Baseball in Portland

It's a good thing! 

The Portland Diamond Project -- @PDXDiamondProj -- has been leading efforts to bring big league baseball to my home city for the first time. It's been awhile since we've seen a team relocate (2005) and even longer since we've seen a brand new team (1998), but professional baseball has a long history in Portland. The city has grown and changed a lot since the days where the old crusty sportswriters said another major pro sport was not sustainable in the City of Roses.

Even though I am loyal to the Cardinals, I would welcome a team here with open arms (of course!) and would definitely go to tons and tons of games. This got me thinking about my past live baseball experiences in Portland, where we had a AAA team when I grew up (left town after I graduated from high school) and then again for ten glorious seasons in the 2000's. More specifically, I took the opportunity to work on my Portland Beavers collection, whose needs are fully documented here. I just picked up a team set from 1984 on eBay and will be looking to acquire more in the future. If you've got any Beavers stuff or Cardinals minor league affiliates, let me know!

Darren Daulton was the biggest name in the set, which is manufactured by Cramer, in the early days before Mr. Cramer himself rebranded his company Pacific Trading Cards. (Remember those?)

The backs had some sort of cartoon on them. This one explains that Cramer made team sets for the entire PCL, which is pretty cool. I wish I had sent off for a free pricelist!

I tried to pick that cards that had the most shots of the old stadium. This is where the Portland Timbers play to this day, and much of the old baseball stadium shell is still intact even as they work on the second phase of a massive construction project this year.

Mura actually played for the Cardinals prior to this, a fact I probably wasn't aware of at the time this came out. You can see that the Beavers were the affiliated with the Phillies at this point. In other seasons (or perhaps just other photo shoots) they would flip the old 'P' logo upside-down to become a lower case 'B' for Beavers. (Immediately prior to this, they would be affiliated with the Pirates, and later the Twins. Through the 2000's, they were the Padres top farm club.)

Here's a shot with a dude in the background. Again, I wish there was more of the stadium, but there aren't a lot of action shots on minor league baseball cards.

Gold Gloves, Pujols and Beavers

I know that this news is more than 24 hours old, but I wanted to give my congratulations to Yadier Molina for capturing his fourth Gold Glove award as the top NL catcher in 2011. Yadi had a few down moments this year, but with the way they choose to award these things nowadays, I would have been pretty disappointed if he hadn't won considering that he had one of the best offense years of any of his competition this year. I realize that the Gold Glove is purely a defensive award, but it seems like in the current climate, it actually takes a standout season at the plate to have a chance. It makes no sense, but if someone is going to tell me there's a better catcher out there than Yadi, I'm going to probably laugh.

Reader David from IL was kind enough to send me some goodies in a package recently, and hopefully is kind enough to continue to be patient while he waits on me sending my end of the deal. I really should not agree to trades when things are this busy in my life, but I've had an unexpected run of chaos that started at the beginning of September and is only now beginning to show signs up letting up.

Along with some Cardinals merch and a cool Pujols (sign him already!) die-cut insert, I also got something I don't see every day: old Portland Beavers minor league cards. I received several cards from the 1980 TCMA team set. Not only is it a fun design, but it also gives me a great chance to look at some of the old Beavers gear that I'm almost too young to remember. This Gene Pentz card shows off a close-up of his face and their white cap.

Here's a white home uniform with a dark cap, sported by Rick Rhoden who would go on to quite a bit of success with the Pirates. His stats suggest he was injured and probably had to play his way back to the majors as a member of Pittsburgh's AAA affiliate at the time.

Here's a red uni and another black cap.

Finally, what's up with the stars on Odell Jones' cap? Does anyone know? I want to know.

Portland really needs AAA baseball again. Stupid disinterested jerks.

Trading with Reader Daniel

Reader Daniel from WV and I recently completed a trade that netted me a large box of cards. Are you surprised? Did you know that I like baseball cards?

