Housekeeping

The offseason has begun in earnest for Cardinals fans like myself. I took a short break from baseball for most of Friday after the incredibly disappointing Game 2 loss, but I got off work early and was able to catch the last 4 innings of the Red Sox/Angels game and felt okay again. Overall, it was a lackluster and pretty disappointing series for the Redbirds, but when I step back and reflect I can accept the result as a fan. Next season, just merely making the playoffs won't be acceptable, however.

And so begins the ritual that is becoming annual of late. This is the time we get to hear about whether or not Tony La Russa will come back for his 383rd season at the helm. Okay, he's not quite in Bobby Cox territory yet, but he's been in St. Louis for a pretty good stretch. There are a lot of things that La Russa does that make my roll my eyes, and even some that infuriate me. I'd have to say, however, that I do hope he comes back. He gets results, and I'm not all that confident that anyone else that could possibly be in consideration (should he decide to walk away) could get the results that he does. Besides, what would Cardinals fans do with their afternoons during the season without a crazy lineup to complain about?

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I've received a fair amount of packages over the past couple of weeks, which is always nice. I'm still trying to play catch-up as I have a whole new batch of things to deal with since I sent out my last round of packages. One of the incoming envelopes wasn't a trade, exactly, but it was my portion of a group break put on by Thorzul Will Rule. I am always interested in group breaks, but my main caveat is that I'm a simple team collector when it comes down to it, so I tend to shy away from anything that is expensive or random. This break was for 2006 Fleer Greats of the Game, and while I didn't get any "hits", I'm pretty happy with the group of base cards and inserts that were sent my way.

This is one of two Ozzie Smith cards that I was able to add to my Ozzie collection. I'm at about 90% complete with cataloging and scanning my Jim Edmonds collection, so I think Ozzie will be the next one that I tackle. I don't think there's any way I'll ever catalog my entire Cardinals collection, so instead I'll just try and focus on the four players that I collect that supercede the Cardinals collection.

Here's the third of three Cardinals-specific inserts that I received. There's maybe a little too much lower border with these, but otherwise they look fine.

I think I like the base cards better, however. I do find it amusing, however, that Lefty is included as a Cardinal here, yet his stats on the back make no reference to his St. Louis career. His numbers start with the '72 Phillies.

Ah, yes, Tommy Herr. There's been rumors about the powder blues coming back in some form next year. Let's just hope that if they do that, they do it right. Nothing annoys me more than grossly inaccurate retro jerseys.

This set has made me realize two things. One, it is really unfortunate that an all-legends style set cannot be done anymore.

And two, not everything that Upper Deck has done with the Fleer line has been dreadful. These cards look really nice.

Is this card colorized? I'm not sure. It looks great, so I guess it doesn't matter. Do Turner networks still show colorized movies?

Oh, well... if I plug my ears and try to remember a time when Tim McCarver was known as a steady veteran catcher and not the ear infection-inducing FOX announcer, maybe I can sleep at night. If there's one silver lining in the uneven coverage that TBS has done in the playoffs so far, it's that they've at least prolonged the time before McCarver takes the air by owning the rights to all of the Divisional Series games.

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Finally, as mentioned above, I'm still in catch-up mode with trades. I'll be sending out packages on Thursday to Roll out the Barrel, reader Noah, Ryan's Memorabilia and Saints of the Cheap Seats. There are a few others that I will be sending stuff to around the first part of next week after I hit the card show this weekend. Please let me know if anyone needs their portion of a trade expedited as I admittedly easily lose track of how long these things take to complete sometimes.