Card Of The Week April 13

Last Wednesday Ichiro Suzuki played in his 3018th game between NPB and MLB.  This passed Katsuya Nomura's record for most games played in between NPB and MLB by a Japanese player.  Of course, Nomura's were all in NPB - he's the only player in NPB with more than 3000 games played in.  Here's Ichiro's 1998 Calbee "West Special" card (#W-47):

The "West Special" cards were a set or subset that Calbee did in 1998 that only contained cards of players on teams in the "western part of Japan" which in this case means west of Kanto - Nagoya (Dragons), the Osaka-area (Blue Wave, Buffaloes, Tigers), Hiroshima (Carp) and Fukuoka (Hawks).  I don't know if these were sold separately from the regular cards that year (like the 1994 Calbee Hokkaido cards were) or if this was just a subset/insert set with the regular cards.