Card Of The Week October 6

Things were looking a bit grim for the Yokohama DeNA Baystars today.  The Tigers had tied the score in the top of the ninth when Kosuke Fukudome hit a solo home run off of the Baystars ace closer Yasuaki Yamasaki.  Yesterday the Tigers fought back from a 7-1 deficit to win Game One of the First Stage of the Climax Series 8-7 so if the Tigers won again, the Baystars season would be over.  But in the bottom of the ninth, Tomo Otosaka pinch hit for Yamasaki with a runner on board and did this:



Baystars won 6-4 and forced a winner-take-all Game Three tomorrow. 

Otosaka grew up in Yokohama - he attended Yokohama High School - so it's really cool he was the hero in today's game.  Here's his card from "Yokohama Pride" subset of the 2017 BBM Baystars set (#DB75) that commemorated several players on the Baystars from Yokohama High School - Yoshitomo Tsutsugoh and Takehiro Ishikawa were the other players in the subset:

One note - I had originally planned on doing a post about 95 year old former pitcher Rentaro Imanishi who threw out the first pitch before Game One yesterday.  Imanishi was the starter in the first game ever for the Baystars franchise in 1950 (when they were known as the Taiyo Whales).  Just one problem - I don't have any cards of him!  He had probably 20 cards or so in the late 1940's when he was pitching for the Hankyu Braves but he hasn't had any modern cards as far as I can tell.  If only there was some OB set done by BBM recently that celebrated the history of the Baystars' franchise that they could have included a card of him in...