A Thursday PWE Round-Up

Cards from @marcbrubaker and more! 

 

As the weekend approaches, let's check out some baseball cards sent to me this year before things get chaotic again.

First up is a batch of things from Jeremy of Topps Cards That Never Were. I've sent Jeremy a number of Rays and Tigers cards in the past, and it was cool to see some cards from the team I collect headed in my direction.

This retro parallel of the Cardinals current closer is numbered to just 99. I wish the print run on these wasn't so small, as they are vastly superior to your garden variety base card.

Jeremy included some customs (see that blog name!) in the envelope as well. Given the state of the Cardinals these days, I'm not sure what the future holds for Mike Schildt. A lot of fans are starting to feel like it's time to clean house again, from the coaching levels to the front office. 

Craig Anderson logged 4 seasons in the majors, but only got two official Topps cards. One of these was shared with a bunch of other rookie floating heads. None of these were Cardinals cards.

Astros fan Marc Brubaker passed along another envelope full of Cardinals. This is also a numbered parallel from the 2020 flagship Topps set, but I prefer the retro stock cards. I think this is my first parallel of whatever this is supposed to be, though.

Donruss goofed around with their past card designs in this 2002 "Originals" set. They didn't quite nail all of the design elements, but it's at least a bit more fun than what Panini has done with their own tributes to the '80s Donruss past.

The Matt Morris card is actually a "sample", as seen here with the stamp on the back. Samples and promo cards have nearly gone extinct with the increased dependency on the internet to disseminate information on new or forthcoming releases. Now we just get sell sheets and mock-ups to look at on our phones and computers.

Speaking of mock-ups, Topps apparently canceled their sticker set this year. Here's a Carlos Martinez card from last year's set.

In 2018, Topps was still putting out the smaller Panini-style album stickers, like this Dexter Fowler example.

Next up, we have a trio of Big Mac cards from 2020. This is from the Chrome Update set that no one actually saw at Target unless you were a big cheater.

This is another Target exclusive. I kind of like that they brought back the "Target Red" parallels as well as the "Walmart Blue" parallels (see Jack Flaherty at the top of the post), even if they're a lot more difficult to find these days.

This McGwire is another in a long line of cheesy Stadium Club inserts. Is the Power Zone supposed to be inside the vaguely Earth-shaped glowing orb? Or does that represent an eyeball? Is the true Power Zone in your eyes?

Lastly from Marc is a pair of well-loved minor leaguers from 1989.

The third envelope for today is actually a pair of envelopes, stuffed full of 2020 Allen & Ginter cards from Elliptical Man. I did such a good job in not collecting this set that people continue to find cards from it that I need. Imagine that! I recently went to the Oregon Zoo, but sadly did not see any leopards.

All of these minis are headed to my meager set build, except for the black bordered Gibby. That one is a nice addition to the Cardinals collection.

Big-sized cards here. (Also known as regular-sized.) Here we have four baseball guys, a pig and a guy whose last name looks like cannabis.

This lot is all ballplayers. If you asked me on most days if Thurman Munson was in the Hall of Fame, I would have wrongly answered "yes" without thinking about it. That should be enough to get him in, don't you think?

The Elephant in the Room

Cards from @SpiegelMichael and some thoughts on the 2020 "season". 

 

Now that's it's officially the end of September, I feel like I was mostly successful at avoiding talking about this season here as if it were a real baseball season. I've been watching the games (mostly), of course, because I just can't look away. I won't be doing my silly playoff prediction preview stuff this time around, however. Before we move on to look at the cards I got from Spiegel (via Twitter) recently, let's just take stock of what happened to this team this year.

Closer Jordan Hicks opted out of the season as he was recovering from Tommy John surgery. Reliever John Brebbia was lost for the entire season due to injury. Starting pitcher (and 2018 All-Star) Miles Mikolas was lost for the entire season due to injury. Starting pitcher (and 2-time All-Star) Carlos Martinez contracted COVID-19 and was hospitalized several times before succumbing to a late season oblique injury that shut him down for the year. Starting pitcher Dakota Hudson became the latest to need Tommy John surgery and will miss the 2021 season. Key reliever John Gant had recurring groin issues and seems unlikely to participate in the playoffs. Brand new free agent signee (and starting pitcher) Kwang-hyun Kim came down with a kidney ailment but returned to the rotation, albeit under heavily medical watch. And of course, all told, more than a dozen players (including Junior Fernandez, pictured, and other more prominent names) and staff members contracted COVID-19 which saw their season shut down for 16 days.

