Reader Scott's Challenge

New features (and a return of an old feature) are coming soon, but first I have some clean up work to do as well as some catching up on trades. One such trade came in the form of a box comprised of two smaller boxes of baseball cards, simultaneously plaguing my household with scads of airbrushed goofballs and gracing it with much needed wants from the big want list. Due in part, I'm assuming, to my inclusion of a standard boiler plate/disclaimer to all of my Airbrushed Fridays posts where I end up practically begging the reader for suggestions and submissions, I ended up with a big stack of future material. This is still good in the sense that I can be much lazier when choosing a subject for these posts, but I now feel like I have been challenged to step my game up.

First off, though, let's take a look at a few choice cards from the want list. I love the idea of this card, highlighting Albert's three MVP awards, but he's been going with the bald look for quite a long time. Maybe this is supposed to be a throwback to 2005?

I think dayf likes this guy. I wonder if he needs this card. (He's not getting it.) He's been known to buy entire boxes just for certain Braves prospects, though.

The 2010 Heritage stack was huge, but there were also some much needed 2007 Bowman Heritage cards thrown in, including a card of the 2009 NL ROY from the Prospects sideset. Sideset? Well, it's not a subset, and it doesn't really stand on its own because you couldn't buy packets of just Bowman Heritage Prospects. It doesn't feel like an insert set, either, when you get 2 in every pack. I'm calling it a sideset.

Blame Felipe Lopez all you want for all of the Cardinals ills of late and... well, okay, I will. I was heavily in favor of the spring signing as Lopez was to provide versatility and depth, and for a time he was doing just that. However, in the face of adversity and injuries to key players (i.e. David Freese), giving Lopez an expanded role has proven to be a really horrible idea. He's stuck in some sort of blender of suck/indifference/injury right now that seems to be plaguing the entire locker room. They tried to get rid of it by going to a Glenn Beck sponsored rally (okay, that was just La Russa and the evil twin of Albert Pujols) and they tried shaving their heads, but it seems like nothing short of the Reds coming to town is going to snap them out of this funk. At least I can say that this is my first non-team issued Lopez card in a Cardinals uniform. Wait... what's that you say? The Reds ARE coming to town? Hooray! (Too bad they have a 45 game lead in the division now.)

Speaking of better things, has there been a better rookie in the National League than Jaime Garcia? Who saw that coming? Okay, okay, some other guy that dayf can't stop posting about probably has a better shot at winning just by name recognition alone, but Jaime has been extremely difficult to score against this season. Hopefully, next season, he can concentrate on staying in games longer by keeping his pitch counts down - something most young pitchers struggle with. This card was one of the healthy stack of random Cards cards that I received.

Green Pujols parallel. Enough said.

Here's one of the '70s freakout cards. My scanner decided to also have a freakout and cut off the top border. Once upon a time in my life, this card would have been considered a Jamie Quirk rookie card, but I wonder what the rest of the guys would say about it. This gets filed under C for Cruz in my book.

I figured I'd give you all a taste of the airbrushed madness here. Goose's uniform seems more like a concept than an actual physical item. Nothing but the pitching mound dirt looks anything like a photo here.

And finally, I figured that I may as well start things where I began, and that's with another team card (whose border was also eaten by the scanner.) The 1973 Cardinals finished an even 81-81 on the season. Let's hope that the 2010 club does not suffer a similar fate.