Card Of The Week September 6

On Friday night at Jingu Stadium, Hiroki Fukunaga of the Chunichi Dragons led off the game against the Tokyo Yakult Swallows with a home run, his seventh of the season (and third lead off one).  Last night, he repeated himself, leading off the game with a home run again.  That made him the first player in Dragons history to hit lead off home runs in consecutive games, although it's been done 38 other times in NPB (23 other times in the Central League).  (H/T NPB Reddit)

Fukunaga was the Dragons' seventh pick in the 2022 from Nippon Shinyaku of the corporate leagues.  I was a little surprised to discover that I had two cards of him from 2022 - the earliest cards for most players are from the Rookie Edition set the year AFTER they're drafted.  Two things happened to make Fukunaga have earlier cards.  The first is that he appeared in the 2022 JABA (Japanese Amateur Baseball Association) corporate league card set (with Nippon Shinyaku) and the second is that 2022 was the last year Epoch issued Epoch One cards for drafted players that were issued the same year as the draft (and the Dragons were one of the teams they featured).  

Here are the two cards in question:

2022 JABA #22JP065

2022 Epoch One #994