Get Pickled

Where baseball gets a little weird. 

 

The Portland Pickles are a local collegiate wood bat summer league team that plays games out here in SE Portland, one of the few area options for watching live baseball after the AAA Portland Beavers left town more than a decade ago. They play in a small stadium constructed in the middle of a city park. It's a fun time! They're really big on marketing (and, especially, their social media account) but I still wasn't expecting that they had actual baseball cards on offer. Erin found a team set at a little team shop downtown recently and figured it might be of some interest to me.

The set uses the 1960 Topps design as an inspiration, specifically the Rookie Stars subset. The team colors are basically the Cascadia flag colors, which form the base for the ribbon that goes through the center of the card.

I'm sure that there's no official licensing involved with this team issued set, but we get to see college logos on certain players. (Don't tell anyone.)

In lieu of stats, the backs contain a somewhat strangely worded bio that includes a few wacky notes. Most players have their "most embarrassing sports moment" put on display. In reality, I'm pretty sure Tommy would have no problem playing for the Yankees if they ended up drafting him. It looks like A-1 Automotive, which has several locations throughout the Portland area, is the sponsor here. That upside-down chair shield thing? We'll get to that in a minute.

Here's another Oregon State Beaver. I have no idea who any of these players are, so I just picked a few at random. When adding these to TCDB, I noticed the majority of the players are going to west coast schools as you might expect, though there are a few from further east.

This one is a really interesting photo. He's a pitcher doing a very non-pitcher thing. This has more of a little league feel to it, except with older humans.

I really have no idea what this guy's deal is, except that this was the card on the very top of the stack. It made me wonder if all of the players were going to have more of a cartoon look to them, but that turned out not to be the case.

Here's a nice shot of the field the Pickles play on from above and behind home plate. The entire outfield is lined with trees, which gives everything a really nice backdrop and serves as a natural batter's eye.

Apparently this is the guy that's famous for keeping track of strikeouts. This made me think that there isn't anyone doing any sort of official scoring, but considering that the stats are available online for this league (West Coast League) in some capacity, that must not be the case. I think he's just famous for holding up these signs. Well, Southeast Portland famous, anyway.

Here's the big mischief-making mascot who also serves as the avatar of the team's social media account. They've made national news several times for various things. At one point the mascot costume was stolen but was eventually recovered after much media attention.

Like any good small time baseball experience, there's a berm you can sit on in the outfield. Apparently this "raising of the chair" is a tradition when the team scores. Of course, you have to bring your own chair to raise, or you're going to look foolish.