Card Of The Week December 21

Last week, former MLB pitcher Mike Campbell suffered a heart attack and passed away at age 61.  Campbell had been drafted in the first round by the Mariners in 1985 and was the player to be named later sent to the Expos to complete the Mark Langston trade in 1989 (the one that brought Randy Johnson to Seattle).  He only spent a few months in the Montreal organization, though, moving back to the Pacific Northwest in 1990 to play in Triple-A for the White Sox in Vancouver.  He was part of a number of teams over the next six years, sometimes just on paper in the off season.  He went from the White Sox to the Brewers to the Rangers to the Padres to the Cubs to the Red Sox, appearing in the majors with Texas, San Diego and Chicago.  

He'd gotten injured in 1996 - not sure if it was his ankle or his shoulder - and the injury took a while to heal.  He joined the Red Sox organization in October of 1996 and they promptly sold him to the Yokohama BayStars less than three weeks later.  His lingering injury and ineffectiveness limited his time in Japan to just three games with Yokohama's farm team though.  He returned to the US and, after being released by the Expos in spring training of 1998, finished his career playing in the Western and Atlantic Leagues over the next two seasons.

As you might expect, Campbell did not have many NPB cards (which is partly why I'm doing a memorial post for him as a "Card Of The Week" post).  As far as I know, the only card issued during his playing time in Japan was in the 1997 BBM "flagship" set - although it's entirely possible that he had a team issued card that year as well.  He also appeared in the 2022 Epoch Japan Retired Foreign Player Association (JRFPA) set.  Here's both of his NPB cards:

1997 BBM #227

2022 Epoch JRFPA #13

2026 Is Almost Here

Every year around now I suddenly realize that there's only a handful of days left before the new year.  Part of what causes this epiphany is when the first card sets of the new year get announced.  There've been three announcements for 2026 sets so far so let's get to them.

- Actually this first announcement isn't "technically" a 2026 set.  While Epoch's "Career Achievement" set won't be released until January 31st, this is the 2025 edition of their annual ultra high end collaboration with the OB Club.  It seems like this set (and the "Holographica" one, of which the 2025 edition has not been announced yet) gets delayed into the year following it's "cover date" each year.  Each box of this year's edition will contain six cards (including two autographed cards) and retail for 18,150 yen (about $116).  The base set contains 60 cards and each card has a serially numbered "hologram" parallel.  There are four varieties of autograph cards - "Authentic" (56 cards, off hand don't know who the four players in the base set that don't have autographs are), "Tribute To The Past" (20 cards), "Baseball Greats" (12 cards) and "Baseball Autographs" (22 cards).  Everyone in the set are OB players and include Sadaharu Oh, Ichiro, Koji Uehara, Koji Akiyama and Kazuo Matsui.

- "Rookie Edition", BBM's annual draft pick set, is back for its 24th edition.  There's no real changes from the past few years.  The base set contains 126 cards - 114 cards for the 2024 draft picks and twelve "New Face" subset cards - because 126 is already divisible by three, there was no need for BBM to add one or two "list of draft picks" cards.  The draft picks include both the 73 players taken in the regular phase and the 43 players taken in the ikusei (development player) phase.  The twelve first round picks will again have "secret" versions which are short printed photo variations and all the regular phase draftees will have various foil signature parallels.  There are three types of insert cards - "Starting Point" (12 cards), "Close Relationship" (nine cards) and "Rookie Of The Year" (this is listed as being nine cards but I suspect it's actually only two cards featuring the 2025 Rookies Of The Year Misho Nishikawa and Kota Shoji).  There are autographed cards available for the draftees although I believe they are only available as exchange cards.  The set will be released in late-February.

- BBM's annual set for retiring players will also be out in late February.  Once again the set will not only include baseball players but retiring athletes in other sports including wrestling, swimming, soccer and boxing.  BBM has not announced how many cards are in the set this year but it will be sold as a box set with n+1 cards where n is the base set size.  The extra card will be a "special" insert card that will feature an autograph of one of the retiring players - either foil or authentic.  Some of the baseball players in the set will be Hisayoshi Chono, Sho Nataka and Shingo Kawabata.  

RIP Nobuhiro Takashiro

As I mentioned yesterday, former Nippon-Ham Fighter Nobuhiro Takashiro passed away last week from esophageal cancer at age 71.  Takashiro had a stellar collegiate career at Hosei University, winning four Best 9 awards and hitting .500 in the fall 1975 season.  He joined Toshiba of the corporate leagues after graduating and played well enough for them in his first season of 1977 that he was named to the "Amateur Baseball Best 9" team and was selected for the Japanese team for the 3rd IBAF Intercontinental Cup (they came in third).  Toshiba made the Intercity Baseball Tournament that year but they were eliminated in the second round.  In 1978, however, they not only made the tournament again but they won it for the first time.  

