Upper Deck Ultimate Victory was a baseball card set first published by Upper Deck in 1999. One of the insert sets was called STATure. The set featured players with outstanding statistical achievements. This card looks like that insert set but I don't know if the Japanese card is a standalone card or what.
I know that baseball is very popular in Japan but I know nothing about baseball card collecting in Japan. A quick search on eBay brings up 3 pages. Some of these are cards are American cards featuring Japanese players but a fair number of them were published in Japan. The only other Japanese card I have is a single card from the Japanese version of the 2002 Topps set.
I don't know anything about the player. His name is Shinji Sasaoka. He's clearly a pitcher and pitched for the Carp. The stat on the front of the card is and earned run average of 3.20. Is this an exceptional ERA in Japan?
Note that the front of the card is mostly in English while the back is mostly Japanese. My favorite thing on the card is the Carp logo on the
back. Click on the card to get an enlarged picture and a better view of the logo.
2 comments:
From the looks of the number (A8), your card is more than likely an insert. Here are Sasaoka's career stats:
http://www.japanesebaseball.com/players/player.jsp?PlayerID=276
You're probably right about it being an insert. And thanks for the link to the Japanese stats.
Cliff
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