Yasuyuki Kataoka

Yasuyuki Kataoka of the Giants announced his retirement back at the beginning of October.  Kataoka was the youngest of three brothers to play for the Utsunomiya Gakuen High School baseball team. After graduating he spent three years playing for Tokyo Gas in the corporate leagues - one of his older brothers (Shogo) was playing for JR East in the corporate leagues as well.  After four seasons with Tokyo Gas Kataoka was drafted in the third round of the 2004 draft by the Seibu Lions. 

By the middle of the 2005 season Kataoka had become the Lions starting second baseman, a position he would hold for the next six seasons.  He lead the Pacific League in stolen bases from 2007 to 2010 and in hits in 2008.  He was named to the Best 9 team in 2008 and was elected to the All Star team in 2008 and 2010.  Injuries started taking their toll in 2011 - he missed time due to leg and shoulder injuries as well as a concussion - and he lost time in 2012 and 2013 as well due to wrist and knee injuries.

He left the Lions as a free agent after 2013 and signed with Yomiuri.  He was the Giants' regular second baseman in 2014 and 2015 and played in over 100 games both seasons for the first time since 2010 but he didn't hit particularly well and he lost his starting job to Luis Cruz in 2016.  Various injuries again cost him playing time the last two seasons and he spent all of 2017 with the farm team.

He played in one Nippon Series with the Lions in 2008 and played for Team Japan in the 2009 World Baseball Classic.

His first BBM cards were #2 from the 2005 Rookie Edition set (which I don't have) and #41 from the 2005 1st Version set.  His first Calbee card was #019 in the 2006 set.  He's also appeared in various sets from Konami, Bandai, Front Runner and Epoch.

2005 BBM 1st Version #41

2008 BBM Nippon Series #S20

2009 BBM 1st Version #443

2009 Konami WBC Heroes #W09R103

2010 BBM All Stars #A52

2011 BBM Lions Classic #36

2012 Calbee #159

2014 BBM Classic #040

2015 Front Runner Giants Game Used Bat Edition #11

2017 BBM Giants #G44

Tomoya Yagi

Tomoya Yagi had a really good rookie year.  Yagi was drafted by the Fighters in the "preferred entry frame" (which I still don't quite understand) of the 2005 draft out of Soka University.  He went 12-8 with a 2.48 ERA his rookie season in 2006 and also made the All Star team.  He also threw a no-hitter in his fourth start ever (well, it was a no-hitter than went 12 innings and he only pitched the first 10 - Hisashi Takeda and Michael Nakamura pitched the other two).  And his team won the Nippon Series that year.  And he was named Rookie Of The Year.  All in all it was a great season for him.

Unfortunately this was the highlight of his career.  A shoulder injury limited his playing time over the next two seasons although he rebounded with a 9-3, 2.88 ERA season in 2009.  He again missed a lot of time over the next two seasons but came back somewhat in 2012 with a 6-3, 3.38 ERA record.  That was the end of his time with the Fighters though - he was dealt to the Orix Buffaloes in early 2013 as part of the Yoshio Itoi deal.

Orix pretty much buried him on the farm team - he only got into six games with the ichi-gun team in 2013 and 2014 and he didn't perform particularly well.  The Buffaloes released him after 2014 and he was picked up by the Dragons after he attended the 12-team tryout.  He got into 14 ichi-gun games in 2015, the most he had appeared in since 2009, and went 4-6 with an ERA of 3.92.  He was banished back to the farm team for the last two seasons, however, only getting into four games with the top team (one in 2016 and three in 2017).  He was released at the end of the season and announced his retirement in November.  I think he will become a scout for the Dragons but I'm not sure.

He pitched in two Nippon Series - 2006 and 2009 - and won a game in each of them.  2006 was the only season he was named to the All Star team.

Yagi's first BBM cards are #35 in the 2006 Rookie Edition set and #172 in the 2006 1st Version set.  Most of his cards were BBM cards but he had a couple Calbee cards in 2006 and 2007 as well as some cards in various Konami, Bandai and Front Runner issues.  (As always I'm using TradingCardDB.com's list to supplement what I own.)

2006 BBM Rookie Edition #35

2006 BBM 1st Version #172

2006 BBM All Stars #A22

2007 BBM 1st Version #479

2007 BBM 1st Version #447

2009 BBM Nippon Series #S38

2012 BBM 2nd Version #410

2014 Front Runner Buffaloes Rookies & Young Stars #15

2017 BBM Dragons #D28

Takehiro Donoue

Giants outfielder Takahiro Donoue retired back in October after the team told him he wasn't in their plans for 2018.  Donoue was originally the property of the Chunichi Dragons - he was their sixth round pick out of high school in the 2003 draft.  He made his ichi-gun debut in 2005.  He appears to have mostly had a pinch hitter/fourth outfielder role with the team.  His best season was probably 2012 when he got into 85 games and hit .282.  He played in three Nippon Series with the Dragons - 2007, 2010 & 2011 - I think all his appearances in the Series were as a pinch hitter.