Around this time, the Takashiro family's chopstick factory was having financial difficulties due to the ongoing oil crisis and he decided to turn professional to raise money to help the family.  Luckily, his role in leading Toshiba to victory paid off for him when the Fighters took him as their first round pick in that fall's draft (although only after they lost the lottery for Shigekazu Mori to the Lions). 

He immediately became the starting shortstop for the Fighters and ended up winning a Diamond Glove (as the Golden Glove award was called at the time) in his rookie season of 1979.  He was the first rookie ever to win the award as well as being the first player other than Yutaka Ohashi to win the PL award for shortstop.  He also made the All Star team that year.  He followed that up in 1980 with another All Star team selection and a Best 9 award.

A dislocated ankle kept him out of 40 games in 1981 but he still made some noise by hitting two grand slams that season, becoming only the fourth player in Fighters history to hit two in one season.  He was healthy enough to play in the Nippon Series that season against the Giants although he only hit .227 as the Fighters lost in six games.

Takashiro remained the Fighter's starting shortstop for four of the next five seasons, missing time in 1984 due to injury and losing his starting role to Takayuki Iwai.  He changed his registered name to Shinya Takashiro in 1985.

The emergence of Yukio Tanaka in 1987 pushed him to a back up role at both shortstop and third base (behind Hideo Furuya).  His lack of playing time continued the following year, when he was banished to the farm team in mid-May and was expected to retire and the end of the season.  Instead, he was dealt to the Hiroshima Toyo Carp for Mitsunori Takiguchi and Michio Nabeya.  Now you might be surprised that a guy who was so obviously at the end of his career could get dealt for TWO players but it turned out that 1989 would be the final season for all three players.  Neither Takiguchi and Nabeya made any appearances with the top team but Takashiro (who went back to his original registered name of Nobuhiro Takashiro) played in 24 games with the ichi-gun Carp.

After retiring as an active player, Takashiro embarked on an coaching odyssey that would last 31 years and see him don the uniform of half the teams in NPB as well as the National Team and a Korean team.  He coached for the Carp from 1990 to 1998, the Dragons from 1999 to 2001 and rejoined the Fighters for the 2002 season.  He would be interim manager for two games for Nippon-Ham that season, filling in when Yasunori Ohshima was suspended for "violent conduct toward an umpire".  The team went 2-0 in those games.

He moved on to the Marines in 2003 before moving back the Dragons for five seasons the following year.  He coached for the Japanese WBC team in 2009 and the Hanwha Eagles in 2010 before spending two seasons with Orix.  In 2013 he was again a coach for the Japanese WBC team and he finished his coaching career with a seven year stint with the Hanshin Tigers from 2014 to 2020.

He had a great reputation for good judgement as a third base coach.  Thanks to him, the Dragons only had one player thrown out at home during the 2006 season.  Katsuya Nomura dubbed him "Japan's Best Third Base Coach". 

Since he left the Tigers, he did some TV commentary as well as coaching for the Osaka University of Economics baseball team.  He had also done TV commentary in 2009 after the WBC ended (don't know if he did the same in 2013).

Takashiro didn't have a lot of baseball cards during his career.  Engel only lists 14 - 10 Takara cards, three Calbee cards and a somewhat obscure game card.  He's appeared in a handful of OB sets over the past quarter century although probably not as many as you'd expect - most likely due to the lack of any good OB team sets for the Fighters.  And considering how many teams he coached for, it's kind of surprising there's only one card of him as a coach.  Here's almost all the cards I have of him:

1987 Takara Fighters #2

1989 Takara Carp #5

2002 BBM All Time Heroes #150

2003 BBM Fighters #119

2007 BBM Dragons #D004

2009 BBM Back To The 80's #046

2009 BBM The Premium Malts #29

2019 BBM Time Travel 1979 #50

2020 BBM Time Travel 1985 #64

A couple notes about these cards:

• The only other card I have of his is his 1988 Takara card which is very similar to his 1987 one
• Two of these cards identify him as "Shinya Takashiro".  One of them is obviously the 2020 Time Travel 1985 cards but the 1987 Takara card lists him as "高代 慎也" which is the kanji for that name.  The 1989 card has him as "高代 延博" which is "Nobuhiro Takashiro"
• That 2002 BBM All Time Heroes card is one of my favorites but I almost always forget about it.  Which is surprising since that mascot (Gyorotan) is kind of nightmare fuel
• I'm guessing that him not having a coaching gig in 2009 after the WBC was over allowed him to play in the Premium Malts game as it was the only time he appeared in one of the sets.

