Card Of The Week January 26

I recently picked up this 1974/75 Sadaharu Oh card (#695) off of Ebay.  At first glance it simply looks like a photo of Oh in the batting cage.  But take a closer look at the guys watching Oh bat:

Hey, those are the Atlanta Braves!  This card is from the 1975 series that featured photos of the Giants training at Vero Beach that spring.  Here's the back of the card:

I was curious what the back said and Google translate was inconclusive so I sent a scan of it to Sean and asked him.  He was gracious enough to translate it and even do a little research.

The line right under the Giants flag says "Major Leaguers are also fans of the Doggy".  Sean explained that "Doggy" is a rough translation of the word "ワンちゃん" or "Wanchan".  What he discovered in trying to make sense of this was that this was one of Sadaharu Oh's nicknames!  Here's how Sean explained it:

The short story is that the character for his last name Oh is actually pronounced "Wang" in Chinese, which sounds very similar to "Wan", the word Japanese kids use for doggy.  So they started calling him that (adding "chan" which is a sort of term of endearment you usually add after the name of a child or something) and it stuck. Amazing what you learn from baseball cards.

Here's Sean's translation of the rest of the text on the back:

March 1-17, 1975 Vero Beach Camp.  Getting prepared for an exhibition game against the Braves.  The moment Sadaharu Oh enters the batting cage the entire Braves lineup gathers around it.  Even major leaguers have a deep interest in the world home run king.

 I was a little disappointed that the back didn't mention any Braves by name.  My curiosity had been piqued when viewing the back of the card through the Google Translate app on my phone.  At one point the app flashed the word "Gar" in its translation of the back.  Could this mean Ralph Garr, the 1974 NL Batting Champion who along with Darrell Evans was probably the biggest offensive star with the Braves at the time (since Henry Aaron was in Milwaukee at this point)?  Examining the back of the card I saw that the characters for Garr's name (ガー) appeared to be there.  But Sean explained to me that those characters were actually part of the characters for "major leaguer" (大リーガー) so the back doesn't name any of the players.  It's hard to recognize any of the players in the photo but I believe that it's possible that Garr is the player on the far left.

Anyway, it's a really cool card and I was glad to get it.  And thanks for translation and explanation, Sean!