2026 Hall Of Fame Class

The Japanese Baseball Hall Of Fame has announced its 2026 inductees and the only one elected was Hideki Kuriyama.  Kuriyama had a seven year career with the Yakult Swallows from 1984 to 1990 and was the manager of the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters from 2012 to 2021.  He managed the Fighters to a Nippon Series championship in 2016 along with a Pacific League pennant in 2012 but I think it's pretty clear that he was elected for two reasons.  Reason number one is that he managed Samurai Japan to the 2023 World Baseball Classic championship and reason number two is that he was Shohei Ohtani's only manager in NPB.

Kuriyama is the fourth of the five Japanese WBC team managers to be elected to the Hall Of Fame, following Sadaharu Oh (2006 team), Tatsunori Hara (2009) and Koji Yamamoto (2013).  Only Hiroki Kokubo (2017) has not been elected and he probably will at some point (although at the Hall's glacial pace, the sun may have burned out by then).  Hirokazu Ibata, who will manage the team for this year's WBC, is also not a Hall Of Famer.

Kuriyama was elected on the "Experts" ballot while the other two ballots - the "Players" ballot and the "Special Awards" ballot - did not result in anyone getting the necessary votes.  Masahiro Kawai fell short of election by two votes on the "Players" ballot.  I think this is the first year there's only been one person elected to the Hall since 1984.

Here are cards of Kuriyama as player, Fighters' manager and Samurai Japan manager:

1989 Calbee #103

2015 Calbee Series Two #M-03

2023 Topps Samurai Japan #13

He took part in a First Pitch Ceremony at the first game at the Fighters' new ballpark on March 30th, 2023, less than ten days after winning the WBC.  Former Fighters managers Trey Hillman and Masataka Nashida also participated but only Kuriyama ended up with a card in BBM's 2nd Version:

2023 BBM 2nd Version #FP01

I wanted to share a couple other cards of him.  He hasn't shown up in many of BBM's OB sets but two of the more recent ones had great photos:

2018 BBM Time Travel 1989 #27

2022 BBM Swallows History 1950-2022 #31

Finally I want to share the card I got him to autograph for me when the Fighters did spring training in Peoria, Arizona back in 2016 - which somehow will be ten years ago next month!

2015 BBM 1st Version #055