Longoria y Longoria

Technically, I believe we have been told that it's possible to get a Stephen Strasburg Team USA autograph from retail packs of 2008 Timeline. With that in mind (okay, not really), I set off for the local Dollar Tree to pick up 10 packs of the stuff at (of course) $1.00 each. My hope was to get at least one of the 4 Cardinals cards from my want list, and amazingly enough I actually succeeded. Rather than go through all of the gory details, I thought I'd just highlight some of the more noteworthy cards.

Evan Longoria was the big rookie for 2008, and there are plenty of Longoria cards to choose from in this product. I really like the Timeless Teams design as I recently mentioned.

I still think Max Scherzer will end up being a very good starting pitcher despite his difficulties so far. I'm not sure that his move to the tougher-on-pitching league was the best career option for him. We'll see.

Here's the lone Cardinal from my want list. I'm down town needing just 3 now. Pujols has been fairly erratic this year. I'm waiting for him to have another crazy good week... anytime now, okay?!

As obnoxious as this set must be to put together, having two different sets of parallels must be really aggravating. Here's a card only a Howard player collector could love.

I don't get how I don't have about 10 of these Matt Holliday cards by now as it's just a base card. It's easy to accumulate tons of cards 1 through 50, especially if you're buying retail.

Here's an example of the other pointless parallel, but this is a good card nonetheless. I'm holding onto this one to see if a certain Troll might need it. Otherwise, it goes onto the trade pile with most of the rest of these.

Heritage Grande

Late last week I received another package, this time from the blog Nachos Grande, containing a supersized portion of tasty Topps Heritage treats with a side of cards from my general want list. In exchange, I sent am sending over a stack of Stadium Club cards.

I can't believe how many players are gone from the 2006 Cardinals championship club already. Guys like Taguchi, who is on a minor league deal with the Cubs now, have been gone for awhile. A lot of guys that were significant contributors to that team such as Tyler Johnson and Randy Flores have seen their departures fly under the radar, by and large. The Cardinals renewed focus on building their team from within their own system is very interesting, at least.

Brian Fuentes was one of a number of players the Cards have seemed to covet in recent times, but ultimately passed on (or were passed on by.) I never saw the sense in throwing a lot of dollars at a guy who couldn't even keep hold of his own closing role at Colorado, though, so I wasn't disappointed when trades never materialized.

Seeing Shane Victorino reminds me that it's almost fantasy baseball time. Victorino has been on one or more of my times for the past couple of seasons, providing just enough on the basepaths to be tantalizing yet not enough anywhere else to really justify keeping him in a constant starting slot. There are so many players who tread this line. At least he's not Corey Patterson.

I may try and do a regular fantasy update on the blog, complete with baseball cards, of course. I haven't fully committed to that idea, though.

One of the cards I received was the disembodied head version of the Albert Pujols Upper Deck Timeline card. After initially thinking this set was awful, I've really come to appreciate some of the designs and am still working towards hopefully completing the Cardinals team set, SPs and all.

This is the very last 2008 Baseball Heroes card I needed to complete the Cardinals team set. I had several opportunities to buy this card cheaply at a card show I attended in January, but I couldn't remember if I needed it or another Cardinal legend. Ultimately I ended up passing on both. I'm still interested in getting some of the rainbow of parallel cards that are rampant in this set.

Finally, here's ex-Cardinal Dmitri Young and the state flag of Mississippi in all of their respective glories. This is the last flag card that I needed from the A&G set. Finally, a sense of completeness!

5 on the 5: 2008 Upper Deck Timeline

I've held off on writing anything about the Upper Deck Timeline set for quite awhile now because all of the subsets that have different retro designs and so forth. This topic has been covered quite extensively on other fine blogs, some of which you may see links to on the sidebar here, so I still won't get into that. Basically, this is a "housecleaning" post. I have purchased five packs over a bit of time and I need to get them sorted. For our purposes, let's assume that I'm posting these packs in the order that I purchased them as I don't really remember anymore when I got what. These are of the retail variety, where you mostly get the base design plus two of the retro designs. The wrappers call them "inserts" but they most definitely aren't, since the card numbers are continuous throughout the main set rather than separate numbering schemes.

Pack 1:
31 - Manny Ramirez (Now I just look at every card of Manny's on the Dodgers and think it's photoshopped, thanks to Topps. Upper Deck wouldn't do a thing like that, would they?)
12 - Jimmy Rollins

48 - Ichiro Suzuki (Yeah, I still get lots of his cards.)
63 - Masahide Kobayashi (RC)

71 - Ross Ohlendorf (RC) Gold (Interesting gold card of Ohlendorf in Pirates colors but pictured with the Yankees. Upper Deck did this a lot in recent years but seemed to avoid it in 2008. It's much better than faking photos if you ask me.)
174 - Daric Barton (RC) '94 All-Time Heroes

Pack 2:

28 - Derek Jeter (Let's just call this the Yankees pack.)
46 - Torii Hunter (Does Hunter only do the crazy poses for Topps?)
10 - Chase Utley (Phillies 1, Eagles 0)
36 - Jim Thome
52 - John Bowker (RC)

145 - Alex Rodriguez '94 All-Time Heroes

Pack 3:
8 - Chipper Jones
44 - Frank Thomas (I wonder if his career is done.)
30 - David Ortiz
26 - Randy Johnson (What cap does Randy wear when he's inducted into the Hall?)

108 - Craig Breslow '92 Minor League (This is the only retro design that I recognized.)

233 - Jim Thome '04 Timeless Teams

Pack 4:
32 - Daisuke Matsuzaka
15 - Jason Bay
33 - B.J. Upton
77 - Denard Span (RC)
178 - Kosuke Fukudome (RC) '94 All-Time Heroes

207 - Ryan Garko '95 SP Top Prospects (At this point I guess I should make the distinction that this is SP as in the product design and not a short-printed card. I don't really feel like any of this set was truly short-printed, but then again, these are retail packs and the hobby packs are much different.)

Pack 5:
49 - Felix Hernandez
4 - Pedro Martinez
31 - Manny Ramirez (again)
12 - Jimmy Rollins (again)

122 - Matt Joyce (RC) '92 Minor League (Joyce was traded straight up to the Rays for Edwin Jackson. Hope he's worth it!)

275 - Hideki Matsui '04 Timeless Teams (In my tribute to Yankee Stadium, I'll show the back of the card. Matsui missed about half of the final season.)

I have updated my general want list to include the Cardinals I'm missing from the Timeline set.