Time to Let It Go

The season is over for the Cardinals, whether I like it or not. 

As a totally biased observer, sometimes it's hard for me to understand why there's little love for the Cardinals franchise these days from outside of the fanbase. But I do get it. People get sick of teams after they have a period of sustained success. While not yet mathematically eliminated from the NL Wild Card race, this will be the second straight year that St. Louis has missed the playoffs, reminiscent of the two seasons following their unlikely 2006 championship. Except, of course, that these last two seasons are not coming on the heels of a World Series ring, but a bitter defeat and early playoff exit at the hands of the Chicago Cubs. This is year six of the Mike Matheny regime, and it wasn't a good one.

Fortunately, I have some fantastic cards from... you guessed it... a Cubs fan to cheer me up. This is part two of the feast of cards set upon me by Jon of Community Gum. Let's look at a few things from the other side of the rivalry.

Here I am rediscovering 1987 Topps. I totally forgot about this set! It's been, what, five long years since Topps put miniature tributes to this set in with their flagship product? This is actually my first bronze foil version of the Rediscover Topps line, which I am told is actually their most common variant. (Hopefully I have the right color here. Sometimes it's hard to tell with foil stamping.)

Jon included a note with this one stating that it was a repack pull. I feel like J.D. Drew is in the upper echelon of what one can expect to pull from a repack. My guaranteed hit or whatever you want to call it is usually some swatch of WBC or Futures Game jersey from a guy who never made it to AAA. I've got nothing against those guys, of course, but when you don't even get a card of a guy wearing any MLB team's uniform, it's hard to get too excited about it.

You know what always cheers me up? Ozzie Smith! Or, more specifically, cards of his that I didn't yet own. I don't often get a chance to buy Topps Finest stuff, so this insert is extra nice. Most of my Finest purchases are base cards out of quarter boxes at card shows.

I really irrationally love Topps Tek (Hi Tek?) and all of its various incarnations. I think this might be only my second card from its recent revival. I think I am just a huge sucker for anything printed on clear acetate. I am the guy that I used to make fun of, folks.

2008 SPx is like the baseball card version of a fidget spinner. Or maybe disc golf? Has anyone tried tossing these cards around an open space? Do they have a boomerang effect?

I'm taking a brief detour here, but Erin's player collections often get a disproportionate amount of attention here at Cards on Cards. This is a fun shiny parallel of Tulo from the waning moments of his Rockies glory days.

I'm probably coming across as a lot more negative than I should considering that I'm poring over all of these terrific Cardinals cards, but I do want to reiterate that I still think Allen & Ginter's shift to full sized relics are a bit of a cop out. This is a nice design, clearly, but the framed relics were always one of my favorite things to look forward to about this set each year.

This card was printed seven years before I was born, but foil stamped just a couple of years ago. It's strange to think about. I need to track down an unstamped version of this card, actually.

There were a lot of Finest cards in this package. This is probably the centerpiece right here. Wong still hasn't put things together for a full season, but he's shown enough in streaks that I still remain hopeful about his career.

This is just a plain old refractor parallel of the same card. No big deal. I probably couldn't find this in the quarter boxes, to be honest.

Another helpful note was included with this Yadier Molina card, noting that it came from the All-Star team set. I only scanned the front to show how little there is to distinguish this from his regular flagship base card. They used to actually put NL or AL logos on these, but the only way to tell now by looking at the front is noticing that the Topps logo is not actually printed in foil. Still, I am super happy to get this card so I am no longer tempted to buy the whole stupid set just for Yadi.

Well, we'll see how much the world loves the Cubbies after they win their second straight ring next month.

A Crazy Idea?

Matt Holliday playing first base doesn't seem far-fetched to me.

I didn't plan on making consecutive posts about the Cardinals Lego-headed star, but with Matt Adams being lost for the year due to injury my mind has been wandering about how this problem will be addressed. With Peter Bourjos finally starting to approach his potential, Randal Grichuk's light tower power on display, and Jason Heyward sometimes doing Jason Heyward things, it seems like the Cardinals have a glut of outfielders and a shortage of quality corner infielders. Holliday is 35 and certainly in the age range of a player who is moved to a more stationary position to keep his bat in the lineup as often as possible. Is baseball the only pro sport anymore where teams are hesitant to approach their aging stars about career changes out of respect or whatever? I'm a huge fan of the man, but it's not like his defensive skills in left field are irreplaceable. Local media, however, seems to have dismissed this idea as nonsense. I don't get it, and I'm not eager to see Mark Reynolds at first as an everyday thing. He's been solid so far in a utility role, but that's where I'd like him to stay.

On to the cards! The always excellent Junior Junkie sent me an outstanding group of cards some time ago, including this synthetic canvas-like Brian Jordan card from the 1997 Leaf set. I'd never seen one of these inserts before. The '90s continue to surprise.

A bunch of Jim Edmonds cards were in the mix, pushing my unique Edmonds card total into the 470s. This shiny thing is number 94 out of 100.

My scanner sort of munched this card's border, but it's still evident that this is a silver signature parallel of Jimmy's 1995 Collector's Choice card. Even Edmonds even played 1B a little bit, also as his Cardinals career was nearing its end.

I'm not going to sugarcoat this. This is an awful card. This was early on in Panini's baseball run, where they evidently were terrified to show even the tiniest indication that the subject plays for a team and isn't, say, an amateur chef in training.

