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.