Pictures of Men (That I Need)

I need men, apparently. If you've ever tried to do a Google search for Pictures of Men, the Blue Jays-centric blog with the hilarious name, you've no doubt encountered an array of photos of well-groomed men. And I don't know what my point is, really, except that I find it amusing. In any case, I got my very own stack of manpics from up north (and back east) and I thought I'd share a few with you.

Dennis hit up a few of my Topps Heritage needs. 2011's Then and Now look might be favorite version of this annual insert set.

This Eric Hurley short print from the 2008 High Numbers set is reminding me how long ago it was when I started collecting this set. The 1959 is probably my favorite design, but it's amazing that I am still so far away from completing this set. I am still missing plain old base cards from this set, people!

My blog has its own Google search ambiguity issues, but it is a place where Cardinals are celebrated and Dennis provided some more great Cardinal stuff. This Stan the Man is a mini version of an already short printed card.

Mike Tyson is going to make an appearance on the next new episode Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, which has outraged advocates for victims everywhere. (Seeing as how the show is ostensibly about a sex crimes police unit and Tyson has quite a sordid past that delves into that area, well....) Oh, wait, wrong Mike Tyson!

Finally, here's a couple of goldies, which I always enjoy. Jake Westbrook had a fantastic 2012 season, but many remain skeptical that he'll be able to repeat his success in 2013. There are plenty of talented young arms that seem to be ready for big time duty, but I think St. Louis will still need some steady veteran innings with Kyle Lohse gone and other members of the rotation dealing with various ailments.

Finally, it's our old bald friend, Matt Holliday. I'm not sure if he'd make the cut in a photo array, but he's a hell of a baseball player.

Heartbreaking Realization

I had a Heartbreaking Realization that I failed, once again, to send my end of a trade before it was time to post about what I got in return. Yikes. I will try to do better next time. In the meantime, here's my stuff. This whole thing started innocently enough with a stray 2008 Heritage High Series short print of Mr. Longer Hands.

I don't have many Triple Theads cards. I have been buying my way in to a lot of group breaks lately, but I just can't seem to get myself to go for anything costly. These cards are nice, though. Very nice. This Gibby card has a bumpy surface, which is kind of fun.

I received two different Rogers Hornsby Triple Threads cards. I opted to show the one with the photo I've seen used the least. There must be a file cabinet full of photos of old-timers at Topps HQ somewhere, and I'm imagining some players only having a couple of pictures in their file based on how often I see some of them recycled.

Speaking of recycled photos, here's the crud-eatin' grin of Johnny Mize on a 2010 Triple Threads canvas. The photo is cropped strangely.

A few of the cards were from the current Ginter set. I'm torn between buying a couple of blasters of Ginter and finally buying myself a hobby Heritage box.

Well, I'm off to hastily fulfill my part of the trade and will make a trip to the post office tomorrow. Click on the Super Ozzie for a super surprise. (Actually, there's no surprise, unless you count the foreign object that invaded my scanner glass.)

Trading with Jon from Community Gum

I can always appreciate a trader with a well-organized want list. I completed a trade with Jon from Community Gum, one of the best sports cards blogs in the business, and suggest that you go on over there and check out said want list. I'm quite certain that I will be making a return trip.

For my part, I got a bunch of needs from sets I've been working on. I thought collecting all of the Black retail inserts from 2011 Heritage would be nearly impossible considering how quickly the jumbo packs disappeared from the big box store racks. However, I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that no one likes these cards but me.

I seem to be a huge sucker for anything that is Sportflics-esque these days. Maybe someday when I feel better about the progress I've made on other more serious efforts I'll go back and take a look at collecting actual Sportflics.

This is still my favorite Heritage set and Topps design. When you throw the High Numbers and variations on the pile, it also becomes the daunting. I will be working on this until I reach the grave.

I'm no down to needing just 8 base cards, 8 sketch cards and the Albert Pujols National Pride card to bring my 2009 Allen & Ginter experience to a close. Well, that's not to say it will be a complete close. After all, there are the endless amounts of minis to look forward to.

I usually like posting these sketch cards to make fun of how they look, but I've seen worse than this. I'm not sure I can vouch for the whereabouts of Randy's right arm, however.

It seems like Sheff retired 10 years ago to me for some reason. This 2009 Heritage high numbered short print seems to say otherwise.

As is often the case around here, a good group of Cardinals made their way into the deal. What is this "Big League Challenge" that is being commemorated here? Was someone too cheap to own the rights to the name Home Run Derby? Come on, Donruss, fess up... er... I guess there is no Donruss anymore.

Minis are always appreciated. Cardinals minis, doubly so.

Trading with The Angels, In Order

As much as I love the Cardinals and love receiving cards of said team, it's almost a relief to open up a package that someone has sent me in the mail and see a bunch of cards from a set or several sets that I'm collecting inside. I feel like I have so many sets on my want lists right now that I'm not getting anything done. Of course, maybe that's me letting my work life bleed into my hobby life a little too much. I received such a package from The Angels, In Order: full of want list needs even if it was Cardinals-free.

Ah, Kurt Miller. Life was so young and fun back then. Just posing for pictures, tossing up baseball in the air... not a care in the world. Kurt Miller ended up with a career ERA of 7.48 with a WHIP heading dangerously close to 2. This packaged knocked out a significant chunk of my 1993 Upper Deck needs, including quite a few of the Star Rookie cards. They can be hard to find in decent shape and I also just, for whatever reason, was missing a lot of them. I'm now down to missing less than 40 total cards for the set, which is nice.

At this point, short printed 2008 Heritage cards are like shiny undiscovered treasures to me. I need a ton of them and have no aspirations of getting all of them any time soon. I was so happy to receive this that I actually posted a Josh Beckett card on my blog.

Included were a handful of 2007 Heritage SPs as well. Rafael Soriano is one of the best closers in the entire league, if not the best. So what did the Yankees go and do? They threw huge money piles at him to not close. He's setting up for Mariano Rivera at the moment. Still, I don't really hate the strategy as Rivera won't last forever and they probably established some pretty good relations with his future replacement by throwing said money piles his way in the meantime.

And speaking of the Yankees, there's this guy. Hopes are dwindling that someone less deplorable will replace Barry Bonds as the all-time career home run hitter, not that Rodriguez himself comes without his own tainted past. Many were looking towards Griffey to somehow be that guy, but he rather rapidly turned into someone who would more likely need assistance crossing a busy street than need a hanging breaking ball to mash over the wall.

Quick Trade with Ginter, Gardner & Game-Used

I'll be brief here and I'm sure that you don't want to hear (read) me complain. I'm working extra hours this week and also decided that this was also the perfect week to reorganize/streamline my music collection. For those of you born before 1989, I'm talking about these crazy circular objects called compact discs. Boy, do those things take up space when you've been buying them relgiously since you graduated from high school.

Here's a quickie trade post/sworn testimony in which I swapped baseball cards with Tommy from Ginter, Gardner & Game-Used.

I am not going to complain here about the Heritage Then & Now inserts. They've had these going for a fairly lengthy time and, while a relatively safe and easy concept, I don't really hate them. That being said, I don't really see the need for the same players to be used on multiple cards in the same year. I'm pretty sure both of these guys appear on other Then & Now cards between the 2008 main set and the High Series thing. It makes it hard for me to remember which cards I need from sight, and I depend a lot on my memory lately.

I still need a ton of SPs to complete the 2007 Turkey Red set, so I am extremely grateful when I can knock off anything that I'm missing. I may have to break down and buy some singles on one of those websites that are all the rage these days.

Thanks again to Tommy!

A Heaping Helping of Heritage

Reader Howard was kind enough to unload another big batch of Heritage doubles on me, more than doubling my current tally from the 2010 set. He also sent over a handful of Rick Ankiel Just preview cards. I'm not really sure what Just is, but three of the cards depicted Ankiel on three different minor league affiliates, apparently chronicling his swift rise through the Cardinals system.

