This weekend, The Civee and I cleaned out our basement. Sadly, I had to dispose of this:
The image quality is horrible because I took the picture in the basement.
Yes, it was framed. Sadly, it suffered some major water damage, but that’ll happen to things left leaning up against a basement wall.
Back in my single days, this looked pretty cool on my wall. Of course, three years ago, it was more of an ironic statement than an item promoting a baseball superstar.
Or Typhoon, if you will.
For the life of me, I could never understand why they didn’t sell items (be they posters or name-and-number t-shirts) with the player’s name written in Japanese. Even though he’s no longer a Yankee, I’d still like a Hideki Matsui Yankees name-and-number t-shirt with “松井 秀喜” instead of “Matsui” over the 55. And I have two Irabu t-shirts, but both of them are in English.
Oh well, one can always hope they take that marketing approach with the Yankees’ next Japanese superstar.
Till then, I’ll keep myself amused with other things I find in my basement.
[…] That summer, the city was abuzz over Hideki Irabu, a Japanese pitcher hailed as that nation’s Roger Clemens. Irabu’s NPB team had dealt him to the Padres, but Irabu would only play for one team- the Yankees. He was acquired by the Yankees and expected to be the greatest pitcher ever. Even though he was dominant in his first MLB start against Detroit, the proclaimed superstar stumbled, displaying a bad attitude and all-too hittable stuff. Still, he had great marketing, selling out his first few starts and having a number of t-shirts on sale at the Stadium memorabilia stands (I still have two, although the Irabu poster I owned had to be thrown out due to water damage). […]