Ginter Madness, Part Two

Feeling hoodwinked yet? I'm like one of those guys that registers the domain name wikkipedia.org and fills a website up with pop-up ads, malware and flashing large fonts full of text to promote some personal agenda.

I stalled at 11 (base) cards short of a complete set of 2008 A&G. I am still holding out hope of completing this set before too long, but right now I'm actually interested in buying the occasional marked down pack or two to see if I can get anything cool out of the inserts. Here's two retail packs I bought for $2 a pop:

Pack 1:

192 - Yunel Escobar (Escobar has been in and out of my fantasy lineups throughout his career.)

220 - Eric Bedard (The only card I remember getting out of my very first A&G Pack, last summer, was Bedard's mini card. That might have been what hooked me. I bought the pack with a lot of skepticism, usually being hesitant to fork over $3 for just 6 cards.)

319 - Jason Giambi (An SP, but I already have it. I'm actually missing 9 SPs and two plain old base cards.)

BI16 - Rogers Hornsby Mini Baseball Icons (Here we go! This was one of my most coveted inserts, and now it's all mine. I hope there are more old Cardinals in this year's lot, but I haven't scrutinized the checklist yet.)

US13 - Curtis Granderson US Flag (According to stuff that I have read on the internet, the common inserts this year are not thick cards like these flag cards. I heard some gripes about Granderson making the all-star team, but he's a pretty good player in my opinion.)

- Checklist Four of Four

83 - Masahide Kobayashi (RC)

137 - Annie Oakley

Pack 2:

155 - Troy Tulowitzki (It's nice to see Tulo finally start to rebound at the plate.)

222 - Jeremy Bonderman (He could be Brad Thompson's older brother.)

17 - Kenji Johjima (This is one of my least favorite looking cards in the entire set. It looks like someone took an eraser or wet rag to a perfectly good Johjima portrait.)

267 - Andrew Miller

T01 - Cornelius Franks Mini Team Orange (Ahh, this is the first one of these that I've pulled. The whole Team Orange thing is incredibly silly and useless, but it's something I didn't have before so it still goes down as a plus.)

19 - Albert Einstein

If you have any of the remaining 11 base cards I need for the set, or any other extra inserts (besides the flag cards) that you want to get rid of, please let me know. Hopefully the 2009 stuff will hit retail stores by next weekend. I'm sure I can't count on any local card shops having reasonable prices.

Ginter Madness

Everyone is posting about their precious shiny new Allen & Ginter stuff right now. Everyone! So I may have lured you here under false pretenses, but it will probably be another week or two before I'll be able to buy any of the new stuff. Here's a 2007 pack I bought at a card show awhile back instead.

221 - Tony Gwynn Jr. (The former Brewer is now the Padres center fielder. I'm guessing we'll see him in Portland at some point.)

258 - A.J. Pierzynski

263 - Jim Edmonds (Nice! Apparently this is an SP. I guess they didn't follow the SP card numbering scheme of the 2008 set back then.)

334 - Gustavo Molina Mini (Ahh... poor guy. I'm sure he is constantly reminded that he is not related to the Catching Molina Brothers, yet he is clearly a Molina who catches for a living. He hasn't quite reached the level attained by those brothers.)

- Checklist Two of Two

265 - Roy Halladay (Would you give up your entire farm system for this guy? It'd have to be pretty tempting.)

195 - Mike Piazza (Future Hall of Famer here.)

If you don't end up egging my house... blog... whatever for misleading you, then maybe I'll post another (not 2009) A&G pack here soon while I bide my time before I can afford more cards.

Part of This Complete Breakfast

At some point I will either stop buying Topps cereal boxes or I will run out of silly breakfast-related blog post titles. In any case, I bought a box of this stuff, Series 2 style, and have chosen this moment to reveal its contents. I haven't bought any cards in awhile, mostly due to budget constraints, so I can't remember exactly when I purchased this. My primary memories of the day involved delicious tacos made with handmade tortillas purchased from a cart on SE 82nd & Holgate.

