Card Of The Week April 5

Last Tuesday, Haruki Hosono of the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters no-hit the Chiba Lotte Marines up in Sapporo.  He struck out 12 and threw 129 pitches.  The Fighters won the game 9-0.  It was not a perfect game as three Marines reached base - one on a walk (first batter of the game!), one on a hit-by-pitch and one on an error (in the ninth).  The Hosono No-no is obviously the first no-hitter of 2026 (it was only the fourth day of games) and the first since Daichi Ohsera threw one on June 7, 2024 (which was also against the Marines) - not including the Tatsuya Imai/Kaima Taira no-hitter against the Hawks last April which doesn't count as an "official no-hitter" since it was a combined no-no and the Hawks scored a run.  Here's a card of Hosono from his rookie year of 2024 (since I don't have many cards after that year):

2024 Epoch Fighters Premier Edition #06

I'm not a big fan of Epoch including studio photos of players in their sets but that's a cool pose.

Hosono was a member of the 2023 Collegiate Samurai Japan team and had autographed memorabilia cards available in the 2024 Panini USA Baseball Stars & Stripes set:

2024 Panini USA Baseball Stars & Stripes #JPN-HH