Sunday, October 18, 2009

Satoru Komiyama

Kind of lost in all the noise with Bobby Valentine's final days managing the Marines was the fact that Satoru Komiyama was retiring. Lotte scheduled his retirement ceremony for the same game as Valentine's, most likely as a slap at Valentine.

Komiyama has had an interesting career. He debuted with the then-Lotte Orions in 1990. He played for them until 2000, making the All Star team six times and leading the league in ERA in 1997. He signed with Yokohama as a free agent in 2000 and played for them for two years, making the All Star team again in 2000. In 2002, he reunited with Bobby Valentine in New York and played one season for the Mets. As far as I can tell, he was out of baseball completely in 2003. With Valentine's return to Chiba in 2004, Komiyama rejoined his former team. He was made a player-coach in 2007.

Here are some cards:





From the top, that's his 1991 Calbee rookie card (#100), his 1996 Calbee "Tokyo Snack" card (#25), his 2001 Upper Deck card (#30) and his final regular BBM card - 2009 BBM 1st Version (#113).

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