In Memoriam 2025

 

2000 BBM 20th Century Best 9 #T-06

I've seen a couple posts on Bluesky and other places, giving a list of the baseball players who passed away in 2025 and I noticed that generally, they don't include any NPB players.  At least, no NPB players who didn't play in NPB.  I thought I'd try to do a quick post that listed some of the major NPB stars who left us this past year.  This isn't a comprehensive list and it's not even a full list of folks that I did Memorial posts for.  I just wanted to recognize that four Japanese Hall Of Famers died in 2025 along with some other fairly big names.  I'm not going to write anything about each player but I will link to the Memorial post I did for each of them.

February 5 - Hall Of Famer Yoshio Yoshida

2015 BBM Tigers 80th Anniversary #08

Feburary 16 - Swallows mascot Tsubakuro (obviously this was the actor who portrayed him since 1994 but I don't know his name.  And apparently Tsubakuro will return to Swallows games next season)

2013 Calbee Series Two #C-8

April 4 - Tony Blanco

2013 BBM Baystars 20th Anniversary #75

April 18 - Hall Of Famer Masaaki Koyama

2005 BBM Glorious Stars #024

June 3 - Hall Of Famer Shigeo Nagashima

2000 BBM 20th Century Best 9 #185

September 22 - Yukihiro Machida

2003 BBM Sluggers #018

November 2 - Hall Of Famer Yoshinori Hirose

2009 Epoch All Japan Baseball Foundation 15th Anniversary #46

November 24 - George Altman

1975 NST #134

In addition, I also did Memorial posts this year for Hidetoshi Hakamada, Yutaka Ohhashi, Jack Bloomfield, Jitsuo Mizutani, Davey Johnson, Jim Marshall & Brian Dayett, Yoshihiro Itoh, Hiroaki Inoue, Nobuhiro Takashiro and Mike Campbell.  There were other NPB players who passed away this year that I did not do posts for - mostly because I had few if any cards of them.  I mean no disrespect to anyone I neglected to do a post for or the players I didn't highlight in this post.

2025 In Review - Everything Else (Including Korea)

I'm finishing up my review of 2025's card releases in Japan (and Korea) with everything that wasn't done by BBM, Epoch, Calbee or Topps.

Bushiroad returned this past year with updates to their DreamOrder collectible card game that was initially released in 2024.  They released a booster pack set for each of the 12 NPB teams which were released in pairs throughout the year with the Giants and Tigers sets coming out in March; the Buffaloes, Lions, Carp and Dragons getting released in April; the Hawks, Eagles, Baystars, and Swallows hitting stores in May and the Fighters and Marines getting published in June.  They also released two other sets in September - a Samurai Japan set that appears to be team set for the 2024 Premier 12 team (which furthers my confusion about the Samurai Japan license holder) and a "Heroes Of 2025" set that features some of the top players from each team.

Bandai returned with a second edition of their "Pro Baseball Deforme Card Collection", their collaboration with Namco that was distributed with packets a snack called "kaki no tane".  Like their 2024 set, this was a 36 card set featuring caricatures of players.

Epoch and the Eagles collaborated on a "comprehensive" team set for the second year in a row.  I was a bit surprised when I realized that there was only one of these sets released in 2025 since the Eagles have done two - labeled "1st Version" and "2nd Version" - almost every year since at least 2018.  As far as I could tell, this was the only collaboration between a team and card company this year - the Lions and BBM did not issue an "L Collection" set for the first time in several years.  I am sure that, once again, various teams issued card sets either through their fan clubs or with meals at the ballpark (or both) but I don't know anything about them.

TIC (or "Hits" or "Produce 216") only did a single one of their "mini colored paper" or "mini shikishi" team sets this year and it was for the Hawks.  They did, however, issue a new product called "mini folding screens".  Each "mini folding screen" is a panel about 24 centimeters (9 1/2 inches) by 13.5 centimeters (around 5 1/3 inches) which is split into three parts.  They issued three sets of eight sheets (four "base set" sheets with four "foil signature" parallels) for three teams - the Giants, Hawks and Dragons.

