Are You Ready For Some Baseball?

Well, things have been getting a bit football crazy lately, including around this blog, so I'll try to dial it back in and talk about Your Second Place St. Louis Cardinals. Here's a few cards from a package received from Bud of First Day Issue a couple of weeks back. I experienced the expected Pavlovian response to Bud's dangling of a certain Colby Rasmus relic card which was the basis of this particular package (and the fact that the guy sends me amazing stuff all the time.)

Shelby Miller's name was bounced about a bit before the non-waiver trading deadline at the end of July. Miller was the first high school flamethrower the Cardinals have gambled on since I've started paying attention to their drafts, which admittedly hasn't been a gargantuan amount of time. I was glad to see that they chose to hang onto him rather than ship him out like they did to Brett Wallace. Even if Wallace develops into a premium major league player, I'm still okay with the decision to deal him. Apparently, Oakland and Toronto also felt the same way. Meanwhile, this is my first Shelby Miller card, which is nice. (Also, this kid was born in 1990. Wow.)

I'm sure that John Smoltz cards in Cardinals uniforms are like Tony Dorsett cards in 1989, but in that scenario I'm the Broncos fan and I'm keeping this card, even if I never liked the team Smoltz will always be remembered for.

Here's a nice Bowman Heritage rookie card of Mitchell "Don't Call Me Mitch" Boggs. Boggs has settled in to a role as a flame-throwing reliever in the Cardinals pen after his previous role of low-'90s, unspectacular starting pitcher.

I suppose the suspense of saving the best for last is killed a bit when you talk about the centerpiece in the first paragraph of the blog post. I will say that I really like look of the 2010 Allen & Ginter framed cards, even more so than previous years. This is the first time I've been actively interested in pursuing all of the Cardinals framed cards rather than just letting people trade them to me passively. I suppose that even means I need Rich Hill's autographed card, even though he never appeared in a regular season game with the Birds.

Thanks again to Bud, whose Mariners I will likely see in person again before I see my Cardinals. There are no other major league parks within a reasonable driving distance of where I live, after all.