My want list took a direct hit, as Daniel was able to eliminate some recently added '80s needs and a handful of more recent Cardinals stuff. There's a certain part of me that wants to put together every O-Pee-Chee set going backwards from 1992 (instead of Topps) just to be different. (Don't start sending me cards, please.)

This is one of my favorite cards of all-time... Leaf style! I would also be too tempted to collect the Donruss-Leaf Canadian equivalents.

I don't know how I ended up not owning this card, but it's back in my collection for now. Fleer's Super Star Special cards are as awesome as Donkey Kong and Pop Rocks.

Daniel knocked out a huge chunk of my 1985 Fleer want list, including an actual happy Hall of Famer named Sutter.

I also received what appears to be the entire 1987 Portland Beavers team set. Here's a rare look at the skipper who led the Phillies to the 2008 World Series title. The Beavers themselves were in their first year as Twins affiliates, which happened to be a championship year for Minnesota.

And yes, that's Billy "Moneyball" Beane, still the GM of the A's.

Pat Casey is the coach of the Oregon State Beavers college baseball team, winners of back to back national championships. I can't root for Oregon State baseball anymore, now that the Ducks have a team again.

There was also a nice pile of junk wax era Blazers in the box. This is one of my all-time favorite Blazer card photos, where Cliff Robinson looks like he's dunking on a really short hoop for some reason.

Daniel promised a Clint Hurdle auto as well. I wonder if this was a "TTM" request or one that was signed in person. I never really think to seek autographs of players, but it's nice when people send them to me. Hurdle is now the Rangers hitting coach, a team that has experienced quite a resurgence this season, especially with the bats.

Blehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

[Reprinted in full from portlandbeavers.com]

Portland Beavers: Farewell, but not goodbye

By Merritt Paulson, Owner/President, Portland Beavers

09/05/2010 8:25 AM ET

Fan Comments (6) Digg Facebook Print E-mail

Tomorrow afternoon, the Portland Beavers will play their final game at PGE Park. Given that this is also the last home game the Beavers will ever play at PGE Park, we’ve got some special things planned to commemorate the occasion – I hope everyone will come out and join us.

Much has been said and written the past few months about Beavers baseball in Portland; its past and its future. When I purchased the team in 2007 I believed Portland was a baseball city that enjoyed a rich baseball history. I still believe that today. From the outset, my goal was to not only improve the success of the team but to enhance the fan and community experience as well. And while PGE Park has a rich civic and sports history, it simply has never been a real ballpark. It’s far too big and its multi-purpose design prevents the kind of close-to-the-action intimacy so essential to the baseball experience – especially minor league baseball. Ballparks do make a difference…in Albuquerque, for example, attendance doubled after Triple-A returned to the city in a new facility following its departure three years earlier (ironically, when it moved to Portland in 2000).

So, with early encouragement from city officials, we advanced a win-win plan for Portland. Renovate PGE Park and bring Major League Soccer to Portland, and build a new and better home for Beavers baseball in the city. Both projects would be public-private partnerships; both would protect taxpayers from risk through significant cash investments and personal financial guarantees from my family; and both would enhance the culture and economy of Portland. We advanced two solid stadium/financing proposals. First, for an intimate ballpark to replace Memorial Coliseum and, after city officials withdrew their initial support for that plan, a second for a ballpark in Southeast Portland at Lents Park. Unfortunately, both Portland plans died due to the combination of opposition from interest groups and lack of political support at City Hall.

After those efforts fell short, we were approached by city officials from Beaverton to bring the Beavers to Beaverton. Once again, we negotiated a public-private stadium financing plan, but, sadly those plans also failed to generate enough support among Beaverton city residents and elected officials.

Losing Beavers baseball in Portland is a tremendous personal and professional disappointment for me. More important, it’s a loss for our many loyal fans and a loss for the city. My biggest regret is my failure to better mobilize baseball fans as a political force to keep Beavers baseball in Portland. Just as institutions like the symphony and opera enrich the culture and identity of a city – so do professional sporting events. The shared experience of a ballpark outing with family or friends on a beautiful Oregon summer evening creates memories of a lifetime and strengthens the social fabric of our community.

Tomorrow, Beavers baseball comes to an end at PGE Park. But, like the ever hopeful and optimistic Cubs fan that I am, I predict baseball will return to Portland or the Portland area one day. You can count me as someone willing to help make it happen. But to succeed, it will require organized and enthusiastic fans making their voices heard and visionary local and state political champions unwavering in the face of inevitable vocal opposition.

Merritt Paulson

Owner/President, Portland Beavers

R.I.P., Portland Beavers... Again

The Portland Beavers are leaving town again for parts unknown next season and no one seems to care. It's frustrating to grow up in a fairly decent-sized television market that only has one franchise in the top four professional sports and seems to be dead set against any visions of changing that. I've often dreamed about what Major League Baseball would be like in the City of Roses. There's been an NHL-ready arena here for 15 years. And while the NFL might be the toughest nut to crack, I'm pretty sure that you could toss a franchise in the middle of The Grand Canyon and it would manage to sell out its games and develop a fanbase.

All along, there was always the comfort of seeing AAA baseball on a warm summer night or a hot summer afternoon. Except, of course, when there wasn't... like when penny-pinching owner Joe Buzas pulled up the stakes and took the team to Salt Lake City in 1994. At the time, mostly due to Buzas's minimalist (i.e. cheap) ideas of promotion and what is now known as PGE Park in a state of total disrepair (the center field bleachers were actually "condemned"), the Beavers departure was met with widespread indifference. You could read about it in the papers, sure, but they were leaving and no one was sad to see Buzas leave town. The Beavers came back 7 years later, as they always do, to a newly renovated yet severely mismanaged ballpark.

This time around, it's new owner Merritt Paulson's push to bring the Portland Timbers soccer franchise up to the MLS level that's driven the Beavers out of town. Paulson hasn't exactly promoted the team well, either. Aside from the season in which he purchased the Beavers and Timbers (2007) in a package deal, he's done very little to promote the club as his clear focus was to take the Timbers to the next level. I can't fault him for that. I also begrudgingly see both sides of the story after initially feeling like boycotting the soccer club. Still, it's hard to get past the notion that if Paulson hadn't bought the team, they'd probably still be on steady ground in downtown Portland. Since the MLS refuses to let any of its franchises share a stadium with a baseball team mostly because of seating configurations, the Beavers are officially homeless after this season and are headed to parts unknown. In the meantime, I've been trying to enjoy as many Beavers games as I can - it feels like 1993 all over again - and I indulged recently in a discounted team set from 2009.

Here are the Venables, father and son... in reverse order. Will has been a mainstay in the outfield for the Padres this year, while his father Max also has a pretty cool looking 1981 Topps baseball card.

You can see Paulson's Timbers logo creeping around in the background of this Chad Huffman card. The Timbers logo pays homage to the much beloved late '70s NASL franchise. I'm excited about, er, "bigger time" soccer coming to town. I'm just really unhappy with the collateral damage. Huffman has been getting some playing time lately with the Yankees lately with some nagging injuries that they've been going through.

Tim Stauffer has been putting up quality stuff with the Padres for years and yet always seems to find himself on the next train back up to Portland. I don't think the Padres, oddly enough, are hating the idea of moving their AAA affiliate closer to home. San Diego and Portland are not exactly neighboring cities, and there's been a trend recently to move key farm clubs closer to the big league club's home base of operations.

This guy was huge... physically. There's been a trend with the recent Beavers clubs where they'll have at least one or two of these monstrous players who are perhaps too awkward to be successful in the majors. Walter Young comes to mind, and even Kyle Blanks could fit this mold if he is not careful.