RIP Hiroaki Inoue

Two retired NPB players passed away last week - Hiroaki Inoue on Tuesday and Nobuhiro Takashiro on Wednesday.  Despite there being an ten year ago difference between the two of them (ten years and six days to be exact), there's some superficial similarities in their careers.  Both players spent a few years playing in the corporate leagues before being drafted in the first round.  Both players played for the Carp (Inoue's first team and Takashiro's last) and both players played for the Fighters - they were teammates for four years starting in 1981.  Both players also coached for the Dragons.  The similarities kind of end there and, as I said, they were pretty superficial but I found it interesting that two members of the 1981 Pacific League Champion Fighters passed away on consecutive days.  I'll do a post for Takashiro tomorrow (hopefully) while I'll talk about Inoue today.

Inoue passed away last week at age 81 from hypovolemic shock after being in poor health for the last month or so.  He had joined Telecommunications Kinki in the corporate leagues after graduating from Hokuyo High School in Osaka.  He played in the Intercity Baseball Tournament in both 1965 and 1966 and was named to the "Amateur Baseball Best 9" team in 1966, the first year such a team was selected.  He was drafted in the first round of the 1967 draft by the Hiroshima Carp.  The Carp only played him sparingly in his first season as he only got into 35 games and hit .224.  He became a regular in 1969 though, first as an outfielder and then as a third baseman.  He didn't hit much, though.  After hitting .252 in 1969, he dropped to .209 in 1970 and .216 in 1971.  His performance didn't improve in 1972 and he ended up getting benched, finishing the season hitting .186.

A change of scenery was in order and the Carp traded him to the Dragons for pitcher Kazuto Kawabata.  His batting average improved considerably in Nagoya, reaching .271 in 1973 and .290 in 1974.  He had the best year of his career in 1975, making the All Star team for the first time and hitting a career high 18 home runs (he had also hit 18 in 1974).  He and Koji Yamamoto of the Carp were fighting for the batting crown late in the season and a couple unfortunate things happened to keep him from beating out his former teammate.  In the next to last game of the season on October 19th, he came in as a pinch hitter in the third inning against the Carp with the bases loaded.  He was intentionally walked to drive in a run and deny him an opportunity to pass Yamamoto.  The Dragons were already up 4-0 so it didn't make a whole lot of sense strategically (the Carp did come back to win the game 11-5).  Then in the Dragons' final game of the year two days later against the Tigers, Inoue still had a shot at passing Yamamoto - it was the first time in NPB history that a batting race had come down to the last game of the season.  Inoue went one for three but was hit by a pitch in his last plate appearance in the game and the season, leaving him with an average of .318, one point behind Yamamoto's .319.  Inoue did lead the Central League in hits that year with 149 (although it wasn't an official category at the time) and won a Best 9 award as well.

He slumped somewhat in 1976 but bounced back the following season.  He repeated this pattern again in 1978 and 1979, making the All Star team for the second time in 1979.  Injuries and the arrival of Seisuke Toyoda (who was 12 years younger than the 36 year old Inoue) cut his playing time in 1980 to only 58 games.  The Dragons sent him to the Fighters in a trade for Masaru Tomita and Hideaki Oshima.  As I mentioned, he spent four seasons with Nippon-Ham, mostly as a bench player.  Probably the highlight of his years with them was his pinch hit, walk off single in the bottom of the ninth of Game One of the 1981 Nippon Series.  He retired following the 1984 season and was hired by Tatsuro Hirooka, the manager of the Seibu Lions and a former Carp coach during Inoue's time there, to be the team's defensive and base running coach.  However, due to the retirements the previous year of Koichi Tabuchi* and Hiroyuki Yamazaki, the Lions were a bit light on right-handed pinch hitters so Inoue ended up getting pressed into service for ten games.  He retired for good after that.

* Yamamoto, Tomita and Tabuchi were teammates at Hosei University in the late 1960's and collectively were known as the "Hosei Three Crows".  I'm kind of amused that Inoue had a link (albeit a somewhat tenuous one in Tabuchi's case) to each one of them - battling Yamamoto for the batting crown, being traded for Tomita and (barely) replacing Tabuchi as a bench player for the Lions

Following his retirement, Inoue was a TV commentator although he did coach for the Dragons for two seasons (1993-94) under his former teammate Morimichi Takagi.

