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:
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| #WB4 |
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| #W9 |
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| #W10 |
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| #WB15 |
If you bought the Ohtani card, you had a shot at getting the image variation card or an autographed memorabilia card as well:
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| #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:
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| #W2 |
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| #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.
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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:
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| 2025 BBM 35th Anniversary/Shukan Baseball 4000th Issue #133 |
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| 2023 Epoch One #956 |
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 |
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:
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| 2010 BBM Rookie Edition #001 |
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| 2010 BBM 1st Version #032 |
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| 2010 Giants Winning Game Card #44 |
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| 2010 Shukan Baseball Season Memorial #4/4 |
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| 2011 BBM Tohto 80th Memorial #71 |
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| 2013 BBM 1st Version #387 |
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| 2014 Front Runner Giants Stars & Legends #11 |
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| 2017 Epoch Giants #32 |
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| 2019 Calbee Series Three #182 |
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| 2022 BBM 1st Version #097 |
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| 2023 Calbee Series Two #106 |
The 2026 World Baseball Classic is in full swing and it's been pretty much everything we all had expected and hoped for. There's been some upsets, some near-upsets and some flat out amazing games. It's kind of wild but there had never been a walk-off home run in a WBC game before yesterday and then there were two! There are any number of things that I could write about but I decided to limit it to just two.
I had the Cuba-Panama game on Friday afternoon and was surprised to see a familiar name in the lineup. Now, to be fair, there were a number of players with NPB experience playing for Cuba that day with Roel Santos and Ariel Martinez also in the lineup and Livan Moinelo, Yariel Rodriguez, Yoan Lopez and Raidel Martinez all pitching. Moinelo got the win and Martinez got the save. The player I didn't expect to see (and this was my fault for not looking over Cuba's roster before the game) was 39 year old Alfredo Despaigne, who had spent ten years in NPB with the Marines and Hawks. It's been three years since he played for the Hawks and I had assumed that he had retired. This is his fifth WBC which I think ties him with Miguel Cabrera and Oliver Perez for most WBCs played in (there may be other players for whom the 2026 WBC is their fifth tournament but I don't know who they are off hand). Here's a card of a younger, slimmer Despainge from his first WBC in 2009:
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| 2009 Konami Baseball Heroes WBC #W09R059 |
Today's Japan-Australia game was a nail biter. The game was scoreless through the first five innings but Australia took a 1-0 lead in the top of the sixth when Aaron Whitfield doubled, stole third and came into score when catcher Kenya Wakatsuki's throw bounced into left field. Japan wouldn't get on the board until the bottom of the seventh where Kensuke Kondoh set the stage by beating out what would have been an inning ending double play but a bad throw pulled pitcher Jon Kennedy off the bag. The next batter, Masataka Yoshida, deposited the second pitch from Kennedy into the Samurai Japan cheering section in right field to put the home team up 2-1. Japan tacked on two more runs in the bottom of the eighth to extend their lead to 4-1. It turned out they needed those insurance runs as two Aussie batters - Alex Hall and Rixon Wingrove - hit solo home runs in the ninth inning before closer Taisei (Oto) finally got the last out to preserve the 4-3 win. With the victory, Japan has clinched the top spot coming out of Pool C. One of the broadcasters mentioned that Japan had been the top seed coming out the first round for every WBC but that's actually not true as they were the second seed in 2006 behind Korea. Korea had upset Japan 3-2 in the last game of the pool with Lee Seung-yuop hitting a two run home run in the eighth inning to provide the winning margin.
Tonight's game at the Tokyo Dome was attended by Emperor Naruhito and the Empress Masako. It was the first time that a reigning Emperor had attended a professional baseball game since November 11th, 1966 when the Showa Emperor attended a game between a Japanese All Star team and the visiting Los Angeles Dodgers. The only other time an Emperor attended a professional baseball game was the Emperor's game in 1959, a game that dramatically ended on a sayonara home run by Shigeo Nagashima. Gabe Lerman on BlueSky asked if Yoshida's home run was the first home run by a Japanese player "to homer in front of the Emperor since Nagashima" which, of course, got me curious. I broke out my copy of "Nichibei Yakyu: US Tours of Japan, Volume II: 1960-2019" and looked up the details about that game. It turned out that three Japanese batters went deep in the game - Nagashima, Yukinobu Kuroe and pitcher Tetsuya Yoneda - so, alas, the answer was "no". For the record, Japanese Emperor's have witnessed nine home runs by Japanese players. Nagashima hit three of them (two in 1959 and the one in 1966) while the other six were by Kazuhiko Sakazaki, Katsumi Fujimoto and Sadaharu Oh in the 1959 game, Kuroe and Yoneda in 1966 and Yoshida today. (A Japanese Emperor has also seen four home runs hit by foreign players - Ron Fairly and John Roseboro in 1966 and Hall and Wingrove today).
Here's a card of Yoshida to commemorate his home run:
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| 2020 Epoch Buffaloes Rookies & Stars #32 |
