Card Of The Week August 8

The baseball blogo-sphere was abuzz last week over an amazing catch by the Carp's Masato Akamatsu, who climbed the center field wall in Hiroshima to rob Shuichi Murata of a home run. The catch even made the Yahoo's front page one day last week. Yahoo's Big League Stew mentioned that it reminded them of the following catch:



The video shows Hankyu Braves outfielder Masafumi Yamamori climbing the fence to take a home run away from Sumio Hirota of the Lotte Orions. (The pitcher by the way is Hisashi Yamada, who had a very distinctive "submarine" delivery and was later Dragons manager from 2002-2003). It happened in 1981 and I think it is commemorated on the back of Yamamori's card from last winter's BBM Memory Makers set - there's a date of 9/16/1981 listed and while I can't read what it says, I can see the kanji for Sumio Hirota's name. Here's both the front and back of the card (#012):




I will point out that the picture has nothing to do with the catch and is actually from a few years later - the uniform he's wearing is the one Hankyu wore between 1984-88.

And in case you missed it, here's Akamatsu's catch from last week:


EMBED-Spiderman Style Baseball Catch - Watch more free videos

Thanks to Japan Baseball Daily for filling in the background of the Yamamori catch.