I think my total count of 2025 NPB sets comes out to about 77 which is a little lower than last year's total of 79 (I had listed the total number of 2024 sets as 60 in my review last year but I was counting all the DreamOrder cards as being one set rather than twenty individual sets).  This would be a count of all the "nationally" released sets (so I'm including the Epoch/Eagles team set but no other team issued sets) but not any of the on-line, on-demand Epoch One or Topps Now cards.

There were three KBO sets released in South Korea in 2025 - all by SCC.  KBO Collection was released in May, KBO Collection+ came out in August and KBO Sensation was released in September.

2025 In Review - Epoch

There weren't many surprises with Epoch's card sets in 2025.  They issued 18 sets, one fewer than they had in 2024 - although two of these sets had "2024" cover dates and there's at least one 2025 set that won't be published until next month (and I suspect there'll be another "2025" set after that too).

2025 was the eighth year of Epoch attempting to compete with BBM to be the premier card company in Japan (Calbee and Topps are non-contenders) and I feel their efforts are continuing to fall flat.  Their flagship "NPB" set dropped in size again.  What had been a 432 or 444 card set up until 2024 had dropped in size to 348 last year and to 240 this year.  The "NPB Luxury" set - a high end set using a similar design but a different checklist and photos (and with all the base set cards being serially numbered) - also dropped in size from 108 in 2024 to 36 cards.

Epoch also released their "Pacific League Rookies" box set for the eighth consecutive year but there weren't any major changes to that set - it still contained all the 2024 non-ikusei draft picks for the six Pacific League teams.

Epoch once again issued "reasonably priced" team sets called "Premier Edition" for eight of the NPB teams.  Each set had between 37 and 54 cards and sometimes contained cards for OB players as well as active ones.  The teams Epoch did sets for were the Baystars, Buffaloes, Carp, Dragons, Fighters, Lions, Swallows and Tigers which were exactly the same teams they did in 2024.

Similarly, Epoch issued their ultra high-end active/OB "Stars & Legends" team sets for the same four teams that they had in 2024 - the Giants, Hawks, Marines and Tigers.  Another one of their ultra high-end sets - "Pacific League Premier Edition" - was back for the tenth straight year - it predates Epoch's initial serious challenge to BBM in 2018 by two years.

The two sets that slipped from 2024 until March of 2025 were both collaborations with the OB Club.  One was the annual ultra high-end "Holographica" set while the second was one of Epoch's few surprises in 2025 - a reasonably priced box set called "Japan National Baseball Team Career Achievements" which featured retired players who had been members of the National team over the past quarter century or so.  The announcement of the set was the first clue that Epoch had taken over the Samurai Japan license, at least temporarily.

Epoch has already announced that the 2025 edition of "Career Achievement", one of Epoch's other annual collaborations with the OB Club, won't be released until the end of January.  There hasn't been an announcement yet about the 2025 edition of "Holographica" which makes me suspect that it again won't be released until March.

Epoch's on-line, on-demand Epoch One cards were back again for their eighth season.  There were ultimately 1321 cards done in 2025 for ten of the twelve NPB teams - everyone except the Carp and Buffaloes.  Additionally, as part of Epoch's tenure as the Samurai Japan license holder, they issued Epoch One cards for the Samurai Japan teams that took on the Netherlands in March and Korea in November.  There were 34 cards issued in all - 17 for each set of games.  As it turns out, Topps also issued six Topps Now cards for the friendlies against Korea so maybe the Samurai Japan license isn't as exclusive as I thought.

2025 In Review - Topps

It was pretty much business as usual for Topps with their NPB products in 2025.  For the third straight year, they issued four sets but they managed to spread them out a little more during the year rather than bunch almost all of them at the end of the year like they did in 2024.

They issued their flagship "NPB" set in June.  Their next set. "Stadium Club NPB", was published in September.  "NPB Chrome" followed in October and "Finest NPB" came out in November.  All four sets had base sets of 216 cards although I don't believe that the same players appeared in all four sets.