Several of the cards in the package filled some key needs from the endless journey to complete the 2008 Topps Heritage set. For the record, I'm not quite going after a "master set". I don't hang onto any of the Chromey cards, unless they're Cardinals of course. However, I am trying to get all of the black back cards and inserts. You can see a link to my full wanted list on the sidebar.

Something weird happened. I know I had this card at one time. I even have an image of it in my pictures directory on my computer, taken from 2008 before I got a scanner. I even remember posting about getting several different Kershaws from the High Numbers set including the autograph that I traded away. But I had this on my want list and do not seem to have another copy lying around my place at all, so I have no idea what happened. Perhaps Night Owl came and jacked the card like the creepy thief from Gauntlet II.

Here's another strange one. I just saw Luis Durango play in person on Sunday. Even in my hit-with-a-bat-addled fog, I could have sworn that Durango was an outfielder. I looked up his stats just now and I see no evidence that Durango has logged so much as an inning at shortstop in his professional career.

I find it strange that Ty Cobb would be part of the "News Flashbacks" insert set instead of the "Baseball Flashbacks" one. Sure, Cobb passed away in 1961, but you would think there would have been no shortage of newsworthy moments to commemorate.

Finally, to my surprise there was another amazing Heritage variation card from the 2009 set in the package. This is one of the more confounding variations that Topps has come up with, as there's no apparent reason to put a Rays logo on Conor Jackson. You could at least say that a certain element would be amused/outraged about seeing Jeter with a Red Sox logo.

Thanks again to Howard. Check out his want lists here and make him a trade offer.

Near Mint Cardinals from Nr Mt

Strange and interesting things are afoot across the world wide webspace. Do people still call it that? Erin alerted me to the recent decision about the MLB Properties vs. Upper Deck case by way of a glowingly positive press release from UD. Panini is promoting its new Adrenalyn (sorry, spellchecker, you'll just have to trust me) XL basketball product right now and wants to send us blogger types out to check out their tour. And Thorzul is organizing the masses once again, this time in an attempt to stick it to The Man. I'm afraid that I have some dissenting feelings about the latter (and it's not what you're thinking), but that will have to wait for another time.

This post is all about the nice stash of Cardinals cards I received from Nr Mt about a month back. This was my first trade with Nr Mt, and unfortunately I somehow bungled it all up by pulling a bunch of Turkey Reds from his want list only to find out that by the time I lazily got around to sending them, he had already knocked almost all of them off of his want list. I've probably done this to others before, so feel free to speak up if you're one of those. I'm trying to be better about e-mailing people with what I'm sending instead of leaving everything up to the surprise factor. I love surprises on both ends, though.

I received two of the Ring of Honor insert cards from 2009 Topps, which is great. I don't think I ever pulled one of these, which probably means that I'm missing something and that they were hobby-only. Cepeda looks great in a Cardinal uniform and is the first Hall of Famer that I ever received a certified autograph of.

This is my first Topps Unique card. I'm not sure what is so "unique" about the card, other than the fact that it is remarkably black. It reminds me a bit of the Oregon Ducks black-on-black uniforms that they use for basketball sometimes. There's probably a fancier name for them, but they basically end up being black nameplate on top of black jerseys.

It's sad seeing Rick Ankiel as a pitcher, let alone as a Cardinal. I like him, but I completely understand why it was time for him to move on. He had become a liability on offense by the latter half of last season and I certainly hope he turns it around, as much as seeing this makes me cringe a bit.

I realized that, prior to the 2006 set, I have a hard time picturing any of the Fleer base designs. It seems like there were at least 10 different Fleer sets for every year going back 10-15 years before Upper Deck drove Fleer into the ground, but aside from Ultra, Platinum, Tradition and the other small sets, I don't have a lot.

I also received a much-needed non-Cardinal card from 2008 Heritage. That's one more thing to cross off the lengthy list.

Ditto for 2009. I was happy seeing the familiar dark grey card back, designating this one a short print, when it came out of the package.

