Card Of The Week August 19

Yoshinobu Takahashi of the Giants hit his 300th career home run last week against the Carp.  Takahashi was a first round draft pick of the Giants in 1997 and had several very good years before he started to run into injuries.  He's only managed to play more than 100 games in three of the last eight seasons (including this year).  He actually only got into one game at the ichi-gun level in 2009.  (Stats are here.)

Takahashi has played for the Japanese National Team a couple of times - at the 2001 Baseball World Cup, the 2003 Asian Baseball Championship and the 2004 Olympics.  Here's his card from the 2002 BBM Japan National Team set for the 2001 Baseball World Cup team (#27):

(Thanks to NPB Tracker for the link to the Japan Times article.)