The Asia Winter Baseball League is run by the CPBL in Taiwan and features six teams - a CPBL farm team All Star team, the Wei Chuan Dragons (an expansion team for the CPBL) a KBO farm team All Star team, a JABA (Japanese corporate league) All Star team and two NPB farm team All Star teams - the red and the white. The Red team features players from the Hawks, Eagles, Lions, Swallows and Buffaloes. The White team has players from the Giants, Dragons, Baystars, Tigers and Marines. CPBL Stats has all the rosters here - probably the biggest name on either NPB roster is Akira Neo of the Dragons on the NPB White team. The league will play through December 15th and can be streamed live via CPBL TV. It costs around $5 US to sign up - CPBL Stats has English language instructions on how to do it.
One other familiar name on the rosters is former Fukuoka Softbank Hawk Munenori Kawasaki, who is a player-coach for the Wei Chuan Dragons. Taiwan is now the fourth country where Kawasaki has played for a team after Japan (Hawks), the US (Mariners and Cubs) and Canada (Blue Jays). As far as I can tell, this is his first baseball action in about two years. He was released by the Hawks in March of 2018 and said he was stepping away from the game due to a nerve disorder but he was not retiring. He joined the expansion CPBL team this past July.
I'm not a big collector of memorabilia cards because I'm cheap and don't want to spend the money but every so often I come across a good deal. I got a bunch of memorabilia cards from some Touch The Game sets from BBM from 2010 and 2011 on Ebay pretty cheap a couple years ago. One of them is this ball card for Kawasaki (2011 BBM Touch The Game #B03):
Thanks to CPBL Stats for all the information on the Asia Winter League. I signed up for the streaming service this afternoon.
1 comment:
Awesome card! I always loved his chipper personality while he was playing in the MLB.
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