I find visits to North America by NPB players and teams to be endlessly fascinating. These visits typically manifest themselves in two ways - NPB teams loaning players to MLB (and independent) teams to play in their farm systems and NPB teams doing all or part of their spring training in the US. There's a card in the new BBM Professional Baseball 90th Anniversary set that I think may illustrate an example of the latter:
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| 2024 BBM Professional Baseball 90th Anniverary #130 |
This card shows Michiyo Arito and Hiroyuki Yamazaki of the Lotte Orions posing in front of what looks like a palm tree. There doesn't seem to be much other vegetation in the background. I wouldn't have thought twice about this if I didn't know that Lotte had done spring training in Casa Grande, Arizona, for three years from 1970 to 1972. Could this photo be from Arizona?
I don't know for sure. The uniforms the players are wearing are the ones Lotte wore those years so it's possible. I was hoping the back of the card might give some clues but, alas, it does not:
Basically it says that the two players were the same age but Yamazaki joined the team earlier (he joined the team out of high school while Arito went to college). In 1970, they each hit 25 home runs and helped the team win the Pacific League pennant. In 1974, they batted on either side of George Altman in the line up and led the team to their first Nippon Series championship in 24 years. (I based this on the Google translation of the text.)
So, maybe it's from Arizona? I don't know where else Lotte trained in the years that they wore those uniforms (1969-72) so maybe it's from somewhere else. I'm at least going to go with it being a very good chance that this photo is from Arizona.
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