Only a Dodger Fan Could Have Unearthed This

A new entry into the Cardinal binders.

I must confess that, unless I'm even more forgetful than I feared, I never knew that Scott Radinsky had a stint wearing the Birds on the Bat. Dodgers fan GCRL has mothballed his blog (for now!) but he's still active in swapping cards for cards. You can see his wants over here. I believe most team collectors have relaxed criteria for what is eligible for the team collection, usually accepting any card that has anything to do with the favored team, even if it's just a logo or team name on the side of the card. I imagine this wasn't kicked out of the GCRL collection because it was fouled up with the wrong team name on it and that it was simply a dupe, because I have a lot of those myself. I have boxes and boxes full of Cardinals cards I don't need. It's scary.

Also to be found was a white framed John Lackey parallel from the most recent Gypsy Queen set. Lackey became the team's de facto ace at the end of the season, with a Carlos Martinez injury scare and Adam Wainwright miraculously recovered from an Achilles tear but with no built up innings-eating capacity. What Lackey really did over the past season-and-change was scowl a whole lot, something that had been missing since Chris Carpenter's retirement. With Lackey off to the dark side for two seasons and a hefty chunk of change, it could be that the Cardinals end up with someone like Cliff Lee to be the grumpy old man in the rotation. It could happen, I suppose?

My cards from the 1950s likely number in just the single digits, so it was great to get a copy of what's now my oldest card ever in this 1950 Bowman Nippy Jones. I wish I could have gotten a better scan of this card, but the only way my scanner would cooperate and scan the entire card was to encase it in some plastic. I find it fascinating that Nippy won a World Series in both his first and final seasons in the big leagues, with the Cardinals and Milwaukee Braves, respectively.

Here's a whole team set of 2015 All-Stars. As much as I like seeing this photo on a card, you'd have to be a Cardinals fan to actually know which one of these six guys is the subject in question, which is kind of stupid.

Also kind of stupid? Lance Lynn's elbow. Lynn has been one of the most consistent and under-the-radar players on the Cardinals roster the past several years. Best wishes for his full recovery in 2017. That sounds so far away.