Finally, here's Lucky... the Mascot. He's Paulson's mascot. I grew up with Round Tripper as the mascot until they left before the 1994 season. (There's a nice history of the team here.) Round Tripper was replaced by Boomer when the Beavers were reborn in 2001. The team went with a really nice old-timey look while retaining their old primary colors of red and black. Paulson decided to tinker with the look, however, by 2008 as he went with the logo and uniform scheme that you see on these cards. This also ushered in the era of Lucky the Beaver, whose costume will presumably be retired in a few months.

PGE Park will hold 20,000 people, after renovations are done.

Those renovations will evict Paulson's baseball team, the Portland Beavers, after this season.

Paulson says even though the Beavers won't play in Portland next year, he predicts Triple-A baseball will return to the metro area "at one point, or another."

Gee, that sounds promising.

Trading with The Greatest 21 Days

If you haven't stumbled across The Greatest 21 Days yet, you're really missing out. The blog chronicles the journey, successful or otherwise, through the ranks of professional baseball for each of the subjects of the 880-card 1990 CMC minor league set. This set holds a special place in my collecting heart for being the first widely available minor league set available in pack form at a time when AAA baseball meant more to me than just something to do for a few sunny summer day's a year. In 1990, The Portland Beavers were the only baseball game in town. ESPN had just recently started their MLB contract, but my household was going through an extended cable TV drought. And nobody in Portland would admit to being a Mariners fan. They were awful.

I just got a package from Steve of the aforementioned blog recently as he offered up some of the doubles that he's accumulated. Unfortunately, I was only able to offer up a meager three cards for his set (curse you, Minor League Giveaway and Minor League Giveaway II!) but I got some great stuff in return nonetheless.

Bernardo Brito was a favorite of my teen years. I could never understand why his amazing bat didn't translate to major league success. Looking back, I suppose you could say he was the classic AAAA slugger. He absolutely owned PCL pitching, but he couldn't do much in his limited opportunities with the Twins. On Brito's card, and moreso with Mike Cook's, you can see the classic Beavers design that is reminiscent of a certain franchise that features birds of a red feather.

Here's the home uniform design, which is more consistent with the early '90s Twins look. Baker is standing on the Civic Stadium Astroturf at what is likely the same photoshoot as everyone involved with the team and this set. This is the site of next year's expansion MLS franchise, which means the Beavers will be leaving town again. They last left town after the 1993 season, which happened to also be the year I also left town for college.

There were also plenty of Cardinal affiliates in the package. The Redbirds are based out of Memphis now, and Memphis is actually in the same league (PCL) as the Beavers so I get to see them every other year. Since they are in a separate division and there are travel cost concerns, teams only play opponents from the "other" division for one series a season, in alternating stadiums.

To be fair, the only reason I scanned this card is because my very first blog post was about Cris (not Chris) Carpenter. I don't really know what the point was, but I knew it was going to be a great start if I went with a 1989 Topps card. That's how you know what you're going to get out of a blog like Cards on Cards.

Steve also included what I believe is now my second Pujols 2010 Turkey Red insert, which means I can close the book on collecting this very necessary card. At some point, perhaps, I will come to realize how ridiculous it is to feel like I need two copies of certain cards because of the way my collecting priorities are organized, but I haven't reached that point yet.

Eric Munson Tried to Kill Me

I took in some minor league baseball this afternoon. It was perfect weather and, despite seeing the Portland Beavers get crushed 8-1 by the Reno Aces, much fun was had by all. (Incidentally, the Aces always remind me of an old King of the Hill episode.)

Balls were flying all over the place, particularly in foul territory. Beavers journeyman Eric Munson, however, one-upped everyone by losing grip on his shiny black bat as it sailed in my direction. I came out of it okay - my hand is scratched and bruised and generally feels fatigued. I felt very fortunate that I was able to save my mother from a very "special" Mother's Day present of her own. After I deflected it, the bat actually ended up in the hands of the people in the row in front of us, who had it quickly exchanged for a cracked bat that was probably just used in batting practice anyway.

It turns out, it wasn't even Munson's bat that was exchanged. Chris Denorfia, who followed Munson in the batting order, is another new Beavers player this season that I recognize... well... mostly from baseball cards. The guy in front of me seemed to be rather unhappy that the bat was broken, and offered it back to me (I was the guy who took the direct blow, after all.)

