Japanese baseball is in the season of goodbyes.

There are only a handful of games left for each of the 12 NPB clubs, and this is the time of year when teams and fans begin to bid farewell to some familiar faces.

No one plays the game forever. As the Hiroshima Carp's Kris Johnson put it once, when speaking about 40-year-old veteran Hiroki Kuroda's solid play, "this game is going to come to an end for you eventually."