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