This is becoming a pretty Ankiel-heavy post all of a sudden. I'm a sucker for the gold serial numbered cards, as I seem to mention every time I get one of these. I just wish the other parallels (like the black ones) were easier to obtain, because those look awesome as well.

Ludwick cards were some of the hardest for me to get my hands on in 2008 during his breakout season. It's nice to get a gold version of his Updates & Highlights card. I really hope he has a big year this time around. If everything goes well, the Cardinals could have one of the best outfield trios in all of baseball.

Finally, here's a jersey card from 2007 Upper Deck Masterpieces. Er, um... it's a "piece of memorabilia" according to the back of the card. I hope this is something I shouldn't feel creepy about showing off to others, since there's no mention of what sort of memorabilia this could be.

Thanks again to Nr Mt! And by the way, I have no evidence that any of the cards that were sent to me were anything but mint condition. Just so you know...

Late to the Twenty Ten Phungo Party

I suppose I'm not actually so late to this party as I am just lazy. I've been sitting on these for awhile. Well, I haven't literally been sitting on them, because that would be weird. It's time to check out a 2010 Phungo pack as well as some of the rest of the cards that he sent me in a recent trade on this rare Cards on Cards Saturday post.

21 - Bernie Williams (Here's a shot from the 2009 World Baseball Classic of one of my Yankee favorites. Yes, I can have those. You don't need to have one if you don't want to. I'm not sure if this is part of a subset or is a variation. I'll have to consult my price guide.)

13 - John Kruk (...no noooo John Kruuukkk...)

41 - Dante Cunningham (Nice! A college pick of the new Blazers rookie.)

40 - Dick Allen 1970 Topps (You saw this one in the previous post - nice little vintage card here.)

AA-38 - Albert Pujols 2008 Upper Deck SP Authentic Authentic Achievements (This is awesome because I really wanted this card but I don't think I put it on my want list.)

13 - Ozzie Smith 1989 Baseball Cards Magazine (I have a bunch of stuff like this in uncut strip form from magazines I bought around this time. I don't really know what to do with them. If I cut them up it would look like a third grader did it, which is kind of charming unless you're not a third grader.)

32 - Tim Lincecum ACE (This one has the special ACE designation. Erin's a fan, so she gets this.)

39 - Glen Phillips (What a way to end the pack! It's the guy from Toad the Wet Sprocket. If he was Canadian - he isn't, is he? - he would have been in the Olympic Opening Ceremonies last night. Everyone else was.)

Phungo also hit up my want lists and sent me an elusive 1982 Bob Shirley card. I've only gone through the years 1980 through 1984 for the want lists and I've already been amazed at how many cards I was missing. I expect the holes in my collection will be much smaller when I get through the later half of the decade before it kicks back up again after 1993.

I didn't even know there was a 2002 Topps Total, and it's glossy... and... ick. Boring.

I'm down to missing just 5 base 2009 Cardinals cards spanning series 1, 2 and what they should just call 3.

I only need one more card to finish off the Cardinals team set from 2007 MLB Artifacts.

I'm always highly appreciative of any Finest card that I can get my hands on. This one features a hilariously bad PhotoShop job as they forgot to put Troy's uniform number on the front. There was a year or two in the McGwire era where the Cardinals did not have uniform numbers on the front of their jerseys, but that was kind of obnoxious and Glaus was far removed from the McGwire years.

Phungo also sent me a few set building cards including this highly sought after Luke Scott short print. I feel somewhat uncomfortable that I'm showing Mr. Scott as I get the impression that he's a bit of a gun-toting lunatic. This is what I get for trying to show off.

I believe this was the last card that Thorzul needed to finish off his set. I'm nowhere near finishing my set, yet, but at least I know I won't be chasing this guy at the end.

Finally, here's a Greg Oden rookie card. This makes it just my second Oden rookie card in my collection. I had a white version of this that is some sort of rookie insert set or what have you. I don't really know. Anyway, it's awesome.