30 Teams in 30 Posts: #1

Warning: The following entry contains images of a particular baseball player that could be deemed not suitable for all audiences. Reader discretion is strongly advised. If you have a weak stomach, sensitivity to light, intolerance towards greed or humans that make more money in a year than a number of countries in the world, please go do something else like watch birds fight over Doritos or something.

I have in the neighborhood of 7500 St. Louis Cardinals cards that I simply do not want. There's no way I'm going to be able to show off a good representation of those cards here. Instead, I simply pulled out a bunch of my doubles of cards that are in my Cardinals shoeboxes. (These aren't actual shoeboxes, of course, but the double-wide storage boxes suited to store cards in top loaders. I have two of these full of Cardinals that I deemed too snobby to be in the regular binders, and a third jammed full of similarly snobby cards that are part of sets that I'm collecting. I don't know why I'm telling you all this. I have a TON of Cardinals doubles. If anyone out there likes Jose DeLeon, Lee Smith, Lonnie Smith, Ozzie Smith, Bud Smith.. all the Smiths(!) or any other Cardinal from the past 40 years or so that I may have overlooked, let me know. I probably have 85 cards of that guy.

This is a "Your Mom" original back, guys. Original back!

See! I told you!

I came to be a Cardinals fan when I rejected the notion that one should always follow the closest geographically located team, even when said team plays ball a couple hundred miles away, and also finally decided to stop picking the same favorites as my father. The Cardinals were an exciting bunch of speedsters in the '80s, and they even had this guy who would run out and do a backflip before games. A backflipping baseball playing wizard! This sounded too good to be true! Furthermore, actually catching a Cardinals game on TV in Oregon in the '80s was akin to trapping the world's largest firefly in a jar and having it make a bunch of firefly babies for all of your friends to see on a cloudless, moonless night. Or something like that. It wasn't until ESPN started carrying MLB games that I got to ever see my favorite team play. That elusive Cardinals game was always out of reach, so the mystery was alluring. I would look at box scores and baseball cards and try to imagine Pedro Guerrero not being terrible at his job.

Favorite current Cardinals player: Chris Carpenter. Sure, Carp is out for the year, but he still gets my vote. As you can probably tell simply by looking at the players that I have singled out on the sidebar of this blog, Carpenter is my favorite. I rarely rank people this way, but Adam Wainwright would have to be second and Matt Holliday a close third.

Is it just me, or is it just as easy to get inserts from this 2006 Fleer Ultra set as it is to get base cards? I have multiples of all of these, not just one or two dupes.

Least favorite current Cardinals player: N/A. I just can't say I dislike anyone on this team. There's no Ryan Theriot this year. There's no Corey Patterson, either. And there, quite possibly, may be no championship this year. That's okay, though. I probably would have picked Tyler Greene simply for how frustrating he's been, but he made one too many boneheaded mistakes and got himself traded to Houston for some stale Wheat Thins and I can't pick him anymore.

The onslaught of mid-'00s inserts of the former first base star continues.

This isn't some specially colored strange version of this MLB 2K6 insert card. It just scanned really oddly. I don't know what's up with my scanner. I guess I probably shouldn't have bought it during a Circuit City fire sale.

This was a 2006 card, but the photo looks like it's from 2002.

I bought this card recently and received another copy of it in the mail the same day. Oops. For some reason that never happens with Cardinals from sets I collect, though. It would be nice, since I always need two of those cards.

Favorite Cardinals player of all-time: Ozzie Smith. I've long since removed all of the anticipation from this post. You just came here for the images, admit it.

Has Topps ever tried doing Heritage minis, aside from these Target exclusive T205 wannabes? Are they going to wait until 2024 Topps Heritage to pull out that gimmick, when it's 1975's turn to shine?

Oh, I have more questions. Did Topps release a 2012 Attax set? What's your favorite color? Is it blue? Do you like pancakes?

Lease favorite Cardinals player of all-time: Jason Marquis. You know, every Cardinal I've ranted and railed against over the years (Kip Wells, Mike Maroth, the aforementioned Patterson, etc.) hasn't really spent much time in the Birds on the Bat, usually due to his own incompetence at playing baseball. Jason Marquis was uniquely talented... unique enough to dazzle one day before four consecutive starts where he gives up 6 runs and walked 6 batters and looks like he'd rather be anywhere else but a baseball field. He was around for awhile. He was on the juggernaut teams of 2004 and 2005 and the team that limped its way to the podium in 2006. That last team opted to throw an unproven rookie into the rotation and left Marquis off the roster altogether.

Thanks to everyone for reading these posts. I still have a bunch of the cards that I've shown here available to trade, so please get in touch if anything looks interesting. I will do a quick "garage sale" type post to wrap things up soon and then this blog heads off on its next adventure. If it's anything like this past adventure, it will be another cheaply disguised ploy to get you to take some cards off my hands.

