Konami Kawasaki

Way back in early 2015 I grabbed a copy of Munenori Kawasaki's 2009 Konami Baseball Heroes WBC card. A couple of weeks ago his 2008 Konami Baseball Heroes card popped up in my eBay feed with an extremely reasonable Buy It Now price. I nearly strained my clicking finger as I added it to my cart and completed the transaction before anyone else could get it out from under me.

While the 2009 card features him in his World Baseball Classic uniform, this card shows him in his Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks garb. He's also sporting a much more serious face in his photo on the back of this card.

These cards were used in some sort of arcade game which, according to Zippy Zappy, inspired the creation of the SEGA Card-Gen arcade game and the trading cards associated with it. The card is a little rough around the edges, so maybe it spent some time actually being used in the arcade. I can't read most of what's on the card, but based on Kawasaki's scores I think he was a fairly valuable player in the game.

I mentioned this recently, but Kawasaki was signed to a minor league deal with the Cubs and might have a hard time getting playing time on the Major League roster. I do really hope that the change in teams is enough to get him a few cards in 2016 sets, as I like gathering cardboard with him on it. It'll be a sad day for me when there are no more Kawasaki cards, although there are plenty out there that I haven't been able to pick up yet, especially among card sets released in Japan.