As usual, in Series 2 there is one legendary refractor of a legendary player or some such thing. Unfortunately, they used some of the same players they used in Series 1 and I now have two different Cy Young cards and no shiny Cardinals.

Here's the rest of the box:

388 - Humberto Quintero

622 - Kurt Suzuki

535 - Ryan Doumit (Three catchers in a row to start things off.)

611 - Jeremy Hermida

652 - Doug Davis

360 - Jorge Posada (One leg at a time...)

393 - Alex Cintron

360 - Nick Markakis

538 - Carlos Guillen (According to the back of his card, Guillen just owns Esteban Loaiza. Frankly, though, who doesn't?)

512 - Steve Pearce (Pearce is finally get a serious shot at the majors this season at age 26.)

458 - Jeremy Bonderman

435 - Carlos Lee

392 - Brandon Phillips (I have it on good word that Phillips walks up to the plate to "Turn My Swag On" by Soulja Boy.)

347 - Jason Bartlett

501 - Jeff Suppan (Suppan faces the Cardinals later today. He has a 7-3 record against his former team and has turned in some pretty frustrating/dominant performances. Hopefully the Hitting Cards show up.)

404 - Matt Capps

473 - Jered Weaver (Do you still think that Jeff Weaver causes more eye-strain of the two brothers?)

457 - John Maine

405 - Todd Helton

343 - Ian Snell

380 - Aramis Ramirez (I'm hoping his return from the DL won't spark some sort of Cubs rally within the division.)

428 - Jamie Moyer (A magnifying glass is recommended if you want to read his stats on the back.)

547 - Jack Cust (Cust is a pretty unique player. He walked as many times as he recorded a hit last season - 111. He struck out 197 times and only hit .231, yet had a pretty decent OPS because of all of the walks.)

602 - Carlos Gomez

620 - Ryan Zimmerman

346 - Mike Cameron (Cameron struck out 1642 times going into this season.)

BCS20 - Bernie Williams World Baseball Classic (Bernie is one of my all-time favorite Yankees. I was pretty excited to see him play in the WBC, though he didn't get a ton of playing time.)

LG-FT - Frank Thomas Legends of the Game (I realize Topps is trying to add more contemporary players to the "Legends" mix, but I think I enjoy getting retired Hall of Famers in this insert set more... unless it's Pujols, of course.)

TR100 - Honus Wagner Turkey Red (So this is something like 3 down and 47 to go with these Turkey Red inserts from Series 2. It seems like the coating on this card is shinier than usual. Well, at least I didn't get a third Jay Bruce card.)

TTT47 - Carlos Beltran Topps Town

470 - Lance Berkman (Speaking of coating, I feel like the Series 2 regular cards have less UV gloss than usual. I read somewhere that someone felt they almost had a blueish tint to them, but I am not seeing that. I do think that they skimped on the UV coating and went for a budget style or something.)

456 - Jason Kendall (This is becoming a Brewer-heavy box.)

365 - Mark Buehrle

356 - Ervin Santana

382 - Wily Mo Pena

424 - Jorge Campillo (I'm trying to think of something to say about Campillo, but all I can think of is that I had no idea he used to be a Mariner.)

498 - Kyle Davies

556 - Brendan Ryan (I'm pretty surprised that Ryan has become the primary SS for the Cards in 2009. He's probably played the best infield defense on the team, gold glovers inclusive.)

653 - Nick Evans

333 - Jeremy Sowers / Aaron Laffey Chief Lefties

396 - Alex Cora

477 - Josh Willingham

579 - Rocco Baldelli

387 - Adam Everett

658 - Rick Porcello (RC)

486 - J.J. Putz (Something tells me that I should have cashed in on the bargain rack Putz Mariners shirts last winter.)

474 - Franklin Guiterrez (I was trying to think of something interesting to say about Gutierrez when I looked at the back of his card...)

