3 Cards (Vol 1)

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

This is (as best as I could figure out) a 1974 Pepsi-Cola Menko card of then-Chunichi Dragons skipper Kaname "Wally" Yonamine. I showed this card off in my "I'm back from Japan" post and it's fitting it leads off again. This card is rather thick and rather long compared to your average baseball card. I liken it to being the Japanese menko equivalent of those old tallboys cards.
And yes, there were parallels and variations of these cards. I know this because I saw multiple Yonamine's with the "Dragons" and "Pepsi Cola" parts printed in different colors than the gold/blue you see there.

This is also my first Yonamine card and I'm extremely pleased to have been able to get one. Yonamine is a second generation Japanese-American. He became the first Japanese-American to play in pro football (he was a running back for the San Francisco 49ers), then he went on to have a long and fruitful baseball career in Japan. He was an 11-time All Star in Japan, he was a league MVP in 1957, a four-time Japan Series Champion, and a Japanese Baseball Hall of Famer. The menko card above comes from Yonamine's tenure as the Dragons manager, during which he became the first ever foreigner to manage an NPB club.

Card #2

The second card I'm showing today is this incredible follow-through shot of Takuma Achira.
Achira was drafted by the Chunichi Dragons in the fourth round of the 2013 NPB Player Draft. Drafted out of the Industrial League (the Japanese equivalent of indy ball in a way), Achira is armed with a low-90's fastball, a slider, a curveball and a forkball. He made his ichi-gun (big league) NPB debut in 2016 and struck out 14 batters in 14.1 innings. In 2017 he was limited to 13 innings but won the ERA title as a member of the ni-gun (the minor league) Western League Dragons affiliate.

Achira was rumored to have been heavily favorited by former Dragons GM/manager Hiromitsu Ochiai, so exactly how much longer Achira will actually stay in the Dragons org remains a mystery. I wouldn't hold out much hope on him staying much longer though. At least we'll have that follow-through shot forever though.

Card #3

This is James Paxton's Bowman Chrome autograph from 2012. One of my collecting buds in Japan got this as a replacement for an Anthony Rendon autograph, and it was a pretty good one.
Paxton was drafted by the Seattle Mariners and made his MLB debut with the club there. In six seasons with the Mariners he's had his fair share of good moments like a no-hitter, some bad moments like numerous injuries, and weird moments like the time an eagle landed on him.

With this Paxton BoChro autograph I now have all four players involved in the trade. Paxton, Justus Sheffield, Erik Swanson and Dom Thompson-Williams.

And that concludes the first installment of my three-cards-at-a-time series. Got a lot more in the works right now, I think this series/concept is here to stay!

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