Domo Arigato: The Five Tool Collector

Over the past two decades, baseball players of Japanese heritage have started to make a name for themselves in the MLB.  Players like Hideo Nomo, Ichiro Suzuki, Hideki Matsui, Koji Uehara, Hisashi Iwakuma, Yu Darvish, Masahiro Tanaka, and Kurt Suzuki have all represented their teams at the all-star game.

But outside of baseball... it's slim pickings.  Thankfully there are awesome bloggers like Commishbob who are kind enough to help me out and send me cards like this:

1961 Topps CFL #13

Outside of Johnnie Morton and a handful of others, I haven't heard of many Japanese professional football players.  In fact, I had to do a little detective work to find some information on Mr. Yamauchi.  According to www.justsportsstats.com, he was a fullback, linebacker, and guard for three different CFL teams from 1954 to 1960.  It looks like his best season came in 1955 when he caught 16 passes and rushed for 223 yards for the Calgary Stampeders.

Yamauchi might not have been of HOF calibre, but this card is amazing and will definitely be a centerpiece in my Japanese PC binder.

But Commishbob didn't stop there.  He also sent a bunch of other cards.  Including these...

Thanks Robert!  I'm a little backed up in terms of building packages... but I definitely have some Orioles set aside for you.

Happy Saturday and sayonara!