Japanese Baseball Cards: Hideto Asamura

Wednesday, May 28, 2025

Hideto Asamura

Hideto Asamura of the Eagles got his 2000th hit last Saturday and became the latest member of the Meikyukai or "Golden Players Club". Asamura is the first member of this august group who was born in the Heisei Era and, as we'll see below, it wasn't the first time he was the first Heisei-born player to do something.

Asamura was born and raised in Osaka-city and attended high school at baseball powerhouse Osaka Toin (which is in Osaka-prefecture, not Osaka-city - it's actually in Daito-city just east of Osaka-city). He was the starting shortstop and leadoff hitter his final year there where he helped the team win the 2008 Summer Koshien tournament - he went 16 for 29 (.551) with two home runs in the six games they played.

He was taken by the Lions in the third round of the 2008 NPB draft and spent 2009 with the Lions' farm team. He made his ichi-gun debut as a pinch hitter early in the 2010 season although he spent about two thirds of that season on farm again. He was pretty much up with the top team for good starting in 2011.

He had his breakout season in 2013, hitting .317 with 27 home runs and a Pacific League leading 110 RBIs. He was the first player born in the Heisei Era to win an RBI crown. He also won a Best 9 award and a Golden Glove award that season, sharing being the first Heisei-born player to win the awards with Daichi Suzuki and Sho Nakata for the Best 9 and Ryosuke Kikuchi and Yoshitomu Maru for the Golden Glove.

He left Seibu for the Eagles as a free agent after the 2018 season and he's been in Sendai ever since.

He lead the PL in RBIs again in 2018 and in home runs in 2020 and 2023 (although he shared the lead in 2023 with Kensuke Kondoh and Gregory Polanco). He won more Best 9 awards in 2016-20 and 2022-23 and another Golden Glove award in 2019. He's also an eight time All Star (2013-19, 2022). He has the longest consecutive game streak in PL history (and fourth longest in NPB history) with the 1346 game streak he had from August of 2015 until just a few weeks ago. He's only suited up for Samurai Japan for an international tournaments twice but he picked them well - winning Gold in both the 2019 Premier 12 and the 2020 Tokyo Olympics (played in Yokohama in 2021 of course).

His first baseball card was #003 in the 2009 BBM Rookie Edition set. The rest of his 2009 cards were all BBM issues - 1st Version (#033), 2nd Version (#747), the Lions team set (#L48) and the Rookie Edition Premium set (#RP02 and #RP37). His first Calbee card was not until 2011 Series Two (#084). He's been in every BBM 1st and 2nd Version set and every Calbee set since 2011. He's also been in every Epoch NPB set since 2018 and every Topps NPB set since 2021. Here's a bunch of his cards: