First Half Champions

Banking wins is good, but this team needs to be the best in October.

The good times and vibes abound with the Cardinals right now as the team has jumped out to a 50-24 start and a sizable division lead over two very talented teams in the Cubs and the Pirates. It's been strange to watch, as the Cardinals have seen quite a few injuries already, both of the season ending variety (Wainwright and Adams) and the significant but not season threatening (Holliday and Walden.) They don't hit very well, but they seem to hit just enough. The pitching has been great. They don't really have a quality first baseman right now, but that may be changing as Xavier Scruggs has been very productive since his recent callup. I'm not complaining, but I am a little nervous considering that past Cardinal glories have come from the team playing their best at the end of the year rather than the beginning.

Here's a fresh batch of Cardinal cards from Scott Crawford that I received back in April. This is a mid-oughts parallel of Jimmy numbered to 643, which matched his slugging percentage the previous year. It's also Edmonds card number 482 in my collection.

Scott added a couple of goldies to my collection, including Cardinal legend (not really) Felipe Lopez.

This shiny-for-no-real-reason Heritage Chrome refractor is Holliday number 250!

There were lots of serial numbered goodies, like this Sweet Spot gold from Big Albert. Pujols is moving his way up some very impressive lists these days.

If' you're still a productive player in 2015, take a step forward. Ehhh... not so fast, Mr. Howard.

Scott also sent a number of minor league cards, which are always welcome in my collection. Wacha is pretty much the ace of the staff these days with Wainwright's long recovery from an Achilles tear still ahead of him.

Tim McCarver recently called Wong the best second baseman in the league [edit: National League] during one of the local team broadcasts. Wong's bat has certainly been impressive, but is that the truth or is McCarver succumbing to home team bias in his post-FOX national team years?

Finally, here's a classy Jon Jay framed jersey swatch from a couple of Gypsy Queens ago. This is further proof to me that all relics should be framed and miniature.

A New Want List + Hits to Trade

I've added another set to the unfortunately growing list of things I'm chasing. I've been squirreling away a few 2006 Bowman Heritage cards over the past couple of years and finally found an opportunity to buy a bunch of packs at an affordable price. This inspired me to put together a want list, which should be live before I go to sleep tonight. In 11 hobby packs (at $1 each!), I managed to snag three hits, and they were all pretty nice.

Before I get into that, however, I wanted to address today's big Cardinals news - that Chris Carpenter is probably done as a major league pitcher. That's not shocking or anything, but I think most fans like we were hopeful that he might be back for one last hurrah after the man went and got a rib removed (!) last year just so he could pitch again. Wow. Unfortunately, it looks like the nerve issues that were causing all the problems are still lingering, and the team announced that they don't expect him to pitch this season. Ouch. Carp went from being a relatively obscure comeback story to pitching dominance to the kind of player that every fan of every team he doesn't play for completely hates. But that's okay with me, and there's no way the Cardinals win either of their recent World Series rings without him. He may never be a Hall of Famer, but he's a Cardinal Hall of Famer - a Willie McGee, if you will.

On to the hits! This is an on-card Alex Gordon autograph. While Keith Olbermann was buying up all of the so-called mistakenly printed Gordon cards in the Topps base set, the Bowman arm cranked out a much nicer card that any Gordon fan would love to own. I almost don't want to get rid of it and I couldn't care less about the Royals.

It's Ryan Howard! And a pinstripe! Usually when I pull jersey cards out of a 7 year old pack, it ends up being Morgan Ensberg.

Gary Sheffield and a chunk of his bat? This is numbered 04/49. Maybe it was the batboy's bat. Maybe the bat came from Sports Authority. Who knows?

There were other Cardinals (not for trade!) in the packs that I opened, and one of them was a mini Juan Encarnacion.

Adam Ottavino had a cup of coffee with the Cardinals but never panned out as a prospect. He resurfaced last year as a league-average reliever with the Rockies.

Brad Furnish didn't fare so well.