This week's entry is (now former) Giants 2 gun outfielder Takahiro Kakizawa, who was released over the weekend after it was discovered that he had committed 110 acts of theft against his fellow Giants team mates.
It seems Kakizawa had started a side gig which involved stealing gloves, bats and other things from Giants players and selling them to a couple of stores in Tokyo, netting about a million Yen.
The scam was busted up when Giants players started noticing their stuff appearing for sale on line, and someone had a look at the security camera footage and found Kakizawa hauling said stuff out of the locker room.
Kakizawa was drafted by the Eagles and traded to the Giants in 2016, though it should be noted he has never played (and now never will play) a game at the Ichi gun level. Apparently he needed the money to pay off some debts, which I guess would explain the extraordinary stupidity of ruining a career for, relative to the potential earnings from even just playing part of a single season at the Ichi Gun level, a crime with such a low payoff.
I don't own the card at the top of this post, put out by BBM in 2013 (the image is from an online auction) and I don't think Kakizawa has many. I should also mention that his cards may not fall perfectly into the crime committing subset genre depending on how you define it. Theft is definitely a crime, but the article doesn't actually say he was arrested, merely that he was fired after the Giants own investigation. Whether he faces criminal charges is a separate issue that doesn't seem to have been decided yet! Given the pathetic nature of the crime and the fact that his career is over at such a young age I would be inclined to say he has already been adequately punished.
That is pretty bold of him. I wonder if there are any repercussions with the shop that bought the stuff. Did it say which shop it was? I like the idea of this series, although I hope that it is short lived and that there aren't many criminals in Japanese baseball.
ReplyDeleteI'm not too sure if the shops will face criminal charges. Selling stolen goods is definitely a crime, unless they were bona fide purchasers in good faith, which I don't think they could argue was the case, so they are definitely open to getting into trouble!
DeleteI'm hoping it won't be a particularly busy series, though two posts in a month so far suggests it might be!
Kakizawa doesn't have many cards - about eight that I can count (besides autographed cards like you're showing here). Half of them are BBM team sets - 2013 & 2014 Eagles and 2017 & 2018 Giants (he was an the ikusei squad in 2015 and half of 2016 so he wasn't in the Eagles team sets those years). The others are BBM's Rookie Edition and 1st Version sets in 2013 and Eagles team issues in 2015 & 2016. He might be in a couple other Eagles team issues.
ReplyDeleteMan, between him and Shota Ohmine people are coming up with inventive ways to pay off debt. This one seems to make more sense than quitting your high paying job while having no usable skills but only if you don't get caught.
Eight cards is still a lot for a guy who never played a game at the ichi gun level! Good job tracking those down!
DeleteYeah, this does at least make more sense on its face that Ohmine's weird retirement. Perhaps they'll both end up working at the same Uniqlo register or something like that.