I'm on the road this weekend so instead of posting about something that happened in this past week, I thought instead I'd highlight a book I recently finished reading - "The Wax Pack - On the Open Road in Search of Baseball's Afterlife" by Brad Balukjian. Balukjian decided to open a pack of 1986 Topps cards in the early 2010's and go talk to each player whose card was in the pack to see how their life was going now that they were no longer playing. It's an interesting book, following his successes (Garry Templeton, Lee Mazzilli, Jaimie Cocanower, and Don Carman among others) and failures (Gary Pettis, Vince Coleman, Dwight Gooden and Carlton Fisk) at connecting with the players. I think my only minor disappointment with the book was that only one of the players - Randy Ready - had played in Japan and it was only briefly mentioned.
Ready signed with the Chiba Lotte Marines after a 13 year MLB career with the Brewers, Padres, Phillies, Athletics and Expos. He ended up only playing in 30 games, hitting just .200 with one home run. He was released relatively early in the season and played in Triple-A with the Padres affiliate in Las Vegas to finish out the year. As far as I know, this card from the 1996 BBM set (#393) was his only NPB card:
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