Rich Gossage was inducted into the National Baseball Hall Of Fame yesterday. A little known sidebar to his career is the 28 games he appeared in for the (then) Fukuoka Daiei Hawks in 1990 (which accounts for the missing year in his American career stats). According to NPB Tracker, Gossage now joins Larry Doby as the only players with NPB experience in the MLB Hall Of Fame.
As far as I can tell, there are no cards of Gossage in a Hawks uniform. The main sets from 1990 in Japan were Calbee, Takara and Lotte and he's not in any of those sets. I guess that's not surprising since he didn't make his first appearence for the Hawks until July 4. The first batter he faced in Japan homered off of him - former Baltimore Oriole and then Kintetsu Buffalo Jim Traber. Ironically, the two had never faced each other during Traber's 4 years with the Orioles. So since I have no card of Gossage to show, here's Traber's 1991 BBM card (#287):
I got the information on Gossage's Japanese career from Japan Baseball Daily's Data Warehouse.
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