Sunday, February 8, 2026

Card Of The Week February 8

There was an interesting story on the NPB sub-reddit a week or so ago.  The Rocket City Trash Pandas of the Southern League will be hosting a three game "Global Baseball Series" from March 30th to April 1st, just before the regular season begins.  One of the teams taking part will be the Toyota Red Cruisers of the Japanese corporate leagues.  Toyota will be playing in two of the three games - they'll take on the Alabama A&M team on March 30th and the Trash Pandas on April 1st.  The Trash Panda's ballpark is just outside of Huntsville, Alabama in the town of Madison and the car company (which has a joint manufacturing plant with Mazda in that town) owns the naming rights to it.

Much as I'd love to see this Series, I don't see any way that I can make it to Huntsville for it.  But I can share a couple baseball cards of Toyota players from a couple of the JABA sets of corporate league players.  There's a number of Toyota players in the sets but I only have four cards that feature three players.  I have no idea of any of these guys will be in Huntsville or if they're even still with the team.

2021 JABA #21JP012

2022 JABA #22JP012

2022 JABA #22JP055

2022 JABA #22JP071

If Ryosuke Aizawa's name sounds familiar to you, it's probably because he's in the Japanese Collegiate Samurai Japan cards in the 2019 Panini USA Baseball Stars & Stripes set.  The 29 year old at least played for Toyota last year as he's in the 2025 JABA set.

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