Meanwhile, Munson remains on my list of evil baseball players. You see, this includes the entire active roster of the 2006 Houston Astros at the time that I saw them play in person in late September. Those were two really lousy games for Cardinals fans, and I never want to go back to Houston. Munson backed up Brad Ausmus behind the plate at times, and made a pinch hit appearance in one of the two loses late that year that nearly cost the Cardinals a playoff berth (and their eventual World Series title.)

By the way, does anyone know what those number on the end of the bat mean?

Catching Up: Surprise Box from Howard

I just wanted to take a moment to thank everyone for making my daily trip to the mailbox a far more rewarding endeavor than it used to be. In the past, it was always Comcast ad, Comcast, bills, bills, nothing, Comcast, nothing, bills. These days, I can at least look forward to throwing manila envelopes and the occasional cardboard box into the mix. (Plus, Qwest ads have replaced the Comcast ads since I dropped their services entirely.) The surprise packages, as I'm sure everyone agrees, are the best because you generally have no idea what's going to show up inside. This isn't always a great thing (hello, Mr. Leon Roberts) but it always proves to be exciting.

One such box came by way of Howard who I had previously completed a very generous trade with. This included my second (I think?) 2010 Upper Deck card. I am not ever going to add that set to any of my want lists, so it will be interesting to see how close I get to completing the Cardinals team set without making so much as a minimal effort. (Don't tell anyone, but the stadium card looks really nice. I am not authorized to tell you what stadium it is, however, and you can never prove any Major League Baseball transpires within it.

Aside from the Turkey Reds, which I would collect no matter what, the Legendary Lineage inserts are pretty much the only inserts that I like from this year's Topps. Yes, that includes the Yer Mom cards. For some reason I'm just not wild about reprinted cards on the current UV-coated flimsy Topps stock.

This Chris Duncan jersey card was as much of a surprise to see as the box was itself. It's my first Duncan solo relic (I have a card he shares with Pujols) and I heard recently he's going to start the season in the minors. I'm hoping he rebounds and gets some decent time in the majors for some team, though I'm sure he'd be a better fit in the American League than he would with the Nationals. I wonder if there are any Duncan relics that are soaked with tobacco spit...

Howard sent over a big stack of 2007 Bowman Heritage cards including this Ryan Braun rookie. Expect to see my 2007 Bowman Heritage want list finally show up here on the blog in the next couple of days.

There were a few foil cards from the set included as well. They're easy to obtain at one-per-pack, so I may as well collect them too.

I believe Howard is the first person to ever send me a Portland Beavers card through this thing I have set up here. Even better, this is Kurt Kepshire - a former Cardinal. It's increasingly likely that this will be the last season of Portland Beavers baseball... AGAIN... and it's so upsetting that I haven't brought myself to write anything that one could construe as rational here about what is transpiring. Let's just enjoy Kurt's card with the old Civic Stadium outfield in the background as we count down the final days of (what is now called) PGE Park's baseball use before it's converted into a full-time MLS outfit.

Okay, onto bigger and sunnier things - the Portland Trail Blazers. Oh... ugh. There's been a black cloud hanging over this team lately, too. There's another thing I don't really want to talk about. I had forgotten about Kevin Thompson, the Blazers second round draft pick in the month I graduated from high school... all 14 NBA games of him.

I won't stop posting Arvydas Sabonis cards. In fact, had I come to start this thing up 7 or 8 years ago, there's a fairly good chance this would have been an Arvydas Sabonis blog.

Does anyone miss the old-school NBA All-Star uniforms? No? I guess I don't, either, but it would be fairly entertaining if they used retro all-star jerseys in one of the games sometime in the near future.

I'm not sure what the Skytech Force is, but I'm sure glad Uncle Cliffy is a part of it!

Thanks again to Howard. Next up are some cards from a certain Wasteland...