2026 Samurai Japan World Baseball Classic Roster

As promised (threatened?) the other day, here's my post for the roster of the Samurai Japan team for this year's World Baseball Classic.  Hard to believe the tournament finally starts in two days (well, it actually starts tomorrow, East Coast US time but Thursday in Japan.  Of course, it's WEDNESDAY in Japan as I type this so I guess it really does start tomorrow...).  It's even harder to believe that two weeks from right now is the final.

I picked Samurai Japan cards for the players whenever possible.  There were only five players who I didn't have a Samurai Japan card for and I would have for a couple of them if I'd continued getting cards last year.  I also wanted to highlight Samurai Japan cards for events other than the World Baseball Classic but there the only national team cards I had for one player (Taisei Makihara) were from the 2023 tournament so I had to go with that.

2024 Topps Now Samurai Japan #25

2024 Topps Now Samurai Japan #7

2019 Panini USA Baseball Stars & Stripes "Rack Pack" Japan Collegiate Team #8

2024 Topps Now Samurai Japan Global Games Team Set #8 Yumeto Kanemaru

2017 BBM 2nd Version #428 (Secret Version)

2024 Topps Now Samurai Japan #35

2022 Topps Now Samurai Japan #014

2024 Topps Now Samurai Japan #29

2024 Topps Now Samurai Japan #20

2023 Topps Japan Edition WBC Team #WBC-24

2023 Calbee Hawks #SH-35

2024 Topps Now Samurai Japan Global Games Team Set #4 Hiroya Miyagi

2023 Topps Now Samurai Japan #3

2022 Topps Now Samurai Japan #003

2016 Calbee Samurai Japan #SJ-20

2017 Calbee Samurai Japan #SJ-06

2019 Calbee Samurai Japan #SJ-27 Kazuma Okamoto

2022 Topps Now Samurai Japan Team Set #SJ-4

2024 Topps Stadium Club NPB #34

2023 Topps Now Samurai Japan #8

2020 Calbee Samurai Japan #25 Ukyo Shuto

2024 Epoch NPB #175

2016 Calbee Samurai Japan #SJ-03

2023 Topps Now Samurai Japan Asian Professional Baseball Championship Team Set #SJ-3 Chihiro Sumida

2020 Calbee Samurai Japan #SJ-09 Seiya Suzuki

2024 Topps Now Samurai Japan #30

2024 Topps Now Samurai Japan Global Games Team Set #6 Atsuki Taneichi

2020 BBM 2nd Version #454 (Secret Version)

2019 Calbee Samurai Japan #SJ-19 Yoshinobu Yamamoto

2019 Calbee Samurai Japan Special Box Set #M-8 Masataka Yoshida

I was kind of surprised when looking back through my old posts to discover that I had not done posts for the 2009 and 2013 WBC rosters.  I didn't start doing it until the 2017 tournament.  This will probably be the last time I do it (at least with cards that I actually own) as I'm sure the 2029 team will have young players who I won't have any cards for.

Card Of The Week March 1

The 2026 edition of the World Baseball Classic is kicking off this upcoming Thursday and I was looking over the Samurai Japan roster to prepare for the my usual post for it when I was kind of struck by something.  I'm not much of an autograph collector so I was kind of surprised to realize that I had autographed cards of six of the thirty players on the roster plus one of the coaches.  I thought I'd show off what I had.

The autographs I have are split between "authentic" autographed cards from sets and cards that I got autographed in person.  Let's hit the "authentic" cards first.

Several players on the roster had previously been members of the collegiate Samurai Japan team and had autographed and/or memorabilia cards in several of Panini's USA Baseball sets over the years.  Seishiro Sakamoto and Masataka Yoshida appeared in the 2013 set:

2013 Panini USA Baseball Japanese All Stars Signatures #12

2013 Panini USA Baseball Japanese All Stars Signatures #23

The 2019 Panini USA Baseball Stars & Stripes set included autographed cards for both Hiromi Itoh and Teruaki Sato, but I unfortunately have never been able to track any of them down at a price I was willing to pay.  I suspect at this point that I never will.  Especially since I expect that this WBC is going to be Sato's "coming out" party.

