Ouch!

Injuries are taking their toll.

As the saga of the long season continues, it seems like trainers and medical staff are making more on field appearances than the manager at this point. Yadier Molina, far and away the most valuable player of the team, became the latest to go down with a significant injury last night. He'll be out until late in the season with a torn ligament in his thumb. As someone who is extremely adept at handling the pitchers, playing defense and finding places on the field to put the baseball with his bat, he will be sorely missed. You could probably split the guy into three and have three extremely useful players. Opponents won't miss him, however.

Night Owl sent over a bunch of 2013 Opening Day Stars inserts after he found his way into a bunch of discounted blasters. I really like these cards. King Felix is attempting to fill up as much of the cardspace as he can with his massive torso.

I got to hear a rather amusing story (these things happen when your team is losing 8-1) about how Fredbird came to be during tonight's TV broadcast. Something about a grumpy Gussie Busch and feeding the San Diego Chicken copious amounts of alcohol until he was entertaining enough. Hilarity apparently ensued.

The Cardinals just had to go out and get their own mascot at that point. Topps really wanted us to make sure that we know Fredbird is in fact a mascot and not a relief pitcher or even a bullpen catcher on these 2014 Mascot inserts. Good to know.

Here's another '75 mini from Night Owl's backup stash. It will look like a regular sized card as Blogger cares more about aspect ratio than relative image size, apparently.