Kyuji Fujikawa joins my collection

Back on December 1st the Cubs announced that they had signed Kyuji Fujikawa to a two year contract.  The bullpen had about three solid arms last season, and two of them (Camp & Russell) were sorely overworked last year.  Fujikawa should help solidify the late inning effectiveness of the bullpen and perhaps give the Cubs some latitude to trade Marmol later this summer.

Fujikawa is only 32 and he features a fastball, slow curve, and a nasty splitter.  Here's a video of our new set-up man if you're interested:

Once the news of the signing hit the wire it was my task to find a Fujikawa card.  As luck would have it, Dave from Japanese Baseball Cards posted an entry featuring Fujikawa on cardboard.  I contacted Dave, we sent a few e-mails back and forth and finally agreed on a 1-for-1 deal.  I was pretty pumped that I could find something from my collection that he was interested in.

Dave received this Michihiro Ogasawara rookie card:

Why do I have Japanese baseball cards lying around?  We'll save that one for another post on another day.

On my end, I received a 2004 BBM 2nd Series card of Fujikawa.  For the record, Kyuji played for the Hanshin Tigers back then.

I love how the card preps you for trivia in English and then spews six lines of Japanese at you.  Yikes!

BONUS ALERT!  Generous blogger detected! Feast your eyes on this:

Yeah, um, look away now.  That is one different "baseball" card.  Fujikawa frolicking on the beach in Hawaii from the BBM 2006 set.    Um, thank you, Dave.  That was, um, ... an interesting throw-in.

My hope is that Fujikawa comes stateside for the Cubs Convention and Theo sends him down to Peoria on the Cubs Caravan to help speed his acclimation to the U.S.  If that happens, I may have a shot at an autograph!  Sweet deal!

Thanks again for working out a deal with me Dave.  Your generosity was greatly appreciated as well.  If I can ever help your collecting needs somehow, don't hesitate to give me a shout!