Japanese Baseball Cards: Shinya Tsuruoka

Thursday, March 10, 2022

Shinya Tsuruoka

It turns out that there was one more player I needed to do a retirement post for. Long time Fighters and Hawks catcher Shinya Tsuruoka announced back in December that he was retiring. Tsuruoka was the Fighters' eighth round pick in the 2002 draft from the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Yokohama industrial league team. Oh, and that's the "Nippon-Ham Fighters" who drafted him, NOT the "Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters". If I am not mistaken, Tsuruoka is the last active player to have worn a Fighters uniform when they still played in Tokyo although he didn't make his ichi-gun debut until 2005, their second season in Sapporo.

He was the backup catcher to Shinji Takahashi for three years but became the starter in 2009 and won a Golden Glove that season. He and Shota Ohno pretty much split the catching duties over the next four seasons but he played well enough the make the All Star team in 2012 and 2013 and win a Best 9 award in 2012. He left the Fighters as a free agent after 2013 and signed with the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks. He was pretty much the backup to Toru Hosokawa his first two years with the Hawks but stepped in when Hosokawa was injured in 2016. By 2017 Hosokawa was in Sendai but the Hawks were committing themselves to younger catchers (like Takuya Kai) and Tsuruoka's playing time dwindled. He left as a free agent after the 2017 season and returned to the Fighters. He was a player/coach his last three seasons and the Fighters asked him to become a full time coach after the 2021 season but he declined as he initially wanted to continue playing. He'll be a TV commentator this season.

Tsuruoka's first cards were in the 2003 BBM Rookie Edition (#83) and 1st Version (#341) sets. He didn't appear in a Calbee set until the 2007 Series One set. Here's a bunch of his cards: