3 Cards (Vol 43)

So after my trip to Japan I brought back a big stack of cards. There were so many cards in that stack that I had no idea where to start when blogging about them. So instead of condensing them all into a big post (which most of you will only read a quarter of), I decided to blog about them at a rate of three cards at a time. Maybe some of them will make for interesting material, maybe they won't. Let's find out.

Card #1

Hell yeah. For the first time in months we're back to the wonderful stadium exclusive cards!
And who better to greet us back to that line than Mr. Chunichi himself, Masahiko Morino?! I've talked about Morino in the past. He's one of my favorite Dragons players of all time. To me he's the face of the Dragons franchise (or at least the face of all Dragons franchise hitters) and I'm glad to say I have a small but modest collection of his.

This is an interesting stadium giveaway. In that it's a lot more generic than the ones I previously blogged about. The ones I blogged about way back in the early parts of this series' run were scratch off cards/tickets where lucky fans could win prizes. But this is just a regular baseball card, sans the stats. It features Morino's profile information, the Dragons logo, and the Nagoya Dome logo. So this really is a trading card. It doesn't serve any addition purpose beyond being a normal card.

Card #2

This is a "Hero Interview" shot featuring former Dragons reliever Takuya Asao.
I've talked about Asao before, you can read my writeup here. This is a checklist card from a Calbee set so the back ain't shit. But this front is everything to me. It's Stadium Club level photography. A full bleed photo with something in the frame to make it fun (the Doala theme mic) and artsy (the out of focus background). Apparently this interview took place in front of fans on April 3rd, 2009.

Card #3

Closing us out with our first EPOCH One card in a while (and also our last for a while).

It features card of Joely Rodriguez setting the record for fasted pitch thrown by a southpaw in the NPB.

The back mentions that it happened on September 15th, 2018. Rodriguez came into the game in the seventh inning against the Hiroshima Carp (in their ballpark, Mazda Stadium too). He threw a 159 heater and recorded the fastest pitch every thrown by a southpaw in the NPB. He racked up three K's that innings and dominated.

Also peep the "Limited Edition of 49" sentence. That means that this one out of only 49 total copies that exist. Woof!

And that was our first BBM-free 3 cards post in a LOOOOONG time. Feels great!
Unfortunately that brand will come back into the picture soon, but hey, it felt good to have this breath of fresh air again.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care :).