Inoue's nickname was "Popeye" due to his somewhat sturdy build.  His 137 career hit-by-pitches was third all time in NPB when he retired but he has since fallen to tenth.

Inoue appeared fairly regularly in various card sets between 1974 and 1984.  He has cards in Calbee, NST, Nippon-Ham, Takara and some of the more obscure mid-70's menko and game cards.  I don't believe there are any cards of him with the Carp and the only card I know of showing him as a Lion is from the 2020 BBM Time Travel 1985 set.  He showed up in a handful of OB sets from the last 25 years or so, especially the various Dragons Anniversary sets.  Here's a bunch of his cards:

1974/75 Calbee #502

1975/76/77 Calbee #397

1975/76 Nippon-Ham

2003 BBM Fighters #124

2005 BBM Dragons 70th Anniversary #48

2011 Epoch OB Club 1977 #RP15 (Mini Parallel)

2017 BBM Time Travel 1975 #60

2020 BBM Time Travel 1985 #78

2021 BBM Dragons History 1936-2021 #22

Card Of The Week December 14

The Twins Oosterhout of the Netherlands' Honkbal Hoofdklasse announced this weekend that they had signed former Chiba Lotte Marines pitcher Ayumu Ishikawa to a contract.

Ishikawa was the Marines' first round pick in the 2013 draft out of Tokyo Gas of the corporate leagues.  He won ten games in his first season and was the Pacific League Rookie Of The Year.  He followed that up with two more seasons of double digit victories including a 14-5 season in 2016 in which he also led the PL in ERA.  

His career went into a bit of a roller coaster after he pitched for Samurai Japan in the 2017 World Baseball Classic.  Injuries limited him to just 16 games with the top team that season and he went 3-11.  He bounced back in 2018 to pitch well enough to make the All Star team for the second (and last) time.  Injuries in 2019 caused the Marines to move him to the bullpen temporarily but he was back in the starting rotation in 2020.  He pitched pretty well in 2021 and 2022 when healthy but he was unable to stay healthy in 2023, missing almost the entire season.  He only pitched in three games on the farm team, posting a 7.71 ERA.  The Marines released him at the end of the season and resigned him as a development player.

He performed well enough in 2024 to pitch his way back to the 70 man roster and made his first appearance at the ichi-gun level in two years at the end of June.  He went 3-1 with a 3.70 ERA in five games that year but despite that, the Marines pretty much buried him this past season.  He made no appearances with the top team and went 1-2 with a 4.74 ERA in seven games on the farm team.  The Marines released him at the end of the season and offered him a coaching job if he decided to retire.  He declined, wanting to continue to play.  Which it appears he will be doing in Europe next summer.

Here's a card of him from the "Exciting Scene" subset in the 2015 Calbee Series One set (#ES-04) celebrating his ten wins from his rookie season of 2014:

A Couple Surprises

I was away for work last week when I learned about a couple new items that I hadn't been expecting so here's a quick post to get us all up-to-date...

- Steve, a trading partner from years gone by, sent me an email last week to let me know that Topps had issued Topps Now cards for the Samurai Japan team that played a couple friendlies against Korea a few weeks ago.  There are six cards in all, four from the game on November 15th (Tai Sasaki, Misho Nishikawa, Seishiro Sakamoto and Isami Nomura) and two from November 16th (Yumeto Kanemaru and Kazuma Okamoto).  The cards are each 1485 yen (around $9.50) and will be on sale until December 26th.  It does not appear that Topps will ship these cards to the US.  It would not surprise me a lot if Topps also issued a team set after these cards have sold out.  (I am surprised that Topps is doing Samurai Japan cards since both Epoch and DreamOrder did them earlier this year.)

- Speaking of surprises, Calbee issued a set last week.  This would be the third off season in a row that Calbee has issued a set following the Hawks set in the 2023-24 off season and the "Pro Yakyu Spirits A" video game tie-in set from last year.  The new set is another tie in to the "Pro Yakyu Spirits A" video game but, unlike the set from last January, this set only has 24 cards instead of the 47 that the earlier set had (it was originally planned to be 48 cards but apparently the set was delayed which caused them to have to remove the Roki Sasaki card from the set since he had signed with the Dodgers).  Calbee managed to get this set out before the end of the year which allowed them to not have to pull the Munetaka Murakami from it.  You can see all the cards (including some of the kira parallels) over at Jambalaya - they look very similar to the earlier set, just with a different background.

