Check out these cartoon drawings of Wily Mo Pena playing baseball in Japan

New Yorker cartoonist Edward Steed spent this past summer in Japan and, like any good tourist, he spent much of his time viewing one of the country's greatest treasures: Baseball. While attending pro and amateur games, Steed filled his sketchbook with some wonderful drawings (you can view them on the magazine's website), including an under-pressure illustration of former MLBer and current Hiroshima Carp pitcher Hiroki Kuroda:

And depicting just how vast and lonely the outfield can seem sometimes:

But if you scroll about midway down the article, you'll come across the Orix Buffaloes-Rakuten Golden Eagles NPB game and a pitcher vs. batter compilation. You might not recognize the batter at first, but things should get more and more clear as the sequence progresses. From this:

To this:

Yes, that is the beautifully-bearded No. 42 on the Rakuten Golden Eagles. That is Wily Mo Pena:

According to the Japan Times, Pena had a game-tying single and go-ahead double in that Aug. 1 matchup. Hopefully a Wily Mo Pena Japanese animated series gets launched via these drawings very soon.

Check out more from Steed's trip to Japan here.