Card Of The Week July 30

Last Wednesday the Chunichi Dragons were cruising along with a 10-0 lead over the Swallows going into the bottom of the seventh when all the wheels fell off.  The Swallows scored two runs in the bottom of the seventh on a two run home run by Yuhei Nakamura then exploded for eight runs in the bottom of the eighth to tie the game up.  They ended up winning 11-10 on a walk off home run by pinch hitter Shoitsu Ohmatsu in the bottom of the tenth.  Here's a video with the painful highlights (if you don't know, I am a Dragons fan) courtesy of NPB Reddit:



This is only the fourth time in Japanese professional baseball history that a team has come back from a ten run deficit and the first time in almost 20 years.   This was the second pinch hit walk off home run Ohmatsu had hit this year - he's now the fourth player in NPB history (and first in 40 years) to have two pinch hit walk off home runs in one season.

This is Ohmatsu's first season with the Swallows after 12 seasons with the Marines.  Lotte let him go at the end of last season while he was recovering from a ruptured Achilles tendon suffered with the farm team in late May.  The Swallows gave him a tryout during spring camp and ended up signing him to a contract.  The only cards I know of him in a Swallows uniform are from the BBM and Epoch Swallows sets, neither of which I have yet.  I did recently pick up a Konami card of him from when he was with the Marines in a lot of assorted cards I got on Ebay.  This is a "Special" card (I don't know enough about Konami's cards to know if that's the official name of the subset or not) from the 2008 Baseball Heroes Black Edition (#B08S032):