I'm sure there were more maladies and players affected by things than I am even recalling right now. By my count, thirteen players made their MLB debuts in this super short season with the Cardinals. And they're a playoff team, which I suppose means something even in the incredibly watered down playoff field where most of their division sits around .500 and practically everyone gets a spot anyway (sorry, Pirates.) I'll keep watching, but like most things, I'm ready for 2021 now.

On to the cards...

This is a fun card from the days where interleague play was still a novel idea. Now we have a DH in both leagues, which they'll probably make permanent along with all of the other ridiculous changes that were rolled out for this "special" year. It's really sad.

Spiegel dug up a relatively common Ozzie Smith card that I didn't actually have. I'm impressed!

Here's a couple of Big League George Springer cards. His collection has been put on the backburner a bit for me, but I still made a few updates to it this year.

Here's a great looking trio of 2002 UD Authentics cards with the matching red borders. Was UD Authentics a step down from SP Authentic, or are they totally unrelated?

The best card of them all, however, is this green bordered '80s Cardinals tribute that has become one of my favorites of the year in all forms. This one is numbered to 299.

Thanks again to Spiegel, who I owe some Dodgers cards. If only I knew where to buy cards these days.

Topps World Series Champions

Recently, Erin and I were at a card shop where we ran across some of the factory distributed Topps team sets that pop up now and again. These ones caught my eyes because it's not exactly common to see the Cardinals on display, even in a shop that caters exclusively to card collectors. Another reason it grabbed my attention was that this wasn't your ordinary team set that gets produced for everyone in the league. This one commemorated the Cards' World Series win last year. As far as I can tell, they didn't do this back in 2006 when the Cards last won, so this was new to me. Erin bought one of the sets (it's a tough thing to resist) while I decided to do a little research, knowing that they probably wouldn't sell out of these sets if I needed to come back for one.

And that's where Listia comes in handy. Somehow, for only 1000 credits and free shipping, I was able to find this object that I didn't know I needed until I found out it existed. But boy, did I ever need it! My set arrived last week and I thought I'd show off some of the cards from it.

I won't bore you with all 27, but there are some interesting things of note even to a non-Cardinal fan... as long as you're a Topps completist, I guess. Adron Chambers didn't have a card in any of the 2011 Topps sets, so his 2012 issues are considered his "rookie cards", whatever that means these days. He spent a good deal of his time being the human victory cigar during the Cards' improbable run, but his presence (along with a key late season triple) seemed to infuse life into a team that badly needed it. He hasn't had a lot of playing time this year, which is too bad as Topps seemed eager to make him the Cards' big rookie this year in all of their products. Instead, more of the focus could have been on Joe Kelly and the just beyond rookie eligible Lance Lynn.

Some of the photos from the playoffs made it into the 2012 set, but others did not. Here's a great snapshot of Allen Craig's home run saving catch. Craig has been a huge part of the offense this year, as expected, though he's played primarily at first base with Lance Berkman's spaghetti knee.

We've seen this one before.

Some of the shots are from the World Series itself, like Furcal's card here. Others, inexplicably, are just recycled from one of the standard issue 2011 sets. I chose to focus on the "new" cards here, but I'll touch on something baffling that I found when Friday rolls around.

Jason Motte's rise to prominence thanks to last year's playoffs makes it easy to forget that he was actually the fifth option to close that the Cardinals looked to last season. After winning the battle with Chris Perez for Future Cardinal Closer (word has it that it came down to Perez and Motte as far as who would be traded to Cleveland back in 2009, and the Cardinals preferred Motte), he failed spectacularly and lost his chance at the position that remained with Ryan Franklin. (Franklin actually made the All-Star team that year.) Fast forward to 2011 where it was Franklin who started the season as the closer. Eduardo Sanchez, Fernando Salas and, briefly, Mitchell Boggs all had their turn at closing in 2012. Salas led the team in saves overall, but they rolled with Motte down the stretch and the rest is history.

Nick Punto has a Cardinals baseball card! Nick Punto has a Cardinals baseball card! Clearly, this one is from the World Series as the Rangers' Ian Kinsler is also pictured.

I hope to track down some more of the Topps blister pack team sets. I have the 2009 team set and most of the 2006, but I still have quite a few left to go. And with the release of the web exclusive Mini set this year, I have another team set still to chase.

30 Teams in 30 Posts: #1

Warning: The following entry contains images of a particular baseball player that could be deemed not suitable for all audiences. Reader discretion is strongly advised. If you have a weak stomach, sensitivity to light, intolerance towards greed or humans that make more money in a year than a number of countries in the world, please go do something else like watch birds fight over Doritos or something.

