Hisayoshi Chono

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:

2010 BBM Rookie Edition #001

2010 BBM 1st Version #032

2010 Giants Winning Game Card #44

2010 Shukan Baseball Season Memorial #4/4

2011 BBM Tohto 80th Memorial #71

2013 BBM 1st Version #387

2014 Front Runner Giants Stars & Legends #11

2017 Epoch Giants #32

2019 Calbee Series Three #182

2022 BBM 1st Version #097

2023 Calbee Series Two #106

Card Of The Week March 8

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:

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:

2020 Epoch Buffaloes Rookies & Stars #32

Fumito Haraguchi

Long time Hanshin Tiger Fumito Haraguchi retired at the end of last year.  Haraguchi was never a big star but he overcame numerous injuries and adversity to be a fan favorite at Koshien.  

Haraguchi first made his mark at the Tigers home park was when his high school, Teikyo, played in the 2009 Summer Koshien tournament where they made it to the quarterfinals.  He played well enough in the tournament that he was selected for the Japanese team for the Japan-US Friendship High School Baseball Tournament later that summer.  A few months later, he was selected by Hanshin in the sixth round of the NPB draft.

He played in only nine games with the farm team in 2010, hitting a paltry .143.  His playing time increased to 48 games in 2011 and his batting average increased to .329.  A back injury in March of 2012 limited him to just 16 games and a .189 average that year.  The Tigers released him at the end of the season and resigned him to an ikusei (development player) contract.

A hit-by-pitch early in the 2013 season broke his arm and he was limited to just 17 games.  He was released again at the end of the year and ended up re-upping his ikusei contract.  He was finally healthy during the 2014 season and got into 57 games, hitting .264.  He injured his shoulder on a pick off play in the post-season Phoenix League (think of something along the lines of the Arizona Fall League) but managed to avoid having to have surgery.  

He re-upped his development player contract again for the 2015 season and was healthy enough to play in 59 games although he hit just .220.  He got invited to take part in the first team's fall practice, however, at the request of the new Tigers manager Tomoaki Kanemoto.  Kanemoto provided one-on-one batting instruction with him during the camp.

Haraguchi and the Tigers once again renewed his development player for the 2016 season but things were different that spring.  He joined the top team's training camp late in February and stayed with the team through much of the pre-season games.  A month into the regular season, the Tigers registered him to the 70 man roster.  They brought him up to the top team on April 27th to make his ichi-gun debut some six years since he had been drafted and after three years as a development player.

He made the most of his opportunity, hitting .380 with 5 home runs and 17 RBIs in his first full month (May), becoming the first former development player to win the "Player Of The Month" award.  He wasn't on the All Star ballot but a write-in campaign resulted in him finishing second to Yuhei Nakamura for Central League catcher and he was added to the team's roster by manager Mitsuru Manaka.  He finished the season with a .299 average and 11 home runs in 107 games and drew some votes for Rookie Of The Year, ultimately finishing fourth.

He had a late season shoulder injury and he may have affected his performance in 2017 as he hit only .226.  His role changed to backup catcher and pinch hitter in 2018 and he did pretty well in that role, hitting .315 despite a hand injury costing him some time late in the season.

His most serious health issue came to light in the off season, however, as he was diagnosed with colon cancer.  He had surgery in January and underwent rehabilitation.  He returned to the field with the farm team in early May and rejoined the top team a month later.  His first at bat resulted in a pinch hit RBI double against the Marines on June 4th.  He was selected to the All Star team via the "Plus One" fan vote and homered twice in the All Star games.  He finished the season hitting .276 in 43 games.

The next several years (2020-24) were each somewhat similar to each other.  He settled into a back up and pinch hitter role, appearing in 50-ish games each year (with the exception of 2022 where he missed time due to catching COVID).  His position registration changed from catcher to infielder and he spent a lot of time playing first base plus a little outfield.  His playing time dwindled to just 16 games with the top team in 2025 and he announced his retirement towards the end of the season.

