Card Of The Week October 3

Joe Torre managed his last game for the Dodgers and possible his last game ever today. Now I want to be clear that I despise both the Yankees and the Dodgers, but I have to say that Joe's a pretty classy guy.

Now you're probably saying to yourself "Well, that's nice and all, but what's that got to do with Japanese baseball. Torre never played or managed in Japan, so there wouldn't be any baseball cards of him". True, he never played or managed for a Japanese team, but he did travel to Japan after the 1974 season with the Mets. And there's actually a set of cards that commemorates that tour.

There was a guy named Ed Broder who in the 1980's became famous (or infamous) for producing non-licensed baseball cards. But before that, he was a serviceman stationed in Japan who printed up and sold baseball cards of Japanese teams for sale in the US. There was a guy named Ed Broder who was a serviceman stationed in Japan in the 1970's who printed up and sold baseball cards of Japanese teams for sale in the US. The cards are amazingly primitive - black and white photos on either card stock or paper - but they're kind of an interesting little experiment. I've been meaning to do a post about them at some point, but I need to learn how to scan black and white photos better with my scanner.

Anyway, Broder did a set of cards for the Mets' 1974 tour featuring several Mets, Yomiuri Giants and Carp players, including Mets manager Yogi Berra, Jerry Koosman, Felix Millan (who would later play for Yokohama), Tom Seaver, Shigeo Nagashima and Sadaharu Oh. Torre is featured on two group cards - one with Kazuyoshi Yamamoto of the Carp and this one:


From the left, that's Ed Kranepool, John Milner, Sachio Kinugasa (who I had not realized had worn a number other than 3), and Torre.

UPDATE - Jason made a suggestion on how to scan the black and white images of the Broder cards in so that they don't look terrible, so let's try this again:


Well, I'd say that's much better. Thanks, Jason!