30 Teams in 30 Posts: #2

It's really simple why the New York Yankees are my second favorite team in all of baseball. My father was a Yankees fan, and so was his father. I don't know where the Yankees history goes in my family beyond that, but it's there and when I was a little kid I was a Yankees fan, too.

I had a Graig Nettles glove when I played little league. I had a Yankees mesh cap as well as a novelty plastic batting helmet. I liked Righetti, Guidry and Mattingly. Reggie Jackson donned the pinstripes, or so I heard, and so did Rickey Henderson. At some point, though, I decided I needed to be my own person and pick my own team. That's about when I started my best friend's favorite team instead of the Yankees.

For these posts, I usually end up digging through boxes of inserts and other cards to come up with 5 or so cards to post. I was barely able to stop at 19 images in this post, and that just represents a small portion of all of the Yankees crud that I have to trade.

Favorite current Yankees player: Mariano Rivera. Hands down, the best closer of all-time. I'm afraid to admit that I did enjoy the Yankees run from 1996-2000 quite a bit. The "A-Rod Years" haven't really been as fun to watch.

Remember these? I have a handful of Yankee Stadium Legacy cards to get rid of, provided that anyone is still trying to put this set together 4 years after it infiltrated all of the Upper Deck products.

Least favorite current Yankees player: Alex Rodriguez. A-Rod is just hard to root for. It's not even about the money with me, really. He just seems like a pretty unlikable person. There's also the whole PED thing to consider...

Not pictured: the rest of the card that my scanner doesn't want you to see.

Wait, how did Jerry Hairston Jr. get in here?

I have so many modern Mickey Mantle cards, it's ridiculous. Topps has pretty much bled this guy dry, taken his blood, and squeezed the juice out of that blood. Well, something like that, anyway.

I collect all things Heritage, but when it comes to mindless, identical Mickey Mantle Home Run inserts... no thanks. I've traded off a few in the past and I still have something like 5 more. Don't get me started on all of the other inserts, home run or otherwise. I have lots of those. Lots!

I do think this is a nice looking card, however. Like the Bobby Abreu at the top of this post, it's a refractor. You can't always tell with scans.

Curtis Granderson is a timeless talent? Seriously? We can confidently say that in 2012, Granderson is a talent that could excel in any era? With all apologies to The Grandy Man, I am having some difficulty with this one. He's a good player, sure, and he may even be a great someday. Oh well, at least it's not Joba Chamberlain.

Favorite Yankees player of all-time: Don Mattingly. The shining beacon of an otherwise dreary period of Yankees baseball was Don Mattingly. He was probably overrated. His statistics as a whole aren't really that impressive. But he was Yankees baseball in the '80s and I liked Yankees baseball in the '80s.

It was also pretty awesome when he was given the mandate to cut his hair, for fear that he would turn the rest of the team into a bunch of dirty hippies or something.

If you're interested in this card, I should warn that it doesn't have sharp corners and has a little bit of a crease in it. It's gin-u-wine vintage, though.

I almost went with Reggie for favorite Yankee for calling out A-Rod on his PED-enhanced numbers, but when I was really getting into baseball he played for the Angels.

Least favorite Yankees player of all-time: Roger Clemens. A ha! Someone even more despicable than A-Rod. Once again, here's someone who diminished an other-worldly career by cheating.

And yet, there are more cards to show. This isn't one of those thick die-cut cards that were given away by the code machine last season. It was a Target exclusive insert from Series 1.

This was another gimmicky insert. It was one of three cards you could pull from a value pack of some sort.

There's one team left, and I'm afraid it's not the Seattle Pilots.

The New York Yankees parade around at #2 in my reverse-ranking of favorite teams as of the moment I picked them a long, long time ago on October 4th, 2010. All of these cards are very much up for trade, so please contact me if you're interested.