I had somewhat better luck with the 2020 Stars & Stripes set as I have cards for the two of the three members of the roster that were included in that set - Shugo Maki and Shota Morishita:

2020 Panini USA Baseball Stars & Stripes Silhouettes Signatures Jerseys Prime #JCS-SM

2020 Panini USA Baseball Stars & Stripes Silhouettes Signatures Jerseys Prime #JCS-SM

Hiromi Itoh is the other player on the roster who was in the 2020 set - he was one of five players who appeared in both the 2019 and 2020 sets.

There are no players on the roster who were in the 2024 Panini set but I'm sure a few of them will be on the roster for the 2029 Tournament.

On to the cards that I got autographed in person...

Ten years ago last month, I spent a couple of days in Peoria, Arizona while the Fighters were doing the early portion of their spring training.  I had taken a stack of baseball cards with me, hoping to get some signatures.  I was kind of rude during the day, interrupting players trying to get from one practice event to another, although a number of them were gracious enough to stop and sign for me.  I had better luck in the late afternoon when the players were leaving the ballpark after doing weight training and heading for their hotel.  There were a number of us standing around in parking lot and the players were much more willing to stop and sign (and take photos with fans).  My biggest problem was not recognizing players immediately so I'll be forever grateful to my friend Dani for pointing out Kensuke Kondoh had passed by and I was able to chase him down in the parking lot to get him to sign.

The next day, I was able to catch Fighters coach Makoto Kaneko as he came off one of the practice fields.  Kaneko is one of the coaches for Samurai Japan this year:

There was one player that year that I wasn't able to get.  I had corralled him as he finished batting practice the first afternoon I was there but he declined (I think politely) to sign.  And I missed him later that day when I came back after the team finished doing weights.  Dani told me when I arrived that he had just been there.  I didn't come out at the end of the following day - my two days in Peoria were at the end of a two week work trip and I was exhausted - so I ended up not getting anything signed by him.

Luckily, the Fighters returned to Peoria for training camp in 2017.  I wasn't able to go - I only had enough leave and funds to do one trip early that year and I went to the WBC finals in Los Angeles a month later instead - but Dani was there.  I had sent her a card and asked if she could get it signed for me.  She agreed and, once again, I will be forever grateful to her for getting it signed and sent back to me:

I hope to have the post for the 2026 WBC roster up by Tuesday evening.

Almost Spring

After several weeks of frigid temperatures and yet another snowfall last weekend, we're finally seeing signs of spring here in the mid-Atlantic part of the US.  It's a beautiful day in the mid-50's and almost all of the snow has melted, making me feel like that spring might finally be on the way.  With that in mind, I figured it'd be a good time to go over the sets that have been announced over the last month or so.

- BBM issues box set in March of each year with a different theme under the "Icons" label.  This year's edition is called "Icons - Nomination" and, as has been the standard for a while, will contain 37 cards - the 36 card base set plus one "special" card.  I think the theme is "top draft picks" so the card base set will feature three players for each team who were (or are - the first round picks from the 2025 draft for eight teams are in the set) top draft picks.  The "special" card could be one of a number of possibilities - a "foil printed" card, an "Extreme2026" insert card (one of the eight 2026 rookies), an "Advance" insert card, a "foil signed" card or an actual autographed card.  There are parallel versions of the "foil printed", "Extreme2026" and "Advance" cards available.  The set will be released on March 30th.

- BBM has announced the first three of their annual "comprehensive" team sets.  Each set has a base set of 81 cards, most of which are "regular" player cards featuring the manager and the players on the 70 man roster plus a couple subsets (which may not be fully defined yet) to fill out the set.  Each set also has 18 non-premium insert cards split into a variety of sets which also may not be fully defined yet (or may have title that doesn't translated to something that makes any sense).  The sets also have two or three types of premium inserts that are serially numbered - Treasure, Esperanza and Admirar.  There will be rare parallel versions of some of the "regular" player cards that will feature photo variants or different backgrounds.