The St. Louis Cardinals are #1 in my reverse-ranking of favorite teams as of the moment I picked them a long, long time ago on October 4th, 2010. All of these cards are very much up for trade, so please contact me if you're interested.

30 Teams in 30 Posts: #2

It's really simple why the New York Yankees are my second favorite team in all of baseball. My father was a Yankees fan, and so was his father. I don't know where the Yankees history goes in my family beyond that, but it's there and when I was a little kid I was a Yankees fan, too.

I had a Graig Nettles glove when I played little league. I had a Yankees mesh cap as well as a novelty plastic batting helmet. I liked Righetti, Guidry and Mattingly. Reggie Jackson donned the pinstripes, or so I heard, and so did Rickey Henderson. At some point, though, I decided I needed to be my own person and pick my own team. That's about when I started my best friend's favorite team instead of the Yankees.

For these posts, I usually end up digging through boxes of inserts and other cards to come up with 5 or so cards to post. I was barely able to stop at 19 images in this post, and that just represents a small portion of all of the Yankees crud that I have to trade.

Favorite current Yankees player: Mariano Rivera. Hands down, the best closer of all-time. I'm afraid to admit that I did enjoy the Yankees run from 1996-2000 quite a bit. The "A-Rod Years" haven't really been as fun to watch.

Remember these? I have a handful of Yankee Stadium Legacy cards to get rid of, provided that anyone is still trying to put this set together 4 years after it infiltrated all of the Upper Deck products.

Least favorite current Yankees player: Alex Rodriguez. A-Rod is just hard to root for. It's not even about the money with me, really. He just seems like a pretty unlikable person. There's also the whole PED thing to consider...

Not pictured: the rest of the card that my scanner doesn't want you to see.

Wait, how did Jerry Hairston Jr. get in here?

I have so many modern Mickey Mantle cards, it's ridiculous. Topps has pretty much bled this guy dry, taken his blood, and squeezed the juice out of that blood. Well, something like that, anyway.

I collect all things Heritage, but when it comes to mindless, identical Mickey Mantle Home Run inserts... no thanks. I've traded off a few in the past and I still have something like 5 more. Don't get me started on all of the other inserts, home run or otherwise. I have lots of those. Lots!

I do think this is a nice looking card, however. Like the Bobby Abreu at the top of this post, it's a refractor. You can't always tell with scans.

Curtis Granderson is a timeless talent? Seriously? We can confidently say that in 2012, Granderson is a talent that could excel in any era? With all apologies to The Grandy Man, I am having some difficulty with this one. He's a good player, sure, and he may even be a great someday. Oh well, at least it's not Joba Chamberlain.

Favorite Yankees player of all-time: Don Mattingly. The shining beacon of an otherwise dreary period of Yankees baseball was Don Mattingly. He was probably overrated. His statistics as a whole aren't really that impressive. But he was Yankees baseball in the '80s and I liked Yankees baseball in the '80s.

It was also pretty awesome when he was given the mandate to cut his hair, for fear that he would turn the rest of the team into a bunch of dirty hippies or something.

If you're interested in this card, I should warn that it doesn't have sharp corners and has a little bit of a crease in it. It's gin-u-wine vintage, though.

I almost went with Reggie for favorite Yankee for calling out A-Rod on his PED-enhanced numbers, but when I was really getting into baseball he played for the Angels.

Least favorite Yankees player of all-time: Roger Clemens. A ha! Someone even more despicable than A-Rod. Once again, here's someone who diminished an other-worldly career by cheating.

And yet, there are more cards to show. This isn't one of those thick die-cut cards that were given away by the code machine last season. It was a Target exclusive insert from Series 1.

This was another gimmicky insert. It was one of three cards you could pull from a value pack of some sort.

There's one team left, and I'm afraid it's not the Seattle Pilots.

The New York Yankees parade around at #2 in my reverse-ranking of favorite teams as of the moment I picked them a long, long time ago on October 4th, 2010. All of these cards are very much up for trade, so please contact me if you're interested.

30 Teams in 30 Posts: #3

This list is really showing its age now. Since I compiled the list, the Padres AAA affiliate up and left town (i.e. Portland) for Tucson and I no longer have the attachment I once had to this franchise.

Even so, I have nothing against San Diego. They've been offensively challenged for quite awhile, notably since Petco Park became their home. They're in a non-threatening division (NL West) relative to St. Louis and they've mostly been clear of notorious characters like Barry Bonds.

Favorite current Padres player: Chase Headley. I have fond memories of using my first non-loaner digital camera on taking blurry photos of Headley in Portland during his prospect days. He's not quite Tony Gwynn or anything, but he's a solid MLB player.

Least favorite current Padres player: Kip Wells. Are you serious? Someone is still employing this clown? 2007 was one of the least pleasant Cardinals seasons that I've ever endured and Kip's presence in the rotation was pretty much a microcosm of the entire debacle.

Favorite Padres player of all-time: Tony Gwynn. Ozzie didn't truly become Ozzie until he was a Cardinal and I'm tired of picking Dave Winfield for every single team he modeled a jersey for, so I'm going with Gwynn here. He was ridiculously consistent with the bat and always hit for a high average.

Least favorite Padres player of all-time: Roberto Alomar. Spit or no spit, I never really liked the guy. I had tons of his cards growing up and no one wanted to trade for them. His brother Sandy Jr. was supposed to be the next big thing and he wasn't, either. Stupid Alomars.

The San Diego Padres appear at #3 in my reverse-ranking of favorite teams as of the moment I picked them a long, long time ago on October 4th, 2010. All of these cards are very much up for trade, so please contact me if you're interested.

30 Teams in 30 Posts: #4

We're nearing the end of the "30 Teams" road, with just three posts left to go after this one. The last post is going to be a doozy, believe me! I have something in the works to continue to trade bait theme of these posts that will last quite awhile, and hopefully it will help some people fill some holes in their collections as well as move me closer to my goal of purging a lot of cards and becoming more active in trading here in the second half of 2012.

This is where the countdown of my favorite teams in order really starts to veer from reality based on how long it's been (almost two years) since I started this feature. I'm not sure how Tampa Bay got ranked so high. They're fine, but I never go out of my way to watch their games. They need a new stadium, certainly.

Favorite current Rays player: B.J. Upton. It was hard to think of someone here, to be honest. I remember Upton getting hot in the playoffs a few years back. I guess I haven't seen nearly as many American League games this year as I have in the past when I was really excited about watching players on my fantasy league teams.

Leave favorite current Rays player: Luke Scott. Ugh, that guy is the worst. Have I picked him before, when he was on someone else's roster? I probably have. Luke Scott deserves the double dose of worsts.

Favorite Rays player of all-time: Fred McGriff. Ah, what the hell... I picked him last week and I am picking him again this week. Tampa Bay's franchise has had a relatively short lifespan, so McGriff's 4+ seasons with the team are good enough for me.

Least favorite Rays player of all-time: Esteban Yan. This guy was a laughing stock of a player who seemed to hang around for awhile because a dreadful Devil Rays team let him close some games in the early years of their existence. The Cardinals turned to him during the desperation of the 2003 season (better known as the "3 Nights in August" season) with predictably terrible results.

The Tampa Bay Rays have a techno dance party at #4 in my reverse-ranking of favorite teams as of the moment I picked them a long, long time ago on October 4th, 2010. All of these cards are very much up for trade, so please contact me if you're interested. 

30 Teams in 30 Posts: #5

I have a few "trade bait" type cards that Erin has charged me with finding suitable homes for, and some of these may be featured in a future post if I work up the ambition to do so. I also may just start sending out some emails to find trade partners. In any case, the one thing I would like to ask anyone that trades with me from now going forward is to at least pay some consideration to the players on Erin's player collection list. (See the sidebar if you have no idea what I'm talking about.) We're still working on coming up with a complete list of what she has for each player she is going after (and I plan on doing that for my PC lists as well), but for now I know a good final resting place for any of your extra Yadier Molina and Tim Lincecum cards - for example.

Tonight I'm supposed to talk about the Blue Jays. I actually just sent most of my Blue Jays cards (aside from the surplus stashes of stuff like 1991 Donruss) out in a package last month, so I don't have a lot to show. I have been fond of Toronto's since I was a kid, seeing them as both a strange bird as now the only Canadian team left in the league and some sort of blue kindred spirit to the red Cardinals club. Also, a lot of my more liked early '90s non-Cardinals players (Dave Stewart, Dave Winfield, Joe Carter, Rickey Henderson, etc.) ended up in Toronto at some point.

Favorite current Blue Jays player: Omar Vizquel. I know this is kind of a cop out. I just can really appreciate the existence of a 45 year old major league shortstop, even one that's been relegated to spot duty.

Least favorite current Blue Jays player: Edwin Encarnacion. I don't really have anything against him personally. He was just a lousy fantasy player for me, year after year. Oh, did you think I was going to say Colby Rasmus? Nah...

Favorite Blue Jays player of all-time: Fred McGriff. Man, who didn't like the Crime Dog? My only regret is not having any McGriff cards at hand for this post. Dave Winfield gets honorable mention here, but that's only because I think I picked him for several other teams in this series of posts.

Least favorite Blue Jays player of all-time: Juan Guzman. Like with Encarnacion, I don't really have anything terrible to say about Guzman. He got me all excited about his career (and consequently, his baseball cards) with his terrific 1992 season only to fade in notoriety. He worked really slowly on the mound. I thought he was going to be one of the all-time greats, and then I just kind of forgot about him.

The Toronto Blue Jays merely exist at #5 in my reverse-ranking of favorite teams as of the moment I picked them a long, long time ago on October 4th, 2010. All of these cards are very much up for trade, so please contact me if you're interested.