No PWE is too small

A couple of weeks ago (more like 3...), I received a direct tweet from everyone's favorite Luis Torrens fan, Kenny, asking if I'd received a PWE in the mail from him from Japan.  I replied that I hadn't, but I had seen a couple of post in the previous days from others who had, so I was hopeful.

That day, I received my PWE, which contained 2 cards that without Kenny's generosity, probably would have never seen the light of day in my house.

First up, Carlos Delgado.

Now I know what you're thinking.  We've all seen the 2003 Topps Carlos Delgado card a million times.   Take a closer look, as there's no Topps logo....

Had to do a bit of hunting, but this appears to be a Topps Kanebo card, featuring the slugger and all his status from the first decade of his career.  Using Google translate I was able to figure out a couple of things, such as the team name says Blue Jays (not just Toronto, or the full Toronto Blue Jays).  It will be fun to try and figure out what the biography says someday....

But this next card is certainly something I thought I would never own.

This is a 2000 BBM Preview card, #P30 featuring Ichiro in his Orix BlueWave uniform.

Absolutely wonderful! 

What I got a kick out of on the back is there's a "Did You Know" in English, then the factoid is written in Japanese.   Wonder why they used 2 languages for that. 

The big thing for me on the card back is his stats.  1992 he started in pro ball as an 18 year old, and fared OK in his first season, struggled in his 2nd, and then just tore up the Pacific League for the next 6 seasons. 

What I learned from looking at his career stats is that if you combine MLB and Japanese stats, Ichiro has 4367 hits.  All time hit king?

Great envelope Kenny, thank you very much for thinking of me! 

Thanks for reading!

Robert