Good Luck Ducks: Texas Never Whispers

Football.

Oregon says goodbye to its longtime defensive coordinator Nick Aliotti today, as the fiery coach has decided to hang it up after one last football game. That football game will be played against the Texas Longhorns at the Alamo Bowl, which is just more than an hour's drive from the UT campus. As a de facto road game for the Ducks, it will be a challenge to win this game even if you don't consider all of the other factors.

This is the fourth season that the Pac-12 has been affiliated with the Alamo Bowl, and the conference has gone 1-2 against Big 12 opponents in the previous meetings. Last year, Texas defeated a higher ranked Oregon State team in a very close and competitive game. Given how things have gone this season for Oregon, it's really hard to say who will win this one. Even considering the massive almost-home field advantage for the Longhorns, Oregon comes in favored by more than 3 touchdowns. I could see Texas winning in a close fought game just as easily as I could see Oregon winning by 30 or 40 points.

Mack Brown, the longtime head coach at UT, will be coaching his last game in the burnt orange today. Unlike Aliotti, Brown was basically forced out. With pockets as deep as this guy, Texas will certainly lure someone notable to takeover head coaching duties. I wouldn't worry about them too much. It does say something about your status as an elite football school when back-to-back Alamo Bowl appearances means that you've fallen on hard times. Meanwhile, Oregon will be slumming it in a non-BCS bowl for the first time since 2008.

Marcus Mariota should finally be healthy for the Ducks after a month off, while star running back Malcolm Brown should provide a formidable foe. Oregon has had difficulty stopping the run at times this season, but hopefully Aliotti has one last trick up his sleeve.

Oregon's last meeting with Texas resulted in a 35-30 win in the 2000 Holiday Bowl.

Game time is 3:45 PST (on a weekday?) in San Antonio with national coverage on ESPN. Go Ducks!

Happy Birthday Steve Garvey

Former Cardinals celebrating birthdays today include: Steve Carlton, Matty Alou and Lonnie Smith.

I'll probably get docked a few contest points for this, but my primary memories of Steve Garvey were as Padres player, occasional TV guest star, and tabloid subject. His heyday came wearing Dodger blue, however. Over the course of a 19-year career, he amassed 10 All-Star appearances, an MVP award and a pile of Gold Gloves. He missed out recently on being selected by the "expansion era" Hall of Fame committee, whatever that means, when they opted to go with a trio of former managers.

Since this is a Drake's Big Hitters card, I thought I'd show off the back as well. It's a red rendition of the regular issue 1985 Topps design. For his career, Garvey had a .284/.326/.446 slash line against the Cardinals, with 20 HRs and 101 RBI in 677 ABs.

Contest Reminder

Tomorrow is the deadline to get your picks in for at least the first contest. Don't know what that's all about? Check it here and enter:

http://cardsoncards.blogspot.com/2013/12/contest-time-college-bowl-pick-em-is.html

Quality Over Quantity

Four cards that are great fits in my collection.

When I can afford to, I like to send out large volumes of cards to people. Usually, I'm a little too time-crunched to do it as I always underestimate how much time it takes to pull a bunch of little objects together into one large stack. Sometimes the recipient just does not have a broad section of needs from which to choose. I appreciate trade packages both great and small, however, and sometimes the best trades could fit inside a tiny envelope.

Scott Crawford recently sent me one of the best "bang for your buck" packages in recent memory. In just four cards, he covered a couple of huge needs in my collection and hit me with two, well, bona fide hits. The long forgotten 2009 Topps Propaganda insert set is two cards closer to completion (I would love to see this kind of artwork again, by the way) with the ghost of Grady Sizemore and an Upton brother joining the collection.

I also received this super crazy "Cracked Ice" version of a Matt Holliday card from some sort of Panini Father's Day promo set. It was released this year, and the Studio tribute is a throwback to the 1991 Studio design. This is about the only way Panini can get away with unlicensed cards, as the whole point of the original Studio set was to feature players out of their uniforms and in a Sears-style portrait.

