Card Of The Week April 6

Tuffy Rhodes is, of course, a well known player in Japan.  Over the course of his 13 seasons with Kintetsu, Yomiuri and Orix, he hit 464 home runs, the 13th highest total.  He was the league leader in home runs four times and league leader in RBIs three times.  Until last September, he was tied with Sadaharu Oh and Alex Cabrera for most home runs in a season.

In the US, however, Rhodes is mostly remembered for an event that happened 20 years ago last Friday.  On Opening Day of the 1994 season, Rhodes (then with the Cubs) hit three home runs against the Mets, all coming off of Dwight Gooden.  As it turned out, this would be over a third of the home runs he would hit in that strike shortened season (he ended with 8) and almost a quarter of his career MLB total (which was 13).

Here's a video clip showing the home runs (complete with a couple Harry Caray home run calls):



And here's a couple of Rhodes cards from Japan.  I'm not big on the "high end" cards (Diamond Heroes, Touch The Game and Genesis) but I do have a couple:

2000 BBM Diamond Heroes #119

2005 BBM Touch The Game #107