Card Of The Week July 18

Seibu did their annual "Lions Classic" series last week where they wore throwback uniform. (There may be more games - and there may be a card set - there have been the past two years). This year, the Lions are wearing the uniforms of the Taiheiyo Club Lions, as the Lions were known from 1973-76. Specifically, the uniforms are from 1973-74, according to "The History Of Uniform".

Anyway, Deanna went to a couple of the games and had a couple of posts about it.

A commenter on one of the posts asks about the 1976 Taiheiyo Club uniforms: "I believe they had uniform number on the front and in the middle like they do with football players." Indeed they did. I've posted something in the past about this uniform, but until recently I did not have a card that showed this uniform. That's now changed. Here's recent Hall Of Famer Osamu Higashio's 1975/76 Calbee card (#1355):


I actually don't think these are the ugliest uniforms from the 1970's. I think that the 1973 Nittaku Home Flyers experiment with a different uniform design for each postion was far worse. Unfortunately (or maybe it's fortunate), I don't have a card showing these uniforms. Beyond the "The History Of Uniform", all I have is this picture from "The Legend Of 50 Years", an NPB publication celebrating their first 50 years (published in 1999):


I think Isao Harimoto's in that picture - it's about as undignified as seeing Dave Winfield in one of those late 70's Padres uniforms or when Joe Dimaggio coached for the A's when they moved to Oakland in the late 60's.