Friday, April 17, 2009

Your Attention, Please


First off, I have some announcements to make. If you're all good and sit through these announcements without making a fuss, I may even post some images of baseball cards and the results of baseball card packs that I have purchased.

  • Cards on Cards is using Zistle now. For starters, I've begun with my Jim Edmonds collection (still a work in progress). I'm just trying the site out. It seems to have a lot of promise and it looks like the team behind it have great intentions of doing something really cool (and free) for those who want to stay organized with their cards and potentially end up with some trading partners. Check the link at the sidebar or, better yet, just go and sign up and give it a look.
  • One snide comment I made about Josh Beckett recently touched off some interesting conversation and sparked an inspired post over at Night Owl Cards. To make a long story rather short, I happen to agree with most of what he says. I just don't like to see pitches thrown at people's heads, as I'm sure no one else does, either.
  • I will make my "final" Blazers post here to wrap up the season and possibly talk about the playoffs in the next day or two, hopefully before the first playoff game tips off Saturday night (7:30 PM PDT on ESPN!) I say "final" because I fully intend this blog to be committed to baseball cards, yet I am not sure how I will handle the playoffs quite yet. It's a very exciting time to be a fan of both the Blazers and the Cardinals, that much is for certain. Perhaps I will just PhotoShop Rudy Fernandez's head on a bunch of old Score cards or something.
  • I've mentioned this before and had no takers, so I will mention it one final time. I have some codes from packs that I've purchased this year. Topps Town, Topps Attax (the code cards from the Topps base set) and some Upper Deck wrappers. If anyone out there has any use for this stuff, let me know and I'll e-mail the codes. I'm not sure what sort of value these codes might have for kids who can participate in the web stuff that Topps and UD have lined up.
So, here's what you really came for. I bought a couple of jumbo packs of 2009 Upper Deck at some point this year. I have no idea when or where this happened anymore, to be honest. Let's take a look.

Pack 1:
47 - Curt Schilling (Retired player. He sneaked a card into a 2009 set simply because he waited an entire year to retire, I guess.)
12 - Alex Romero

28 - Casey Kotchman
70 - Ryan Theriot (Did you know his last name spells out "The Riot"? Oh, you did? Is that so? Did you know the Cubs are lame? Think about that for awhile!)
123 - Jeff Francis
186 - Ervin Santana
130 - Gary Sheffield (I hadn't really realized just how many players have changed teams since the end of last year until I started going through these cards.)

193 - Chad Billingsley
465 - Manny Ramirez Season Highlights (A Red Sox card, with a smashed corner to boot.)

SQ-19 - Miguel Cabrera Starquest Common (The Starquest design isn't too bad, I suppose, but I'm not thrilled with the violetish coloring on the "common" cards. I don't know what colors the other versions are.)

479 - Albert Pujols Team Checklist (The Machine)
415 - Conor Gillaspie (RC)
293 - Pedro Feliz
208 - Blake DeWitt (Recently demoted.)
259 - Ivan Rodriguez (Pictured with the Yankees, now with the Astros)
387 - Alex Rios (His HR total went back to where he's normally at - 15 - but he nearly doubled the number of steals last season from past seasons.)
370 - Eric Hinske (Now a Pirate, but not the bad kind.)
380 - Vicente Padilla
5 - Orlando Hudson (A Dodger now)
68 - Ted Lilly
49 - Dustin Pedroia (I still help but feel that Pedroia will go on to be considered the worst player ever to win Rookie of the Year and MVP in consecutive seasons.)
142 - Jeremy Hermida

163 - Mike Aviles (Team Puerto Rico!)
128 - Edgar Renteria (Was a Tiger, now a Giant)
191 - Manny Ramirez
496 - Joe Mauer Team Checklist
412 - Aaron Cunningham (RC)

SQ-3 - Alfonso Soriano Starquest Common (Erin, hide your eyes.)

447 - Rockies Team Leaders (Speaking of guys changing teams, only one of these Rockies stuck around for 2009.)
498 - Jack Cust Team Checklist
242 - Jose Reyes
225 - Denard Span (One of my multi-team fantasy guys this year.)
206 - Chin-Lung Hu
397 - Wily Mo Pena
312 - Jake Peavy

363 - Carlos Pena (Pictured with his Silver Slugger award. I believe he only won in 2007, so perhaps he was presented with the award at the beginning of the 2008 season since he's shown in the newer Rays uniform.)