This is the fifth year that Topps has done cards for the NPB market and they've done different sets each year.  They've issued a total of 17 sets over that time - two in 2021, three in 2022, and four each in 2023, 2024 and 2025.  They've done the "flagship" "NPB" set each year as well as the "NPB Chrome" set.  The "Chrome" set has changed somewhat over the years as the first two years it was simply an ugly parallel version of the "NPB" set but since 2023 has been a completely different set with different photos and checklist.  Three other sets have only had two editions - "Bowman NPB" (2022-23), "206 NPB" (2023-24) and "Stadium Club NPB" (2024-25).  "Finest NPB" so far has only had the 2025 edition.  

For the second year, Topps issued Topps Now cards for NPB teams.  I have been unable to determine, however, how many of the teams they did the cards for or even how many cards they issued this year.  Topps' Japanese website - on the rare occasions where it doesn't automatically redirect me to the US one - doesn't appear to have any archive information about what cards they've issued easily available.

Topps apparently lost the license to do Samurai Japan cards at the beginning of the year as both Epoch and Bushiroad did Samurai Japan related sets but they apparently regained the license towards the end of the year.  They issued six Topps Now cards for the team that played a couple friendly matches against Korea in November.

Card Of The Week December 28

There will be three teams under new field management in 2026.  The Chiba Lotte Marines will be managed by Saburo*, the Tokyo Yakult Swallows will be under the leadership of Takahiro Ikeyama and the Yokohama DeNA Baystars will be run by Ryoji Aikawa.  All three are first time managers which is somewhat surprising in Ikeyama's case as he just turned 60 last week which is a little old to be making your managerial debut.  All three spent most if not all of their careers with the team they're taking over which is pretty standard for an NPB manager - of the 12 current NPB managers, only Hajime Miki of the Eagles didn't play for the team that they're running.

* Saburo's full name is Saburo Ohmura but, as there was another player with the family name "Ohmura" (Iwao Ohmura) when he joined the Marines in 1995, he decided to go with "Saburo" as his registered name.  He continued to do this even after the other Ohmura left the team after 2003.  He went by his full name during his brief tenure with the Yomiuri Giants in 2011.  I think he will continue to be "Saburo" as manager since that's the name he was using as farm team manager the past two seasons.

Here are cards of all three new managers:

2007 Marines Team Set #3

1994 Kanebo #018

2000 Future Bee Baystars #Yb-018

Munetaka Murakami Epoch One Cards

I mentioned the other day that I had a number of Epoch One cards of Munetaka Murakami.  I actually have 14 in all (along with a 2023 promo card) which is the most I have of any one player.  I can't say that I set out to get that many of him - it's just that his Epoch One cards have tended to have really attractive photos so I've picked them up.

Murakami has a lot of Epoch One cards.  TCDB lists 119 between 2019 and 2024 and a quick eyeball count of the Epoch One website (TCDB does not have the 2025 cards listed) came up with another 11 2025 cards.  (It's a little frustrating that there doesn't appear to be any way to do a search on the Epoch One website.)  So I have a little more than a tenth of his 130 Epoch One cards (not counting the various other Epoch One varieties - "Holospectra", "Signature DECO", etc).  50 of his 130 cards were released in 2022, the year he hit 56 home runs and won the Triple Crown.  I don't know if he has the most Epoch One cards of any player but it wouldn't surprise me if he did.

I thought I'd do a quick post to show off the Epoch One cards of his that I have - you'll see what I mean about how attractive a lot of the photos are.  I've included on each of these what the event each card represents - some are more mundane then others.

This first card commemorates his first ever walk off grand slam on July 2, 2020:

2020 Epoch One #120

He stole three bases in a game on November 5th, becoming the first player to do so in 41 years:

2020 Epoch One #642

This next card is for him hitting his 13th home run of the 2021 season:

2021 Epoch One #264

The next two cards commemorate him hitting home runs in five consecutive at bats over two games from July 31 to August 2, 2022 (the Swallows were off on August 1st).  The first card shows the three home runs on July 31 while the second card shows the second home run (and fifth overall) from August 2:

2022 Epoch One #601

2022 Epoch One #615

This card is for his 41st home run of the 2022 season, He reached 100 RBIs in this game, his 103rd of the season, the fastest any Swallow had ever reached that milestone:

