A Slew of Redbirds from A Rival Fan

@TomSOlson sends Cardinals from the north. To the, um, west.

This may in fact finally be the Cubs year (or is it?), but that doesn't mean I can't make nice with a fan of the rival team. I'm sure P-Town Tom is just as eager to get Cardinals cards pushed out the door as I am eager to see St. Louis gain a game in the standings on Chicago. The funny thing is, I am often starved for Cubs trade bait while I end up swimming in more Cardinals doubles than I know what to deal with. Nevertheless, I do send what I can to fans of that blue team.

A golden 2011 card of the 2011 hero. I love it!

It was covered in spit.

(Not actually covered in spit.)

The 1996 Pinnacle Aficionado set was a strange one. Scanned, the left side photo sort of looks like a sketch, but in hand I'm always afraid I'm accidentally going to scratch parts of the players' faces off.

All of the cards in the 1996 E-XL set were framed. I can honestly say I didn't know what the word adroit meant until I looked it up. I guess I'm not much of a Weezer fan. (This is completely true.)

Matt Carpenter is due back soon! Matt Carpenter is due back soon! I'm just fearful another key player or two will have to suffer the fates of the disabled list in sacrifice in order to see his return, because that seems to be what happened with Aledmys Diaz.

I never pulled one of these tough-to-find 1993 Studio Heritage inserts back in the day, so I was really excited to add this to my Ozzie collection. There are just a handful of early '90s cards of the Wizard that are a little above my usual "if it's less than a buck" threshold that I haven't yet pulled the trigger on, and this was one of them.

Here's a great one to end it with, a die cut Prizm insert of Adam Wainwright, who has certainly regained his form of late after recovering from last season's Achilles tear.