Card Of The Week December 7

Two now former NPB pitchers signed deals with MLB teams last week.  Cody Ponce, who had three mediocre seasons in Japan with the Fighters (2022-23) and Eagles (2024) before spending last season in Korea, has signed a three year deal with Toronto.  His 2025 KBO season was spectacular - he went 17-1 with a 1.89 ERA and struck out 252 in 180 2/3 innings and won the MVP award.  The highlight of his NPB tenure was the no-hitter he threw against the Hawks back in 2022.  The lowlight was probably the game I saw him pitch in Fukuoka last year where those same Hawks beat his Rakuten Eagles 21-0.  He was tagged with 12(!) earned runs in three plus innings of work which raised his ERA from 4.50 to 7.05.  He didn't bring it down too much the rest of the season as he ended the season with a 6.72 ERA.  (In fairness to him, I saw him pitch well and beat the Hawks in Sendai a week before that.)

The other pitcher is Anthony Kay, who spent two serviceable seasons the past two years with Yokohama, who signed a two year deal with the White Sox.  I don't have a whole lot to say about Kay other than to mention that he won an "Outstanding Player" award in the 2024 Nippon Series when the Baystars won the championship.  I think I'm more optimistic for Kay's chances in MLB than Ponce's as Kay's put up decent numbers in a hitters ballpark (despite NPB being a terrible offensive environment the past few years).  I'm not sure I'd have given Ponce a three year deal but, hey, it's not my money and good for him.

Here's cards of both of them - Ponce's card celebrates his no-hitter:

2022 Epoch One #750

2024 BBM 2nd Version #416

Rich Gossage

I had mentioned a while back that Topps had included autographed cards of Rich Gossage into a couple of their NPB products.  To the best of my knowledge, Gossage, who had spent the 1990 season with the Fukuoka Daiei Hawks, had never had a Japanese baseball card before this.  I got an email from Kenny (aka Zippy Zappy) today in which he sent me an image of Gossage’s card from the Topps NPB Chrome set that he had swiped from an online auction:

I’m a bit curious why they didn’t include the team name on the card but it wouldn’t be Topps if they didn’t do something that makes me scratch my head.

I mock Topps a lot but I’m impressed that they’ve gotten some interesting OB players to sign cards for them.  For example, they’ve had what are pretty much the first NPB cards of Hideo Nomo since 1994.  I’d be more impressed (or at least more interested) if they’d issue base set cards of these guys rather than only rare and expensive autographed cards.

UPDATE - Fuji mentioned in a comment seeing a different autographed Gossage NPB card on Ebay so I took a look and found that he also had cards in both the 2025 Topps NPB and Stadium Club NPB sets.  I swiped the images:

I think both of these are better looking cards (mostly because I don't like the Chrome cards) but it's interesting that neither one identifies the team.

Card Of The Week November 30

Last week, Kenta Maeda officially returned to Japan and NPB after ten seasons in North America playing for the Dodgers, Twins and Tigers as well as the Cubs and Yankees organizations.  He didn't rejoin his original team, the Carp, but instead signed on with the Eagles.

Here's his card from the 2013 BBM 2nd Version set (#502):

2025 Award Winners

NPB announced their major award winners for 2025 a few days ago and Livan Moinelo of the Hawks and Teruaki Sato of the Tigers were the MVPs of the Pacific and Central Leagues respectively.  I was a little unsure if I was going to continue my tradition of showing the BBM flagship cards of the MVPs this year (my little tribute to the MVP subset in the 1975 Topps set) since I didn't buy any cards.  But I decided to lift the images of the cards for both the MVPs and Rookies Of The Year from Jambalaya (but I'm not doing the Sawamura or Best 9 award winners anymore).

2025 BBM 1st Version #168

2025 BBM 1st Version #043

The Rookies of the Year were Misho Nishikawa of the Marines and Kota Shoji of the Swallows:

2025 BBM 1st Version #238

2025 BBM 1st Version #133

I've been tracking for a while how often BBM doesn't have a card of at least one of the Rookie Of The Year winners in 1st Version.  Not to get too deep into the weeds here but there's a difference between a player being a "rookie" on his baseball card (meaning he's in his first year as a professional after getting drafted the previous year) and a "rookie" by NPB standards (meaning he's played less than a particular number of games at the ichi-gun level).  BBM will have cards of all the "rookies" by the baseball card definition in 1st Version each year but may not have a card of all the "rookies" by NPB's definition.  For example, last year Central League Rookie of the Year Hiromasa Funabasama did not have a card in 1st Version.  He was a "rookie" in the baseball card sense in 2023 (because he was drafted in 2022) but didn't play enough with the top team to lose his "rookie" status in NPB's view (or make BBM think he'd be significant enough in 2024 to be included in the 1st Version set).

