Airbrushed Fridays: 1971 Topps #286

The Cardinals wore their navy blue road caps last night for the first time this season. After 21 consecutive years of having the navy blue road caps (which themselves were a return to the '60s look), the team announced that they were going to go with the familiar red cap on the road again. Then, they backed off of that statement and claimed they would keep the navys around and wear them in road games against teams that wore red caps. If that wasn't confusing enough, just a few days before the season started the team conducted a fan poll, which suspiciously skewed towards an "all red" look despite all sorts of evidence that votes were leaning against that. So here it is, nearly three weeks into the season, with no official announcement from the team... well, who knows what's going on?

Who is this week's victim, and why do we care? I have to feel that Jerry McNertney was tormented a bit as a kid. Why? His name just screams Nerdy McNerderson. He also looks like a cartoon character. To which I'm sure Jerry would say, "I played Major League Baseball and you did nothing of the sort." McNertney was a journeyman multi-positional player who spent nine seasons with five clubs and is one of the few who has donned a Seattle Pilots jersey.

Why is this a thing? McNertney was traded by the fledgling Pilots-turned-Brewers franchise in the offseason following the Brewers inaugural year. He is wearing a logoless blue batting helmet (Brewers? Pilots?), which is nothing resembling what the Cardinals employed back in 1971.

Airbrushed Fridays is a weekly feature as the name seems to imply. If you know of a card with an altered photograph that you'd like to see featured, please contact me. You probably won't win anything other than a hyperlink and some dried up old Sharpies, but you never know!

Paintball, Anyone?

What's up with Ozzie's eyewear here?

This is one of my recent Listia wins, and while it's a nice idea, I probably won't be using it as a bookmark at any point. Barry Colla cards always seemed to fall into a grey area between unlicensed cards and flat out bootleggery, but it at least appears that they got the big time consent to make these Bookmarkers. I don't have many Colla Collection cards in my collection - in fact, I can't think of any right off the top of my head.

If you haven't signed up for Listia yet, you must hate getting things for free. It's not amazing and it does require a few minutes of your time, sort of like a virtual garage sale, but it's the laziest and cheapest way to get free cards that I know of. I've actually put together a healthy chunk of the 2007 Allen & Ginter set from Listia alone, which is a good thing because I never see unopened packs of that stuff.

Lenticulartastic!

My first trade with Scott Crawford on Cards went off without a hitch, and I'm still here to tell about it. Scott claimed some "Up For Grabs" Reggie Jackson cards and a bunch of cards from the 2012 Topps Archives set. Meanwhile, I helped myself to some Cardinals and a few other goodies. (By the way, I had to put the whole "Up For Grabs" thing on hold for a little bit as I was having a hard time keeping up with trades, but it will be back very soon.)

Scott sent me a bunch of bling, 1992 style, in the form of some Gold Winners. I don't think the term "bling" was a thing back then, but let's just say that Juan Agosto is looking pretty fly, dope, and phat. Phat indeed.

I believe this was a hobby shop promotion that was a cross-promotion involving the MLB Network. I don't get to hobby shops too often as they're strangely even less convenient than card shows around here, so I usually miss out on all of the hobby exclusives. This is a fantastic looking card of the former Cardinal great.

The contributions of Allen Craig (and Lance Berkman for that matter) are greatly overlooked in all of the other amazing things that happened during the 2011 World Series. Also, I love gold parallels and serial numbered cards. Have I mentioned that lately?

Scott dropped in a couple of lenticulartastic Opening Day Stars inserts from a couple of years ago. I am collecting all of these inserts and am glad to see that Topps brought them back for a third straight year. I did some work on the sidebar to my want lists recently, which consolidates some of the sets into sub-pages. Things look more tidy, and it also makes me feel like I'm not trying to put together 45 sets at once. Because I'm not. I swear!

Airbrushed Fridays: 2013 Topps Opening Day #201

I was at a Dinosaur Jr show last night, so I missed the ugliness between the Padres and the Dodgers, save for a few clips on the MLB Network. I don't usually tend to side with the Dodgers in most matters, but am I right in thinking that Quentin (and the Padres by extension) were completely in the wrong there? It's really annoying that a talented player like Zack Greinke can get injured in such a senseless way, but maybe I'm also just ticked because he's on one of my fantasy teams. I'd be interested to hear about this from a Padres perspective.

Who is this week's victim, and why do we care? Ervin Santana is one of those extremely talented pitchers whose stats just don't ever sync up with his expected results. At this point, we should probably except the righty with the big slider to be just be inconsistent and leave it at that. The Angels certainly must have been thinking this when they flipped him and a pile of cash last October to the Royals for a minor league reliever.

Why is this a thing? Do you think we'll ever see a return to some posed, actually-in-new-uniform shots for newly acquired players? At first, I was somewhat amused by the Photoshop thing, but now that it's pretty much become the norm for sets like Opening Day and Heritage, I am growing tired of it. I also know that it's been years since there's been a significantly terrible Cardinals Photoshop in one of these early sets, and that makes it less fun for me.

Airbrushed Fridays is a weekly feature as the name seems to imply. If you know of a card with an altered photograph that you'd like to see featured, please contact me. You probably won't win anything other than a hyperlink and a half-hearted apology from Carlos Quentin, but you never know!

State of the Cards, 2013 Edition

Now that we're a week and a half into the 2013 season, it's time for a little analysis on where this season is going. Just kidding! Small sample sizes, guys! Small sample sizes. It's fun to look at stats right now and see that Michael Morse of the Mariners is on pace to hit 97 HRs and that Cardinals rookie Matt Adams is hitting .643. It's hard to make much of else of a season that has already seen the Astros win 3 games, which is close to the over/under on what I figured they'd win in any given month this year.

I'm posting some cards from the final packages I received in February, though technically these first few are from a PWE. Jazzy Jedi Jeff of 2 by 3 Heroes sent me some tasty cardboard Cardinal parallels from the recent flagship Topps set. Jake Westbrook has basically picked from where he left off last year, boring people to death while putting up really nice numbers from the 4th starter position. He tossed his first shutout in 7 years today in the final game in the Cardinals first home series. Meanwhile, Brandon Phillips is crying himself to sleep tonight. Well, I don't know that for sure, but that's what I'm going with.

Given the Cardinals recent handling of injuries and injury-related news, I'm going to go ahead and assume that Jason Motte is out for the year and will require Tommy John surgery. That leaves a full-time closer job open. Mitchell Boggs has never really wowed anyone in his opportunities in the role, so it seems natural that someone experienced like Edward Mujica could be given the job. The problem is, Mujica has a pretty unimpressive track record outside his St. Louis work.

I also received a small package from Adam of Thoughts and Sox. Adam is in the first group of people I ever traded or corresponded with, so it's always nice to hear from him. He sent over a bunch of well-loved 1971 Topps cards, and there were several that I didn't recognize, which is always a good sign.

The '71 in the best shape by far was also the most star-studded. My monthly card show is coming up on Saturday, and I should really force myself to take a closer look at the always present vintage-heavy tables.

Finally, here's a Carlos Beltran Heritage Chrome parallel. Topps severely reduced the odds on getting the Chrome parallels last year, and I can say that I have seen very few of these compared to past years. Oddly enough, they are still stamped with the same-ish printing run. 1963 of these exist, supposedly. If they didn't all make it into packs, I wonder where they actually are. And if they were all distributed in packs, does that mean that there are lots more 2012 Heritage base cards than other years?

Contest Results! (and a Trade Update)

And the winner is... no one! Well, that's not entirely true. No one did particularly well in this year's college hoops contest, but we have to crown someone, right? Some did less worse than others, and those someone's are:

1st Place - Wilson (Tenets of Wilson)
2nd Place - Last Year of My Big East Bias (reader Brian C.)
3rd Place - Royals & Randoms & Cyclones (Royals and Randoms)
4th Place - Thunderbyrds (reader Timmy B.)
Worst Place - kcklad (reader Danny L.)

Yes, the football contest's runner-up is the big winner this time, while the champion of my last contest finished last. It's funny how those things work out. Wilson will receive a 2013 Topps Heritage blaster or a suitable equivalent (basically anything that's out on the shelves this weekend.) Send me an email soon if you'd like to change your prize!