Release Date	Team	Regular Cards	Subsets	Non-Premium Inserts	Treasure	Esperanza	Admirar	Other
Early April	Eagles	71	Newcomer(2), Title Holders(3), Tohoku Spirits(5)	Main Players(9), Growing Up(3), Veterans Of The Counterattack(3), Rookie Phenom(3)	24	9	6	Autograph cards
Mid April	Lions	68	I Am!(4), Advantage Ahead(3), Headliner(3), Legacy of the 1(3)	Shishi Zangetsu(9), Tachyon(3), For A Long Time(3), Anthem(3)	24	9	6	Autograph cards
Late April	Swallows	67	Conversion(2), Fourth Round Picks(3), Iron Wall Relief(4), Promising Young Fielders(5)	Main Players(9), Combination(3), Breakout Candidates(3), Rookies(3)	24	9	6	Autograph cards

- Speaking of team sets, Epoch has announced the first of their "Premier Edition" team sets for 2026.  Epoch's team sets are not "comprehensive" (i.e. they don't have every player on the 70 man roster) but this first set for the Carp will have a base set of 49 cards - 47 cards for active players (and manager Takahiro Arai) plus OB cards for Seiya Suzuki and Koji Yamamoto.  There's a "hologram" parallel available for each of the base set cards.  The set has the usual large batch of inserts that the "Premier Edition" sets have- three varieties of "Regular Foil Signature" ("silver", "gold" and "hologram") (18 cards each), two varieties of "Regular Decomori Signature" ("hologram" and "hologram parallel") (18 cards each), five varieties of "Time To Shine" ("A","B","C","D","E") (six cards each) and three varieties of "Decomori Signature" ("gold","green" and "hologram") (six cards each).  I think all the inserts are serially numbered.  There are also the "GEM" and "BLACK GEM" "special insert cards" (nine cards in each) that I think are much more limited.  Finally, there are seven different types of autographed cards that are available - "Authentic" (45 different), "Star" (5), "Carp Combo" (2), "Combo" (1), "Rookie" (9), "Rookie Combo" (1) and "Legendary" (1).  I have no idea what the difference between "Carp Combo" and "Combo" is.  The set will be released on May 2nd.

- Epoch has again teamed up with the OB Club to produce another OB Samurai Japan box set.  This year's edition is "officially" dubbed the "Japan Professional Baseball OB Club Official Card Japan National Baseball Team Holographica 2025" set and will be out on March 28th.  Some of the set details are still in flux but the base set will contain at least 32 cards for retired players (and managers) of Samurai Japan.  Each box will contain the full box set plus two "special" cards - a "hologram" parallel card (which may have parallel versions as well) and one of three different types of autographed cards - "Authentic", "Tribute To The Past" and "Baseball".  From the name of the set, I assume that it was originally intended to be released in 2025 but got delayed (as was also the case for the other two sets that Epoch collaborates with the OB Club on - Career Achievement and Holographica).  I'm kind of amused that last year's OB Samurai Japan set was under the "Career Achievement" label but this year's is under the "Holographica" one.  I gave into temptation with last year's set and was disappointed with it.  Given that this year's set appears to have many of the same players, I don't think it will be hard for me to give it a pass.

Oh Seung-hwan

I have a list of about eight or nine players who retired as of the end of last season that I've been meaning to get around to doing posts about but, for whatever reason, I haven't had a chance to.  I'm going to start now and hopefully I can get all of them done before the season starts in just over four weeks.

Former KBO, NPB and MLB closer Oh Seung-hwan announced his retirement last August, effective at the end of the season.  Oh was drafted by the Samsung Lions out of Dankook University in 2005 and made his KBO debut early in that season.  He went 10-1 with 16 saves and an ERA of 1.18 in 61 games that year, earning the Rookie Of The Year award.  He remained with Samsung for another eight years, racking up a total of 277 saves despite missing time in 2009 and 2010 with shoulder and elbow injuries.  He led the league in saves in five of his nine KBO seasons, 

He departed Korea for Japan after the 2013 season, signing a two year deal with the Hanshin Tigers.  He immediately stepped into the closer role for Hanshin and continued his stellar performance from Samsung.  He had a Central League leading total of 39 saves in 2014 along with an ERA of 1.76.  His ERA grew by almost a full run to 2.73 in 2015 but he still led the league in saves with 41.

