There was a no-hitter in Japan last Monday but you may not have heard much about it. There's two reasons for that. The first is that it was a combined no-hitter which NPB does not count as an "official" no-hitter. The second is that it was in the Eastern League, one of NPB's two farm leagues. Four Fighters pitchers kept the Swallows hitless at Kamagaya Stadium. Starter Sun Yi-Lei went six innings, striking out four and walking two. After that three relievers - Kodai Yamamoto, Aneutys Zabala and Takumi Yamamoto - each threw perfect innings to close out the 5-0 victory for Nippon-Ham. Here are cards of all four pitchers - as Sun and Kodai Yamamoto are both development players (ikusei), they don't have a lot of cards for me to choose from:
![]() |
| 2024 Epoch Fighters Premier Edition #25 |
![]() |
| 2023 Bowman NPB #BP-48 |
![]() |
| 2024 BBM 1st Version #306 |
![]() |
| 2024 Epoch NPB #322 |
I got an email from someone this week asking me about Sun's 2023 Panini USA Baseball Stars & Stripes card. I didn't know about it before he had asked, but that set contained autographed memorabilia cards for the 2022 Taiwanese collegiate national team (similar to the ones for the Japanese collegiate national team in the 2019, 2020 and 2024 editions of that set). Sun's card apparently is in high demand and I suspect that will increase when the Fighters move him to the 70 man roster and he makes his ichi-gun debut, probably later this season.
I have to mention another event that happened this past week. Yesterday's Fighter's 8-7 victory over the Eagles featured an event that had never happened before in NPB history. In the top of the fourth, with the Eagles trailing 3-2, Itsuki Murabayashi hit a grand slam to put Rakuten up 6-3. An inning later, Chusei Mannami hit a grand slam (his second home run of the game) to put the Fighters back in the lead, 8-6. It was the first time ever that two players hit "come-from-behind" grand slams in the same game. Here are cards of the players:
![]() |
| 2021 BBM Eagles #E58 |
![]() |
| 2024 Topps Stadium Club NPB #160 |