This year, however, both Rookies Of The Year had cards in 1st Version, the first time that's happened since 2021.  Furthermore, both Rookies Of The Year are "rookies" in the baseball card sense as well as both players were drafted in 2024 (and thus have the little "rookie" icon on the front of their cards).  That's the first time that's happened since 2017 when 2016 draftees Yota Kyoda and Sosuke Genda were the award winners.

RIP George Altman

Former Tokyo/Lotte Orion and Hanshin Tiger George Altman has passed away at age 92.  Altman's first professional baseball experience was when he joined the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro American League in 1955 after graduating from Tennessee A&I State University (later renamed Tennessee State University).  He only spent three months with Kansas City, though, before his manager Buck O'Neil, recommended that the Cubs sign him.  He spent the 1956 and 1958 seasons in the Cubs farm system and 1957 in the US Army before making the major league club in 1959.

He spent four seasons in Chicago, making the All Star team in 1961 and 1962, but the Cubs dealt him to the Cardinals following the 1962 season and St Louis flipped him to the Mets for the 1964 season.  He was traded back to the Cubs in early 1965 and spent another three seasons with them.

He joined the Tokyo Orions for the 1968 season and was immediately impressive.  He hit .320 with 34 home runs and a Pacific League leading 100 RBIs.  He slumped a bit in 1969, the first year after Lotte bought the team, but still hit 21 home runs with 82 RBIs.  He bounced back in 1970, hitting .319 with 30 home runs and 77 RBIs to help lead Lotte to a Pacific League pennant.  They played the Giants in the Nippon Series that year and Yomiuri wanted no part of Altman early in the Series.  They walked him four times in Game One (three times intentionally), once in Game Two and twice in Game Three.  The Giants ultimately won the Series in five games, the sixth of their V9 championships.

Altman continued his stellar play the next few seasons, hitting .320 with 39 home runs and 103 RBIs in 1971. .328 with 21 home runs and 90 RBIs in 1972 and .307 with 27 home runs and 80 RBIs in 1973.  He was off to great start in 1974, tying the PL record by hitting home runs in six consecutive games in June and posting a high batting average.  What he didn't know, however, was that he had colon cancer.  He thought that his fatigue and bloody stool was a result of hemorrhoids and it wasn't until he collapsed during a game against Nankai in August that he was correctly diagnosed.  He was treated (with either surgery or chemotherapy or both) and recovered but he was unable to complete the 1974 season or play for Lotte in that year's Nippon Series (in which they defeated the Chunichi Dragons).  He ended the season with .351 batting average and 21 home runs in only 85 games.

That offseason, both Altman and the Orions were unsure if he would be able to continue to perform at the levels that he had before his cancer treatment.  Not to mention that he'd be 42 years old going into the 1975 season.  The Orions manager Masaichi Kaneda wanted to sign another American player and make Altman a coach, which would have cut Altman's salary considerably.  Ultimately, he and Lotte parted ways and he signed with the Hanshin Tigers.  

The Tigers made a first baseman out of him - he had mostly played outfield with the Orions - and plugged him into the fifth spot in the lineup, behind clean up hitter Koichi Tabuchi.  He didn't have a great year - hitting .274 with 12 home runs and 57 RBIs - but his presence in the lineup is credited with Tabuchi seeing a lot more pitches to hit that season.  As a result, Tabuchi had probably the best year of his career, hitting .303 along with 43 home runs.  Those 43 home runs led the Central League, making Tabuchi the first player not named Sadaharu Oh to lead the league in 14 years.  

Altman called it quits at the end of the 1975 season.  He ended his NPB career with 205 home runs and was the first foreign player to reach 200 home runs.  His record was short-lived, however, as Clarence Jones would pass him in 1976.  He won three Best 9 awards (1968, 1970 and 1971) and made four All Star teams (1970, 1971, 1973 and 1974).

