A&G: Best of the Blaster

Because I am filled with evil and I like to see everyone's pockets get drained in these tough economic times, while at Target over the weekend looking for 2009 packs I convinced my unsuspecting girlfriend to buy an Allen & Ginter blaster. (Erin: "I wanted to buy it. I just needed convincing to spend my hard earned cash.") Here is the best pack of the box.

57 - Ben Sheets (This is one of the horizontal A&G cards that really works for me. Others have pointed out how much dead space there is on some of them. This one shows Sheets' entire wingspan. Unfortunately for him, he fell out of the free agent race and the Brewers might not even get compensated for it if he doesn't pitch by the June draft.) (Erin: "I am not a fan of this card's face.")
131 - Todd Helton (Erin says: "He seems drawn to me. His cards seem drawn to me.")

163 - Jeremy Hermida

WL46 - Tenzin Gyatso (Tenzin makes another Cards on Cards appearance. This time he's upgraded to a scanner-quality picture.) Erin: "Feel free to give me all of your World Leaders cards. Thanks."

AGR-GA - Garret Anderson Framed Jersey (Not bad! I've never pulled one of these after several packs and 4 blasters, but Erin got one here, which she believes is her second in 6 boxes. Anderson is rumored to be a candidate to head to Seattle, which might make sense, but I don't see how he's much better than some of the players they've had in the past like Ibanez. Erin: "Neat! I wish it was Figgy.")
- Checklist 3 of 4

347 - David DeJesus (SP) (This one's mine. Ha, ha, ha! You can't have it. Erin is also giving me a Vladdy card from her box. The set is getting there... little by little.)
290 - Ken Griffey Jr. (Will Griffey have a job by Opening Day? Hell, will Adam Dunn have one?)

That's right, 7 cards, checklist notwithstanding. And no stealth US Flag card to make it 7. The only packs I've found that had extra cards usually had two minis that both had roller marks on them, probably due to a machine jamming and spitting out too many cards or something. Erin also got a shark card in the box - the same shark that I've pulled twice, unfortunately. Tiger sharks just love us.

Who Are These Guys?

One of my favorite parts of team collecting is going to card shows and sifting through boxes of 5 and 10 cent cards to see all the cards that came out during my long time away from interest in baseball cards. When I went to a show this past month, I was pretty amazed at how many players from this decade that I've never heard of that have Cardinals cards. Of course, they all seem to have fit the "prospect" bill at one point or another, at least in a card company's mind, and it's doubtful that most of them ever got to wear the Birds on the Bat in a counting game, let alone appeared for any major league team at all. I thought I would dig deeper on a handful of the cards that I picked out at the show.

- Chance Caple (2002 Topps Chrome): Caple, a starting RHP, was a 1st round draft pick in 1999, but never made it past A ball in 6 seasons, all with the Cardinals. He only made 3 appearances (all starts) in his final season, 2004, and had decent numbers so I can only assume that his career ended due to injury.

- Chris Haas (2000 Bowman): Haas was another late 1st rounder, picked way back in 1995. He played the corner infield spots and it appears that the Cards finally gave up on him after the 2000 season. St. Louis was pretty well set at 1st base, with Mark McGwire and Albert Pujols on the way, with Tino Martinez bridging the gap. Haas bounced around a bit after he left the St. Louis system but never made it past AAA and last played in 2003.

- Jeremy Lambert (2002 Fleer Focus Jersey Edition): Perfect picture of the unknown prospect as Lambert is seen here carrying the ol' equipment bag. Lambert, not to be confused with Chris Lambert, was a late round (16th) pick who spent 7 years in the Cardinals system, mostly in the bullpen. He spent one final season in the Boston system at AA before finally, presumably hanging it up after 2004. At the time he appeared on this card, he was coming off of a productive second half of a season with AAA Memphis and had earned a spot on the 40-man roster, though he never got the call.

- Scotty Layfield (2002 Leaf Rookies & Stars): Layfield was a 20th round pick, but rose to AAA in his 5th season in the Cardinals system. He then proceeded to drop out of sight, resurfacing a few years later in independent league ball.

- Bill Ortega (2002 Bowman Chrome): Ortega was an undrafted outfielder from Cuba who didn't possess a lot of power or speed. He is, however, the first on this list who made it to the majors. He spent two season at AAA and earned at 5 game, 5 at-bat stint in September of 2001.

