Card Of The Week February 2

Training camps for the NPB teams opened yesterday and for the first time in four years there isn't a Japanese team training in the US.  The Fighters opened a new facility in Okinawa and so are there rather than Arizona like they were the past four years (2016-17 in Peoria and 2018-19 in Scottsdale).

I wrote a post a few years ago about all the times that I could find when Japanese teams had trained in the US.  I mentioned at the time that I hadn't seen any cards from the 1990's that I were convinced had photos that had been taken in the US.  I came across a couple cards the other day though that make me want to reconsider that conclusion.

The Yakult Swallows trained at the Padres spring training facility in Yuma, Arizona from 1977 until 1999 (they were actually there for a few years after the Padres had moved to Peoria).  I was looking through the 1993 BBM set (when I was grabbing a Yukio Arai card for this post) and noticed that the cards of Hideki Hashigami and Tsugio Kanazawa had a building in the background that I think is the locker room building at the facility:

1993 BBM #306

1993 BBM #125

I had spent some time at this facility a couple years ago when I was in Yuma for work.  Here's a photo that shows the building in question - you can see it has a low sloped roof like the one in the photos:

I could be imagining things but I think the building is visible on the lower right side of this 1990 Bowman card of Rob Nelson of the Padres although it's difficult to see.  I went looking through the Bowman Padres cards from 1989-92 since they were the most likely sets to contain photos taken in Yuma for the Padres but that was the only card that looked like it had the building in it.

I am willing to admit that I'm wrong but I'm more and more convinced that it's Yuma.

UPDATE - I should mention that there are a couple other cards that feature photos that I strongly suspect were taken in Yuma but they don't feature any identifying buildings in the background.