Good Luck Ducks, Week 3: Bringing the NW to Northwestern

The Fighting Ducks hit Lake Michigan for an early first road test.

Oregon hits the road for the first conference game of the year, after completely obliterating their first FBS opponent last week. Oklahoma State seems to be facing some dark times, but it was a bit of a surprise just how dark things got last Saturday, even though the Cowboys were coming off of a 3-9 season with a freshman backup QB at the helm. It's hard for me to feel completely sorry for a (*checks notes*) Big-12 school, especially from the part of the country that eats and breathes and does other unsavory things to the sport of football, but I was feeling bad for Oklahoma State late in that game, especially their overmatched quarterback.

The Ducks are up against Northwestern today with the Wildcats in a temporary home, in a very small venue with Lake Michigan right in the background. Unfortunately, since this isn't baseball, it doesn't seem likely that any balls will end up in the drink, but I suppose you never know. They once again start the day off as favorites by around four touchdowns, but playing outside of Eugene can always throw a wrench into those expectations. With FOX's "Big Noon Saturday" crew in full effect, it won't be treated like any other game, and certainly the small crowd at full tilt will provide an experience that most Ducks players aren't quite accustomed to. SMU transfer Preston Stone (what a name!) has already racked up seven touchdowns on the young season for Northwestern, so it's fair to expect a lot of balls in the air today.

Oregon's incredibly deep looking roster should be up for the challenge, but it will be interesting to see how all the playing time shakes out as you would figure that touches will be more proportionately distributed among top performers and the season moves along. The Ducks had 10 non-QB players carry the ball last week and 10 different players caught passes (9 in the first half alone if I'm not mistaken), but that kind of distribution isn't expected nor necessarily sustainable. Still, it was fun to watch, and the hope is that the fun can continue on today as Oregon inches closer and closer to the massive game against Penn State later this month.

Notes and miscellany:

• Northwestern, of course, is in the midwestern United States, and I've never in my life mistaken their geography for being located somewhere closer to my territory in the Pacific Northwest. However, outside of vaguely knowing they were a school located in the Midwest and probably not far from one of the Great Lakes, I couldn't have spotted them on a map. Such are the things you need to learn when joining another big conference. I doubt many Big Ten diehards could have pinned the tail on the Eugene donkey at most times in their lives.
• Opponent fun fact: As alluded to, Northwestern is in the process of renovating Ryan Field, their home in Evanston for nearly a century. It honestly looks pretty cool from the project renderings, and they purport to be doing it without taxpayer money.
• Opponent history: Their last meeting was in 1974, before I was born, with the Wildcats taking down the Ducks 14-10 in a season where both schools combined to win a total of 5 games. Yikes.
• Game time is 9:00 AM PDT on FOX in Evanston. Go Ducks!

Cardinals, Heritage and Sometimes Both

 

A late spring trade package with some of the usual suspects and a couple of nice surprises.

Since I don't really do many prearranged trades outside of TCDB anymore, it's always nice to find a surprise bubble mailer in or near my mailbox. Make that doubly so if it's from Night Owl Cards, since we've been sending stuff back and forth from coast to coast for many years now. Right around the end of spring one such package landed in my lap and I'm finally ready to show off some of its contents today.

I won't get into my rant about what Fanatics did to my beloved Topps Heritage again, and I genuinely like some of the colored parallels, but the sheer quantity of them is too much. (If it's negative, everyone is blaming Fanatics now, aren't they?) I'd much rather get one of the traditional inserts or, gods forbid, a short printed base card than a parallel in every pack.

I was excited about Matt Carpenter returning to the team last year in part because I knew it could potentially mean more Matt Carpenter Cardinals cards, and I wasn't totally disappointed. I knew it might be a struggle for him at the plate, but he was deployed sparingly. Lance Lynn also returned to St. Louis to finish his career last year and ended up with more Cards cards, while Tommy Pham's brief reappearance last summer also netted him new Cardinals offerings. I was a bit less excited about Pham.

A former Cardinal who hasn't returned is the power hitting and oft-injured Tyler O'Neill, although he's only in his 8th big league season. He's got time yet. This aqua Donruss Optic parallel from his rookie year is numbered to 299. One of these days I have a huge rant brewing about the whole rookie card thing -- and it's not going to be pretty -- but for now I am just calling everything a "card from his rookie year" and leaving it at that.

