Summertime in the Shopping Aisle

You know it's the heart of summer when, just like an old friend, Allen & Ginter has returned to retail shelves.

Wait... that didn't make any sense? I guess I should spend some more time looking at vintage cigarette ads. At any rate, I was prepared to buy my first blaster of the year on Saturday, but Target only had jumbo packs. The packs looked like they had been picked through like a display of fruit at the grocery store, but I selected two packs to purchase anyway. In fact, none of the packs were even on the rack anymore, but they were laying in a heap as someone had probably already made off with the packs containing the framed cards. Here are two frame-free packs instead.

Pack 1:

179 - Ben Zobrist (Like a number of players in the so-called Year of the Pitcher, Zobrist has experienced a serious decline at the plate this year.)

242 - Jules Verne (If Jules Verne was a baseball player, what position would he play? I'm going to say backup catcher.)

149 - Ichiro Suzuki (Token Ichiro card.)

106 - Dustin Pedroia

46 - Chad Billingsley

93 - Brandon Inge

39 - Josh Johnson (Great pitcher, boring name.)

100 - Matt LaPorta

285 - Alex Rodriguez (A-Rod must be amused with all of the LeBron James backlash. At least, he's probably glad that's not him under the microscope anymore.)

315 - Bobby Abreu (If the past couple of sets are any indication, this must be a short print. I like A&G short prints a lot better than Heritage short prints, because they seem like they're not so impossible to pull.)

74 - Ryan Ludwick Mini A&G Back (First Cardinal! Ludwick has surely had a lot of lousy injury luck in his career. Hopefully he will be back before too long, but in the meantime the Cardinals have gotten a long look at some of the younger outfielders with some success.)

TDH7 - Jason Heyward This Day in History (This is my first Heyward card. The jury is still out on this guy.)

Pack 2:

193 - Hoard & Rory (Disc Dog Champion! Why do I get the feeling my girlfriend is going to adore this card?)

229 - Franklin Gutierrez (The mere fact that Gutierrez has batting third on numerous occasions for the Mariners is really telling about what kind of offense they have.)

200 - Lance Berkman

138 - Javier Vazquez

182 - Chris Carpenter (Carp! People were ready to write him off after just two lousy starts, but he went out and threw a great game Thursday night.)

298 - Jorge Cantu

120 - Nick Swisher (Proof that there wasn't much thought put into the Home Run Derby selection process this year.)

15 - Carlos Quentin

247 - Rajai Davis

127 - Albert Pujols (Maybe this really is an example of Topps being lazy, but Pujols does go into this crouch something like 100 times a game. Then again, that doesn't mean that they need to use that shot all of the time.)

MM21 - Bambiraptor Monsters of the Mesozoic (Bambiraptor! Aw... it's so... cute? I must have this entire set.)

TDH73 - Ian Kinsler This Day in History (What do Ian Kinsler and Galileo have in common? This baseball card, apparently.)