Back to the retirement posts...
Yoshiyuki Ishihara retired after a 19 year career catching for the Hiroshima Toyo Carp. He was selected by the team in the fourth round of the 2001 draft from Tohoku Fukushi University and made his debut late the following season. Ishihara was better known for his glove than his bat - his career batting average was .235 - and he alternated between being the starting catcher and the primary backup catcher for the Carp for much of his career. In his later years he essentially became Kris Johnson's personal catcher.
He made the All Star team three times (2008, 2009 & 2011) and won the Best 9 and Golden Glove awards (at catcher of course) in 2016. He played in the 2016 and 2018 Nippon Series which the Carp lost both of. He was named to the 2009 World Baseball Classic team but saw very limited playing time as he was the backup to Kenji Johjima and Shinnosuke Abe.
His rookie card was #114 in the 2002 BBM 1st Version set. As far as I can tell, this was his only 2002 card (BBM didn't start issuing the Rookie Edition set until the following year). He appeared regularly in at least one of BBM's flagship sets every year until 2015. He hasn't been in one since 2017 although he was in Epoch's NPB sets in 2019 and 2020. His first Calbee card was #147 in the 2004 Series Two set. Here's a selection of his cards:
 |
| 2002 BBM 1st Version #114 |
 |
| 2006 BBM Carp #C039 |
 |
| 2008 BBM All Stars #A17 |
 |
| 2009 Konami Baseball Heroes WBC #W09R100 |
 |
| 2012 Front Runner Carp Starting Lineup #08 |
 |
| 2015 Epoch Red Helmet 40th Anniversary #16 |
 |
| 2017 BBM Carp Successful Achievement #19 |
 |
| 2020 Epoch NPB #342 |
No comments:
Post a Comment