I have in the neighborhood of 7500 St. Louis Cardinals cards that I simply do not want. There's no way I'm going to be able to show off a good representation of those cards here. Instead, I simply pulled out a bunch of my doubles of cards that are in my Cardinals shoeboxes. (These aren't actual shoeboxes, of course, but the double-wide storage boxes suited to store cards in top loaders. I have two of these full of Cardinals that I deemed too snobby to be in the regular binders, and a third jammed full of similarly snobby cards that are part of sets that I'm collecting. I don't know why I'm telling you all this. I have a TON of Cardinals doubles. If anyone out there likes Jose DeLeon, Lee Smith, Lonnie Smith, Ozzie Smith, Bud Smith.. all the Smiths(!) or any other Cardinal from the past 40 years or so that I may have overlooked, let me know. I probably have 85 cards of that guy.

This is a "Your Mom" original back, guys. Original back!

See! I told you!

I came to be a Cardinals fan when I rejected the notion that one should always follow the closest geographically located team, even when said team plays ball a couple hundred miles away, and also finally decided to stop picking the same favorites as my father. The Cardinals were an exciting bunch of speedsters in the '80s, and they even had this guy who would run out and do a backflip before games. A backflipping baseball playing wizard! This sounded too good to be true! Furthermore, actually catching a Cardinals game on TV in Oregon in the '80s was akin to trapping the world's largest firefly in a jar and having it make a bunch of firefly babies for all of your friends to see on a cloudless, moonless night. Or something like that. It wasn't until ESPN started carrying MLB games that I got to ever see my favorite team play. That elusive Cardinals game was always out of reach, so the mystery was alluring. I would look at box scores and baseball cards and try to imagine Pedro Guerrero not being terrible at his job.

Favorite current Cardinals player: Chris Carpenter. Sure, Carp is out for the year, but he still gets my vote. As you can probably tell simply by looking at the players that I have singled out on the sidebar of this blog, Carpenter is my favorite. I rarely rank people this way, but Adam Wainwright would have to be second and Matt Holliday a close third.

Is it just me, or is it just as easy to get inserts from this 2006 Fleer Ultra set as it is to get base cards? I have multiples of all of these, not just one or two dupes.

Least favorite current Cardinals player: N/A. I just can't say I dislike anyone on this team. There's no Ryan Theriot this year. There's no Corey Patterson, either. And there, quite possibly, may be no championship this year. That's okay, though. I probably would have picked Tyler Greene simply for how frustrating he's been, but he made one too many boneheaded mistakes and got himself traded to Houston for some stale Wheat Thins and I can't pick him anymore.

The onslaught of mid-'00s inserts of the former first base star continues.

This isn't some specially colored strange version of this MLB 2K6 insert card. It just scanned really oddly. I don't know what's up with my scanner. I guess I probably shouldn't have bought it during a Circuit City fire sale.

This was a 2006 card, but the photo looks like it's from 2002.

I bought this card recently and received another copy of it in the mail the same day. Oops. For some reason that never happens with Cardinals from sets I collect, though. It would be nice, since I always need two of those cards.

Favorite Cardinals player of all-time: Ozzie Smith. I've long since removed all of the anticipation from this post. You just came here for the images, admit it.

Has Topps ever tried doing Heritage minis, aside from these Target exclusive T205 wannabes? Are they going to wait until 2024 Topps Heritage to pull out that gimmick, when it's 1975's turn to shine?

Oh, I have more questions. Did Topps release a 2012 Attax set? What's your favorite color? Is it blue? Do you like pancakes?

Lease favorite Cardinals player of all-time: Jason Marquis. You know, every Cardinal I've ranted and railed against over the years (Kip Wells, Mike Maroth, the aforementioned Patterson, etc.) hasn't really spent much time in the Birds on the Bat, usually due to his own incompetence at playing baseball. Jason Marquis was uniquely talented... unique enough to dazzle one day before four consecutive starts where he gives up 6 runs and walked 6 batters and looks like he'd rather be anywhere else but a baseball field. He was around for awhile. He was on the juggernaut teams of 2004 and 2005 and the team that limped its way to the podium in 2006. That last team opted to throw an unproven rookie into the rotation and left Marquis off the roster altogether.

Thanks to everyone for reading these posts. I still have a bunch of the cards that I've shown here available to trade, so please get in touch if anything looks interesting. I will do a quick "garage sale" type post to wrap things up soon and then this blog heads off on its next adventure. If it's anything like this past adventure, it will be another cheaply disguised ploy to get you to take some cards off my hands.

The St. Louis Cardinals are #1 in my reverse-ranking of favorite teams as of the moment I picked them a long, long time ago on October 4th, 2010. All of these cards are very much up for trade, so please contact me if you're interested.