Upcoming Milestones

With Opening Day 2026 arriving shortly, it's time to roll out my now-traditional post about which players are approaching the career milestones that will ensure them admission to the Meikyukai or "Golden Players Club".  The requirements are that the player has to have been born in the Showa Era (1926-89) or later and accumulated more than 2000 hits, 200 wins or 250 saves.  Statistics from MLB count but only if the NPB stats came first - which is why Alfonso Soriano is eligible but Larry Parrish isn't.

There are six members of the Meikyukai active in NPB right now - Hayato Sakamoto, Takumi Kuriyama, Yohei Ohshima, Yoshihisa Hirano, Hideto Asamura and Masahiro Tanaka - and one in MLB - Yu Darvish.  

In previous years, I've used the most recent NPB cards I had of each player but, because I stopped buying new cards for the most part last year, I can't do that anymore (unless I swipe images from the internet).  So instead I decided to use the earliest appearance that I have of each player from a BBM team set (either comprehensive or not).  It made it kind of interesting to see which teams these players who all have somewhat long careers started from.   

I'm going to start by listing the active hitters who have less than 2000 hits but more than 1500:

1. Yoshihiro Maru, Giants: 1929 hits

2008 BBM Carp #C70

2. Takeya Nakamura, Lions: 1830 hits

2004 BBM Lions #58

3. Ryosuke Kikuchi, Carp: 1789 hits

2012 BBM Rising Carp #11

4. Shogo Akiyama, Carp: 1832 hits (1761 NPB + 71 MLB)

2011 BBM Lions #L67

5. Tetsuto Yamada, Swallows: 1643 hits

2011 BBM Lions #S45

6. Yuki Yanagita, Hawks:  1616 hits

2011 BBM Hawks #H67

7. Daichi Suzuki, Eagles: 1608 hits

2013 BBM Marines #M50

8. Akira Nakamura, Hawks:  1516 hits

2012 BBM Hawks #H65

I think Maru is likely to reach 2000 this year but I don't see anyone else doing it in 2026.

Next up are pitchers with more than 150 wins and less than 200:

1. Masahiro Ishikawa, Swallows:  188 wins

2005 BBM Swallows #S27

2. Takayuki Kishi, Eagles:  170 wins

2007 BBM Lions #L19

3. Hideaki Wakui, Dragons: 166 wins

2005 BBM Lions #L007

4. Kenta Maeda, Eagles: 165 wins (97 NPB + 68 MB)

2007 BBM Carp #C31

I don't see any of these guys getting to 200 this year - or ever, really.

Last but not least, here's all the pitchers with more than 200 hundred saves and less than 250:

1. Naoya Masuda, Marines:  248 saves

2015 BBM Marines #M29

2. Yuki Matsui, Padres:  237 saves (236 NPB + 1 MLB)

2014 BBM Eagles #E02

3. Yasuaki Yamasaki, Baystars:  232 saves

2015 BBM Baystars #DB11

4. Raidel Martinez, Giants:  212 saves

2018 BBM Dragons #D32

Martinez is the new entry in the list.  Pitchers can accumulate saves quickly so it's possible that all four of these guys could pass 250 this year.  Martinez is the only one who's currently a closer (although I'm not sure if the Padres promoted Matsui now that Robert Suarez went to the Braves), so it's probably not likely.  Martinez has had more than 40 saves in each of the past two seasons so if anyone does it, it'll probably be him (which would make him I think the second foreign born member of the meikyukai, following Alex Ramirez - Soriano is eligible but doesn't appear to have accepted membership).

Most of the cards displayed are from the player's rookie year.  The exceptions are the cards for Takeya Nakamura, Ryosuke Kikuchi, Daichi Suzuki, Akira Nakamura, Masanori Ishikawa and Naoya Masuda.

Card Of The Week March 22

A few weeks back, I was thumbing through my copy of the 1973 Calbee book, looking for cards depicting the Nittaku Home Flyers, when I came across a beautiful card of Dragons catcher Tatsuhiko Kimata (1973-74 Calbee #215), swinging a bat with the scoreboard from Nagoya Stadium behind him.  I found the card listed on Mandarake and grabbed a screen shot:

That link from Mandarake had a couple pieces of bad news with it, though.  The first was that the card was sold out and the second was that the price of the card when it was in stock was 25,000 yen which is about $150-ish.  Way too much for me to spend on a card, especially now that I'm not really collecting anymore.  I'll have to console myself with the other Calbee Kimata cards I have, like this one from the 1974/75 set (#39):

2026 Topps Now WBC Cards

With the WBC wrapping up last night, Topps has put their final Topps Now cards for the tournament up for sale.  I'm a bit surprised at how few cards they did this year.  The first time they did Topps Now cards for the WBC - back in 2017 - they did 64 total cards (plus three Spanish language parallels).  For the 2023 WBC, they did 73 Topps Now cards.  That's just the single cards and not the various team sets that were also for sale both years.  This year's set had only 43 cards plus a short printed image variation for Shohei Ohtani and an unnumbered card featuring both Ohtani and John Cena.