After two seasons in Nishinomiya, he was off to America, signing with the St Louis Cardinals.  His first year in St Louis went well, going 6-3 with 19 saves and a 1.92 ERA, causing the Cards to exercise their 2017 option of his contract.  His second year went less well with his ERA ballooning to 4.10 although he still notched 20 saves.  

A free agent going into 2018, Oh signed a deal with the Texas Rangers, only to have the Rangers back out of the deal when a physical revealed an "abnormality" in his right arm.  The Blue Jays signed him a few weeks later and he went 4-3 with a 2.68 ERA in 48 games, mostly in middle relief.  He pitched well enough that Toronto dealt him to the Colorado Rockies in late July.  He went 2-0 with a 2.43 ERA in 25 games for the playoff-bound Rockies.

Injuries caught up with him the following year as his ERA skyrocket to 9.33 in 21 games before going on the disabled list in June.  I'm not sure if it was related to the "abnormality" that the Rangers found the year before but he returned to Korea mid-season to have surgery on his right elbow and announced that he'd be returning to Samsung when his contract was up with the Rockies.  The Rockies went ahead and released him in July, a year to the day that they'd gotten him in the trade with Toronto.

He was healthy going into 2020 but had a delay to his being able to play in games.  He'd been suspended by the league in 2016 for gambling at a casino in Macau - Korea has strict anti-gambling laws - and had to serve the suspension now that he was back in Korea.  He ended up racking up 18 saves in just 45 games that year.  He seemed to be back to his old self, saving at least 30 games in each of the next three seasons (including a league leading 44 in 2021), although his ERA grew each year.  He had 27 saves in 2024 but his ERA was almost 5 and I think Samsung moved him out of the closer role last year (although I'm not sure how healthy he was).  He only appeared in 12 games with an ERA of 8.00 with no saves.

He ended his career with 549 saves across the three leagues - 427 in KBO, 80 in NPB and 42 in MLB.  He lead his league in saves a total of eight times (2006-08, 2011-12, 2014-15 and 2021).   He had two Hall Of Fame nicknames - "Stone Buddha" and "Final Boss".  He was a member of the Korean National Team for several major tournaments, including the 2006, 2009, 2013 and 2017 World Baseball Classics and well as the 2008 Beijing Olympics (where Korea took the Gold) and the 2020 Tokyo Olympics (where they didn't).

He's got an interesting mix of baseball cards.  There were no officially licensed cards for KBO during his career until 2014, his first season in Japan, so his first officially licensed KBO card wasn't until his return in 2020.  His first card at all appears to be from Japan in the 2009 Konami Baseball Heroes -WBC set.  Despite his being on four WBC teams, this is his only card from the tournament.  His only other card from his pre-NPB days is from the unlicensed "KBO Game" set from 2010.  He appeared on many cards in NPB in 2014 and 2015 as well as Topps cards between 2016 and 2019.  He appeared in several of SCC's KBO sets from 2020 to 2024.  Here's some of his cards, including all the KBO cards of him that I have:

2009 Konami Baseball Heroes - WBC #W09R118

2010 KBO Game Set #AS-004

2014 BBM 1st Version #195

2014 BBM Tigers #TM1

2015 Calbee Series Two #139

2015 BBM 2nd Version #503

2020 SCC Premium #SCCP1-20/L05

2021 SCC Golden Premium #SCC-21/L04

2021 SCC Golden Premium #SCC-21/L04 (Korean National Team)

2022 SCC Rainbow #SCC-22/L03

The Nittaku Home Flyers

2003 BBM Fighters #102

The NPB subreddit today had a post about the seven different uniforms that the Nittaku Home Flyers wore during the second half of the 1973 season.  The post featured the above photo that was immortalized in the 2003 BBM Fighters team set.  I wrote a post about this topic some years ago but, to be quite honest, I really had no idea what I was talking about at the time.  I will point out that my assertion that they wore different uniforms based on what position the players were playing is completely wrong.  I also didn't have any baseball cards showing these uniforms when I did that post so I thought I'd take a second shot at it now.  

My original post included some scans of pages from "History Of Uniform" which I could not read at the time.  I can read them now - not because I've learned how to read Japanese but because Google Translate has greatly improved in the past 12 years.

