Card Of The Week August 2

There was a wild game in Chiba last Tuesday night.  The Marines took on the visiting Eagles and jumped out to a 6-1 lead after three innings,   Half of those six runs scored on a pair of home runs by Marines' first baseman Seiya Inoue.  The Eagles scored four in the top of the fourth on a Stefan Romero grand slam to make it a one run game but the Marines came back with three more runs in the bottom of the fourth to pad it back to a 9-5 lead.

The Eagles then scored one run in the fifth and five in the sixth to take an 11-9 lead.  They added another run in the top of the eighth to make it 12-9.  But the Marines weren't done.  They scored three in the bottom of the eighth, tying the game on Inoue's third home run of the night.  In the bottom of the ninth, the Marines loaded the bases with one out before Eagles reliever JT Cargois hit Shogo Nakamura with a pitch, forcing in the winning run. 

Here are the highlights from the game:

This is actually the second game this season that the Marines have won on a walk off hit-by-pitch.

I thought I'd share Inoue's first Calbee card.  I was actually kind of surprised that Inoue had a card in the 2014 Calbee set as he was a fifth round pick in the 2013 draft and I was under the impression that Calbee normally didn't do rookie cards for players who weren't first round picks.  After doing a little research I found that there was another Marines rookie - Yuta Yoshida - who was also in that set but the Marines first rounder that year - Ayumu Ishikawa - would not have his first Calbee card until 2015.  I may do some more looking into this (especially now that the Olympics posts are done) but until then, here's Inoue's 2014 Calbee card (#104):