Back in the swing of things.
More so than other sports I pay some attention to, baseball seems to have this cyclical nature about it. Maybe it's because the different seasons signify different stages of baseball life (spring training, fall classic, summer being everything else.) Maybe it's the average fan's belief that things have a way of resetting themselves as their stats reset at the beginning of the season. Maybe this is the year Grady Sizemore doesn't get seriously injured. Maybe Michael Pineda returns to All-Star form. Maybe the Cubs... something something.
I enjoyed the onslaught of baseball on Monday afternoon and I'm back to posting about baseball cards, not that I ever left. I received a bunch of cards from Royals fan Doug back in February, which seems like ages ago. I occasionally run into a Royals fan in my daily goingsabout (goingabouts?) and he always seems really eager to talk about baseball this time of year. The Royals were a sworn enemy of mine back in the Bret Saberhagen days thanks to a certain controversial World Series, but now they are an underdog that I want to see succeed. I'm even feeling the same way about the Astros these days, even though my terrible visits to Minute Maid Park are still fresh in my mind.
Here's a short printed card of Rajah. This was a one-and-done set from Topps, which reminds me of something...
Gypsy Queen has been around for three years now. I am guessing that it's on the release calendar for 2014 as well. What is it about Gypsy Queen that has contributed to its (relative) longevity? I pretty much ignored the 2013 release, which makes cards like this a welcome surprise to me.
I'm hoping Pujols has a rebound season this year. I'm over the bitterness. I got over that pretty quickly. I'll never be a huge Pujols collector, but I have to respect the amazing decade of amazingness that he was responsible for. I'll never get excited about his cards the way I might have in the past, but it was nice to see a Cardinals Pujols card in 2014.
Shelby will get the call to the mound on Friday as the 4th starter in this year's rotation, and I'm pretty excited about it. It feels like it's been forever since he pitched, as he was put on double secret probation and more or less was shelved during the playoffs. It wouldn't be shocking to see him outpitch last fall's darling Michael Wacha this year, but I'm not going to count on anything either way.
I really like Gypsy Queen for their on-card autographs and their cool insert sets (Moonshots, Sliding Stars, Dealing Aces, Collisions at the Plate). But if I were Topps I might make this a every other year product and flip flop it with something like Archives, Chicle, or Turkey Red. That way they're not over flooding the market with too many cards to collect and by taking a year off, maybe it'll stimulate more demand for the product.
ReplyDelete