3 Cards (Vol 45)

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

Alright, starting off this edition will be a postcard sent to me a while ago from NPB Card Guy.

NPBCG obtained this postcard of Shigeru Sugishita's Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame plaque for me during his trip to Japan. I've talked about the God of Forkballs a lot (and will continue to do so) so my initial plan was to translate the plaque. But then I found that translating it word for word would be difficult because everything on here looks a big run-on sentence. So instead here's my best "paraphrase" of what the plaque says.

After venturing through Teikyo High (School) and Meiji University, (he) entered the Chunichi org in year 24 of the Showa Era (1949). With his unique forkball and fastball he dominated and became one of the best in an era of Professional Baseball (read: NPB). Especially in (Showa) 29 (1954) when he had a standout season that also led to his club's first title in which it won its first Central League championship and then the Japan Series championship. That accomplishment in itself is praise worthy. From (Showa) year 34 (1959) and onward he coached/managed for Chunichi, Daimai, Hanshin and Kyojin.

Oof, that was a lousy translation job on my part. Though the fact that I couldn't tell what some characters were didn't help.

Here's the back. It just says 1985 HoF Entrant Sugishita Shigeru-shi (Mr.) Relief

As well as that it's the Japanese HoF and also lists the address for the museum.

Thanks again for the card NPB Card Guy.

Card #2

Back to the Dragons team-exclusive cards. This Road to Victory kinda became a very apt name for this set as this was the year the Dragons look to win their first Nippon Series title since 1954. They instead got stomped by the Nippon Ham Fighters. Though they'd enact their revenge by winning it all in 2007 against those very same Fighters.

Oh right, these came out in 2006 BTW. This is different from the previous stadium goodies I showed in that it's basically just a regular card with your typical card back info (except for stats). This one goes more trivia facts like how his sign is a Virgo, how his favorite car is his BMW, how his blood type is A, among other trivia facts like his first game/hit/home run. Based on how all of these things were said to be as of March 1st (of 2006) and how there's a bit about what Araki himself expects from himself this season, these might've been pre-season goodies.

Card #3

Hitoki Iwase is the Japanese Mariano Rivera. He holds the record for most saves (among other stats) all time in the NPB after decades of dominance.

The back of this is more standard. Only unlike the last scratch-off card I showed (which was God-knows how long ago), this one made it so that if you got three Doalas and that day happened to be a Tuesday, you'd get a signed shikishi by a player. If you don't know what a shikishi is, I wrote a post about it a while ago. Meanwhile if you got three Doalas on a Thursday you'd get an iron-on patch. Hmmm, the gap between those two prizes seem very wide to me.