Well, I'm pretty sure his name is not Jose. Gutierrez is a Seattle outfielder, so I'm guessing his "niche in history" is actually Jose Lopez's. I would try to do some research on this card to find out of it's some crazy rare error card, but I'm pretty sure that card companies these days do not correct any errors with their cards. They only seem to "correct" their intentional gimmicky errors.

613 - Kendry Morales

642 - Ken Macha (Ha, ha, ha! The Brewers lost last night. You can stop laughing now!)

543 - Travis Ishikawa

367 - Bobby Abreu

644 - Alfredo Aceves (RC)

660 - Jacoby Ellsbury

361 - Alex Rios / Vernon Wells Power Jays (Erin tells me that Vernon Wells has a case of the suck this year, because apparently he is doing a disservice to her fantasy team.)

555 - Joe Girardi

Happy 4th

Nothing says "Hooray for America!" more than this card.

Happy 4th, everyone.

How Topps Defeated Upper Deck in 2009: Exhibit A

I threw my wantlist into the ring awhile back and Scott from Hand Collated sent over a few 2009 Cardinals that I needed, including my first "rookie cards" of NL ROY candidate Colby Rasmus. For some reason, Upper Deck chose a cheesy spring training "signing autographs for the fans" shot for their first look at Colby. It's a strange choice, if you ask me, because this seems to be sort of a cliche photo choice usually reserved for superstar players. At this point, Rasmus had yet to appear in a counting major league game.

I think the Topps card is perfect, however. I'm admittedly a sucker for the photos where you can see the ball suspended in mid-air. This card just looks great, though. I like that you can see the coach observing his young prodigal player in the background. Colby seems a little different than a lot of young players. He did not walk once in the entire month of June and claims that he isn't interested in walking, only hitting. I am also not impressed with his arm, having seen him hit the pitcher's mound at least twice now with a throw from the outfield. But he does have a lot of talent and he did hit the big walkoff HR in Wednesday night's game. I will be rooting for him, of course, because he's a Cardinal.

I also picked up my first two Ring of Honor cards in the trade. These apparently are hobby-only inserts, which would explain why I was lacking in that department. I don't think I like the design, but anything honoring the World Series Champion Cardinals is alright in my book.

Of course, I'm not sure how this would constitute a trade if I don't actually send something back in return. Oops. I'll be poring over the want lists and will have something in the mail soon, I promise.

Level I - I Am a Winner

With the Cardinals back on the winning side of things, I figured it was time for a winning blog entry. I can't say I've won a ton of things in my life, but I did manage to win a blogger's hockey cards contest and I can take that to my grave! I think my biggest advantage was probably that I know very little about hockey, so instead of utilizing my tendency to completely overthink everything, I just went with some fearless gut feeling predictions and let it fly. The hockey cards looked amazing as advertised, by the way, though they are now in the hands of someone who appreciates the sport more than I. I recently received the goods and Captain Canuck was kind enough to throw in a few Cardinals cards along with the prize and a 1991 O-Pee-Chee Premier Baseball pack. I'll save the pack for another day, but here are some of the Cards cards that are brand new to my collection.

Rhett Parrott will make a good candidate for a sequel to my Who Are These Guys? post. I'm not overly fond of the 2002 Bowman design, but I know that I don't have many cards from this set yet.

I haven't exactly chased the rainbow, but I'm getting closer to owning all of the charcoal (retail only) parallel cards from the 2008 Upper Deck Baseball Heroes set. I liked the set, though I have tons and tons of doubles from the base set now. I'm guessing that this set isn't making a return appearance in 2009.

I really, really dislike slanted designs. There's no reason for it!

