First of all last Tuesday night Kenta Maeda took a no-hitter against the Brewers into the ninth inning before giving up a bloop single to Eric Sogard. Maeda struck out 12 batters in the eight+ innings he pitched but sadly didn't even get the win as the Twins bullpen gave up three runs in the top of ninth to tie the game up. The Twins eventually won in the 12th inning.
Had Maeda completed the no-hitter he would have become the first player to ever throw a no-hitter in both NPB and MLB. He had thrown one against the Yokohama DeNA Baystars back on April 6, 2012 when he was still with the Hiroshima Toyo Carp - it was the Baystars 7th game under their new ownership. The no-no was commemorated in the 2012 BBM No-Hitters set (#80):
The other story from last week is that on Thursday Orix Buffaloes manager Norifumi Nishimura resigned. Orix currently has the worst record in NPB and Nishimura took responsibility. He's being replaced by Satoshi Nakajima who had an almost 30 year (1987-2015) career as a catcher with Hankyu, Orix, Seibu, Yokohama and Nippon-Ham. He was the last active Hankyu Braves player and actually hit the last home run by a Hankyu player. He's been the farm team manager for Orix since last year. So far the Buffaloes are undefeated under him (in all of three games!) but Tuesday they start a six game series with the Hawks so I would expect that to change. Here's a card of him from when he was with Orix back in the 1990's (1995 BBM #108):
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