There were only four cards featuring members of Samurai Japan.  I swiped the images of the cards from Topps' website:

#WB4

#W9

#W10

#WB15

If you bought the Ohtani card, you had a shot at getting the image variation card or an autographed memorabilia card as well:

#W4 (image variant)

Here's the card with both Ohtani and Cena:

Team Korea had their best showing in the WBC since 2009 but that was only good enough to earn them two cards in the Topps Now set.  Both cards featured events in Korea's 11-4 victory over the Czech Republic on October 5th:

#W2

#W3

Topps says on their website that "Select hobby products will feature WBC-inspired inserts later this year."  I wonder if that means they won't be doing sets only available from their website (like the "Global Stars" and "World Baseball Classic" sets from 2023).  I will try to post about what else they produce this year but since I don't monitor MLB cards very closely, it wouldn't surprise me if I miss stuff.

Shukan Baseball 3000

A few months back, BBM published a set that celebrated both their 35th year of producing baseball cards and the 4000th issue of Shukan Baseball.  I thought it might be interesting to take a quick look at what BBM did the previous time that Shukan Baseball hit a milestone - their 3000th issue in 2010.

BBM celebrated the 3000th issue by including a set of twelve baseball cards over three issues of the magazine in August of 2010 with each issue containing four cards.  As you can probably guess, twelve cards means that there's one player from each NPB team included.  Eight of the players were retired and the other four were active.

I don't know which issue was the 3000th but the first of the three had a cover date of August 2nd, 2010 and had the following four cards:

#1/12

#2/12

#3/12

#4/12

The next issue, with a cover date of August 9th, contained these four cards:

#5/12

#6/12

#7/12

#8/12

The final four cards were in the issue with an August 16th cover date and featured active players:

#9/12

#10/12

#11/12

#12/12

To be honest, this is an odd little collection of cards.  There's really nothing about Shukan Baseball on the cards other than the "Weekly Baseball 3000th" on the front.  The backs have a somewhat generic player biography that never mentions the magazine,  I've no idea why these particular players were selected instead of more famous players (like why Tsuneo Horiuchi instead of Shigeo Nagashima or Sadaharu Oh?)  There are no magazine covers depicted and I don't know if any of these photos were used on covers.

I was kind of disappointed by this year's 35th Anniversary/Shukan Baseball 4000th Issue set but I think it's a lot more interesting than what BBM did for Shukan Baseball's 3000th issue.

Card Of The Week March 15

As you probably know by now, Samurai Japan lost to Venezuela last night and have been eliminated from this year's World Baseball Classic.  It's the first time Japan has failed to make the semi-finals in the six tournaments.  I'm not going to do any second guessing about anything - there's a lot of things that factor into a single ballgame going one way or another so it's really hard to pinpoint a reason for a loss.  

I do want to mention that I think Japan is handicapped by their intercontinental travel.  They've lost the first game they've played on American soil four times out of the six tournaments.  They lost their first game of the second round in 2006 - they actually went 1-2 in the round - but it was a round robin style round that year and they won the tie breaker with two other 1-2 teams (the US and Mexico) to take second place behind the undefeated Korean team.  They won their first game in the second round in 2009 but lost their second one - it used a double elimination format that year so they were able to rally and ended up winning the top seed in the pool.  The second rounds for the 2013 and 2017 tournaments were held in Japan so their first games in the US were the semifinal games in San Francisco and Los Angeles respectively and they lost both games.  The second round in 2023 was also held in Japan although, like this year, it was a single game.  Once again, Japan's first game in the US was in the semifinals and they barely defeated Mexico.  This year, their first game in US was an elimination game in the "second round" - now known as the "knockout stage".  This obviously is a small sample size but I wonder if Japan would have made it to the semifinals if the "knockout stage" had been played in Tokyo again (which would have required one of the first rounds that was played in the Western hemisphere to have been played in Korea or Taiwan again).

