Card Of The Week April 30

After five seasons in North America, Munenori Kawasaki has returned to Japan.  He signed a contract to rejoin the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks at the beginning of this month and spent most of April with the Hawks' ni-gun team.  He made his ichi-gun debut on Friday, appearing in an NPB game in a Softbank uniform for the first time since the 2011 Nippon Series.

Well actually, that's not exactly right.  The Hawks spent the weekend in Osaka playing the Orix Buffaloes and it was the first "Kansai Classic" series of the year.  Both teams wore retro uniforms so Kawasaki was wearing a throwback 1980 Nankai Hawks uniform.  Here's his first at bat, leading off in Friday's game:



I thought I'd feature a card of him wearing another throwback Nankai Hawks uniform.  Sports Card Magazine #70 back in 2008 included three cards of players wearing "Classic" uniforms - Norichika Aoki, Hiroyuki Nakajima and Kawasaki.  Here's the Kawasaki card:

SCM #104