His rookie cards are all BBM issues from 2010 - Rookie Edition (#031), 1st Version (#144), 2nd Version (#585) and the Tigers team set (#T040).  He only appeared in BBM's Tiger team sets the next few years and didn't have any cards at all in 2015 as BBM stopped including ikusei players in their team sets that year.  His first base set Calbee card wasn't until 2017's Series One (#060) and he only had one other "regular" player card in a Calbee set (2020 Series Three #198) although he appeared on a couple checklist cards (and, oddly enough, had a Star card in 2016 despite not being in the base set).  He appeared in several of Epoch's NPB sets, even in years when he didn't appear in any of BBM's flagship sets.  Here's a handful of his cards:

2010 BBM Rookie Edition #031

2010 BBM #144

2013 BBM Tigers #T071

2016 BBM 2nd Version #362

2017 Epoch Tigers #22 (** variation)

2019 Calbee Series Three #C-12

2021 Epoch NPB #269

2023 BBM Tigers #T56

2026 Epoch One Samurai Japan Cards

I had an email exchange with Ryan today and he alerted me to the fact that Epoch had issued some Epoch One cards for Samurai Japan.  There are 21 cards in all and they cover some of the exhibition games that the team played in February.  

As you'd probably expect, there are no MLB members of the team included but there are cards for Kensuke Kondoh, Teruaki Sato (2 cards), Shota Morishita (2 cards), Seishiro Sakamoto (2 cards), Kenya Wakatsuki, Hiromi Itoh, Hiroya Miyagi (2 cards), Chihiro Sumida, Hiroto Takahashi, Shugo Maki, Kaito Kozono, Koki Kitayama, and Shoma Fujihira with Sato, Morishita, Sakamoto and Miyagi having two cards each.  There are also cards for players who played in the exhibition games but are not part of the WBC roster - Hibiki Shinohara, Tai Sasaski and Daito Yamamoto (who also had two cards).

The cards are 500 yen each and will be available for three days - which will be roughly 6 PM JST on Monday, March 9th (5 AM EDT).  As always it does not appear that Epoch will ship these cards overseas.

Topps Now World Baseball Classic Cards

The World Baseball Classic kicked off today and, for the third time, Topps is issuing Topps Now cards for it.  So far there are only three cards available from the two games that were played today  - Travis Bazzana of Australia and Bo Gyeong Moon and Shay Witcomb of Korea.  All the cards will be listed on both Topps' US website and their Japanese website.   The cards are $8.99 each on the US site and 1485 yen on the Japanese one.  These three cards will apparently be on sale for 48 hours instead of what I thought was the standard 24 as they'll be available until 5:15 PM EST on March 7th.  I'm going to make a guess that Topps will release new cards at 5:15 EST for at least the next two days and then we'll see what happens on Sunday when most of the US switches to Daylight Savings Time.  My expectation is that the cards will go on sale at 6:15 EDT then but that's just a guess.

In addition to the single cards, Topps is also selling Topps Now team sets for six of the teams in the tournament - USA, Japan, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Korea and Puerto Rico.  The sets for the US, Japan, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela are $59.99 each (9900 yen on the Japanese site) and contain 13 cards - the 12 card base set plus one extra card that is either a parallel or an autographed card (I guess they've taken inspiration from BBM's box sets).  The Korea and Puerto Rico sets are $49.99 each (8250 yen) and have only 11 cards each - a 10 card base set plus the parallel or autograph card.  These sets will be available until 2:45 PM EDT on March 16th.

The twelve players listed for the Samurai Japan set are Shohei Ohtani, Seiya Suzuki, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Munetaka Murakami, Kazuma Okamoto, Kensuke Kondo, Yusei Kikuchi, Tomoyuki Sugano, Hiromi Itoh, Masataka Yoshida, Shugo Maki and Kaito Kozono.  There are seven different parallels available for all 12 players but there are only autographed cards available for four of them - Ohtani, Yamamoto, Murakami and Okamoto.

The ten Korean players are Jung Hoo Lee, Hyeseong Kim, Woo-Suk Go, Hyun Jin Ryu, Shay Whitcomb, Jahmai Jones, Dane Dunning, Do Yeong Kim, Hyun Min Ahn and Ju Won Kim.  Parallels are only available for the Jung Hoo Lee and Hyeseong Kim and Jung Hoo Lee is also the autograph available.

3/6 UPDATE - Checked Topps' website at 5:15 EST-ish and they've only added one card.  It was actually added earlier today.  The new card is for Shohei Ohtani's grand slam and is a little more expensive as it is $11.99 in the US and 1980 yen in Japan.  Apparently the difference in price is due to the possibility of getting a autographed and/or memorabilia card or an image variant card with it.  The card will be available until 2:45 EDT on Sunday, March 8th.

2026 Samurai Japan World Baseball Classic Roster

As promised (threatened?) the other day, here's my post for the roster of the Samurai Japan team for this year's World Baseball Classic.  Hard to believe the tournament finally starts in two days (well, it actually starts tomorrow, East Coast US time but Thursday in Japan.  Of course, it's WEDNESDAY in Japan as I type this so I guess it really does start tomorrow...).  It's even harder to believe that two weeks from right now is the final.

I picked Samurai Japan cards for the players whenever possible.  There were only five players who I didn't have a Samurai Japan card for and I would have for a couple of them if I'd continued getting cards last year.  I also wanted to highlight Samurai Japan cards for events other than the World Baseball Classic but there the only national team cards I had for one player (Taisei Makihara) were from the 2023 tournament so I had to go with that.

2024 Topps Now Samurai Japan #25

2024 Topps Now Samurai Japan #7

2019 Panini USA Baseball Stars & Stripes "Rack Pack" Japan Collegiate Team #8

2024 Topps Now Samurai Japan Global Games Team Set #8 Yumeto Kanemaru

2017 BBM 2nd Version #428 (Secret Version)

2024 Topps Now Samurai Japan #35

2022 Topps Now Samurai Japan #014

2024 Topps Now Samurai Japan #29

2024 Topps Now Samurai Japan #20

2023 Topps Japan Edition WBC Team #WBC-24

2023 Calbee Hawks #SH-35

2024 Topps Now Samurai Japan Global Games Team Set #4 Hiroya Miyagi

2023 Topps Now Samurai Japan #3

2022 Topps Now Samurai Japan #003

2016 Calbee Samurai Japan #SJ-20

2017 Calbee Samurai Japan #SJ-06

2019 Calbee Samurai Japan #SJ-27 Kazuma Okamoto

2022 Topps Now Samurai Japan Team Set #SJ-4

2024 Topps Stadium Club NPB #34

2023 Topps Now Samurai Japan #8

2020 Calbee Samurai Japan #25 Ukyo Shuto

2024 Epoch NPB #175

2016 Calbee Samurai Japan #SJ-03

2023 Topps Now Samurai Japan Asian Professional Baseball Championship Team Set #SJ-3 Chihiro Sumida

2020 Calbee Samurai Japan #SJ-09 Seiya Suzuki

2024 Topps Now Samurai Japan #30

2024 Topps Now Samurai Japan Global Games Team Set #6 Atsuki Taneichi

2020 BBM 2nd Version #454 (Secret Version)

2019 Calbee Samurai Japan #SJ-19 Yoshinobu Yamamoto

2019 Calbee Samurai Japan Special Box Set #M-8 Masataka Yoshida

I was kind of surprised when looking back through my old posts to discover that I had not done posts for the 2009 and 2013 WBC rosters.  I didn't start doing it until the 2017 tournament.  This will probably be the last time I do it (at least with cards that I actually own) as I'm sure the 2029 team will have young players who I won't have any cards for.