Card Of The Week May 3

Last week Dragons player/manager Motonobu Tanishige became just the second player in NPB history to appear in 3000 games.  Tanishige joins another former player/manager, Katsuya Nomura, as the only players to reach this milestone.  Nomura's record for most NPB games appeared in is 3017 and it's generally expected that Tanishige will pass him this season.

It's still possible, however, for Tanishige to experience a first in his career, even after 3000 games.  Yesterday, in his 3001st game, he was ejected for the first time ever after making contact with the home plate ump when arguing a close play at the plate:



For the record, I think the runner was out but I don't think it was possible for the ump to see it from where he was standing.  And NPB has not yet implemented the same kind of replay system that MLB has.  (And Tanishige would have been ejected anyway for making contact with the umpire.)

It's kind of ironic that he gets ejected from a game against Yokohama, his original team from 1989-2001.

Here's a card of Tanishige from the "Grand Masters" subset of the 2011 BBM Dragons team set (#D86):