2022 Epoch One #667

This card commemorates his 56th home run of the 2022 season and is actually a promo card from the following season:

2023 Epoch One Promo

Late in Game Three of the Final Stage of the Climax Series in 2022, Murakami beat out an infield single with two outs and the bases loaded, helping the Swallows rally to eliminate the Tigers:

2022 Epoch One #956

In 2023, he homered in his first at bat of the season:

2023 Epoch One #032

I'm not entirely sure what happened in this next card but I think with the score tied late in the game against the Carp on April 2nd, Murakami hit a ball that he thought was a home run but the wind kept it in the ballpark at Jingu.  The defense, however, misplayed the ball and Murakami ended up scoring what proved to be the winning run for the Swallows.  He got credit for a double and a two base error.  

2023 Epoch One #037

He hit his 17th home run of the 2023 season on July 22nd:

2023 Epoch One #555

He hit his first home run of the 2024 season on April 14th:

2024 Epoch One #222

Five days later, he hit his third home run of the season.  It was his first that year at Jingu Stadium and the solo shot in the eighth inning put the Swallows up for good against the Baystars:

2024 Epoch One #271

He hit his 23rd home run of the 2024 season on August 24:

2024 Epoch One #919

This final card commemorates him hitting his 30th home run on September 20th, becoming the fourth player in club history to hit 30 home runs in four consecutive seasons.  The card shows him celebrating with Jose Osuna:

2024 Epoch One #1033

I know I promised a post with all his Samurai Japan cards as well - I'll get to that when I get a chance.

2025 In Review - Calbee

Calbee's 2025 output was unfortunately much the same as their 2023 and 2024 output.  Once again, Calbee issued their "flagship" set in only two Series rather than the three that they had done for much of the previous twenty years.  

Series One came out in May - two months later than Calbee has published it in previous years.  My guess is that they decided if they were only publishing two Series instead of three, they could schedule them evenly throughout the baseball season rather than starting just before the season started.  The base set contained a total of 87 cards - 60 "regular" player cards (five per team), 21 "Title Holder" cards and six checklist cards.  There were three associated insert sets.  Two of these were ones that had been included in previous years - "Star" and "Legend" (for players who retired at the end of the previous season) but the third was a 12 card set called "Strikeout Leader".  In the past, Calbee had special 12 card box sets that were only available from their Japanese Amazon store but it appears that they have shifted these to being available in packs now.

Series Two was released in August and contained a 78 card base set - 60 "regular" player cards, 12 "Opening Game Cleanup Hitter" cards and six checklist cards.  There were two insert sets - "Star" and "Opening Day Pitcher" with the latter again being cards that would have previously only been available in the Amazon.co.jp Calbee shop box sets.

Calbee bookended these releases with a pair of sets that were a tie-in with the "Pro Yakyu Spirits A" mobile game.  The first of these sets was released in January and I'm pretty sure Calbee had originally intended to issue the set in 2024 as the set had 47 cards - one less than would be expected.  The missing player appears to have been Roki Sasaki who they would have been able to include in a 2024 set but not a set released in 2025.  The second set, containing only 24 cards, was released in December.  It's a little confusing, as both sets have the same name - "Pro Yakyu Spirits A" - and look very similar.

2025 In Review - BBM

BBM increased their number of baseball (or primarily baseball) sets from 27 in each of the past two years to 32 in 2025.  It was the highest number of BBM sets since 2019 (which also had 32 sets).

Actually, I should correct this - BBM announced 32 sets this year but one of them - the set celebrating both BBM's 35th year doing baseball cards and Shukan Baseball's 4000th issue - has been delayed until January.  So really, BBM only issued 31 sets in 2025

Over two thirds of BBM's 2025 releases - 24 of the 31 sets - were what I refer to as the "perennials" - sets they issue every year.  These sets include the three "flagship" sets - "1st Version", "2nd Version" and "Fusion"; the team sets for all 12 NPB teams - the Baystars, Buffaloes, Carp, Dragons, Eagles, Fighters, Giants, Hawks, Lions, Marines, Swallows and Tigers; the "Rookie Edition" (draft pick) set; the "Dancing Heroine" set dedicated to the cheerleader/dance squads for a number of the teams; the high-end "Genesis" set and the ultra-high-end "Glory" set.  They also include the two baseball specific box sets - "Icons" (with a theme of "Prospects" this year) and "Rookie Edition Premium".  They also issued three multi-sport sets that primarily featured baseball players - the "Farewell" box set for retiring baseball players and other athletes, the "Infinity" set and the ultra high-end "Crown" set.  