To top things off, this is a Matt Carpenter Silver Slate wrapper redemption card that's numbered 3 out of 10. Wow! It's a framed card that is reminiscent of the Gypsy Queen parallels, only it uses the base design. Matt Carpenter became one of my favorite players in the league last season, and I'm hopeful that his transition back to third base goes as well as his season at second did.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to sign up for the contest!

Contest Time! College Bowl Pick 'em Is Back

Win baseball cards for being right at something for once in your life.

Back by no demand whatsoever, for the fifth consecutive year I am giving away free cards to the best prognosticators of (mostly) meaningless college football games. Past winners include Adam from Thoughts on Sox (2009-10), Mark from Stats on the Back (2010-11), AJ from The Lost Collector (2011-12) and last year's winner, Royal Dan.

If you want to skip all the blah blah blah and just get to the free stuff, go to the bottom of the post for the sign-up link and make sure you submit picks for every game. There's even a separate contest for non-Yahoo people, but you don't care about that because you've already started staring out the window at the squirrels chasing each other.

If you've participated in the past, you know the drill. Go on ahead to Yahoo and sign up. I have sent out invitations through Yahoo's automated system. If you don't get an email invite, follow the manual procedure at the bottom of this post (and if all else fails, send me an email and I will try to help you out.) For the rest of you, here are the rules and prize details, which will be similar to past years:

• First place will receive: a 2014 Topps Series 1 blaster OR suitable equivalent (subject to availability at Target)... as well as a small plastic pouch of cards from your favorite team/player(s)/etc.
• Second place will receive: a Priority Mail padded envelope full of cards from your favorite team/player(s)/etc. (this usually ends up being around 8 bags/pouches or so)
• Worst place will receive: whatever I feel like sending you. I've been spending a considerable amount of time cleaning up and sorting through stuff lately I have a bunch of junk on my desk that I don't know what to do with, so please be very afraid to finish last this time around. Of course, as past "winners" of this prize can tell you, you will still receive some cards targeted toward your favorite team/player(s).

Because there's no such thing as a free lunch, at least without a copious amount of rules and guilt, here they are (basically copied from last year):

• Participants must sign up through the official Yahoo link. Unfortunately, this means that you must have a Yahoo account. I know this is a deal breaker for some, but I can't figure out another way to accept manual entries and try to math them up according to Yahoo's point system.
• Promote this contest! No, that doesn't mean you need to "follow" my blog, nor does it mean that you'll gain any competitive advantage by posting about this contest. I just want to see a lot of people participate, and will be willing to award more prizes if there are more participants. 16 23 31 people joined the Yahoo group last year - let's increase that total! Put a subliminal message on your blog post. Send a mass email. Casually tell your co-workers in the break room while discussing Brett Favre's latest injury Tim Tebow's latest game winning prayer Mark Sanchez's buttfumble hahahaha Mark Sanchez's buttfumble is still really funny... okay fine... Eli Manning's incredible interception rate. The possibilities are endless!
• Points are scored according to the Confidence System. This basically means that while you are predicting which team wins which bowl game, you will also be responsible for ranking how confident you are in each pick. For example, if you are insane enough to think that Washington will beat Nebraska Baylor Boise State BYU (actually not that far fetched) and are willing to bet your street cred on it, you will want to assign that matchup a higher confidence rating (30, perhaps) than you would with your misguided "TCU will totally stomp Michigan State because I ate at a Buffalo Wild Wings last night Ball State will rule them all!" pick.
• Email me your contest information after you sign up. You can't assume that I will automatically recognize your clever Yahoo Pick Set name, nor will I necessarily disbelieve your "friend" who claims your prize after everything is said and done because he swears he's CowboysFan4Ever and is the "most right" about his "sweet picks".
• You can change your picks at any time, so long as your pick is made before the official start time (usually the TV broadcast time) of each game.
• You must make a pick for every game to be eligible for the "worst place" prize. Also, once again this year... please... no tanking it on purpose! The prizes aren't that great, folks. I'd much rather award the prize to someone who failed in spectacular fashion than someone who intentionally went with picks that are doomed to fail like Wisconsin over Stanford UCF over Baylor.

