Ayami Sato

The Toronto Maple Leafs of the semi-pro Intercounty Baseball League announced yesterday that they had signed Madonna Japan's legendary pitcher Ayami Sato to a contract, presumably for the 2025 season.  It's funny - I had never heard of this league before last week when the Hamilton Cardinals announced their signing of Fernando Rodney and now they've had two big news stories in as many weeks.

I thought I'd take this opportunity to show off the cards I have of Sato.  I'm pretty sure I've shown all of these before but never in a single post.  All the cards I have of her are from the Japan Women's Baseball League sets from either AIAIO or Epoch - as far as I know, there are no cards of her with either Madonna Japan or the Lions' Women's team.

2015 AIAIO JWBL #D15-18-01

2016 Epoch JWBL #43

2017 AIAIO #D17-18-05

2017 AIAIO (unnumbered)

2018 AIAIO #18-18-C1

2018 Epoch JWBL #13

That's Minami Takatsuka with Sato on the unnumbered 2017 card.

I have one more card of Sato although she's not identified on it.  The unnumbered 2015 AIAIO card features a photo with a single member of each of the four JWBL teams:

Sato's obviously on the top left with Yuki Kawabata on the top right.  Not positive about the other two players but my best guesses are Yasuko Ohsawa on the lower left and Haruna Tadano on the lower right (although I easily could be wrong).

I'll close this post by mentioning that I was fortunate enough to see Sato pitch during my trip to Japan in 2019.  I went to a JWBL game between Aichi Dione and Saitama Astraia in Ichinomiya, Aichi and Sato was the starter for Dione.  She gave up three runs in the top of the first and loaded the bases with no one out in the second before bearing down and getting out of trouble without giving up any more runs.  She did end up losing the game, however.  Here's a couple not very good photos of her on the mound: