Ghosts from the Past

Minor League cards from a dormant Portland team from @padrographs -- plus new Topps Total and Stadium Club Cards!

If I was a better Portland baseball fan, I would do regular features on the old Portland minor league teams here. I'd probably even promote the Portland Diamond Project, even though there hasn't been a whole lot of news of late. I started going to Portland Beavers game as a small child early in the '80s, a tradition that continued through my high school years and resumed in the '00s before the team was forced out once again.

I do have a Portland Beavers collection, which increased dramatically thanks to a large donation from Rod from Padrographs. There were tons of fun cards and memories in this bunch, including early '90s fan favorite Jarvis Brown, with interesting Civic Stadium outfield wall ads from Hamm's and Reser's on display.

My collecting habits started to wane in 1992, so I didn't have any of these '92 "Pre-Rookie" SkyBox cards. Danny Sheaffer would end up being a (future) Cardinal at some point.

The first and (for a long time) only Portland Beavers team set I owned was purchased at the stadium in 1988, but it was missing this Eric Bullock card. More than thirty years later, it is finally complete!

Rod also sent along a complete team set of the short-lived Portland Rockies which I still need to scan to add to the TCDB site. I'm saving that one for a rainy day, so you may see a bonus post about this package at some point.

As teased above, Rod also sent some choice cards from the big league team I root for. Continuing on with the online-exclusive Topps Total set is a reliever that originally came up in the St. Louis system but was a shell of his former self by the time he got to pitch wearing the Birds on the Bat.

I'm hoping Miles Mikolas will be an anchor for the 2020 rotation. His 2019 season wasn't exactly great, but he stayed healthy and didn't do anything to lose his position.

Among the bunch of cards from Rod were some slick 2019 Stadium Club parallels, like this sepia Johnny Mize version.

This is a wild high five. I should try to figure out what game this was from. Ozuna's name is emblazoned in red foil here.

Here's a black foil parallel of the Ozzie Smith card we previously established was of the Wizard doing his thing in front of the Hall of Fame. Nice!

I have been a huge fan of the quirky, period-specific inserts that have ended up in the Topps Heritage sets in recent years. These "Candy Lids" things are no exception. This is actually the second one of Goldschmidt that I've acquired, which means this will be headed to my set binder.

Thanks again to Padrographs!