Japanese Baseball Cards: Olympics

Showing posts with label Olympics. Show all posts

Saturday, March 23, 2024

Japanese National Team Sets For Major Tournaments

I mentioned the other day that every one of the members of the 2023 WBC Samurai Japan squad had at least one baseball card in a WBC set. I started wondering how often that had actually happened before. I realized it had only happened once before - all the members of the 2009 team appeared in Konami's Baseball Heroes WBC set. Realizing that the reason all the members of the 2023 team had cards was because there was a team set issued in Japan which was also why all the 2009 team members had cards made me get curious about Japanese issued cards for the other WBCs as well as Japanese issued cards for the other major international tournaments - the Olympics and the Premier 12. I thought I would try to summarize all this information in this post although it's going to cover a lot of the same round as this post from four years ago.

The 1984 Los Angeles Olympics were the first Olympics to include baseball although it was a demonstration sport until the 1992 Barcelona games. Unlike in the US, however, no baseball cards were ever issued for the amateurs who played for Japan in any of the Olympics. The first Olympics that allowed professionals to play baseball were the 2000 Sydney Olympics. These were also the first Olympics that there were Japanese baseball cards for so we'll start there.

Before we do though, I want to go over what I think is the history of the licensing for cards of the National Team in Japan. This is basically based just on tracking who released which set when. It looks like Upper Deck had the initial license in 2000, followed by Calbee in early 2001. BBM took it over in 2002 (with their first set being the team set for the 2001 IBAF Baseball World Cup) and held it through 2008. Konami took over in 2009 and had it until 2013/2014. Calbee again had it from 2015 until 2020 or so. Topps picked it up at some point after that although I'm not sure when. Topps' first Japanese National Team products were the Topps Now Samurai Japan cards and team set for the Australian friendlies in November of 2022. As of this writing, Topps is still the license holder - they have Topps Now Samurai Japan cards up for sale at this very moment for the team that played two games against Team Europe earlier this month. (I will confess to being completely confused as to why BBM was able to include Samurai Japan cards in last fall's Infinity set.)

2000 Upper Deck Sydney Olympic Games Japanese Team Cards #221

2001 Calbee #J-01

Tournament: 2000 Sydney Olympics

Medal: None

Cards: 2000 Upper Deck Sydney Olympic Games Japanese National Team Cards, 2001 Calbee

Missing Players: Shinnosuke Abe, Jun Hirose, Masanori Ishikawa, Akichika Yamada, Yuji Yoshimi

Notes: The Japanese baseball team for the Sydney games was a hybrid pro-am roster with eight professional players, eleven corporate league players and five collegiate players. The 2000 Upper Deck Sydney Olympic Games Japanese National Team Cards set was a 264 card set that featured Japanese Olympic athletes from a number of different sports. It included cards of 19 of the 24 players on the baseball team - only the collegiate players were excluded. The following year, Calbee included an eight card subset showing all eight professional players in their National Team uniforms. I think the Upper Deck cards were "officially" Olympic cards (they have the logo of the games on them) while the Calbee cards were not.

Tournament: 2004 Athens Olympics

Medal: Bronze

Cards: None

Missing Players: All of them

Notes: It is somewhat baffling to me that there was no card set for the 2004 Olympic team. It was the first time Japan sent an all-professional baseball team to the Olympics and the team they sent was absolutely stacked. The pitching staff included Koji Uehara, Hiroki Kuroda, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Tsuyoshi Wada and Hisashi Iwakuma while the line up featured Michihiro Ogasawara, Norihiro Nakamura, Yoshinobu Takahashi, Kenji Johjima, Kosuke Fukudome and Kazuhiro Wada. It is especially baffling considering that BBM did a team set for team from the 2003 Asian Baseball Championship that was a qualifier for the 2004 Games and included insert cards of that team in the 2004 1st Version set. The team dominated all but one opponent at the Games and it was that one opponent that caused them to end up with the Bronze Medal. The Australians were the only team to beat them in pool play and Chris Oxspring out-dueled Matsuzaka in the semi-final game.

Tournament: 2006 World Baseball Classic

Medal: Gold

Cards: None

Missing Players: All of them

Notes: This is a little misleading in that while there were no Japanese cards issued for the 2006 WBC, there were many US based cards issued, including 56 cards that featured the manager (Sadaharu Oh) and sixteen players from the Japanese team.