Half of the "non-perennial" sets were for the Lions.  The team was celebrating it's 75th anniversary this year and BBM issued a 142 card Anniversary set for the team in four 35 or 36 card box sets throughout the year.  Vol. 1 came out in April, Vol. 2 came out in June, Vol. 3 came out in July and Vol. 4 finished things off in September.  

The other three "non-perennial" sets were all box sets.  I've been unsure if the box set for the women's high school baseball All Star game against Ichiro's KOBE CHIBEN team (that somehow included Hideki Matsui and Daisuke Matsuzaka) should be called "Dream" or the "High School Baseball Women's Selection VS Ichiro Selection" but it came out last February.  The other two sets were team related - "Lions Bouquet" and "Fighters Great Voyage" - and came out towards the end of the year. 

Munetaka Murakami Of The Chicago White Sox

Former Tokyo Yakult Swallow Munetaka Murakami signed a two year, $34 million deal with the Chicago White Sox last weekend.  Murakami is one of at least five Japanese players looking to join MLB teams this winter and was the first to sign with a team.  

Murakami was the first round pick of the Swallows in the 2017 draft out of Kyushu Gakuin High School in Kumamoto, but that's a bit of an oversimplification - he wasn't the Swallows first choice for their first pick.  Yakult was one of seven teams who selected Kotaro Kiyomiya in the first round with the Fighters ultimately winning the lottery for his rights.  In the second draft of the first round, they, along with the Giants and Eagles picked Murakami and the Swallows won his lottery.  (This is actually the second time I can think of off hand where the Swallows lost out on their first pick to the Fighters and ended up with a MUCH better player as a result.)

Murakami spent most of his first season on the farm, only getting into six games at the ichi-gun level in September.  He made the most of his time in the minors, though, hitting 17 home runs in 98 games and winning the Eastern League MVP award.  The Swallows opened the 2019 season with Murakami playing third and the rest is pretty much history.  

I'm not going to go through his career year by year but suffice it to say, he's done very well for himself.  He's hit 246 home runs over eight seasons which not only includes his 2018 season in which he only hit one home run at the top level (in his first at bat!) but also his injury shortened 2024 season in which he hit 22 home runs in only 56 games.  He was Rookie of the Year in 2019 and won the Central League MVP in both 2021 and 2022.  2022, of course, was his best overall season when he not only won the Triple Crown (first NPB player to do so since Nobuhiko Matsunaka in 2004 and first Central Leaguer to do it since Randy Bass in 1986) but he hit 56 home runs, the second highest total in NPB history.  He's won four Best 9 awards (2020-22, 2024) and made the All Star team four times (2019, 2021-22, 2024) which seems low but keep in mind that there was no All Star game in the COVID-shortened 2020 season.

There are two things that I already know that I'm going to get tired of explaining.  The first is that, despite Jeff Passan of ESPN constantly reporting it, Murakami is NOT "single-season home run champion in Japan".  To be honest, he's not even the "single-season home run champion" of the Swallows.  Wladimir Balentien hit 60 home runs in 2013 and, despite the likes of Joe Posnanski attempting to claim there's some "juiced ball controversy" tainting Balentien's home run record, no one's really disputing it.  Jim Allen has more to say about this, but Murakami's 56 home runs in 2022 is the most by a "Japanese-born" player in NPB history, which is basically a made-up record for the purposes of sensationalism.

The other thing is something I haven't had to explain yet but I'm betting I will have to at some point.  For the purposes of his baseball cards, Murakami was a "rookie" in 2018.  However, from the point of view of NPB, he was still a rookie in 2019 - hence him winning the "Rookie Of The Year" award.  All his cards from 2018 are marked as "rookie" cards and none of his 2019 cards are but I'm sure that won't stop someone on Ebay or Reddit from claiming his 2019 cards are his "true rookie cards".

