Card Of The Week September 6

I was in Sacramento California last week for work and ended up at a River Cats (the Giants AAA team in Sacramento) game on Wednesday evening.  I was sitting in my seat in the section behind home plate when a gentleman sat down a couple rows in front of me wearing an Under Armour Yomiuri Giants hat.  He was obviously a scout and after staring at him for a little bit trying to remember who the Giants had as a North American scout, I finally leaned forward and asked him if he was working for Yomiuri.  (I normally don't like to bother scouts at ballgames - they have a job to do or other scouts to talk to and I don't really have anything to say to them although I once had a great evening at a game in Hagerstown Maryland sitting in front of Joel Youngblood, Don Buford and a scout from the Padres and just listening to them talk.)  Turns out that he wasn't working for Yomiuri (he just liked the hat) but he had played in Japan - he was former Nippon Ham Fighter Micah Franklin and he was there scouting for the Mariners.  He hit 30 home runs in 131 games for the Fighters in 1999 but he only appeared in 13 games in 2000 split between the Fighters and Tigers.  He later spent a couple years with Hyundai in Korea.

I told him I was pretty sure I had a Japanese baseball card of him and I was right.  Actually I have two - his BBM card from each of his two seasons.  Here's the 1999 one (#425):