2008 BBM Japan National Team #JPN12

Tournament: 2008 Beijing Olympics

Medal: None

Cards: 2008 BBM Japan National Team Set

Missing Players: None

Notes: I used to think that BBM hadn't done a set for the 2004 Olympic baseball team because their results were so disappointing. If that was indeed the case, there's no way they'd have done a set for the 2008 team. While the team was again pretty well stacked, they went a mediocre 4-3 in pool play, just barely qualifying for the medal round. They then lost both the semi-final game against South Korea and the Bronze Medal game against the US to come away with no medal for the second time in three Olympics with professional baseball players. I do not believe that the set was "officially" an Olympic set as there's no logo or acknowledgement of the team being from the Olympics on them.

2009 Konami Baseball Heroes WBC #W09R089

Tournament: 2009 World Baseball Classic

Medal: Gold

Cards: 2009 Konami Baseball Heroes WBC

Missing Players: None

Notes: Konami produced the gold standard for a WBC set in 2009. The Baseball Heroes WBC set contained 253 cards of 253 individual players representing all sixteen teams from the tournament. All the players on the roster for the four teams that made the final round - Japan, South Korea, the US and Venezuela - are included in the set (ok, the roster was the roster for the final round so Brian Roberts is in the set but Dustin Pedroia is not since Roberts replaced Pedroia on the US roster for the final round). Each of the other twelve teams have twelve cards in the set with the exception of Panama which only has eight. There's two twelve card inserts sets - one has the All Tournament Team while the other has three extra cards for players from the four final round teams. The set is an "official" WBC card set and features the tournament's logo.

2013 Konami Samurai Japan #B13SJ004

Tournament: 2013 World Baseball Classic

Medal: Bronze

Cards: 2013 Konami Samurai Japan

Missing Players: Many players

Notes: The 2009 Konami WBC cards are somewhat difficult to come by but they can be found. In contrast, the 2013 Konami Samurai Japan cards are incredibly scarce. I didn't even discover they existed until 2022. There's only 11 cards featuring a single player from each NPB team (the 2013 Japanese WBC team had no players from the Baystars). I've only been able to get two of them so far. The cards are not "official" WBC cards - there's no logo on the cards themselves and I think the sleeve patches have been removed from the photos.

2016 Calbee Samurai Japan #SJ-07

Tournament: 2015 Premier 12

Medal: Bronze

Cards: 2016 Calbee Samurai Japan

Missing Players: Kenta Maeda

Notes: Calbee issued four Samurai Japan sets in the five years between 2016 and 2020. Each set was issued in the fall, usually in November. What was odd about the sets is that they covered the players who had played for Samurai Japan from July of the previous year until June of the year of issue. So for example, the 2016 set featured players who had played for the team from July of 2015 through June of 2016. Of course, in reality that meant the players who suited up for the team in any tournaments or friendlies being played in either November or March of each year. Doing it like this produced two issues. The first is that the players in the set are not necessarily the players on the roster for a tournament - which is probably one reason why Calbee never associated the sets with a particular tournament. The second and probably bigger issue has to do with how (I think) Calbee's NPB license works - they can make baseball cards of any player on an NPB roster the same season they are issuing the cards. So if a player like, say, Kenta Maeda, played in the Premier 12 in November of 2015 and then spent 2016 in MLB, Calbee would not be allowed to issue a card of him in a 2016 set. The upshot of all this is that the 2016 Calbee Samurai Japan set is not specifically a set for the 2015 Premier 12 team as it also contains cards for players who played in friendly games against Taiwan in March of 2016 and does not include a card of Kenta Maeda. The set is also not "official" as there's nothing to tie it to the Premier 12.

2017 Calbee Samurai Japan #SJ-29

Tournament: 2017 World Baseball Classic

Medal: Bronze

Cards: 2017 Calbee Samurai Japan

Missing Players: Norichika Aoki, Ginjiro Sumitani

Notes: The 2017 Calbee Samurai Japan set covered the players from the 2017 World Baseball Classic along with players from the friendly matches against Mexico and the Netherlands in November of 2016 (which allowed it to have Shohei Ohtani who did not play in the 2017 Classic). Because he spent 2017 in MLB (and the set was not an "official" WBC set), Calbee was unable to include Norichika Aoki in the set. I've been somewhat at a loss to understand why Ginjiro Sumitani, who was a late addition to the WBC squad to replace the injured Motohiro Shima, was not in the set though.