Speaking of his cards, let's talk about them.  TCDB lists 62 cards for him from 2018 but once you eliminate the parallel, insert, memorabilia and autographed cards, his number of base set rookie cards is more like eleven.  His first card is #107 in the 2018 BBM Rookie Edition set and he also appears in BBM's Icons - Fanfare, 1st Version, Swallows and Rookie Edition Premium sets.  He also appears in Calbee's Series One "Dora-Ichi" subset and Epoch's NPB, Swallows Rookies & Stars and Swallows Stars & Legend sets.   He actually has three separate cards in the Swallows Rookies & Stars set but as far as I can tell, none of them are any rarer than any others.  One shows him fielding, one shows him batting and the other shows him running the bases.  Here are all the 2018 cards I have for him - I'm missing the Rookie Edition Premium and Swallows Stars & Legend cards along with one of the Swallows Rookies & Stars cards.  I did include an insert card of his from the BBM Swallows set that I had:

2018 BBM Rookie Edition #107

2018 BBM Icons - Fanfare #35

2018 BBM 1st Version #317

2018 BBM Swallows #S54

2018 BBM Swallows #HT3

2018 Calbee Series One #D-12

2018 Epoch NPB #425

2018 Epoch Swallows Rookies & Stars #58a

2018 Epoch Swallows Rookies & Stars #58c

I'm going to finish this post off with a number of other cards of him - two from each year from 2019 to 2024 (when I stopped getting new cards).  I've got a number of Epoch One cards for him as well as even more cards of him with Samurai Japan, so I've decided to show those in a later post (that I probably won't get to until January).

2019 BBM 2nd Version #CS59

2019 Calbee Series Three #S-64

2020 Calbee Series One #TR-2

2020 BBM Swallows #S55

2021 BBM 1st Version #313

2021 Epoch NPB #419

2022 Topps NPB #185

2022 BBM Fusion #TH03

2023 Calbee Series One #T-09

2023 Epoch NPB #241

2024 Calbee Series One "Team Home Run Kings" #HR-05 

2024 Topps NPB #49

UPDATE - I completely forgot to mention that his 2022 season was commemorated in a box set from BBM called "Munetaka Murakami Shin-Ka".  The set included a card for each of his 56 home runs that season as well as a summary of his Triple Crown.

Card Of The Week December 21

Last week, former MLB pitcher Mike Campbell suffered a heart attack and passed away at age 61.  Campbell had been drafted in the first round by the Mariners in 1985 and was the player to be named later sent to the Expos to complete the Mark Langston trade in 1989 (the one that brought Randy Johnson to Seattle).  He only spent a few months in the Montreal organization, though, moving back to the Pacific Northwest in 1990 to play in Triple-A for the White Sox in Vancouver.  He was part of a number of teams over the next six years, sometimes just on paper in the off season.  He went from the White Sox to the Brewers to the Rangers to the Padres to the Cubs to the Red Sox, appearing in the majors with Texas, San Diego and Chicago.  

He'd gotten injured in 1996 - not sure if it was his ankle or his shoulder - and the injury took a while to heal.  He joined the Red Sox organization in October of 1996 and they promptly sold him to the Yokohama BayStars less than three weeks later.  His lingering injury and ineffectiveness limited his time in Japan to just three games with Yokohama's farm team though.  He returned to the US and, after being released by the Expos in spring training of 1998, finished his career playing in the Western and Atlantic Leagues over the next two seasons.

As you might expect, Campbell did not have many NPB cards (which is partly why I'm doing a memorial post for him as a "Card Of The Week" post).  As far as I know, the only card issued during his playing time in Japan was in the 1997 BBM "flagship" set - although it's entirely possible that he had a team issued card that year as well.  He also appeared in the 2022 Epoch Japan Retired Foreign Player Association (JRFPA) set.  Here's both of his NPB cards:

1997 BBM #227

2022 Epoch JRFPA #13