Everything Zeile

Another @flywheels Affordable Group Break takes us back to the mid-'90s. 

I feel like I keep needing to hit the refresh button on Cardboard Collections these days, what with all of the group breaks that have been launched out of that blog. Back in May, 1994 Select and 1995 Score were on the agenda, two sets where I was woefully short of completing my Get All The Cardinals task.

Not every card was a Todd Zeile card, of course, but when I sense a theme it's best to stick with it. Zeile came up through the system as a highly touted prospect at the catcher position, but it wasn't long before he was moved to the hot corner. Zeile ended up playing a lot of positions for a lot of teams throughout his career, and I was surprised to learn recently that he never made an All-Star team.

Gold Zeile! I need more '90s parallels. There are a lot of interesting bits of trivia about Todd Zeile over at his Wikipedia page. You should check them out.

Much to my surprise, there was a bonus white envelope sent my way by Colbey on the same day as the group break package. This is a really cool on-card (c'mon, it was 2000) autograph of Rick Ankiel from his pitching days. It's die cut! It's Pacific! I like everything about this.

I even really like the card back, which provides a different photo of Ankiel on the so-called other side of the baseball. Again, this is really cool. Rick has made some headlines in recent days in his efforts to make a comeback as a pitcher again. I honestly think he just wants to come out of the bullpen for a big league team one of these days just to throw one more time, and I have no problem with this. His book, The Phenomenon, was a surprisingly good read for an athlete book and I highly recommend it. If you happen to read it, you will likely be rooting for him, too, in whatever his future endeavors may be.