Sunday, July 8, 2012

Card Of The Week July 8

Deanna Rubin has a post up about attending a San Rafael Pacifics game and seeing one of her favorite players - former Tiger and Fighter outfielder Tomochika Tsuboi.  Tsuboi last played in NBP two years ago.  He signed with the Pacifics back in April (I'm not sure if or where he played last year).

Here's one of his his Calbee cards (#074) from 2003, his first season with the Nippon Ham Fighters (their last season in Tokyo):


6 comments:

Jason Presley said...

Tsuboi played mostly for the Buffaloes ni-gun team in 2011.

NPB Card Guy said...

His bio on Japan Baseball Daily said he'd been picked up by Orix after 2010 - I should have checked what you've added on SportsCardForum to see if he'd had any cards from last year. Which would have led me to this card.

Thanks for the info.

Deanna said...

Yeah, I was going to say what Jason said. I even saw him play at a ni-gun game when I went to Koshien last spring. It looks like he only played in 3 games for the ichi-gun Buffaloes in 2011.

Also thanks :) I haven't been writing much, but it's been exciting to see or meet a few Japanese players over here in the US. I have a post about Eri Yoshida coming up soon too! Unfortunately Tsuboi may get released since he got injured -- it's kind of a shame but that's how the indie leagues work, I guess.

NPB Card Guy said...

Something that I'd like to get around to someday is compiling a definitive list of all Japanese players who have played in the minors in the US. I know there have been several in the indie leagues over the years (Makoto Sasaki, Hideki Irabu, Toshihisa Nishi, etc).

drbillellis said...

The link for one source of minor league data is:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/minors/player.cgi?id=tsuboi001tom

I use www.baseball-reference.com frequently for MLB and minors stats. It shows the only 3 games with Orix that Deanna mentioned. The page for Tsuboi on www.japanbaseballdaily.com does not show any 2011 games.

NPB Card Guy said...

Yeah, I had been going with Japan Baseball Daily's bio - for whatever reason those three games didn't show up over there.