Longtime Blue Jays infielder Tony Fernandez has passed away from kidney disease at age 57. Besides Toronto, Fernandez also played for the Padres, Mets, Reds, Yankees, Indians and Brewers. He also spent the 2000 season in Japan, playing third base for the Seibu Lions. He did well in his one season in Tokorozawa, hitting .327 with 11 home runs and 74 RBIs in 103 games. He returned to North America for the 2001 season, splitting time between the Brewers and Blue Jays before retiring at the end of the season.
There were an awful lot of cards of Fernandez issued in Japan in 2000. He appeared in the "flagship" BBM set as well as the high-end Diamond Heroes set. He had both a "regular" Calbee card and a "New Face" subset card. He appeared in both of Upper Deck's Japanese sets that year - Ovation and Victory. He also appeared in the Epoch Pro-Baseball Stickers set, two of Future-Bee's Power League sets and he had two cards in Konami's Field Of Nine set (the Future-Bee and Konami sets were collectible card game sets).
I only have four of the eleven cards I listed:
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| 2000 BBM #298 |
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| 2000 BBM Diamond Heroes #32 |
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| 2000 Upper Deck Ovation #39 |
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| 2000 Upper Deck Victory #8 |
3 comments:
Oh that's terrible news. I actually got to see him play here, his 2000 season with Seibu coincided with my first year in Japan and I caught a Lions-Blue Wave game at Green Stadium that summer in which he started. I was about equally as excited to see Tony Fernandez as I was to see Ichiro, Fernandez had been my best friend in high school's favorite player.
That's so cool that you got to see him play over there. He's one of those guys who no one seems to remember played in Japan.
This year has been full of heartache. Super sad to hear the news about Fernandez. I didn't even realize he played in Japan until I started looking at his career statistics.
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