I was a little surprised when I started looking for baseball cards of his that all of his Japanese cards from his playing career were from when he was with the Tigers but when I thought about it for a minute, it makes sense.  There were almost no baseball cards produced in Japan between 1965 and 1972.  Calbee started producing card sets in 1973 but Lotte prevented their rival snack company from including Orions players in their card sets (an embargo that continued until 1985).  So it wasn't until Altman joined the Tigers in 1975 that he could have any cards.  He had three cards in the 1974/75 Calbee set along with a card in the 1975 NST set.  He also appeared in one of the home brew sets from Ed Broder as well as a game set included in the July, 1976 issue of "Elementary School 3rd Year" magazine (JGA 154).  He has appeared as a member of the Orions in a couple of OB sets from BBM in past 20 years.  I have four of his six vintage Tigers cards and both of his BBM Orion cards:

1974/75 Calbee #787

1974/75 Calbee #827a

1975 NST #134

1975 Broder JA 5

2008 BBM Lotte 40th Anniversary #16

2013 BBM Legendary Foreigners #06

Japanese (And Korean) Players In The WPBL Draft

 

The Women's Pro Baseball League (WPBL), the latest attempt at a women's professional baseball league (which is somewhat explanatory by the name) in the US, held its draft last week and I got curious about how many of the drafted players had any experience playing in either the Japan Women's Baseball League (JWBL) or for any of the women's teams associated with NPB teams (specifically the Lions, Tigers and Giants).  And, of course, which of those players might have baseball cards already.

What I found from looking over the list of drafted players was that there were ten Japanese players drafted along with four players from South Korea.  I think, though, that there was only one player who had played in the JWBL - which isn't super surprising since the league's been gone for five years now (and suffered a huge loss of players after 2019 due to issues with how the league was run).  Seven of the players, however, have played for one of the NPB team associated women's teams (including one of the Korean players) and six of them have played for an incarnation of their country's women's national team.

I'll go over the Japanese and Korean players on a team by team basis, starting with the Los Angeles team which has the most of them.  LA took Ayami Sato as their top pick and the second overall pick.  Sato, of course, is a legend in women's baseball and for the longest time was regarded as the best female baseball player in the world.  She's the only player that I know for sure played in the JWBL and also the only one I know for sure has baseball cards.  I did a post just about a year ago showing all the cards I had at the time of her and, since then, I've added the autographed card from the 2018 Epoch JWBL set that appears above.  In the seventh round, LA took Emi Saiki who spent two seasons (2023-24) with the Hanshin Tigers.  The Tigers have issued some cards for their women's team as giveaways with bento boxes so it is possible that she might have a baseball card or two as well.  Suzu Nasasaki, who spent 2020-22 with the Saitama Seibu Lions as a teammate of Sato's, was LA's 11th pick.  They went back to the Lions' roster with their 20th pick, selecting Rio Obitsu who was with the team in 2024-25.  Obitsu had played for Samurai Japan in the 2019 Women’s Baseball Asian Cup and was named the MVP of the tournament.  LA's 24th pick was pitcher Ayuri Shimano who had spent four seasons (2022-25) with the Yomiuri Giants.

With four players, San Francisco took the second most Asian players in the draft.  As far as I've been able to tell, however, none of them played for any of the NPB team associated women's teams.  San Francisco took Ayaka Yamamoto with their sixth pick, Jua Park with their ninth pick, Hinani Beppu with their 15th pick and Hanna Miura with their 19th pick.  Park played for the South Korean National Team in the 2023/24 Women's World Cup though (although they only participated in the 2023 portion of the tournament).

New York drafted three Asian players.  Their third pick, Rakyung Kim, was a member of the Korean National Team for the 2018 Women's World Cup and played for the Lions last season - she was the first Korean player on the Lions.  Their seventh pick, Natsuki Yonetani*, was a teammate of Obitsu's on the 2019 Women's Baseball Asian Cup Samurai Japan team and led the team in batting.  Their final Asian player was their 29th pick, a Korean infielder named Minseo Park.

* The league website has her name as "Yonetani Natsuki" but Samurai Japan's webpage for the 2019 tournament implies that her family name is Yonetani.

Finally, Boston took two Asian players in the draft.  Their first round pick was a Korean catcher named Hyeonah Kim who was also a member of the 2023/24 Korean Women's World Cup team.  Their ninth round pick was Suzuka Yamamoto who played on the Tigers in 2021-22 and may have had baseball cards.

I may have missed where some of these women have played.  I relied heavily on the Japanese Wikipedia pages for the Tigers, Lions and Giants women's teams as well as their page 2023/24 Women's Baseball World Cup.  I also used the Samurai Japan website as well as the WPBL's site.

Card Of The Week November 23

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.

2017 Epoch Carp #08

2017 Epoch Dragons #14

2017 Epoch Pacific League #11

RIP Yoshinori Hirose

Longtime Nankai Hawks star and Hall Of Famer Yoshinori Hirose passed away earlier this month from heart failure at age 89.