2nd through 4th Place will have to stay tuned for "Selection Sunday". This Sunday, I am going to throw a bunch of cards into a trade bait pool and the runners-up will get to choose among those cards. Everyone will likely get some extra goodies as well. Worst Place gets what's coming to them. You don't get to choose!

Timmy B, please email me your mailing address when you get a chance. For everyone else mentioned above, if you've moved in the last year or so, please send along your address as well. Otherwise, I can probably dig it up.

If you're expecting a package from me (probably overdue), I am nearly caught up with trades. Hooray! I am planning on having everything I owe to everyone mailed out by Monday. If we still have something "in progress", please contact me soon so we can get things finalized. I am pretty disorganized right now. Contest prizes should be mailed out by the end of next week, except for Wilson's prize from the last contest which is sadly still sitting on my desk. Yikes!

Gimme a Break

Group Breaks are fun. My participation in these activities has increased as my disinterest in the latest products has decreased, which if you know me at all shouldn't be much of a surprise. Most of the time these breaks are a nice opportunity to get some cards for a team you care for. I usually don't sign up for the breaks that either involve teams chosen completely at random or have any structure that doesn't include being able to select by team. Of course, if the Cardinals are chosen before I get a chance to sign up, I lose all interest as well.

Joe Average Collector has been running a bit of a "variety pack" style break for the past number of months. At my count, there's still nine slots (eighteen teams total) available for his April break, so if you've got a blaster's amount of cash to spare, you should go ahead and sign up. And as you probably suspected already, all of the cards I'm featuring here are ones I received in JACC's past breaks - some from February and some from March.

I took the Blue Jays as one of my secondary teams in hopes that I'd pull at least one Chris Carpenter Blue Jays card, and was rewarded with a couple. I don't have many of his cards from the old days, so that was nice. Carp caught one of the two (?) ceremonial first pitchers thrown out at the Cardinals home opener, which was also nice. (I have chosen to forget anything else that may have happened during that game.)

I know I had the White Sox as a secondary team in one of these breaks as well, which means I now have extra White Sox cards to give out that I had lost track of. I added a couple of inserts and some oddballs to my White Sox stash. As far as this card goes, it reminds me that if I had more time on my hands I'd probably be a junk wax era error card collector. I was mildly obsessed with error cards back when those cards were new and there was no internet to speak of, so I can only imagine how fun it would be to collect all of these weird (and usually insignificant) variation cards these days. As it is, I know that this is a double error card - both the front and back of the card have errors that were later corrected. I believe there's at least three versions of this card, and this is the most screwed up of all of them. Maybe someday I will set up a special variation Trade Bait page for others that are interested in these things, but I've never been shy about trading away this stuff as it is.

This one goes out to all the people who instantly change the channel... er... close the browser tab when they run into a basketball card. Ha! JACC likes to throw in certain extras to all of his breaks, and occasionally hits up some player collections. And yes, I actually do collect non-Blazers Clyde Drexler cards, not that anyone was asking.

Erin's Figgy collection is getting fatter by the day. Figgins was cut in the spring by the Marlins and is currently without a job. I wonder if he'd still have a job today if he never signed the contract with Seattle, as the atmosphere (and his play on the field, of course) just seemed toxic.

Pete Kozma is every Cardinals "expert"'s favorite topic right now, with every mistake being heavily scrutinized and every success being scoffed at. Is it possible that he will be a competent, even decent starting shortstop? Well, it's early April, and he has just 33 big league starts on the books.

I just had to scan an Ozzie card.

The interesting thing about this Albert Pujols Bazooka parallel is that is has his full rookie contract signature ("Jose A Pujols") on it rather than the usually shortened "A Pujols" that we are used to seeing.

Jaime Garcia had a great spring and has put together two pretty nice starts in the games that count. I'm optimistic!

Finally, here's the centerpiece of both group break packages. This early Pujols Diamond Kings card is numbered to 2500. Serial numbered cards before 2006 (roughly when I started buying packs again) seem to be pretty tough to find in comparison to more recent stuff. I need more stuff like this.