I don't know what this is at all, but it's numbered to just 30 and reminds of some informational cards I had as a kid that showed safari animals and little factoids about each. It's awesome! I need more like this.

Somehow I completely missed 2013's 75th Anniversary Topps set (must have been a Hobby only thing?), but the buybacks have been trickling out in trade packages of late. If you put this in a time capsule it would probably confuse the hell out of someone down the road.

Finally, here's a swell looking Tulo jersey card for Erin's collection. Erin is still holding on to some hope that Tulo will someday be a Cardinal, but for the time being that position is pretty locked up by a Peralta guy that could be headed to the All-Star Game this year.

2015 Topps: The Blaster

What is a blaster supposed to be, anyway? Where did that name even come from?

Here are my final thoughts on 2015 Topps Series One as I take a look what I got in my blaster last week. I will probably buy a few more packs here and there, but that will probably be it. There aren't a lot of Cardinals in this set for once. I'm not complaining, though.

As you can see above, the manufactured memorabilia hit is a Tulo card, which works out well if your name is Erin. These "cards" are more like bricks, and they are very heavy. You could seriously injure someone with one of these if you so desired.

This is supposedly a "Baseball History" insert, but I don't think they were playing any kind of baseball on the moon.

Here's another "rainbow foil" parallel. It turns out that these are nearly as rare as the golds.

That's some nerve you've got there, Topps!

Deion Sanders hit 39 home runs in his career, one fewer than Nelson Cruz hit last season. This is an extremely stupid baseball card.

Wright doesn't look 10+ years younger here (this is supposed to be from 2004 if you can't read the foil) but the patch on his sleeve seems to match one the Mets wore that season. Maybe GCRL can verify this.

These are pretty busy looking and the year is displayed as prominently as the player.

New Guy, Old Guy. Matt Harvey has a teenage mustache.

This seems legit. Look at those awful vests the Pirates used to wear, along with Bautista's hilarious sleeves.

Oh man, I started this blog that year (2008) and seeing Hamilton in a Reds jersey doesn't seem weird at all.

Josh Hamilton was also my gold card o' the blaster.

I don't care about these at all. This is yet another card to put in the "NO TEAM" section of my trade-able inserts box that I'll never get rid of.

These are great. I wish current Cardinals made great defensive plays in the outfield that could be captured on a baseball card.

I wish he was beating the crap out of Robin Ventura on this card instead of this.

How did Randy Johnson not catastrophically tear his arm up at some point in his career? That might be what amazes me the most.

You don't see many cards of Red Schoendienst these days in another uniform besides the Cardinals. So this doesn't go in my binder? Aw, man.

This will have to do.

All-Star Eve Trade Post

Hopefully, no one will be pitching though a cloud of "cognac".

Chunter of the Chipp 'n' Dale blog sent me a wonderful bunch of baseball and basketball cards that I'd like to show off as we get ready for tomorrow night's All-Star Game.

I've been coveting this insert card for a long time from last year's set, so I'm really happy to get a copy of my own. Topps really knocked it out of the park (GET IT?!) with these inserts, which really make me wish they'd take a quality-over-quantity approach with some of their inserts in the future.

These '89-style die cut minis, on the other hand, are not so great. It is great seeing cards of Lee Smith in a Cardinals uniform in 2014, though.

I'm sure there are plenty of disgruntled Dodgers fans who think they got robbed with Wainwright getting the starting nod tomorrow over Clayton Kershaw. I can't say I blame them, but I also find it nearly impossible to argue against Wainwright deserving it. After a number of near-misses in past seasons with major awards, Waino gets a little bit of the spotlight tomorrow to reward a stellar first half. As for Kershaw, well, it seems like it would help his cause a bit if his team... say... went ahead and won the pennant sometime. Interestingly enough, the last Cardinals starter to star the All-Star Game was Chris Carpenter in 2005. Before that, I believe you might have to go back to Bob Gibson if I'm not mistaken.

Well, now that I've managed to get that image out of my mind (although I'd be happy for Don Mattingly), let's look at a fantastic relic card of Erin fave Troy Tulowitzki. Tulo has been one of the best players in the game in the first half, so it was cool to see him named captain of one of the Home Run Derby teams. The only problem is that I seem to be growing really tired of the Home Run Derby. Maybe it's too much Chris Berman or maybe it really is just a tired event?

Chunter collects some basketball and he dug up a few jersey cards that were right up my alley. Jerryd Bayless didn't have the biggest run as a Blazer, but he's established himself as a solid combo guard and bench option in the league. D.J. Augustin has bounced around a bit, but he's also an established vet at this point.

This one is right up my alley, as we have both a (former) Blazer and a former Oregon Duck. Ridnour was a fantastic player in college and is about to enter his 12th season in the NBA, this time as a member of the newly rechristened Charlotte Hornets. I was a little confused about the color of Ridnour's jersey swatch, and when I read the back it turns out that while Webster's is supposedly from an NBA game, Ridnour's is from a Rookie Challenge. He was in his 5th season when this card came out, so that tells you that Upper Deck was probably sitting on piles of musty old barely "worn" Ridnour jerseys at this point. Still, it's a great card for my collection for multiple reasons.

Finally, here's a more clearly identified Rookie Challenge jersey, from current Blazer Wesley Matthews. Wes wasn't about to give up his #2 when the Blazers signed Steve Blake last week, never mind that Blake is joining the team for the third time and has worn that number for both of his previous terms with the team.