Putting a Bow On It

Sign-ups are still open for this year's March Radness contest. We're already at 26 participants, which means with just 3 more entries we will surpass last season.

This is the second time I'll mention JABOs in the same day. Kyle held the first group break I came across for 2012 Topps, and I was quick to snatch up the Cardinals. I also had the Rays, who I passed along to the Troll, and the Mets who are earmarked for one of my contest winners.

Here are some of the Cardinals I received:

2012 Topps was very kind to the Cardinals, and with good reason: they are the defending World Series champs. I will probably mention that a few more times this year. Adron Chambers was one of the more entertaining stories of the Cards' improbable run. He didn't factor into the playoffs, but he had some huge late game pinch hit appearances deep in their September drive to overtake the Braves. I will never forget his bases-clearing triple against the Mets.

I wasn't sure that the deciding NLDS game would be topped. Chris Carpenter won a pitching duel with Roy Halladay that was one of the most tense games I've ever watched. It's a bit disconcerting that Carp is already dealing with a neck problem after practically leading the planet in innings pitched last year, but hopefully he will be alright by April.

I do find it a bit confusing that all of the playoff cards have the World Series logo on them, regardless of whether or not they are from the World Series.

In 2006, the most memorable series to me was the NLCS, but that wasn't quite the case last year. It certainly felt like sweet revenge to see the Cards top their division rival (Brewers) in that series, though, but the series as a whole was a distant third to the nail-biting divisional series and the off-the-wall-bonkers World Series.

Best. Game. Ever. It won everything. I never thought for a moment that I could watch a Game 7 and feel like it didn't even matter as much because I had just seen everything you could ever want out of sports the previous game, but that's how amazing it was. I couldn't even find the words to make a proper blog post about it.

This card reminds me of the '80s "team leaders" Topps cards, probably because Berkman and Holliday are wearing the '80s style retros. I feel like there was a lot of high-fiving in the '80s. I'm glad we still do that.

Speaking of '80s, this insert set is one of the more pleasant surprises of the year, in a year that I don't really have much of an opinion one way or the other about the overall design. I would probably think about collecting these outside of my Cardinals collection, but I have so many other projects that haven't seen completion and I don't have a lot of reason to buy many Series 1 packs after this break as it is.

These... I'm not so impressed with.

Kyle tossed in a few Cardinal extras for me, including some 2003 Topps Shoe Box Collection cards. I don't know what they are, but I like their style!

Finally, here's an 'Ol Red bat card from 2004 Bazooka that was swapped out for a David Wright memorabilia card that I got in the break by virtue of having the Mets. Good stuff.