For this week's post, I figured I'd feature the two offensive stars from last night (other the Shohei Ohtani).  With Japan down 2-1 in the bottom of the third, Teruaki Sato laced a double into the right field corner to bring in Sosuke Genda with the tying run.  Shota Morishita - who had just entered the game as a replacement for the injured Seiya Suzuki - followed up with a three run home to left, putting Japan up 5-2.  Unfortunately, those were the final runs the team would score in the game.  Here are cards of Sato and Morishita in their Hanshin Tigers uniforms:

2025 BBM 35th Anniversary/Shukan Baseball 4000th Issue #133

2023 Epoch One #956

Calbee And More Team Sets

It's only been two weeks since the last time I did a round up of new set announcements but I figured that it'd be a good time to do another one.  Maybe writing this post will make me feel better about South Korea getting eliminated by the Dominican Republic...

- Calbee's Series One set will officially be released on April 27th but it'll likely start appearing in card shops both in person and on line a few days before that.  The checklist for the set is online already and it unfortunately confirms that Calbee's continuing to produce sets that are smaller than they were just a few years ago.  There are 89 cards in the base set, split between 60 "regular" player cards (five per team), 23 "Title Holder" cards and six checklist cards.  The theme of the checklist cards is mascots which is distressing for two reasons - in previous years the checklist cards featured some of the best photography in Calbee's sets and Calbee did mascots as the theme of their checklist cards last year too.  The fact that there's six checklist cards implies that there will again be only two Calbee "flagship" sets this year with Series Two coming out sometime in the summer - Calbee's intent every year is to include twelve checklist cards across all of their Series - one checklist card featuring each NPB team (although not a list of the cards for that particular team).  There are the usual 24 "Star" insert cards as well as four "Legend" cards featuring players who retired last year - Yuito Mori, Sho Nakata, Hisayoshi Chono and Shingo Kawabata.  There are gold facsimile signature parallels of both the "Star" and "Legend" cards.  There are also 12 "Team Home Run King" cards listed but I'm not sure if these will be available in packs or as some sort of "special box".  Calbee used to have 12 card box sets that were associated with each Series and sold through some on line retailer (most recently Amazon.co.jp) but the equivalent cards from last year's sets were available in packs. 

- BBM has announced two more of their "comprehensive" team sets.  As usual, each set has a base set of 81 cards, most of which are "regular" player cards featuring the manager and the players on the 70 man roster plus a couple subsets (which may not be fully defined yet) to fill out the set.  Each set also has 18 non-premium insert cards split into a variety of sets which also may not be fully defined yet (or may have title that doesn't translated to something that makes any sense).  The sets also have two or three types of premium inserts that are serially numbered - Treasure, Esperanza and Admirar.  There will be rare parallel versions of some of the "regular" player cards that will feature photo variants or different backgrounds.

Release Date	Team	Regular Cards	Subsets	Non-Premium Inserts	Treasure	Esperanza	Admirar	Other
Late May	Carp	63	2025 Topics(4),  Promising New Forces(4), Born In Setouchi(5)	Paramount(9), Tough Enough(3), Carp Nova(3), Promising Future(3)	20	9	6	Autograph cards
Late May	Giants	63	Mascot Gathering(1), Promising Young Players(5), Strongest Unit(2), Three Arrows(3), Grand Slam Trio(3), Reliable Veterans(4)	Giants Pride 2026(15), Rookies(3)	24	9	6	Additional Premium Insets of Cross Foil Signing (15), Combo Cross Foil Signing (2), Triple Cross Foil Signing (1), Triplex 2026 (3), My Fave (12), Super Metallic Giants (9) plus memorabilia cards

Remember that the Giants don't allow their players to have authentic autographed cards.

- Epoch announced the second of their 2026 "Premier Edition" team sets - this one is for the Swallows.  The base set will 40 cards - 38 cards for active players (and manager Takahiro Ikeyama) plus OB cards for Norichika Aoki and Shingo Kawabata.  There's a "hologram" parallel available for each of the base set cards.  The set has the usual large batch of inserts that the "Premier Edition" sets have- three varieties of "Regular Foil Signature" ("silver", "gold" and "hologram") (18 cards each), two varieties of "Regular Decomori Signature" ("hologram" and "hologram parallel") (18 cards each), five varieties of "Time To Shine" ("A","B","C","D","E") (six cards each) and three varieties of "Decomori Signature" ("gold","green" and "hologram") (six cards each).  I think all the inserts are serially numbered.  There are also the "GEM" and "BLACK GEM" "special insert cards" (nine cards in each) that I think are much more limited.  Finally, there are five different types of autographed cards that are available - "Authentic" (37 different), "Star" (6), "Rookie" (7), "Legendary" (2) and some undetermined as yet number of "Combo" autographs.  The set will hit the shelves on April 25th.

