On Tuesday of this past week, I knew what I was going to write for this week's "Card Of The Week" post but then Wednesday happened. I decided to write about both things this week rather than pick one.
I'll start with what happened on Wednesday - the Mid-East Falcons opened their 2025 Baseball United season by no-hitting the Karachi Monarchs. Four pitchers combined to throw the no-no with three of them being Japanese and two of those Japanese pitchers having pitched in NPB. Kazuki Yabuta started for the Falcons and went five innings before being replaced by Yudai Mizushina, a Japanese player who joined the team as one of the winners of the reality show "Tryout: Plan D". Shotaro Kasahara replaced him for one inning and Severino González closed out the ninth. This was the first no-hitter in Baseball United's short history and I don't think the Falcons took advantage of any of the league's gimmicky plays (other than using a Designated Runner for Hiroyuki Nakajima).
The original thing I was going to write about was that the KBO's Hanwha Eagles had signed former Fukuoka Softbank Hawk Shota Takeda. Takeda apparently will fill the new Asian foreign player slot for the Eagles which I think is for any Japanese, Taiwanese, Chinese or Australian player and is separate from their usual foreign player limits but I may be mistaken. I think Takeda will be the first Japanese pitcher with NPB experience to play in KBO since Ken Kadokura in 2011.
I was a little pressed for time this week so I decided to show 2017 Epoch cards for all three players (Yabuta, Kasahara and Takeda) so that I only had to pull out one card album.
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| 2017 Epoch Carp #08 |
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| 2017 Epoch Dragons #14 |
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| 2017 Epoch Pacific League #11 |
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