Shinnosuke Abe

Another player who announced his retirement at the end of the season was Shinnosuke Abe of the Yomiuri Giants (although he was on the Giants roster for the Climax Series and I assume he will be for the Nippon Series as well).  Abe was the Giants first round draft pick in the fall 2000 draft out of Chuo University.  He immediately became the Giants primary catcher, making his NPB debut on Opening Day against the Tigers on March 30th, 2001.  He remained the Giants starting catcher for the 14 years, catching over 100 games every year except 2003 and 2005.  In 2003 shoulder issues sidelined him after 94 games and in 2005 the shoulder issues caused him to move to first base for 32 games.  He moved to first base "permanently" in 2015 although Kazuma Okamoto's emergence caused him to move into a backup role in 2018 and Abe moved back behind the plate as a backup to Seiji Kobayashi this past season.

I really can't do Abe's career justice so I'm going to just list his many accomplishments.  He was a 13 time All Star (2003, 2004, 2006-2015, 2017), a nine time Best 9 Award recipient (2002, 2007-2014) and a four time Golden Glove winner (2002, 2008, 2013-2014).  His best season was 2012 when he led the Central League in hitting (.340) and RBIs (104) and was named CL MVP.  He ended his career with 2132 hits and 406 home runs.  He played in five Nippon Series (six if you count this year's), winning Championships in 2002, 2009 and 2012.  He was the MVP of the 2009 Series and won an "Outstanding Player" Award for the 2012 Series.  He was Giants Captain from 2007 through 2014.

He made a number of appearances with the Japanese National team, beginning with the 1997 Intercontinental Cup, 1999 Asian Baseball Championship, and the 2000 Summer Olympics when he was still in college.  As a professional he appeared with the teams for the 2001 Baseball World Cup, the 2007 Asian Baseball Championship, the 2008 Summer Olympics and the 2009 and 2013 World Baseball Classics.

Abe's BBM rookie cards are #P10 from the "2001 Draft No. 1 Pick" subset in the 2001 Preview set and #282 from the "flagship" set.  His first Calbee card was #073 from the 2001 set.  He also had 2001 cards from the Future Bee "Power League" set, the Konami "Field Of 9" set and the Upper Deck set.  Here's a bunch of his cards including all the 2001 cards I have for him (and I previously did a post for him when he got his 2000th hit in 2017):

2001 BBM Preview #P10

2001 BBM #282

2001 Upper Deck #7

2002 BBM Japanese National Team #15

2003 BBM 1st Version ##GG2

2004 BBM Giants #G95

2005 Konami Baseball Heroes Old Black Edition #B05B013

2006 BBM 1st Version #375

2007 BBM All Stars #A50

2008 Calbee #004

2009 Bowman Sterling WBC Relics Blue Refractor

2010 Giants Winning Game Card

2011 BBM 1st Version #370

2012 BBM Nippon Series #S71

2013 BBM 1st Version #325

2014 BBM Giants #G099

2015 SCM #314/Cross Plasma #CP43

2016 BBM The Ballpark Stories #010

2017 BBM Fusion #043

2018 Calbee #057

2019 Epoch NPB #302