Card Of The Week May 24

Last week Ichiro Suzuki of the Miami Marlins got his 2,874th hit of him MLB career, passing Babe Ruth for 38th place for batters since 1900 (and 42nd for all time).  Ichiro now has 4,154 between NPB and MLB (including his hit in today's game) which is pretty damned impressive even if it isn't a record.

Here's Ichiro's card from the 1999 TV Sports set:

This was a 16 card set that appeared as an uncut sheet in an issue (or issues) of the magazine TV Sports.  Besides Ichrio, the set included Hideki Matsui, Kazuo Matsui, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Kazuhiro Sasaki, Tomonori Maeda, Tsuyoshi Shinjyo, Atsuya Furuta, Tomohiro Kuroki, Kenshin Kawakami, Kimiyasu Kudoh, Atsushi Kataoka, Akinori Ohtsuka, Takanori Suzuki and Yoshinobu Takahashi.  Half the guys in the set ended up spending time in the US and a quarter of them are still active this year in either MLB or NPB (Ichiro, Kazuo Matsui, Kenshin Kawakami and Yoshinobu Takahashi).  So far there are only two Hall Of Famers (Sasaki and Furuta) but that will change.