Pack 2:
1 - Randy Johnson (Randy is pictured with the D-Backs but is now with the Giants.)
64 - Kerry Wood (Cubs ---> Indians)
27 - Tim Hudson
92 - Juan Uribe
194 - Russell Martin

152 - Roy Oswalt (I feel like I've softened up a bit on the Astros in the past couple of years. But this stupid team likes to play dead every season, no matter how much or little talent they have and somehow always catch fire late in the season. It's embarrassing that they caught the Cards last year and I'm hoping that this year, where it seems like they've dropped off talentwise even further, that they won't be a problem for the Cards this season at any point.)
117 - Ubaldo Jimenez
493 - Carlos Quentin Team Checklist
404 - Phil Coke (RC) (When spoken outloud, his name is a verb followed by a noun. I guess my name isn't far from doing that as well.)

SQ-4 - Chipper Jones Starquest Common
485 - Tim Lincecum Team Checklist (According to the back, the poor Giants only have 12 cards in the entire 500 card Series 1 set, including this card and a Team Leaders card.)
424 - Michael Bowden (RC)
265 - Johnny Damon
250 - Johan Santana
267 - Hideki Matsui
365 - Jonny Gomes (Gomes only hit .182 last year. Ouch.)

348 - Adam Wainwright (Wainwright has been fairly shaky so far in 3 starts, but has a 2-0 record to show for it.)
399 - Cristian Guzman
57 - Kevin Youkilis
8 - Eric Byrnes (Ugh.)
71 - Mark DeRosa (Like Wood, a Cleveland player now.)
36 - Daniel Cabrera (Lousy pitcher who still makes 30 starts a year for some reason.)
180 - Jered Weaver
159 - Jose Valverde

103 - Jay Bruce (Oh come on, Reds, you're better than that. I thought this was only a Padres thing.)
166 - Gil Meche
458 - Angels Team Leaders

SQ-11 - Hanley Ramirez Starquest Common

453 - Diamondbacks Team Leaders
462 - Jon Lester Season Highlights (The no-hitter)
233 - Jason Kubel
216 - Corey Hart (Bleh.)
284 - Frank Thomas

382 - Jesse Litsch (The Jays are doing pretty well for themselves so far this season. With Roy Halladay as a teammate, this guy gets overlooked by a lot of people, but he seems to have good numbers on the back of his card.)
364 - Akinori Iwamura
398 - Ronnie Belliard (Quite a character.)

4 comments :

  1. Well, at least the Reds camo uni matches with that dumb Upper Deck gold bar.

    I like the idea of Zistle. I've heard nothing but good things. It just seems like one more thing for me to do right now (especially since I've been in process of cataloguing my cards a different way for awhile now). I just have to get over that.

    ReplyDelete
  2. 1. Feel free to add all the cards Zistle doesn't have listed for my collections. Until that site has the cards I have, it sucks.

    2. You're supposed to always agree with ME ...

    3. How can you soften up about the Astros!? Think of Minute Maid. Geez.

    4. "When spoken outloud, his name is a verb followed by a noun. I guess my name isn't far from doing that as well.)" Your last name is not a noun. It's an adjective with an "s" on the end.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Since Zistle is free, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a certain amount of participation from its users in getting their database bolstered. I know that's probably not your thing, Erin. I want to kind of wait and see where it goes (I think they're still beta testing) before I put a lot more work into it, but I will help you out if you want.

    Biggs (Bigs) is used as a slang term in a noun-like way, like in basketball (referring to post players) or in baseball ("The Bigs"). That's where I was going with that, I guess...

    ReplyDelete
  4. For one, I don't have the capability to add cards I have. I don't have a digital camera OR a fancy schmancy scanner like you.

    There's no way my Anthony Reyes collection will be complete on there unless I add some pictures myself. I think I am the only person in the world that collects Anthony. I am sure there aren't a ton of Yadi collectors, either. Most people aren't cool enough.

    But your name isn't THE Biggs. I didn't know we could add words.

    ReplyDelete

Comments are highly encouraged, but then again, so is eating your fruits and vegetables.