This card (#32) is from the 2013 BBM "10/22/1973 Tigers vs Giants" set, the second of BBM's "Greatest Games" series of box sets. It shows Giants manager Tetsuharu Kawakami being lifted in the air by his team in the traditional do-age after the Giants had defeated the Tigers 9-0 to clinch the 1973 Central League pennant, the team's ninth in a row. What's odd about the photo is that usually the do-age is done on the playing field but this one looks like it's done inside somewhere. I'd been curious about this ever since I got this set but it wasn't until last week when I saw this tweet from @thehanshintiger that discovered what had happened.
According to this post on "The Hanshin Tigers English News" blog, a bunch of Tigers fans stormed the field after the game ended and attempted to attack the Giants. The team wasn't able to celebrate their championship until they got back to their hotel.
Tiger fans were understandably frustrated (not that that's an excuse for storming the field). As the post points out, the Tigers had come into the last two games of the 1973 season having to win only one game to clinch their first pennant since 1964 (which was also the last time anyone other than the Giants won the Central League). The first of those two games was against the Dragons in Nagoya on October 20th and the Tigers lost 4-2. They then followed that disappointing loss up with the drubbing by the Giants two days later. It would be another 12 years before the Tigers finally won another Central League pennant. (Both the game against the Dragons and the game against the Giants were commemorated in the "Exciting Game" series from the 1973/74 Calbee set.)
As I do whenever I mention this game I feel I need to point out that another significant baseball event occurred on the same day of this Tigers-Giants game. In Toyoyama just outside of Nagoya that day Yoshie Suzuki gave birth to her and her husband Nobuyuki's second child. They named him Ichiro.
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