Like last year, it looks like there's a handful of cards for the Fighters in
the new BBM 1st Version set that appear to have photos that were taken during
the Fighters' early training camp in Peoria, Arizona this past February. As I've pointed out before, most of the cards in the set feature photos that were taken last year. The main exceptions to this are rookies and players on new teams (either players who were on other NPB teams last year or players coming to NPB after playing somewhere else last year).
The Fighters only sent 40 or so of the guys on their 70 man roster to Arizona while the rest of the team trained in Okinawa, so that cut down on the number of guys who could have had photos taken at Peoria. It looks like the only rookie that the Fighters brought to the US was 2nd round pick Kazunari Ishii. The other new Fighters in Arizona were Edwin Escobar (new foreign player), Toru Murata (former NPB player returning to Japan from MLB) and Taishi Ohta (acquired from the Giants in a trade). Here's the cards for these four players:
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| 2017 BBM 1st Version #009 |
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| 2017 BBM 1st Version #021 |
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| 2017 BBM 1st Version #007 |
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| 2017 BBM 1st Version #019 |
Clearly the Escobar photo was taken in Arizona. Why do I say clearly? Because the
photo is in
the Fighter's photo gallery for February 6th. The other three photos were probably taken in Arizona but it's possible they were taken in Okinawa after the US contingent traveled there in mid-February.
I can state for certain that the Fighters' team card photo was not taken in Peoria - it was taken at Sloan Park in Mesa, Arizona, the spring training home of the Cubs.
The Fighters played an exhibition game there against the kt Wiz of the KBO on February 8th.
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| 2017 BBM 1st Version #325 |
Dani and
Deanna were at this game - I saw an Arizona Fall League game here last October.
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