The Triumphant Return of Albert Pujols

As you may be aware, one Jose Alberto Pujols was on a year long banishment from the blog for egregious crimes against the Redbirds... being that he took more money for so-called greener pastures, of course. It's a new year, however, and in sports you can arbitrarily decide how long to hold grudges. I decided that it's time to bury the hatchet - and who am I kidding, anyway? It's not like I stopped collecting Pujols (Cardinals) cards in 2012. I just liked collecting them significantly less than before.

I was a participant in another "O" No!!! Another Orioles Blog group break recently, and we also worked out a trade bait trade between us to complement it. The break itself was decidedly late '90s and early '00s, which is right in my wheelhouse, while the trade bait (including the All-Star manupatch card with the tiny Pujols head) came from more recent years.

The Upper Deck HoloGrFX (did I spell that correctly?) logo looks like something out of a failed video game line. The base cards have that shiny dazzling effect to them that recent cards are starting to draw heavily from again, while this Big Mac insert has a more conventional Upper Deck look to it.

This is a fantastic looking Topps Chrome die cut insert card that my scanner barely attempts to do justice to. And yes, once again it's a Big Mac card. Did you know that 1 out of every 1.7 Cardinals cards from 1997-2000 are Mark McGwire cards? I totally did not make that statistic up. (I totally did.)

It's Josh Kinney, the long lost lefty reliever from the Cardinals 2006 World Series championship team. He resurfaced with the Mariners recently, which was nice to see.

Taking a glance at his minor league stats, Todd McInnis has only completed his second season as a pro, but he's 24 and hasn't progressed past A-ball. We'll see what this year brings.

Finally, here's another nice little auto. Joe Mather has made a couple of major league stops since he first showed up as a Cardinal in 2008. I'll forever remember him for being constantly mispronounced by opposing teams' broadcasters. MATH-er indeed. (It should use the sound you would make for the word "the".)