Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Pants! And More

I'm almost completely caught up with trades, both incoming and outgoing, which is a nice feeling. Another nice feeling? How about that satisfying win the Blazers got over the 'Heatles' tonight? I know, I know... everyone is beating that team, lately. After taking a step back and trying to look at both matchups with Miami objectively this season, however, I can definitely say that the Blazers are a good match for them and should probably even beat them in a series. Of course, we're a long way from either team making it to the NBA Finals, so it's probably best to table that discussion for now.

Having to do with nothing is this wonderful package of Cardinals cards sent my way from the venerable Lonestarr of Behind These Hazel Eyes. He really likes the Chicago Cubs, which means that I'm certain he didn't shed any tears over kicking some Cardinals cards to the curb. I'm always excited about getting the Target and Wal-Mart exclusive parallel cards because they're really hard to find. I have far more gold parallel cards than these things.

Oooh... Jason Marquis. I guess this is what scraping the bottom of the barrel feels like. Why am I even bothering with this card? Well, the short answer is that it's the very last Cardinals base card in the sizable 2007 Upper Deck set that I needed. Let's have a party!

It still hasn't sunk in that Ryan Ludwick is gone.

This is just a reminder to myself and all of you that I need to pay more attention to non-Cardinals Jim Edmonds releases. His run with the Padres was very brief, but I think there were a fair number of cards out there to represent it.

I know a lot of people like this Obak stuff, but it feels really... cheap... to me. And not the good kind of cheap.

As much as I am a fan of the 2003 Topps set, the Opening Day counterparts are not that great looking to me. The color is weird. I think that set would have worked a lot better with a black or red border, for example. That being said, each pack came with a slightly smaller sized sweepstakes card and this is my first Cardinals example. I'm not sure what other players were part of this.

This one was really exciting for me, although it would probably leave a lot of people scratching their heads. Why? I had heard a lot about the Upper Deck "40-Man" set, which seemed to be an even more ambitious version of Topps Total: cards of just about everybody on a tight budget. Great idea, right? What makes this even better is that I don't think there are a ton of Mike Timlin cards in a St. Louis uniform floating around. I wonder if I could ever find packs or boxes of this.

Well, this was certainly a surprise. I flipped over one of these Counterparts cards (Shane Reynolds on the flip side) to find an Andy Benes on-card auto. Usually when I flip over slightly unpleasant things I tend to find something even more unpleasant, so this turned out pretty awesome for me.

Things are getting good, now! Here's a card in the underappreciated 2007 Allen & Ginter frame, containing a piece of game used "not from any specific game or season" relic of hard luck pitcher Mark Mulder. Wait a second... is that... pants? IT IS PANTS! MARK MULDER PANTS!! AHHHHH!!!!!

Finally, here's an interesting card from 10 years ago of a couple of flamethrowing pitchers living completely different baseball lives now. The little bat pieces are slightly smaller than the size of a dime, which is interesting and kind of cute at the same time. Kerry Wood is back with the Cubs now and probably has a pretty solid place in their bullpen locked up, while Rick Ankiel became the batter he was depicted as on this card. He's on the Nationals roster now. Let's hope they at least spell his name right on the uniform.

3 comments :

  1. I traded that Wood/Ankiel card to someone back when I first started....I don't remember who it was though.

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  2. I saw Ankiel wearing a red uniform playing against the Mets yesterday. For a whole inning I thought the Mets were playing the Cardinals.

    Baseball moves too fast for my brain.

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  3. Haha, glad you liked. The auto came from the GSNHoF that he himself won from a contest from another blogger. The bat card came as an extra in a group break. And the pants card... I have no idea how I ended up with that one, lol.

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