Blazers & Ginters

Both kinds. 

Reader KO Rob found the blog and recently signed up for the Guilt-Free Basketball Card Club (still accepting all comers!) While I'm still in the process of squirreling away some goodies for Rob, I thought I'd take a look at some stuff he sent my way.

The package was a nice selection of old-school (and middle-school?) Trail Blazers cards, including some Metal cards of some of my mid-'90s faves. The Blazers have had their share of misfortune, mostly on the injury front, but one of the saddest dreams is thinking of what may have happened if Sabas had arrived when he was drafted ('80s) and not when the Cold War was sufficiently thawed.

The Blazers sold the farm to get Kiki, who was a prolific scorer but not much else. Injuries made him a liability on defense, and Clyde Drexler's emergence as first banana probably hastened his departure as much as anything else.

It may be a little loved, but here's an honest to goodness Walton card from the championship season. Nice! Now I have to figure out what to do with this oversized card. I'm not so good at storing these sorts of things. Maybe I can stick them between some books on the bookshelf.

Rob also sent over a healthy stack from last year's Allen & Ginter baseball set. Of all the inserts I received, I thought I'd pick out the former David Arias out of the bunch as I'm in more of a baseball mood than anything else.

I'll end it with this card from the base set. Jonah Keri is one of my favorite baseball writers. Aside from his unbridled love of all things Expos, Keri writes a weekly series of articles called The 30 during the MLB season that you should definitely check out if you're interested in what's going on with the league. It started off over at the sadly defunct Grantland and now appears on SI.com if I'm not mistaken. Or, at least it would, if the season was still going on. Sad.