Click here to sign up! It's free! First timers are very welcome.

Group ID: 22319

Password: quackquackquack

DEADLINE: There's a hard deadline of Saturday, December 21st at 11:00 AM PST. That's the start time of the first bowl game.

But wait... there's more! Available to all entrants as well as non-entrants who don't want to use Yahoo, there's a bonus contest:

Leave a comment here predicting the final score of the BELK BOWL before the Belking officially begins (the game is on the 28th) and win a retail jumbo pack of 2014 Topps Series 1. Whoever is closest gets it. Belk on, Belkers!

Airbrushed Fridays: 2012 Bowman #28

Is Photoshop the Botox for baseball cards?

Who is he? Mat Latos is a young right-handed starting pitcher. More importantly, he owns a cat named Cat Latos. The more famous of the two single-T big league Mats (the other being Gamel), Latos had a 21 game winning streak that spanned portions of the 2012 and 2013 seasons.

How did he get here? Latos came up with the Padres and excited people. He must have excited the Reds, because they gave up four players for him, including some young talent like Yonder Alonso and Yasmani Grandal. And, uh, they also got Edinson Volquez.

Repeat offender? No

Other versions of this card? No

Airbrushed Score: 3

Comments: Well, if it wasn't for the fact that Bowman's release date that year was only a couple of months after the beginning of spring training, I'd be a little suspicious. But when you look at the background of this card, perhaps it's not the player who is Photoshopped than it is the background. I mean, what kind of dreamscape is Latos pitching in front of? The Reds spring uni starts to look more and more legit when you see it that way, while his pitching motion seems more and more posed. Weird stuff. Bowman is more Photoshop than natural, I tell you.

Swaggy

Some shiny things.

Tomorrow is the last day of baseball's so-called winter meetings, and it looks like the Cardinals have already spent most of their Christmas shopping money. There's still time and, presumably, room in the payroll to pick up some shiny new things for next season, but the team lacks any serious holes to fill right now and already spent a good chunk of change on the man with the unfortunate name spelling (Jhonny Peralta). They also picked up some shiny speed in the name of Peter Bourjos. All we're really left with at this point are the various roster-filling moves that are usually pretty under the radar.

I'm sitting on some new shiny things of my own and thought I'd show off a few of them here. These cards were sent by The Junior Junkie, who is seriously threatening longtime blog pals Play at the Plate and Night Owl Cards for most pieces of mail sent to this blog in a calendar year. The scan of Jordan Swagerty's shiny card virtually robbed the Xfractor of its "X"s. Weird. Swagerty seems to be having trouble escaping the low minors currently, but if he ever makes the bigs I'm going to have a really hard time not calling him "Swag" or thinking of the ridiculous "Turn My Swag On" song.

Here's a guy who has actually made it. Since the trade of hometown hero David Freese, Wong's prospects are certainly looking up. The organization made it a priority to put him on the big league roster this season even though he mostly sat. Glaring baserunning errors notwithstanding, Wong appears to have the upper hand on a starting 2B job in 2014 with All-Star Matt Carpenter moving back to his natural 3B position.

There was a time, of course, that the Cardinals farm system wasn't all that prosperous. In fact, in the Jocketty era, it flat out stank. That's not John Gall's fault. I mean, an infinitesimal percent of baseball players actually get to wear a MLB uniform at any point in their life. It's just such a glaring shift in philosophy, where back in the "ought" years the minor league system was completely gutted at time where the team on the field was smacking fools around. I like that there are players coming up to be excited about now, and it's not like the Big League Cardinals have suffered at the expense of building up young talent.

Another thing I don't miss? Short printed rookie cards. Well, I didn't collect cards in 2004, so it's kind of hard for me to say that I missed that. As much as I like serial-numbered cards, I would hate it if every Trevor Rosenthal card this year came with a little stamp on the back to remind you that it's harder to find one of him than it is to find a Matt Holliday.