Onward, Rose City!

With the Timbers advancing to the MLS Cup final, a timely envelope arrives.

Thorzul's annual Trade Me Anything affair is always a good time, and this year was no exception. I was able to snag a low numbered parallel and an unnumbered parallel from this year's Topps Update set in exchange for some goodies that I had cooked up. As a surprise bonus, Thorzul included a refractor of Timbers star Darlington Nagbe. (Thorzul's Twitter feed clued me in that he is a PTFC supporter.) Nagbe finally joined the US Men's National Team earlier this month for a World Cup qualifier and got to top things off with a berth in the MLS Cup final after the Timbers dramatic win yesterday.

The Timbers have a long history in Portland that dates back to the '70s and the old NASL. I was too young at the time to have clear memories of their NASL days, but I remember plenty of their bumper stickers on soccer mom van's in the old neighborhood as a kid. The club went through a few incarnations, but the fanbase really started to grow in the ought years as they navigated their way through US pro soccer's second tier before being awarded the current MLS franchise that began play in 2011. I won't claim to be Timbers Fan #1 and was heartbroken when their newly remodeled MLS-ready stadium permanently displaced the PCL's Portland Beavers franchise, but I had enjoyed attending their games in the past and currently follow them when I can. It's been an exciting playoff run so far and the big match against the Columbus Crew on Sunday should be exciting as well.

I should probably get around to getting some Timbers team sets, but they are unsurprisingly overpriced in this area.

As far as the cards I knew I was receiving, both were of the Cardinals variety, as is my standard operating procedure. I haven't checked the odds, but I seem to have pulled (and received in trades) far fewer of these rainbow foil parallels this year than last year's "red hot foil", 2013's "emerald something-or-others", 2012's "gold sparkle", and (don't forget) 2011's diamond anniversary sparkletastrophes. I might just be unlucky this year.

I'm lucky to own this card, however. There are very few Topps flagship black parallels in my collection, so I'm always up for taking what I can get. Mark Reynolds doesn't make a very exciting low numbered pull exactly, but I suppose it could have been worse. There are a lot of relief pitchers in this year's Update set.

Airbrushed Fridays: 1975 Topps #412

My last name can do things.

Who is he? Bill "Froggy" Hands was an 11 year starting pitcher in the majors, with the bulk of his playing days coming with the Chicago Cubs in the late '60s and early '70s. While never an All-Star, he won 20 games with the Cubs in 1969 and had respectable numbers throughout his career.

How did he get here? Hands was in the middle of a down season in 1974 when the Twins waived him. He was claimed by the Texas Rangers, with enough time left in the season to squeeze in two starts but apparently not enough time to get a Topps photographer on the scene.

Repeat offender? No

Other versions of this card: None

Airbrushed Score: 8

Comments: There's a lot of blue here.

Good Luck Ducks, Week 13: Civil Disobedience

It's that time of year again.

After another big victory with purpose last week, Oregon faces their in-state rival in their final regular season game of the year. It's been a short, strange year! Stanford unfortunately did not hold up their end of the bargain and went on to defeat Cal last week, leaving the Ducks out of the conference title picture. To be 8-3 at this stage after the way things went at the early stages of this season, however, definitely feels fortunate.

Speaking of fortunate, well, the Oregon State Beavers have been the opposite of that. The Beavers are looking to avoid going 0-for-the-conference today, but things are obviously looking grim with the way Oregon has been playing. The betting line opened at 30 was pushing 36 as of this writing. While Vernon Adams Jr. has been earning accolades left and right for his play of late, OSU will start their 3rd string QB, a guy whose name sounds like a weird amalgamation of last season's QBs (Marcus Mariota and Sean Mannion).

It would be unthinkable if this game was even close, but funny thing can happen during rivalry games. The Ducks will be hoping today to keep the humor to a minimum and the Duck mascot push-ups to a maximum. It's hard to get too excited about the game this year, but it is The Civil War, after all. A win likely puts the Ducks in the Alamo Bowl against a strong Big-12 opponent, with a puncher's chance at an at-large bid for the Fiesta Bowl.

The 2009 Civil War was a lot more competitive than today's game is expected to be.

Game time is 1:00 PST with national coverage on FS1. Go Ducks!

A Mix of Old and New

Cardinals cards from different eras.

While I was being all impressed with myself for being caught up on trade posts last week, Jeff from Wish They Still Came With Bubblegum dropped a power-packed plain white envelope on me. It was chock full of Cardinals both old and new.

Dizzy's an old card on a shiny thick new 2010 Topps Tribute design.

Rob Kaminsky is one of the up-and-comers who hasn't made it to the bigs yet. This is my first card from the 2015 Topps Heritage Minors set. At least, I think that's what it's called. Also received, but not pictured, was a league leaders type of card from this set that included Tim Cooney who did get in a few appearances with St. Louis this year.

After many, many years, the 1973 design is really growing on me. The font is just perfect for the era, and I have to admit that I really like the little logos for each position.

