Behold, the beauty that is Flair.
Bo Rosny's Baseball Cards Come to Life! is another blog that has seemingly been around forever. Bo is out there grabbing interviews, profiling players, and generally making the rest of us blogging chumps look lazy and... chumplike? Earlier this year, Bo acquired a ton of cards and moved a bunch of them all over the place, including several hundred that landed in my mailbox. I've admittedly been a bit intimidated to write this post among my multiple false starts in trying to get a suitable package together to send back, but rest assured that this blog entry means things are moving in the right direction.
I specifically requested '90s Cardinals from the years/sets that I didn't collect in their day, and hopefully was able to fill in a bunch of gaps. I would check the want lists from these years if they actually existed. This is, I believe, my first look at Cory Bailey. Ever. Not only does he not currently have a place in my Cardinals binders but I'm pretty sure I didn't even know that such a player existed anywhere.
In contrast, I have a ton of Ray Lankford cards and I am quite sure of his existence. However, I definitely had never seen this card before, from the 1998 Topps Stars set.
I believe Bo was a near-miss in getting his name on the high score board, aka the 10 Most Wanted "Special Thanks" list of people who were able to knock off a Top 10 need. Still, I will post a Jamie Moyer card any chance that I get.
There was a huge pile of 1993 Flair cards which I will pore over in the days to come, now that they've been unleashed from my "to be scanned and reported on" box. Osborne's name is a bit of a bummer to Cards fans who remember their horrific 1996 NLCS collapse, but I choose to remember the good times... like that cool 1991 Score rookie card, maybe?
Bo also sent old-school Blazers (nice!) including two different version of a 1995-96 Fleer Metal Buck Williams card. This is basically the Slayer of basketball cards right here.
I'll take anything Finest, especially something from one of my favorite players of all-time. Clyde was Pacific's Finest back then, but would soon be one of Texas's Finest after that great Portland team was dismantled.
Wow, this looks totally bootleg. It's apparently from a brand called Scoreboard and bears no league or even Player's Association insignia.
I would have to say Nick Van Exel was one of the more unfortunate members of the Jail Blazers era. For every knucklehead like Qyntel Woods (was into dogfighting and tried to use his rookie card as photo ID when he got pulled over for speeding) or all out creep like Ruben Patterson, there was a guy like Van Exel who was just a lost former star who was trying on a new uniform in a new environment for a couple of years. The Blazers operated like a zealous fan's fantasy league team for a number of years, for better and for worse. I enjoyed the team immensely during these days, but it was also a little embarrassing to be a fan at times.
Finally, Bo threw in some Ducks hoops cards. These are always appreciated! Freddie Jones has red foil on his card, which makes me think it's some kind of parallel. Basketball season (especially college) is a ways off yet, but football is frighteningly lurking just around the corner.
Glad you like them!
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