Sunday, November 27, 2016

Takashi Kawai

Yet another long time NPB player who retired at the end of the 2016 season is Eagles pitcher Takashi Kawai.  Kawai was drafted out of Josai University in the third round of the fall 1998 draft by the Marines (their first two picks in the draft that year were Masahide Kobayashi and Tomoya Satozaki).  He pitched mostly out of the bullpen for Lotte, putting together a couple decent years in 2001 and 2002 before he started to lose effectiveness.  The Marines traded him to Tohoku in May of 2006 for Ken Shinzato.  It looks like he spent most of his time with the Eagles with the farm team - he only had maybe 4 out of the 11 seasons he spent in Sendai where he had more than 10 appearances with the ichi-gun Eagles.  I don't think he made any appearances in the 2013 Nippon Series with the Eagles and he didn't pitch in the 2005 Series with the Marines.

His BBM rookie was #514 from the 1999 set.  He never had a Calbee card but he did appear in sets from Future Bee, Konami and Bandai.

1999 BBM #514

2004 BBM 2nd Version #719

2006 BBM 2nd Version #512 (1st Version Update)

2009 Eagles Seat Owners Club #45

2016 BBM Eagles #E21

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