled on the first post being the best 100 players in NPB history (again based on that video) and then the second post will be the rest (Don't worry plenty of fun ones there too). 

Quick note on photos and logos. I did my best to match years and uniforms, but with some sparse photography out there for most of these players it is a crapshoot. And sometimes in the case of photos and logos I chose aesthetics over accuracy. 

100. Kaoru Betto. Probably most known for being on The Dude's shirt in The Big Lebowski. 

NBA Showdown -- GREATEST TEAM OF ALL-TIME TOURNAMENT, part II

The greatest team tournament isn't going to exclude worthy contenders simply because they didn't finish strong in the postseason -- so hold onto your hats, we've got some STRONG teams coming that didn't win it all for various reasons: injury, key player suspensions, the way the cookie crumbled, and/or running into a team with hot markers rolling straight 20s ;) 

I didn't include them, but the '97 Rockets were one of the first "want-to-be superteams" that didn't pan out *cough the Nets cough*

However, I'm not going to give them equal love as the champions - fair is fair in a "greatest ever" bracket -- so these teams are going to have to earn their spots in the final bracket via a play-in tournament. But we'll get to the logistics later, let's see the teams!

NBA Showdown -- New Style, GREATEST TEAM OF ALL-TIME Tournament

 So if you've been following the NBA Showdown posts on the blog, you either saw (or should see) this amazing post by Matt announcing and explaining his revamped style of NBA Showdown. As you can see in the example below, it swaps out the nebulous/often nonsensical "Speed/Power" for the straightforward and objective "Offense/Defense" methodology.

Everything else about the game is the same, but now (i) player values/ratings make more sense; (ii) give defensive players their proper value and (iii) gameplay is a simple "offensive players offense - defender's defense + roll" instead of choosing speed or power. 

NBA Showdown: Best teams of the 2020s

 Thanks to help with the formulas and calculations from Matt, my main card creator buddy and the undisputed master of bringing NBA Showdown into the modern age (including his awesome re-imagining of the game with offense/defense rather than speed/power), I went on a bit of a card creating binge. Like, a lot of cards from a lot of teams. And I want to share them with y'all!

I'm going to start with 234 cards from the 2020s -- I made 8 players per team, plus some scattered superstar cards here and there that seemed fitting from the past few years. I hope you enjoy, and let me know which teams were better/worse than you anticipated!

2020 Los Angeles Lakers (52-19, #1 Seed in West, NBA Champions)