2020 Calbee Samurai Japan #SJ-27 (Seiya Suzuki)

Tournament: 2019 Premier 12

Medal: Gold

Cards: 2020 Calbee Samurai Japan

Missing Players: Shun Yamaguchi, Yoshihiro Maru

Notes: The 2020 Calbee Samurai Japan set was the only one of Calbee's Samurai Japan sets to only have players from one event and that was due to the pandemic. While there were supposed to be friendly matches against some other country (I think it was Taiwan) in March of 2020, they were cancelled as COVID lockdowns began. Despite this, the set was still not an "official" Premier 12 set. Shun Yamaguchi spent the Coronavirus shortened season in MLB in 2020 and so was not able to be included in the card set. Like Sumitani in 2017, Yoshihiro Maru was a late addition to the roster (he replaced the injured Shogo Akiyama) and was somewhat inexplicably left out of the set.

Tournament: 2020 Tokyo Olympics

Medal: Gold

Cards: None

Missing Players: All of them

Notes: There have been four Olympic baseball tournaments using professional players. Japan has medaled in two of them - the 2004 Athens Games and the 2020 Tokyo Games (which were played in Yokohama in 2021). It blows my mind that there are cards for the two Olympic teams that did not medal (2000 and 2008) but not these two teams. Especially since the 2020 team won the Gold Medal on their home soil. Hell, even the incredibly disappointing South Korean team had baseball cards!

2023 Topps Samurai Japan #1

Tournament: 2023 World Baseball Classic

Medal: Gold

Cards: 2023 Topps Samurai Japan

Missing Players: None

Notes: Having an actual license for the WBC allowed Topps to produce a set that included both NPB and MLB players.

That's a total of eleven "major" tournaments since 2000 - five WBCs, four Olympics and two Premier 12s - and there have been Japanese-issued baseball cards for eight of them. Three of those eight featured cards of all the players on the team.

Given that Topps Japan has done Topps Now singles and team sets for three different Samurai Japan "events" now (the 2023 Asian Professional Baseball Tournament and the 2022 and 2024 friendly matches against Australia and Team Europe respectively), I fully expect them to do the same for this fall's Premier 12 team. I expect that they'll be the first cards for a team in that tournament to acknowledge it.

Friday, February 17, 2023

1964 Japanese Olympic Baseball Team(s)

I did a series of posts a few years ago on the Japanese Olympic Baseball teams from the 1984 to 2008 Olympiads. I knew at the time that baseball had included as a "demonstration sport" in the 1964 Tokyo games but I pretty much ignored it because it wasn't an actual tournament of between several nations. Instead I had read that it was a single game between a US team made up of college players (managed by legendary USC coach Rod Dedeaux who would also manage the 1984 US Olympic baseball team) against what was described as "a Japanese amateur all-star team". The game was played at Meiji Jingu Stadium on October 11th, 1964 in front of 50,000 fans and was won by the US team by a score of 6-2. The US team included eight future MLB players - Mike Epstein, Gary Sutherland, Chuck Dobson, Alan Closter, Dick Joyce, Jim Hibbs, Ken Suarez and Shaun Fitzmaurice. Fitzmaurice hit a home run on the first pitch of the game.

Or so the English Wikipedia article said. However, when I decided to try to find out who was on that "Japanese amateur all-star team" by checking the Japanese version of that Wikipedia article, I discovered something interesting.

That story's not true.

To be fair, a lot of the story is true. There was baseball played at Meiji Jingu Stadium on October 11th and the US collegiate All Star team was involved. But Team USA actually played TWO games that day - one against a team of Japanese collegiate players and one against a team of Japanese corporate league players. I don't think either Japanese team should really be considered an "All Star" team. The collegiate team was essentiallythe Komazawa University team (which had just won the All Japan University Baseball Championship four months earlier) which was fortified with seven players from other colleges in Tokyo. Similarly the corporate league team was the Nippon Express team (which had won the Intercity Baseball Tournament two and a half months earlier) that was bolstered by seven players from other teams.

The first game was between Team USA and the collegiate team which ended in a 2-2 tie. I haven't seen any play-by-play for this game but I have seen a line score which shows that Team USA scored a run in the top of the first so the account of Fitzmaurice homering on the first pitch of the game may very well be true. Team USA shut out the corporate league team 3-0 in the second game of the day.

I'm also not sure about the claim of 50,000 fans in attendance. If I'm correctly reading the Google translation of "Japan National Team Uniform Catalog", a mook published by BBM a couple years ago that was one of the sources for the Japanese Wikipedia article, attendance was somewhere between 30,000 and 40,000 with the outfield lawn seats completely full. (Tbis mook is the source of the photos used in this post.) Jingu Stadium currently only seats around 31,000 but it used to have a capacity of 58,000 (according to the ballpark's Japanese Wikipedia page) so it is physically possible that they really did have 50,000.

I'm curious about how the story of this event got garbled. It kind of looks like the two scores got mashed together - the two Japanese teams combined to score two runs but Team USA had five total runs, not six. I think the primary source for the English language Wikipedia article is this monograph by Pete Cava (which also appeared in the 1992 edition of the SABR publication "The National Pastime"), specifically the following paragraph:

More than 50,000 fans turned out of the game with a Japanese amateur all-star team on 11 October. Dedeaux positioned himself in the third base coaching box, wondering how his team would fare.“Shaun Fitzmaurice was the leadoff hitter,” Dedeaux told Loel Schrader. “He hit the first pitch of the game for a home run over the left-centerfield fence.” The U.S. was en route to yet another Olympic victory, this one a 6-2 triumph.

I don't know what Mr. Cava's sources were as he didn't list them in the monograph and I can't ask him because unfortunately he passed away a few years ago. I don't mean to criticize Mr. Cava here. It's easy sometimes to forget just how much information is available at our fingertips now.

What's kind of odd is that one of the other sources referenced in the Wikipedia article - an article from the October 26th edition of the Lincoln (Nebraska) Star entitled "U.S. Ends Tour On Sour Note" - states "In their Olympic exhibition doubleheader at Tokyo's Meiji Stadium Oct. 11, the Americans tied a Japan College All-Star team 2-2 and beat a non-pro Japanese team 3-0." so there's a contemporary English source confirming the Japanese Wikipedia version.

The collegiate team (seen above with Team USA) had 18 players - 11 from Komazawa, two from Chuo, two from Hosei, two from Keio and one from Rikkio. Twelve of these players would go on to play professionally. Here's the roster:

Position	Player	Team	NPB Career
Infielder	Doi, Shozo	Rikkio	Giants 1965-78
Outfielder	Fujita, Toshihiko	Komazawa
Infielder	Goto, Kazuaki	Komazawa	Tigers 1969-75, Fighters 1976
Infielder	Hirono, Isao	Keio	Dragons 1966-67, Lions 1968-70, Giants 1971-73, Dragons 1974
Pitcher	Ito, Hisatoshi	Komazawa	Dragons 1967-74, Lions 1975
Pitcher	Kihara, Yoshitaka	Hosei	Buffaloes 1965-67, Whales 1968-69, Carp 1970-74, Lions 1975-76
Pitcher	Morita, Masahiko	Komazawa
Outfielder	Nagaike, Tokuji (Atsushi)	Hosei	Braves 1966-79
Infielder	Ohshita, Tsuyoshi	Komazawa	Flyers/Fighters 1967-74, Carp 1975-78
Outfielder	Ohta, Takao	Komazawa
Catcher	Sato, Fumio	Komazawa
Infielder	Shimizu, Takeo	Komazawa
Catcher	Shintaku, Hiroshi	Komazawa	Dragons 1966-78
Infielder	Shintani, Shigezo	Komazawa
Outfielder	Suetsugu, Toshimitsu	Chuo	Giants 1965-77
Infielder	Takegami, Shiro	Chuo	Atoms/Swallows 1967-75
Outfielder	Takeno, Yoshiro	Komazawa	Carp 1966-71
Pitcher	Watanabe, Taisuke	Keio	Hawks 1965-72

I'm not going to do mini-biographies of the players like I did for the other Olympic team rosters but I will make some comments about some of the players. Atsushi Nagaike is the biggest name here - he won two Pacific League MVP awards (1969 & 1971) and led the league in home runs and RBIs three times each. Shozo Doi and Toshimitsu Suetsugu were key members of the V9 Giants. Doi managed the Orix BlueWave in the early 1990's and is most famous (infamous?) for saying that Ichiro Suzuki would never be able to hit with that batting stance. Taisuke Watanabe's claim to fame was throwing the first perfect game in Tokyo Big Six history.

I have cards of nine of the twelve players to play in NPB, including cards of five of them as collegiate players from either the 2011 BBM Tohto 80th Memorial set or the 2011 BBM Legend Of Tokyo Big Six set. Here's cards of these players. For anyone I have both a collegiate card for and an NPB card, I'll show the collegiate card first:

2011 BBM Legend Of Tokyo Big Six #068

1973 Calbee #23 (Shozo Doi)

2013 BBM Greatest Games 10-22 1973 #18

2011 BBM Legend Of Tokyo Big Six #024

1967 Kabaya-Leaf #63 (Isao Hirono)

2011 BBM Legend Of Tokyo Big Six #050

1974/75 Calbee #768 (Atsushi Nagaike)

1975/76/77 Calbee #31 (Tsuyoshi Ohshita)

2021 BBM Dragons History 1936-2021 #13

2011 BBM Tohto 80th Memorial #21

1978 NST #212 (Toshimitsu Suetsugu)

1968 Shonen Book (Shiro Takegami)

2011 BBM Legend Of Tokyo Big Six #023

The corporate league team (seen above with Team USA) also had 18 members - 11 from Nippon Express, two from Nippon Oil, two from Nippon Steel Pipe, and one each from Sumitomo Metal, Nippon Columbia and Kanekalon Kaneka. Only three of these players would have professional careers. Here's their roster:

Number	Position	Player	Team	NPB Career
26	Catcher	Arai, Masataka	Nippon Express
21	Outfielder	Edamatsu, Michiteru	Nippon Oil
23	Catcher	Hirose, Koji	Nippon Oil
16	Pitcher	Kiyosawa, Tadahiko	Sumitomo Metal
20	Outfielder	Kobori, Shuji	Nippon Express
5	Infielder	Kondo, Ryosuke	Nippon Express
19	Pitcher	Kondo, Shigeo	Nippon Columbia	Orions 1972-74
2	Infielder	Miyawaki, Yoshiaka	Kanekalon Kaneka
3	Infielder	Muraki, Hiroshi	Nippon Express
9	Infielder	Nagano, Takao	Nippon Express
18	Pitcher	Sato, Akira	Nippon Express
23	Outfielder	Sato, Shoji	Nippon Steel Pipe
25	Outfielder	Takeda, Hiroshi	Nippon Express
6	Infielder	Takenouchi, Masafumi	Nippon Express	Lions 1968-78, Tigers 1979-82
17	Pitcher	Tanaka, Akira	Nippon Express	Giants 1969-70, Lions 1971-75, Whales 1976-77
7	Infielder	Taura, Masaaki	Nippon Steel Pipe
22	Outfielder	Totsuka, Hiroshi	Nippon Express
4	Infielder	Yongdo, Yongsan	Nippon Express

I only have cards for two of the three players who went on to play in NPB and I kind of found the one I didn't have cards for to be the most interesting. Shigeo Kondo spent eleven or so years playing in the industrial leagues before putting himself up for the 1971 NPB draft. At 29 years and one month, he was the oldest player ever drafted at the time when he was chosen by Lotte in the sixth round. His record would stand for eleven years before 30 years and five months old Norio Ichimura was taken by the Dragons in the third round of the 1982 draft. Here's cards of the other two future NPB players:

1979 TCMA #82

2010 BBM Lions 60th Anniversary #64

The US team was not considered part of the official US Olympic team - they were actually on a tour of Japan and South Korea where they played a total of 14 games (including the Olympic games) - nine in Japan and five in Korea. As such the team was not quartered in the Olympic Village and not allowed to take part in the Opening Ceremony. I'd be curious to know how they felt looking beyond the left field stands of Jingu Stadium and seeing the Olympic torch burning in the Olympic Stadium a short distance away. You can see the torch in the background of this photo of the pre-game lineup from one of the games (it's also visible in the background of the two team photos):

Thursday, July 29, 2021

Active Former Korean Olympians

I did a post last week on the former Japanese Olympic baseball players still active in either NPB or MLB but for some reason it took me a week to realize that I could do a similar post for Korean players. There are just seven former Korean Olympic baseball players still active in KBO or MLB. All of whom played on the Gold Medal winning team from the 2008 Beijing Games. The players are Kang Min-ho of the Samsung Lions, Kim Hyun-soo of the LG Twins, Kim Kwang-hyun of the St Louis Cardinals, Lee Dae-ho of the Lotte Giants, Lee Yong-kyu of the Kiwoom Heroes, Oh Seung-hwan of Samsung and Ryu Hyun-jin of the Toronto Blue Jays. Oh, Kang and Kim Hyun-soo are on the Korean roster for the Tokyo Games. In fact, all three played in the team's win against Israel "today" (yesterday Korea and Japan time) with Oh getting the win (after blowing the save by giving up a game tying home run to Ryan Lavarnway in the ninth inning) and Kim hitting a game tying home run of his own in the seventh inning.