He spent the 2006 offseason playing for the North Shore Honu of the Hawaiian Winter League along side future MLB players like Lorenzo Cain and Kenley Jansen.

The Dragons released him following the 2014 season and he attended the 12-team tryout that fall.  The Giants signed him to an ikusei contract but he was registered to the 70-man roster during spring camp in 2015.  He got into 102 games with the ichi-gun Giants in 2015 and 2016 but spent all of 2017 with the farm team.

Donoue comes from a baseball playing family.  His father Terashi pitched for the Dragons from 1971 to 1986 and his younger brother Naomichi was his teammate with Chunichi after 2007 (and is still playing in Nagoya).

Donoue's first BBM cards are #49 from the 2004 Rookie Edition set (which I don't have) and #246 from the 2004 1st Version set.  He only had four "flagship" cards ever - in the 2004, 2008, 2009 and 2012 1st Version sets.  He never had a Calbee card but he did have a couple cards in some of the Bandai and Konami collectible card game sets.  (H/T TradingCardDB.com.)

2004 BBM 1st Version #246

2007 BBM The Climax - Dragons #D27

2011 BBM Dragons 75th Anniversary #99

2011 BBM Nippon Series #S57

2014 BBM Dragons #D68

2015 BBM Giants #G70

2017 BBM Giants #G66

Yuji Iiyama

Back to the retirements after almost a month and a half...

Longtime Fighters backup infielder and farm hand Yuji Iiyama announced his retirement back in September.  Iiyama was drafted out of his high school by the Fighters in the fourth round of the 1997 draft.  He spent his most of his first seven seasons with the farm team - only making it into 11 ichi-gun games between 1998 and 2004 (and all of those were in 2001 and 2003).  He was pretty much a late inning defensive replacement most of his career - he only appeared in more than 100 games once in his career (2007) and he only had 55 plate appearances that year.  The most plate appearances he ever had in a single season was 194 in 2011.  He did get to appear in four Nippon Series (2006,2007, 2009 and 2012) though.  He will be remaining in the Fighters organization as a ni-gun infield and base coach.

His BBM rookie card was #470 in the 1998 set.  He never had a Calbee card and until I looked at TradingCardDB.com's listing for him I wasn't aware that he'd ANY non-BBM cards - he had a couple Bandai and Konami cards.  He only appeared in four BBM flagship sets (1998, 2007 1st Version, 2008 1st Version and 2011 2nd Version) over the course of his career - the same number of Nippon Series sets he appeared in.

1998 BBM #470

2003 BBM Fighters #051

2006 BBM Nippon Series #S22

2007 BBM 1st Version #24

2011 BBM 2nd Version #430

2014 BBM WE LOVE HOKKAIDO #18

2017 BBM Fighters #F45

Kazuhisa Makita of the San Diego Padres

Kazuhisa Makita, formerly of the Saitama Seibu Lions, has signed a two year deal with the San Diego Padres.  Makita was originally drafted by Seibu in the second round of the 2010 draft out of Nippon Express of the industrial leagues.  He stared 2011 in the Lions rotation but was named the team's closer by mid-season. He saved 22 games which helped him to win the Pacific League Rookie Of The Year award.  He moved back into the rotation for the next few seasons before moving into a middle relief role since 2015.  He made the All Star team four times in his seven seasons in NPB (2011, 2013, 2016-17) and played for Samurai Japan three times (2013 & 2017 World Baseball Classics and the 2015 Premier 12).

His BBM rookie cards are #013 from the 2011 Rookie Edition set and #050 from the 2011 1st Version set (although he also has cards in that year's 2nd Version and Lions team sets).  He's also in the 2011 BBM All Stars set.  He's been in every 1st and 2nd Version set since his rookie season.  His first official Calbee card isn't until 2012 (#090) although he appears on one of the 2011 checklist cards (#C-10).  He's also made appearances in Bandai, Konami, Front Runner and Epoch sets.  He doesn't appear in any of Topps's WBC sets but he has shown up in Calbee's Samurai Japan sets in 2016 and 17.  See his listing at TradingCardDB.com for a more comprehensive list.