Hirose originally signed with the Hawks as a pitcher in 1955 but an elbow injury in his first few months with the team caused him to switch to being a position player.  He made his debut with the top team in 1956 and by the middle of 1957 was Nankai's starting shortstop.  He shifted to the outfield in 1961 to make way for Kenji Koike at short and ran off a streak of five straight years of leading the Pacific League in stolen bases.  He also won the batting crown in 1964, becoming the first player to ever win the batting and stolen base titles in the same season.  He also set the NPB record for most at bats in a season with 626 in 1963.

Speed obviously was a major part of Hirose's game and he was the first player in NPB history to reach 500 stolen bases.  He was obviously the career leader in steals for a number of years but was passed by Yutaka Fukumoto late in the 1977 season, Hirose's final year.  He finished his career with 596 stolen bases, which is still second all time (albeit distantly to Fukumoto's 1065).  He also hold the records for consecutive steals without getting thrown out with 31 in 1964 and for stolen base success rate with 95.7% in 1968 (in which he stole 44 bases while only getting thrown out twice).

He won three Best 9 awards and the first Diamond Glove outfielder award (as the Golden Gloves were called when they were introduced in 1972).  He was selected to the All Star team 11 times (1958-66, 1968-69) although he declined to play due to injury in 1964 and 1968.  He won two All Star game MVP awards (1961 Game One and 1966 Game One).  He got his 2000th hit in 1972, becoming only the sixth player to reach that milestone.  He'd become a member of the Meikyukai when that club was established in 1978.  He was elected to the Hall Of Fame in 1999.

He became the manager of the Hawks after retiring, taking over for Katsuya Nomura, who'd been dismissed for "mishandling personal and professional matters" as Hirose's Japanese Wikipedia page states.  I've never gotten a clear understanding of what happened but Nomura's wife (who he had married after having an affair with her during his previous marriage) was apparently interfering with the running of the team.  Hirose's team was weakened by the departures of both Yutaka Enatsu and Junichi Kashiwabara who had sided with Nomura.  The Hawks had finished second in 1977 (well, second overall - the PL was using a split season at the time and Nankai had finished second in the first half and third in the second half) but dropped to sixth in 1978 (overall and in both halves).  They climbed to fifth in 1979 but after dropping back to last in 1980, Hirose was replaced by Don Blasingame (who'd been the head coach under Nomura for a number of years).  

He was a baseball commentator during most the 1980's before returning to the Hawks (now in Fukuoka and owned by Daiei) as a defensive and base running coach in 1991.  Under his tutelage, three Hawks players (Hisashi Ohno, Makoto Sasaki and Hiroshi Yugamiya) had more than 30 steals in 1991, with Ohno leading the league with 42.  The following year, Sasaki led the league with 40 steals and became only the second player (after Hirose) to win a batting and stolen base title in the same year.  He went back to being a baseball commentator following the 1992 season, a job he'd continue until he retired in 2015.

Now that I'm looking at Hirose's vintage cards, I'm a bit surprised about something.  While he appears in a lot of menko, bromide, gum and game sets from the late 50's and early 60's (as well as the 1967 Kabaya-Leaf set), he almost completely absent from Calbee's sets.  He only appears on three cards and only one of those (#800a from the 1974/75 set) features only him.  He shares a card with Katsuhiro Nakamura (1974/75 #95) and is included on the Hawks team card from the 1975/76/77 set (#410).  He's appeared pretty regularly in BBM's OB sets over the last 25 years, especially any of the various Hawks OB team sets.  He's also appeared in at least two Epoch OB sets.  Here's a bunch of his cards:

1959 Marusho JCM 39

1960 Marusho JCM 13a

1962 JGA 146 "Tassel Playing Cards"

1967 Kabaya-Leaf #318

1974/75 Calbee #800a

1977 NST #324

2000 BBM 20th Century Best 9 #457

2002 BBM All Time Heroes #115

2006 BBM Nostalgic Baseball #052

2014 BBM Young Hawks - Futures And Legends #35

2018 BBM Hawks 80th Anniversary #06

2018 BBM Hawks #HH13

2022 BBM Hawks History 1938-2022 #11

A couple comments:

• I think both Marusho menko cards use the same image but the 1960 card is cropped tighter and the colors are different
• I don't actually own the Kabaya-Leaf card - I swiped the image from TCDB.
• That 2018 BBM Hawks card is from the "Hawks History" cross set subset and is the only card I've seen depicting him as Hawks manager (there may be another one from something Engel refers to as "JA 9" but I've never seen any cards from that set).

One final thing - I was kind of taken aback at the photo on the back of Hirose's 2002 BBM All Time Heroes card:

I'm kind of curious about why he's got a motorcycle.  I suspect this is for one of his All Star game MVP awards but I don't know that for sure.