Samurai Japan Women's Team and the Women's Baseball World Cup

The Women's Baseball World Cup is going on right now in Viera, Florida.  The women's Samurai Japan team is currently the number one ranked team in the world, having won the last five tournaments (2008,2010,2012,2014 and 2016).  They haven't lost a game since the 2012 Cup.  They are 4-0 in the current tournament, having just defeated Cuba 4-1 about an hour ago.  That win pretty much clinched them a spot in the super round which will be their first opportunity to play Team USA, who is the only other team at 4-0 in the tournament.

Several of the players on this year's roster play in the Japan Woman's Baseball League which is currently the only professional women's baseball league in the world.  Epoch did a set for this league a couple years ago and I thought it'd be interesting to see who from the team had a card in the set.  It turns out there's only five players on the roster who appear in the set:

2016 Epoch JWBL #23

2016 Epoch JWBL #22

2016 Epoch JWBL #01

2016 Epoch JWBL #43

2016 Epoch JWBL #34

In addition both Kawabata and Miura have had cards in a couple of BBM's "Real Venus" and "Shining Venus" sets - these are BBM's annual-ish sets devoted to female athletes.  Ryan has discovered other JWBL sets - at a minimum Kawabata, Miura and Sato all appear in those sets.

The Opening Round of the Cup will end with a couple make-up games on Monday while the Super Round kicks off on Tuesday.  The championship game will be on Friday.  So in less than a week we'll know if Japan can win a sixth straight Women's Baseball World Cup.