Card Of The Week October 23

The first two games of this year's Nippon Series have been played and so far it's been all Carp.  Hiroshima has won both games by identical scores of 5-1.  The Series will resume on Tuesday in Sapporo.

The TV coverage showed footage of previous Nippon Series with the Carp and the Fighters a couple of times during Game One's broadcast.  Since the last time the Fighters won the Series was only 10 years ago in 2006, I wondered how many players on the Fighter's Series roster were on the Series roster back then.  I'm pretty sure that the answer is only one - Kensuke Tanaka.  There are three other layers from that roster that are still with the team - Yuji Iiyama, Hisashi Takeda and Masaru Takeda - but all three played mostly with the ni-gun team this year and I'm reasonably sure that none of them is on the Series roster.  What I was surprised to discover was that Daikan Yoh was not on the 2006 Series roster - he didn't play in a Nippon Series until 2007.  I caught glimpses of an outfielder with red-dyed hair playing the outfield in some of the clips of the 2006 Series, but that must have been Tsuyoshi Shinjyo instead.

Here's Kensuke Tanaka's card from the 2006 BBM Nippon Series set (#S15):

That's three weeks in a row that I've used a card from one of BBM's Nippon Series sets as Card Of The Week - I think I'm in a rut...