Let's Talk Jaime

It's like he signed a metallic Band-Aid.

Jaime Garcia had two brilliant seasons and has very respectable career totals. But when he should be entering his peak years, he's sidelined yet again with scary shoulder injuries and giving scary quotes about his surgically repaired shoulder. Being disappointed by a budding star's career threatening injuries isn't something that's uniquely a baseball thing, but it still seems to happen to MLB pitchers more than other pro athletes.

It sucks. The Cardinals have not had a lasting prominent left handed starter since, I don't know, John Tudor? Actually, despite his phenomenal seasons with St. Louis, he wasn't able to put in enough years to get any jersey retirement proceedings going. Maybe this is The Curse of The Tudor? In recent years, the Cards have had huge difficulties batting against lefty starters as well. I can't explain it. I hope Jaime comes back and can contribute this season, but I'm not holding my breath. Poor Mark Mulder probably isn't holding his breath, either.

Once again, Howard sent over some more cards to me recently, and I thought I'd show off some of the oversized gems that were sent my way. I am a big fan of lenticular cards, and he sent over a few McGwire prints from MLB that capture a moment in sports history that you can basically play back and forth with your own two hands.

Truthfully, I really wanted to scan these photo things just to see what my scanner would do with them. They don't look half bad. This is McGwire's record breaking HR that I also have immortalized on an extremely thick standard sized card with a Kodak logo on it. I didn't collect during these years so I am a complete novice when it comes to the HR Chase Era and how it played out with sports memorabilia.

Here's one for Erin's collection, a Tulo box topper from the 2011 Topps Lineage set. I didn't know these things existed.