And here I thought Donruss didn't have a Major League Baseball license. It's no wonder that Donruss got in some trouble for their unlicensed baseball products. This is a far cry from the airbrushing days where everyone wore a solid colored cap and had nary a trace of any team logos on their uniforms. Oddly enough, I never think of Eck as Cardinal when I look back on his career. This is now the second Eckersley "legends" style card I own where he's pictured in a St. Louis uniform when I'd fully expect him to be pictured with Oakland.

Make sure you check out Waxaholic, where among other things you can read about Ghostbusters 2...

I'm Angry at Baseball

I'm getting really tired of the Cardinals losing. The NL Central seems to have reverted to its pre-2008 levels of total mediocrity and yet the Cards have been completely unable to capitalize. It looked like the team had finally conquered its fear of scoring runs (krosdaplaetophobia) when they absolutely crushed the Royals the weekend before last. Perhaps, non-coincidentally, I left town right around that time and missed that entire series only to come back to the same anemic offense that had been struggling before I took off. Last night, Albert Pujols provided three runs for the team, but Chris Carpenter unfortunately picked the wrong night to have his worst start of the season.

Anyway, to make a long story short, I'm ticked off. When I get ticked off, I decide to post really bad packs in lieu of something that I can be a little more rosy about. I think someday I might buy a whole box of 1986 Topps, because there's nothing quite like actual wax pack wrappers and 1986 was the first year I started collecting. I know that the set is bad, and there really aren't even any decent cards in the set. It's stuck between the bumper crop of rookies from 1983 through 1985 (Sandberg, Mattingly, Puckett...) and the late '80s rookie class (Glavine, Smoltz, Biggio, Randy Johnson...)

Ah!! Curse Randy Johnson!! He wasn't all that great last night, but he got the job done and St. Louis has now lost yet another game to the Giants. Alright, here's the cards...

415 - Hal McRae (Complete with wax stain on the front that's probably invisible in the scan. Hal is the current Cardinals hitting coach. Maybe he is to blame!)

326 - Kent Tekulve (Great specs and great uniform. There's really nothing not to love about this card.)

726 - Orioles Leaders (Featuring Rick Dempsey, "Co-Dean of the Orioles", providing "Continuous Service Since: June 15, 1976". I didn't quite understand this language when I was still 10 and starting to collect this stuff.)

106 - Ray Burris (I have no idea who this guy is, but it's a cool picture.)

372 - Ben Oglivie (I'm gettin' over Oglivie! I wanted to link a relevant Ovaltine commercial on youtube or something here, but I failed to find one.)

716 - Rickey Henderson All-Star (Rickey Henderson finished 4th in the AL in OBP in 1985 behind the illustrious Toby Harrah.)

41 - Brad Wellman

426 - Brewers Leaders (Featuring Dean Charlie Moore)

- "Spring Fever Baseball"

586 - Greg Harris

287 - John Christensen

231 - Jim Frey (I have no recollection of this guy being a manager of anything, much less the Cubs.)

23 - Manny Lee

728 - Mike Marshall

363 - Terry Forster (Forster was notoriously referred to on air as a "fat tub of goo" by David Letterman at some point in the mid-'80s and went on to finish his professional career as a Portland Beaver in 1987. The Twins won the World Series that year, but Forster was never called up.)

249 - Rob Deer (I always think of Rob Deer whenever Adam Dunn is brought up. I'm not sure the comparisons are fair, though. Adam Dunn, as much as I dislike low-average/high-strikeout guys does at least draw his fair share of bases on balls.)

Here's Deer, complete with gum stain. I don't remember packs back then having wax stains on the fronts of cards and gum on the back. I'm sure the gum made its imprint over time because of the long wait before it was opened, but the wax being affixed to the front of a card instead of the back is interesting. Perhaps the pack was resealed, or maybe it wasn't. I'm not sure what sort of golden ticket would ever be waiting inside a pack of this stuff. Wax coated card fronts just seemed to be more of an early-'80s (and before) thing to me if I remember correctly.

Hopefully tomorrow will bring more cheer in the baseball department. I did mail off about a half dozen packages today, so at least that's good news.