Card Of The Week July 12

Last Friday was the first day that fans were allowed into the ballparks in Japan.  The teams are limiting the crowds to no more than 5000 people with plans to go to half capacity on August 1st (assuming the increase in cases in Tokyo and other places doesn't continue).  One of the games on Friday was called on account of rain (Swallows at Giants in Kobe) and another was called after five innings because of the weather (Baystars at Tigers at Koshien Stadium) but all of the remaining games were decided in the final inning.  The Lions pushed across the winning run in the top of the ninth in Chiba but the other three games sent all the fans home happy as they all ended on dramatic sayonara home runs.

In Osaka, the Fighters had a 3-1 lead on the Buffaloes with two outs and two on in the bottom of the ninth when Aderlin Rodriguez did this:



About 10 minutes later and 300 miles to the west, Yuki Yanagita led off the bottom of the 10th with this prodigious blast:



Over in Nagoya (and I'm not sure where it falls in the timeline of the evening) the Dragons had a bottom of the ninth rally to tie their game with the Carp at 1 before Dayan Viciedo made it a 2-1 final with with a solo home run in the bottom of the 10th:



According to John E. Gibson and the Japan Baseball Weekly podcast, this is the third time in history that there were three walk off home runs in one day in Japan.  The most recent time was last September 4th and the other time (according NPB Reddit) was September 10, 1967.

I thought I'd share cards of the three players this week.  I just got the new Epoch NPB and Calbee Series Two sets the other day and I'll be doing posts on them in the next few days so I thought I'd show cards of Yanagita and Viciedo from the sets as kind of preview.  Rodriguez isn't in either set so I'm just going to show his BBM 1st Version card - it's the only card I have of him so far.

2020 BBM 1st Version #151

2020 Epoch NPB #063

2020 Calbee "AVG Leader" #AL-11