Five Years In

Today marks my fifth anniversary writing this blog.  I wanted to take this opportunity to thank a lot of people.

First I want to thank all the guys who've put up great blogs and websites to talk about Japanese baseball - Michael Westbay, Deanna Rubin, Gen, Patrick, Gary Garland and all the others I have listed on the right side of the blog.  I want to thank Jason Presley for doing an amazing job of cataloging and checklisting all kinds of odd foreign cards (not just Japanese) - makes figuring out who has a card when so much easier.  (and I apologize to Jason for not helping him out more than I have.)

I also want to thank John Gibson and Jim Allen for their invaluable weekly Japanese baseball podcast - I always learn a lot from it, including how to pronounce names.

I've been corresponding with Ralph Pearce a lot lately and I've been slowly realizing how much of a debt all of us current collectors of Japanese cards owe to a handful of people.  I'm hoping to write more about this in the future, but for now let me just thank Mel Bailey, Ed Broder, Bud Ackerman, Gary Engel, Philip Block, Robert Shadlow and Robert Klevens (among others).  And of course, Ralph Pearce.

I also want to thank Rob Fitts for his encouragement over the years.

I want to thank my wife and kids for putting up with this for so long.

And a big thank you to everyone who reads this.

I started this blog because I was frustrated that I couldn't find any English language place on the web that would tell me the things I wanted to know about Japanese baseball cards.  My hope is that I've become that place for other collectors.

Thanks for indulging me in this early Thanksgiving.  Now I'll get back to writing about cards and mocking Yuki Saitoh.