Here's cards of each of the seven players. Since there are no Korean Olympic team cards that I'm aware of, these are all KBO cards:

2019 SCC KBO Collection 2 SCCR2-19/111 All Star

2018 SCC KBO Collection SCCR-01/141 (Kim Hyun-soo)

2015 Superstar Baseball Season Two Sticker

2017 SCC #SCC-01-LT15/N

2018 Hanwha Eagles Calendar cards

2020 SCC Premium #SCCP1-20/L05

2010 KBO Game Set #AH-002

I guess it's not surprising that out of the seven players, five are either current or former MLB players. Besides Kim Kwang-hyun and Ryu, Kim Hyun-soo played for the Orioles and Phillies, Lee Dae-ho played for the Mariners, and Oh pitched for the Cardinals, Blue Jays and Rockies.

Monday, July 26, 2021

NPB And KBO Players On Olympic Team Rosters

I wanted to do one final post on the Olympic Baseball Rosters. This post lists the former and active foreign players from both NPB and KBO who are on the rosters for the Dominican Republic, Israel, Mexico and the US.

Actually, Israel doesn't have any NPB or KBO players on their squad but the Dominican Republic has five, Mexico has four and Team USA features five.

The five players for the Dominican Republic are Jairo Asencio (Kia Tigers 2014), Juan Francisco (Yomiuri Giants 2015), CC Mercedes (Yomiuri Giants 2017-present), Angel Sanchez (SK Wyverns 2018-19, Yomiuri Giants 2020-present) and Raul Valdes (Chunichi Dragons 2015-17). I don't know of a KBO card for Asencio (mostly because Dan hasn't done a Foreign Attack set for 2014 yet) but here are cards of the other players including both a KBO and NPB card for Sanchez:

2015 BBM Giants #G47

2020 BBM 2nd Version #467

2018 Vittum Foreign Attack #27

2020 BBM 1st Version #167

2016 BBM Dragons #D24

The four Mexican players are Joey Meneses (Orix Buffaloes 2019), Efren Navarro (Hanshin Tigers 2018-19), Ramiro Pena (Hiroshima Toyo Carp 2017) and Sammy Solis (Yokohama DeNA Baystars 2019). I do not know of any Japanese cards for Solis but here are cards of the other three:

2019 BBM 1st Version #097

2019 Epoch NPB #421

2017 BBM Carp Successful Achievement #23

Finally the five players on Team USA's roster are Tyler Austin (Yokohama DeNA Baystars 2020-present), Anthony Carter (Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters 2014), Brandon Dickson (Orix Buffaloes 2013-20) , Nick Martinez (Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters 2018-20, Fukuoka Softbank Hawks 2021-present) and Scott McGough (Tokyo Yakult Swallows 2019-present). I have NPB cards for all five these players:

2020 BBM 1st Version #204

2014 SCM #258

2016 BBM 2nd Version #451

2019 Epoch NPB #079

2020 Epoch NPB #407

Sunday, July 25, 2021

2021 Korean Olympic Baseball Team

I wanted to follow up yesterday's post for the Samurai Japan Olympic team with a post for the Korean Baseball Team for the Tokyo Games. South Korea is the defending Gold Medal baseball champion, having beaten Cuba in 2008. They also participated in four other Olympic baseball tournaments, losing in the Bronze Medal game in both the 1984 and 1988 games, finishing last among all eight teams in 1996 and defeating Japan in the Bronze Medal game in 2000.

While Japan only has one former Olympian on their roster, Korea has three - Oh Seung-hwan, Kang Min-ho and Kim Hyun-soo - who were all on the 2008 team*. The team's manager, Kim Kyung-moon, was also the manager of the 2008 squad. At the other end of the experience spectrum, the Korean team also includes two rookie players (as does the Japanese team) - Lee Eui-lee and Kim Jin-uk. Since I don't have any 2021 KBO cards yet, these two are missing from the below list of players.

* I partially attribute this to the fact that the Korean experience in the 2008 games was much more positive than the Japanese experience was

As I did for the Japanese team, I'm listing the roster by uniform number with the pitchers first, followed by the catchers, the infielders and the outfielders. I used this roster on Korean Wikipedia for the names and the uniform numbers (although I'm not sure it is up to date - it only has 23 players listed. Go Woo-suk is listed the roster on the Japanese Wikipedia page (which doesn't have the uniform numbers) so I'm adding him to the list but without his uniform number):

1 Ko Young-pyo