2011 BBM Rookie Edition #013

2011 BBM 1st Version #050

2012 Calbee #T-03

2013 Front Runner Lions Rookies & Young Stars #16

2014 BBM Lions Classic - Impact Of Lions Blue #05

2015 Lions Fan Club #35

2016 Calbee Samurai Japan #SJ-15

2017 Epoch Lions #16

As you can see, all the card manufacturers like to focus on the fact that Makita's got a submarine-style delivery.

Card Of The Week January 7

The first player to ever bat as a Designated Hitter in an official game in MLB was Ron Blomberg of the New York Yankees.  Ever wonder who the first DH in an official NPB game was?  It was Toshizo Sakamoto of the Nippon-Ham Fighters.  The Pacific League adopted the DH in 1975, two years after the American League did it.  UPDATE - it actually was not Toshizo Sakamoto.  I'm not sure who it was.

Sakamoto had kind of an unusual career - he only played for 14 seasons but he played for four different teams!  He was drafted from Kawai Musical Instruments of the industrial leagues in the fifth round of the 1966 draft by the Hankyu Braves.  He quickly established himself as the starting shortstop for the Braves and won the Best 9 award at the position from 1968 to 1971.  He led the PL in steals in 1969 with 47 and was elected to the All Star team each year from 1968 to 1971.  There was apparently an incident in Game 3 of the 1971 Nippon Series that may have cost him his future with the Braves.  The Braves were leading the game 1-0 going into the bottom of the ninth against the Giants at Korakuen Stadium.  The Series was tied at a game apiece so a Braves win would put them up 2-1.  With two outs and a runner on first (Isao Shibata), Shigeo Nagashima hit a slow ground ball a little to the left of up the middle that Sakamoto could not quite get to - it rolled into the outfield with Shibata going all the way to third.  Sakamoto apparently had taken a step in the opposite direction when the ball was hit which prevented him from reaching the ball.  All of this would have been forgotten except that the next batter, Sadaharu Oh, hit a three run sayonara home run to win the game for the Giants.  Oh's home run is considered a turning point for the Giants who went on to win the next two games 7-4 and 6-1 and win the Series 4 games to 1.  It would be the Giants' seventh consecutive Nippon Series title of the V9 era.  It was also the fourth time in five years that the Giants had beaten the Braves in the Nippon Series - they would do it again in 1972.

I found a clip on YouTube of the main events in the bottom of the ninth of Game 3.  Nagashima's ground ball happens around the 1 minute, 19 second mark - you can't see Sakamoto breaking the wrong way but you can see how close he got to fielding it:



As I mentioned, the Braves made the Nippon Series again in 1972 but they did it without Sakamoto - he was traded with Koji Okamoto and Seigo Sasaki to the Toei Flyers for Masayuki Tanemo and Yutaka Ohashi.  He made the All Star team again in 1972.  In 1973 the team (now called the Nittaku Home Flyers) moved him to third base.  By 1975 the now Nippon-Ham Fighters had moved him to second base - looking at his numbers it looks like he played 94 of the 96 games he played in 1975 at second so despite being the first DH he didn't DH more than two games that season.

He was traded for a second time after the 1975 season - going to the Kintetsu Buffaloes with Kenichi Yaezawa for Toshikazu Hattori and Yozo Nagabuchi.  After three years with the Buffaloes he again switched teams - this time going to the Nankai Hawks (not sure if there was a trade, a sale or if he was released by Kintetsu).  He spent two years with the Hawks - the last one as player-coach - and retired following the 1980 season. 

Sakamoto doesn't have a lot of baseball cards.  There's only three I know of that were issued during his career and they were all American issues - he's in a couple of the mid 70's Broder sets and he's in the 1979 TCMA set.  He has no Calbee or Yamakatsu cards that I'm aware of.  He's shown up in just a couple of the recent BBM OB sets - he's in the 2009 Hankyu Braves Memorial set, the 2011 Legend of the Bs set (he actually has two cards in the set - one as a Brave and one as a Buffalo) and the 2013 The Trade Stories set.  He also appeared in Epoch's high end "Hankyu Braves Greats" set last year.  Since his first DH at bat was as a Fighter I wanted to show him in a Fighters uniform however the best I could do was showing him in a Toei Flyers uniform:

2013 BBM The Trade Stories #08

RIP Senichi Hoshino

Hall Of Fame pitcher Senichi Hoshino passed away at age 70 on Thursday of this past week.  I wrote an appreciation of Hoshino when he retired as manager in 2014 so I'm just going to show some more cards of him here:

1974/75 Calbee #337

1975 JCM 75 Pepsi Menko

1978 Yamakatsu JY6

2001 Upper Deck #63

2003 BBM Nippon Series #26

2011 BBM 1st Version #136

I got an autograph from Hoshino back in 2010 at the Cal Ripken World Series in Aberdeen, Maryland.