Hamm 'n Tape

Hamm supply is low. Please send help.

In case you missed it, I'm trying to tilt all of the baseball cards that feature the ultramagnetic Jon Hamm towards the Pacific Northwest for some reason - more specifically, to my residence (or PO Box) in Portland. I'm up to two (!) of these cards now, thanks to White Sox enthusiast and Don Draper of the collecting world Jeff from 2x3 Heroes.

There was more than Hamm in this envelope, however. Here's a card with a piece of tape on it that one Steven Farinaro signed. Farinaro is in his third year in the Cardinals system and hasn't really made it out of rookie ball, but he only just turned 20 last month, which means he wasn't even born yet when I started college. And now I might possibly have some of his trace DNA. That's kind of frightening.

Jeff sent a nice array of cards from the 2015 Topps Heritage, something I kind of dropped the ball on this year. A couple of Cleveland Indians SPs and this Willie Mays Flashbacks card were among the highlights. This is one of the better Heritage insert designs in my opinion.

Here's a great card of Albert Pujols in a throwback jersey, likely taken during the ill-fated 2003 season. I've kind of softened my stance on Pujols lately. He just did so many amazing things in his 11 seasons in St. Louis that the good has to outweigh the bad (i.e. his splitting town for more cash.) Oh... that contract, though!

Finally, I snagged an explosive gold parallel "rookie card" of the explosive Cardinals closer. Rosie has been very good this season outside of a rough patch he hit around the All-Star break. Matheny has supposedly tried to be a bit smarter about his usage this season. Whether or not that's really been a contributing factor, the results have been good.