Finally, here's a 1969 Topps card, which would be Torre's first Cardinals card but clearly not his first in a Cardinals uniform. That would come later. Special thanks to my scanner for lopping off the right border.

Good Luck Ducks, Week 12: No Let Up

The Ducks face another huge test as the clock winds down on the 2015 season.

Another week, another thriller. Oregon stopped Stanford on a 2 point conversion that would have sent the game to OT, and suddenly the (still) hottest team in the Pac-12 is starting to dream big. Oregon is back in the Top 25 for the first time since the brutal early loss to Utah and face a similarly ranked USC team this week. The Ducks need a win today and a win over Oregon State as well as a Stanford loss in The Big Game to win the Pac-12 North. It's still a bit of a long shot, but their path to the conference championship got quite a bit clearer after last week's big win. For the fanbase, anyway, it was sweet, sweet revenge.

The Ducks haven't faced USC in 3 seasons, which is a travesty and shouldn't happen with any conference foe. The expansion of the Pac meant that every school would skip two opponents each year, but there's absolutely no excuse for skipping someone in back-to-back years. The Trojans are also on a nice winning streak since firing their coach. In any season, USC is always a football behemoth, so it's nice that the game is at Autzen Stadium.

Vernon Adams Jr. seems to be firing on all cylinders now, and with just a few games left in his career, he's actually been limited in his usage with so much action happening on the running side of the Ducks offense. Oregon's offense was very frustrating and simple for several weeks early in the season, but they've really opened up the playbook recently with multi-position players doing a variety of things. Adams has proven to be adept at scrambling his way out of trouble and has excelled at throwing the deep ball. This might go down as a stunted season for him with the way his broken finger affected him and the team's chances, but he still has time left to do some great things. On the Trojans side, senior QB Cody Kessler is chomping at the bit to get a piece of Oregon for the first time. USC usually runs as often (or more) than Oregon does, but it could come down to very experienced 5th year senior signal callers to determine the outcome of this one.


Last time these two teams met, it was just points, points, points.

Game time is 12:30 PST with national coverage on ESPN. Go Ducks!

Airbrushed Fridays: 2015 Topps #587

Dirty Dan Does Denver.

Who is he? Daniel Descalso is a utility infielder who won a World Series with the Cardinals in 2011. While he was essentially a replacement level player, he filled in at a number of positions when the Cardinals were short-handed and even pitched an inning or two. He isn't much of a hitter, but did provide some key hits in some of the Cardinals recent playoff runs.

How did he get here? The Cardinals eventually let Descalso hit free agency after the 2014 season, and he ended up signing a two year deal with the Rockies, filling a similar role in Colorado

Repeat offender? No

Other versions of this card: None, but here's the source photo --

View image | gettyimages.com

Airbrushed Score: 9

Comments: This is dreadful Photoshop, folks.

Night Owl Service

I'm a subscriber.

With this post, I am officially caught up with all incoming card-related packages for the first time in what has to be years. It seems like years, anyway. And what better way to commemorate this occasion than with some cards from my most frequent mailbox visitor, Night Owl Cards. One of these days I'm going to compile a list of links to everything he's sent. One day... maybe the next time I'm caught up?

Night Owl sent a healthy stack of this year's Heritage cards, which is great as this is the time of year that I start getting tired of looking for Heritage to open. Altuve is a short print in the set as well as one of Erin's guys to collect, but this one I'm going to keep (shh!) since it's hard enough as it is to get ahold of Heritage SPs. Also, Altuve has about a million different cards in this set when you consider all the inserts and variations.

Here's a much loved 1975 Lou Brock Hostess card. I understand there are Twinkie and non-Twinkie versions of this card. I don't see a Twinkie logo anywhere, so I'm gonna go with non-Twinkie.

I kind of miss the old Target red parallel cards now that they're gone. I know that they're just another annoying side distraction that you're never going to collect all of before you die, but the red look always looks good on Redbirds.

I'm a little disappointed that Topps used the same photo for this card as the Pujols 1st Home Run card, but I bet they have to pay some sort of per-photo fee for archival photos. (Side note: does anyone know when they started completely outsourcing their photography to Getty Images? They used to employ their own photographers at one point, didn't they?)

Ah, Kolten Wong's golden home run trot.

And here's a shiny gold low-numbered autograph of the Cardinals young reliever with the funky name. We saw bits and pieces of Tuivailala this past season, but I am guessing he will figure more prominently into the team's bullpen plans in the future.

As a bonus, Night Owl included some laminated lanyard/credentials/backstage passes/whatever from some prominent sports card conventions of the past. I haven't been to any such things before. My card shows are usually very local and homely, if you ask me.

So they used to have a night owl service for our public transit bus system back when I was a kid. I'm not sure why it went away... perhaps things are just too dangerous on the streets of Portland these days, or maybe drivers were falling asleep at the wheel. Whatever the reason, I feel like there's no excuse good enough to shut down something that keeps potential drunk drivers off the road. Bring it back, TriMet!