Thursday, March 25, 2010

Fighters Victory Set

Via Yakyu Baka comes news of the 2010 Fighters Victory card set. The Fighters will produce a card for every victory this season. If they'd done this last year, there would have been 82 cards for the regular season and 5 for the postseason. I don't know if this has been done by anyone before - it's similar in idea to the Hideki Matsui Home Run cards.

5 comments:

Scott Kaneko said...

Hi,

I purchased some 2010 BBM Preview cards and there is one of John Clayton. Next to his name is the word UNTEN. Do you know what that means?

Thanks,
Scott

NPB Card Guy said...

OK, I'm completely stumped on this one. I don't know of a 2010 BBM Preview set (it's not been listed on their website and they haven't done a preview set since 2002), I don't know of anyone in professional baseball in either the US or Japan named John Clayton and I have no idea what "UNTEN" means.

Deanna said...

Uh, hi. Fighters nerd to the rescue.

John Clayton Unten is a kid the Fighters drafted last fall -- he was born to an American father and Japanese mother in Okinawa, so he was given an English name, BUT his parents divorced when he was in elementary school and he stayed in Okinawa, so I assume he took his mother's Japanese name, Unten, in order to register in schools and all (might have done so even before the divorce), which is fairly common here for kids to do.

I did think it was rather curious that he showed up at the "let's present the new draftees" assembly with two Japanese parents. I haven't stalked him yet at Kamagaya, but I have a feeling he doesn't speak any English.

http://www.fighters.co.jp/team/player/detail/55.html

They used to call him "Okinawa's Darvish" because he was this tall lanky half-breed pitcher who could throw in the upper 140's.

Does that help? :)

NPB Card Guy said...

OK, now things makes sense. Thanks Deanna!

Scott Kaneko said...

Thanks Deanna for the information.

Regards,
Scott