Hisayoshi Chono

Another player who announced his retirement at the end of last season was Yomiuri Giants and Hiroshima Toyo Carp outfielder Hisayoshi Chono.  Chono had been a star at Nihon University, hitting over .400 in both the spring and fall seasons of his senior year of 2006 and winning a Best 9 award.  He was named to the collegiate national team in 2006 and also joined a hybrid team of college and corporate league players for the Asian games late that year.  

He was drafted by the Fighters in the fourth round of the College and Corporate League player portion of the 2006 draft. He refused to sign with them, however, as he wanted to join the Giants. His college coach Hiroshi Suzuki infuriated Fighters fans by saying that Nippon-Ham was the team that Chono hated the most.  

Instead of signing with the Fighters, Chono instead joined Honda of the corporate leagues.  NPB's rules are that if a college player goes to the industrial leagues instead of joining an NPB team, they have to wait for two years before they can go into the draft again (it's a three year wait for high school players) so Chono was committed to playing for Honda until 2008.  

The Giants had told Chono that they would draft him in the first round in 2008 but changed their plans, selecting Taishi Ohta instead.  They had intended to take him in the second round but the Chiba Lotte Marines, under the impression that Chono was willing to sign with a team other than the Giants, took him first.  He again refused to sign and spent a third year with Honda.  Finally in the 2009 draft, the Giants took him in the first round and he, of course, signed with them.

Finally with the team he wanted to be with, Chono made the most of his opportunity.  He hit .288 with 19 home runs in 128 games in 2010 and was named Central League Rookie Of The Year*.  He followed that up in 2011 by batting .316 to lead the league in batting.  He hit over .300 again in 2012 and lead the Central League in hits with 173.  He capped the season by winning the MVP of the Nippon Series that fall when the Giants beat the Fighters.

* It was the third straight year that a Giant was named Rookie Of The Year, following Tetsuya Yamaguchi in 2008 and Tetsuya Matsumoto in 2009

He was named to the Japanese team for the 2013 World Baseball Classic, the only time he would suit up for them in one of the major tournaments.  During the regular season, he led the league in games played (144) and at bats (590), made the All Star team and won Best 9 and Golden Glove awards for the third straight year but his overall offensive numbers declined somewhat.  His performance over the next few seasons was kind of up and down and he moved in and out of the starting lineup.  He worked through knee and elbow injuries in 2014 and his batting slump in 2015 made his manager, Tatsunori Hara, order him to get his eyes examined. 

The Giants signed free agent Yoshihiro Maru following the 2018 season and the Carp, Maru's old team, were able to select one player from the Giants roster as compensation.  Thinking that the Carp were more likely to want younger players, Yomiuri left the 34 year old Chono unprotected.  To their surprise, the Carp took him and Chono was Hiroshima-bound.

He would spend four seasons in western Honshu, playing about as well as he had in his last couple season in Tokyo for the first two years.  His offensive performance fell off significantly in his last two seasons with the Carp and, following the 2022 season, the Carp sent him back to the Giants in what's called "free trade" - essentially just giving him to Yomiuri.  His offensive decline continued and he announced his retirement at the end of the season.  He signed a contract to be an advisor for the Giants and also announced his intent to go to grad school the study sports management.  

His first baseball card was #001 in the 2010 BBM Rookie Edition set.  He also had rookie cards in both the 1st (#032) and 2nd Version (#527) sets from BBM as well as the Rookie Edition Premium (#RP01), Touch The Game (#008) and Giants team (#G059) sets.  His first Calbee card was also from 2010 - #97 in Series Two.  Here's a handful of his cards:

2010 BBM Rookie Edition #001

2010 BBM 1st Version #032

2010 Giants Winning Game Card #44

2010 Shukan Baseball Season Memorial #4/4

2011 BBM Tohto 80th Memorial #71

2013 BBM 1st Version #387

2014 Front Runner Giants Stars & Legends #11

2017 Epoch Giants #32

2019 Calbee Series Three #182

2022 BBM 1st Version #097

2023 Calbee Series Two #106