Here's big surprise number one: my first ever Stan the Man card from his playing days! And it doesn't even look like it was fished out of a latrine or rolled up to smoke something. There are some visible scratches and a small crease, but it looks really nice to my standards. My scanner did not like the lower border for some reason.

There was a pretty decent pile of Heritage for the set build in the pack. I'll let the Christopher Sanchez SP represent the lot as you've likely seen all of these base cards numerous times by now.

The second nice surprise is this Dakota Hudson Allen & Ginter jersey card from 2020. It's not quite on the same level as the Musial card, of course, but it's not like people are backing up truckloads of these to my house every week.

If you do want to back up a truckload of cards to my house someday, make it full of Ozzie Smith cards, like this 2024 Donruss Optic Blue Velocity parallel. I'll never run out of these kinds of parallels to collect, but I'll also probably never stop wanting them.

Thanks again to Night Owl and everyone who has sent little and big surprises in the mail over the years!

Good Luck Ducks, Week 2: Yo Soy Un Pistolero

The Ducks tangle with their first FBS opponent of the season.

The first Oregon game of the year went about as well as anyone could have hoped for. In stark contrast to the consternation that loomed over the first couple of games in the 2024 season, which of course eventually resulted in the Ducks taking the Big Ten title, last Saturday's win over Montana State was quite the cake walk. Of course (of course!) the Bobcats are an FCS team, but if there was ever a time for an FCS team to strike, it's going to be at the start of a season.

Next up on the docket is an appointment with Oklahoma State. The Cowboys are somewhat of a rarity these days, a team that actually stayed with their conference (Big 12!) amongst so much maneuvering and money grabbing. Another sign of surprising stability is that their head coach (Mike Gundy) has been leading the program for a couple of decades, which is something like several eternities by 2025 standards. They're also coming off of a dreadful 3-9 season, although they started things off this year on a positive note with a win over an FCS program.

That's probably where the similarities end with these two schools. Oregon's Dante Moore era got off to a nice start, with the redshirt sophomore looking pretty impressive, albeit against noticeably inferior competition. Moore seemingly has a million different people to throw to on the field even after some significant injuries to the receiver core along with a couple of big departures due to graduation. Their backfield is so stacked that prized transfer Makhi Hughes barely touched the ball, although in the Dan Lanning era it's always been difficult to evaluate what the team is going to look like in the long run as Lanning seems to treat most of these nonconference games like an NFL preseason.

Notes and miscellany:

• This will be the second time in three days that one of my football teams is facing a Cowboys team. Of course, the rivalry between Oregon and Oklahoma State doesn't really exist (unlike Dallas vs. Philly), but it will always make me recall Dez Bryant (boooo!) and the 2008 Holiday Bowl.
• Opponent fun fact: Oklahoma State's mascot for more than 100 years is Pistol Pete, someone who doesn't have the look of someone you'd want to mess with, even if he's a bit bow-legged.
• Opponent history: Oregon won their only meeting, the aforementioned 2008 Holiday Bowl. I do miss those occasional Pac-12(10) / Big 12 games and I would have guessed that they played the Cowboys more than just the one time.
• Game time is 12:30 PM PDT on CBS in Eugene. Go Ducks!

Still Group Breakin'

Checking out another batch of Cardinals cards from spring's group breaks.

While I'm not participating in card breaks at the level I once was, I still have a regular thing going on with a few low cost breakers. Tonight we'll take a look at some stuff I got earlier this year from the Nachos Grande breaks.

A good chunk of the cards that hit my mailbox this time around were from the then-new Topps Heritage set. As of this writing it looks like I may have finally finished off the non-SP base set, but Topps made it extremely annoying to collect the inserts this time around, getting rid of all of the usual concepts like Flashbacks and New Age Performers, sets that were small enough to complete in a reasonable amount of time. In their place are much larger insert checklists which are not commonly even found in packs. Annoying. They also spammed the whole product with Chrome and color parallels, when in the past one or two of these would suffice.

One of the boxes in these past breaks was something called Historic Autograph Company. It's a 2024 set featuring players from a long bygone era.

I had never heard of these things and they have a strange look to them: glittery and shiny but still trying to look "old" in a way.

They don't even put the player names on the front, but many of these guys are famous enough that you might recognize them anyway.

Speaking of a ridiculous number of parallels, well, that just seems to be Topps in the Fanatics era now. They decided to streamline by significantly cutting down on the number of releases per year but decided to cram even more, ahem, "value" into their core products that they kept around. That's how you get a special Miles Mikolas parallel card adorned with a whole mess of Topps logos.

This 2022 Topps Museum Collection card was a really nice surprise, as you usually don't see high end cards in these breaks. This one is numbered to just 99 copies.

A box of 2004 Bazooka was part of the fun, and among other things I ended up with a chunky red parallel of a Yadi rookie card. Nice!

These 1997 Pacific Prism Gems of the Diamond cards are really not very attractive looking. It's always nice to add another card of The Wizard to my collection, though, especially an older one.

Here's one of those new Topps Heritage inserts. We shall see if I ever track down a second copy of this.

To repeat myself for the billionth time: I miss Topps Total. And I don't mean that on-demand stuff that they put out several years ago. Nobody liked Topps Total because of the design, and that was really the only thing connecting the 2020 era cards with the 2000s product. (This one is a silver parallel.)

Will we see a tribute to the 1991 set in next year's Topps flagship products? Well, it's not like Topps is exactly known for innovation these days, so I'm going to assume yes.

Good Luck Ducks, Week 1: Reboot

The Quack Attack begins their second B1G season with a very remade roster. 

 

I probably say this every year, and you could certainly look at this year's calendar and see that Labor Day falls on the earliest day it possibly could, but it seems like the football season really sneaked up on us again. The Ducks begin another typically mellow nonconference schedule with a home match against an FCS opponent, but it's not just another FCS opponent. Much like the Ducks last season, the Montana State Bobcats ran the table in 2024 only to get knocked out as soon as the calendar flipped over to January. Of course, the two programs exist on entirely different planes of college football existence, but that's not to say that today's match will be a cakewalk.

There are quite a few changes on both sides of the ball for the Ducks as they head into their second season in the Big Ten. This doesn't come as a surprise in the current state of player movement across the sport, but it is the first time in several seasons that Oregon won't be quarterbacked by an accomplished multi-year starter from a major program who transferred in just in time for some potential playoff action. They will have another power school transfer at the helm, though, as Dante Moore is expected to takeover as QB1. Moore started as a freshman two years ago under Chip Kelly at UCLA before moving to Oregon to more or less apprentice under Dillon Gabriel last season. He took enough snaps to get his feet wet (ha!) with the green and yellow, but not enough to burn a redshirt year as far as I can recall, so if this all works out he could be around for a bit.

Montana State is an excellent running team who is led by Adam Jones, a back that is not quite at the level of Ashton Jeanty, but could at least give Ducks fans some uncomfortable feelings reminiscent of the game they squeaked out against Boise State early last season. A successfully running game is often an equalizer against an offense with superior talent, meaning that if Oregon can't force many fourth downs, it could make for an uncomfortable sunny afternoon in Eugene.

Notes and miscellany:

• Given how things played out last year and the current massive turnover in the roster (only three starters return), I am going to temper my expectations for the season. There's a chance this team could take a big step back, but given the talent and (presumably) cash being thrown around, it's also possible that the Ducks become one of those programs that breaks off from the rest of the bunch and ends up in some superleague tier someday. I don't really like either prospect. I know going back to the way things were (pick a year: 2015? 2010? 19-90something?) isn't ever going to be a possibility, but the upheaval in this sport (and others that I follow to be quite honest) makes me less invested than I used to be. Of course, that might be a good thing for my own personal health.
• Opponent Fun Fact: Jersey number 41 holds a particular significance for Montana State, and not just because Montana is the 41st state.
• Opponent History: Oregon won the only previous meeting, 27-14 back in 1947.
• Game time is 1:00 PM PDT on the B1G Network in Eugene.

The Baseball Project Trading Cards!

 

Baseball cards featuring a rock band that writes songs about baseball. 

 

If you're reading this and you like rock music, there's a good chance you've at least heard of The Baseball Project. Founded almost two decades ago, the band (a supergroup, if you will) celebrated their fourth album release and tour back in 2023 with a pack of cards available at their merch table which was clearly too fun for me to pass up.

