Hiroki Kokubo's Retirement

Hiroki Kokubo announced his retirement a few weeks back (err...make that months) and his Hawks were eliminated in the playoffs today by the Fighters, so he has played his last game.  I did a retrospective on him a couple months back when he reached 2000 hits, so I thought I'd concentrate on something else here.  I had made a comment in a post a while back about BBM having a "usual photo of Hiroki Kokubo throwing his bat on his follow-through".  I figured I'd attempt to back that comment with some evidence, so I went all of his BBM cards to see how often they used a similar pose.  The answer is - very often.  Here's a bunch of examples, which by no means is all of them:

1998 BBM #537

1998 BBM Hawks #FD48

2000 BBM #276

2001 BBM #393

2002 BBM All Time Heros #122

2002 BBM Preview #P76

2004 BBM Giants #G47

2005 BBM 1st Version #352

2006 BBM Record Makers #125

2007 BBM 2nd Version #542

2008 BBM 1st Version #310

2008 BBM 2nd Version #664

2008 BBM 70th Anniversary #84

2009 BBM Legend Players #064

2010 BBM 1st Version #307

2011 BBM 2nd Version #465

2011 BBM Nippon Series #S15