Let's start with a little background - Nittaku Home was a real estate company that bought the Flyers from Toei in early February of 1973.  Since training camp had already started, there wasn't time to design new team uniforms from scratch, so instead there were just minor modifications made to the Toei uniforms used the previous year.  The away jerseys were modified to say "Nittaku Home" instead of "Toei" and the Toei logo on the sleeve was changed to the Nittaku Home one.  These were the uniforms that the team wore until the All Star break in mid-July.

The new uniforms were unveiled with the assertion that "the Flyers would confuse opponents with their uniform color strategy".  How exactly that would work was never explained.  1973 was the first year of the Pacific League's ten year experiment with a split season and the Flyers had finished the first half in fifth place with a 25-37-3 record.  They improved to fourth place and a 30-32-3 record in the second half but I suspect that replacing manager Kenjiro Tamiya with Masayuki Dobashi was probably more responsible for that improvement than the uniforms.  

The four uniforms with a white base were home uniforms while the solid blue, yellow and black with yellow sleeves were away uniforms.

There apparently were some stories that the players were confused at all the uniforms and sometimes brought the wrong one to games and had to play in the wrong one but (if I'm understanding the Google translation correctly) that doesn't appear to be accurate.  "History Of Uniform" quotes outfielder Mikio Sendo saying that he didn't remember that happening and that the team always had spare uniforms so it's possible someone played wearing a different number than usual but not a different uniform than the others.

Following the season there was talk of the Flyers and Lotte Orions merging.  Tokyo Stadium, Lotte's home ballpark, had gone bankrupt, leaving the team without a home.  I think the plan was to get two more teams to merge, reducing the number of teams to ten and having all ten teams play in the same league.  It didn't happen and Nittaku Home ended up selling the Flyers to Nippon-Ham in November of 1973.  (Lotte was essentially homeless for five years, playing the majority of their games in Sendai while also hosting games in a number of different parks across Japan.  Kawasaki Stadium became available when the Taiyo Whales moved to Yokohama in 1978 and the Orions played there for the next 15 years.)

I took a look today to see how many baseball cards I had that depicted members of the Nittaku Home Flyers.  I have eleven, not including the card shown above.  I was kind of amused to discover that those eleven cards only feature three different players.  What's more, two of those players only appear in the less interesting uniforms from the first half of the season.  Here are the cards in the order that they were published:

1973/74 Calbee #317 (Satoshi Niimi)

2012 BBM No-hitters #56

2013 Epoch Rookies Of The Year #29

2016 BBM The Ballpark Stories #098 (Naoki Takahashi)

2019 BBM Fusion #44

2022 BBM Fusion #38

All three of the Naoki Takahashi cards commemorate the no-hitter he threw against the Kintetsu Buffaloes on June 16th.

The cards that I have that show the colorful uniforms from the second half of the season all feature Hall Of Famer Isao Harimoto.  Only four of the seven uniforms make an appearance on the cards (and two of the cards have the same photograph).  Again, these cards are presented in the order they were published:

1973/74 Calbee #316 (Isao Harimoto)

2004 BBM Baseball Magazine Insert #1-3/4

2015 BBM Memories Of Uniform #097

2017 BBM Fusion #050

2017 BBM Fusion #050 (Secret Version)

I am aware of additional four cards that show members of the team from the 1973/74 Calbee set.  I swiped the images of three of these from TCDB and the other from Mandarake.  Three of these cards show the same uniform that Harimoto is wearing in the Calbee card above while the other card shows Katsuo Ohsugi wearing the uniform from the first half of the season:

1973/74 Calbee #207 (Isao Harimoto)

1973/74 Calbee #208 (Katsuo Ohsugi)

1973/74 Calbee #209 (Mikio Sendo)

1973/74 Calbee #316 (Katsuo Ohsugi)

These sixteen cards are the only ones I know of that depict members of the Nittaku Home Flyers.  I'm not saying there aren't others, but I haven't seen them.

The players in the group photo at the top of this post are (from left to right) Isamu Nakahara (pitcher), Hideaki Watanabe (pitcher), Tsuyoshi Oshita (2b), Makoto Fujiwara (pitcher), Masatoshi Nakahara (SS-3b), Takeaki Yamazaki (pitcher) and Masaki Miura (pitcher).