Each card features one of the primary band members, and the info card that leads off the pack gives you some contact info as well as a small glimpse at the album cover of their latest release, Grand Salami Time. The title track is based on the catchphrase of Seattle Mariners legendary broadcaster Dave Niehaus and ties in a bunch of other famous announcer catchphrases.

Each card features a childhood photo of a band member, using the familiar 1987 Topps style and Future Stars logo.

On the back of the card you get each band member's "stats" (i.e. rock band resume) along with a fun fact about that member.

Did I get an all-rookie hot pack? It seems like I did!

One of the big things that put this band on my radar is that I became a huge R.E.M. fan in high school, and the band has included two core members of that group at times as well as a touring member, meaning that I first got to see 60% of this group play live together more than 30 years ago.

Is there anything better than old little league photos? I still have one or two of mine somewhere.

Peter Buck was always my favorite R.E.M. member, and he's only gotten more involved in different projects as he's gotten older, including a run of solo releases not mentioned here.

Scott McCaughey is a Bay Area native, so he may not be as enthused about wearing a Yankees shirt here as he seemed to be in the photo.

McCaughey started touring with R.E.M. in 1995 and eventually moved up here to Portland, so I see him around from time to time when I go to shows locally. The Minus 5 is always a fun time.

Steve Wynn pushes the Yankees thing further here with an actual team logo.

Wynn put out a number of acclaimed records with The Dream Syndicate in the '80s and is married to the band's drummer, Linda Pitmon. He splits lead vocal duties with McCaughey for the most part, with Mike Mills at the mic on a couple of fun tracks about Dale Murphy and doctoring baseballs.

I tend to shy away from most bands that could easily be labeled as a "gimmick band", but the first time I caught these guys live I was really into it. Their collective background in the music game certainly helps here. Check them out at their website, on Bandcamp, or YouTube or wherever you consume music.

New Cardinals and an Old Friend

New (to me) Cardinals cards and a fun surprise.

 

Earlier this year, Padrographs opened some new card packages and was kind enough to send some of the Cardinals spoils my way. We once again had a couple of major Topps releases from 2024 bleed into the 2025 calendar, including this fun "rookie year" insert of Masyn Winn that's a throw back to a mid-90s insert design.

From the 2025 Topps Series 1 set came a few Nolan Arenado inserts, as he is one of the lone players still with the Cardinals that could be considered a star these days.

Arenado did not get traded in the offseason despite at least one serious attempt, and did not get traded at this year's trade deadline. I imagine the market for him had shrunk even further, as his production at the plate has fallen off dramatically (and he is currently injured.)

Topps swiped a few insert concepts from canceled sets like Big League and Opening Day recently to assimilate them into the main flagship set. I think these must have only been available in some special retail configuration or another.

Stan the Man gets in on the 2025 Series 1 fun.

I assure you this is a rainbow foil parallel, one of the only shiny parallels that exists these days that doesn't throw a bunch of weird glittery patterns at you. Of course, it scans just like a base card.

The 2024 Topps Heritage High Numbers product was the other carryover from last year. From left to right, top to bottom, we have a guy in a City Connect jersey who was recently dealt ahead of the trade deadline, a Rule 5 pick from last year who recently rejoined the active roster, a speed demon who is still developing at the plate (or so they tell me), a "sunset card" of sorts of one of my favorites, and a guy who was recently DFA'd twice and is currently in the minors for another unmentionable team.

The big fun surprise, of course, is this Paul DeJong signed card of his "Bowman 1st" Chrome card. DeJong is with the Nationals right now and has recently smacked a couple of homers. Good for him!

A Holiday Weekend PWE Round-Up

 

Fun things come in small envelopes.

 

It's time for another round of small trade envelopes and things of that nature. This bunch is pretty baseball (and Cardinals) heavy, which is just about perfect for this time of year.

First up is the first of two envelopes from gcrl (cards as i see them). This one has been sitting on my shelf since February according to the postmark. A pair of obscure Cardinals pandemic relievers still look good in red, even with the blue background design that accompanies the red bordered parallel card from 2021 Topps Heritage.

Panini's Donruss product sprang forth this strange little die-cut card with a giant Rated Rookie logo on it in 2016. The nostalgia for the Rated Rookie logo supersedes what little Panini actually does with its Donruss brand, which is typically underwhelming if not just outright boring.

I think at this point I have more Tim Cooney signed cards than the total number of times I can recall seeing him actually pitch, but that's fairly typical for certain players who get featured in Bowman. I didn't have this blue parallel, of course!

This Career Year insert is apparently from the 2022 Topps flagship set. I don't really remember it at all, and I bought a decent amount of this Topps stuff that year. Pujols certainly looks much younger here in his 2009 state than he did during his memorable 2022 Cardinals comeback.

Ah, who doesn't love a good Stadium Club photo? When do we get Stadium Club this year? This month? September? December? Never?

Until they also lost the Players Association license, Panini continued their tradition of numbering all of their inserts to 999 copies, like this one. You could still find unnumbered parallels in their various retail configurations, though.

I kind of miss the dumb fake relic cards that they put in Topps blasters for many years. I believe this year (2023) was the last year that they did something like this. The rubbery hockey puck-shaped thing in the middle of the card is certainly memorable. It almost totally obscures the player.

Further cementing gcrl's status as Hamm King were this pair of inserts from the 2015 Topps set. I now own 17 of these by my count, and others will have their work cut out for them if they want to catch the leader.

Next up is a very coveted card from noted author and Brewers fan (and the two do intersect) Matthew Prigge. I did not know that a Jim Edmonds Brewers card existed until recently, which made me highly interested in obtaining a copy. After Edmonds was traded to San Diego (for future World Series hero David Freese), he went on a whirlwind tour though the NL Central, playing for every team in the division aside from Pittsburgh before winding up his career. Cubs and Reds Edmonds cards are readily available in some major sets, but the existence of a Brewers card was news to me.

I had to scan the back because I'm highly interested in police/team issued cards and wanted to check this out. I believe there are actually a bunch of different versions of this set, at least according to TCDB. I'm assuming that the main different is the presenting sponsor on the back.

Matthew also included a few shiny bonus cards that I had been hesitant to write about for some time now. I believe he was the first person that I knew of to discover this weird bootleggy looking set/box thing that was briefly available on Amazon. I was hoping someone else would discover more info about this set and maybe even put a checklist together for TCDB, but as far as I know no one has bothered to undertake this.

Here's a couple more. I have a whole stack of these that I also purchased from Amazon a year or two ago, but I don't know if what I ended up with was a complete set. I ended up throwing a few of these into envelopes for others myself, so I wouldn't even be able to attempt a checklist anymore. I'll probably toss the rest of these up on the blog as a giveaway at some point this summer because they've been sitting on my desk far too long. The set is full of weird errors and has a strange checklist, but the Cardinals were more than fairly represented.

Here's what all of the card backs look like. Ah yes, it's the Patriotic Baseball Eagle. The cards are are extremely thin and sharped like playing cards/TCG cards, except that they're all shiny gold... and probably very toxic. Don't eat these. I believe they're Korean in origin, from what little research could be done from when they were available for sale.

The third envelope comes from gcrl once again, who comes out swinging with this amazing autograph of one of my all-time favorite college football players. LaMichael James' Press Pass autograph card is numbered to just 99 copies, and I don't even mind that he's been cut off at the shoulders here.

From Duck to Duck, this is a pro rookie card of another Oregon running back who had a pretty solid run with the Seahawks in the '00s. I've never been one to root a ton for the NFL team up north of here in Seattle, but Mo Morris gave me a reason to check in on them from time to time.

The bulk of the envelope was comprised of a bunch of 2025 Topps Heritage needs. I'm pretty close to being done with the (non-SP, non-insert) set now, but there's a few stragglers as usual.

Last up is this single card from Damon Holtz, a great Bluesky follow who gives away cards on his feed there pretty frequently. This is one of the "silver pack" box topper insert cards from the recently released Series 2 set and also shows Pujols in his original run with the Cardinals. This is actually the second card I've snagged from the very generous Damon, but I think I ended up only posting on Bluesky about the other one. I'm not going to try to convince anyone of the merits of Bluesky (or any social media in general), but if you're over there, feel free to give me a follow!