- Justin Pope (2002 Upper Deck): Pope was a 1st round pick in 2001, but was off to the Yankees system by 2003 where he stayed until last season. He spent 2008 at AA Reading, the Phillies affiliate. He is the only active player of the bunch so far. He began his minor league career as a starter but is strictly a reliever these days.

- Joe Rogers (2002 Topps Chrome): Rogers appears to be one of the more curious stories. An undrafted free agent, Rogers was a lefty starter who left the Cardinals for the Boston system in 2004. He then apparently bounced around with some independent league teams only to resurface as a Memphis Redbird last year for 3 appearances (2 starts.) Still, I'd never heard of the man.

- Esix Snead (2001 Fleer Futures): Esix Snead was the inspiration for this post. He has to rank up there with Stubby Clapp on the all name team, and I had never heard of him until I found a few of his cards a few weekends ago. Snead actually has his own Wikipedia page, so I'll let you check him out for yourself.

- Clint Weibl (2002 Topps): Weibl was a 37th (!) round pick in 1996 and spent 8 years in the St. Louis system as a right-handed starter. He wound up with the Brewers AAA affiliates for a couple of years and then vanished from baseball after 2005.

- Blake Williams (2001 Topps): Williams was a 1st round pick who couldn't make it out of A-ball and only lasted four seasons as a right-handed starter in the Cardinals system. He wore the socks the right way, though. So many pitchers...

- Justin Brunette (2001 Ultra): I actually know who Keith McDonald was, sort of, so I'll just focus on Mr. Brunette. He was a 20th round pick in 1997 and lasted 6 years as a lefty reliever, including two season in the Mets system. He did make 4 appearances with the big league Cardinals in 2000.

Well, now I'm slightly more educated in obscure one-time fringe prospects. I hope you are, too. To be honest, I can't wait to get more cards like these. It's stuff like this that keeps me interested in crawling back to card shows.

Merry Christmas to Me

It's not too late to talk about Christmas, is it? It feels like Christmas in my household, since I finally broke down and bought myself a scanning device. It's pretty amusing, actually, that it took me this long to get one considering the line of work I'm in. I work at a company that scans hundreds of thousands of documents every day. But that's not what I'm here to talk about, not now or ever. I'm here to talk about the cards that my girlfriend gave me for Christmas.

First up is a 2007 Topps Finest Jim Edmonds Refractor. There's a lot of dead white space on the card, but it looks really nice, especially in the light (as most refractors tend to do.) It's a great addition to my Edmonds (and Cardinals) collection.

Here's a 2007 Bowman X-Fractor of Edmonds. I'm still working on the scanner settings, of course, but from what I gather there really isn't a good way to scan these cards. It's probably a bit like scanning Sportflics. This card is numbered 108/250 and immediately becomes one of my best Edmonds cards. Keep in mind, I don't really have a lot of fancy autographs or anything.

This is a mini from the 2003 Topps 205 set. I don't really know anything about the set at all, except from a few cards I've grabbed from the 10 cent bins at card shows. This one has a Piedmont back.

Not that I would judge these gifts by their "book value", but I think this Allen & Ginter mini was the hardest to get/most expensive of the lot. Why is that, you ask? Because it has no number on the back. What a silly idea for a variation, but hey, I love that I own this card.

Finally, there's a grey jersey card of the Wizard, my all-time favorite player. It's numbered 39/50, and it's from this past year's SP Legendary Cuts set. I didn't hear a lot of great things about this set, but this is a really nice relic card if you ask me.

If anyone out there has any Ozzie Smith or Jim Edmonds stuff you don't mind parting with, by all means, send me an e-mail. In the meantime, I'm going to work on getting Erin's wants on my want list page so I can help bolster her collection as well.

Thoughts, Sox and Miscellany

I got a few cards in the mail the other day from Thoughts and Sox, a nice surprise completing a trade that I had somewhat forgotten about. I sent over some UD Masterpieces Red Sox cards and some Turkey Red doubles. In return, I got some of Adam's extra 2008 Topps Heritage cards (happened to need them all) and a few Cardinals including a Brian Barton Timeline SP design card. I've really come around on the Timeline set. If only I lived closer to a reasonably priced hobby shop, I probably would have bought a bunch of the hobby packs by now. I just won three hobby packs on eBay yesterday, though, so I will at least have a few to open soon. I still need a handful of Cardinals cards from the set, which are listed in my General Want List on the sidebar.

Normally you won't see too many Red Sox cards on this blog, but I had to let a few sneak in here. I wonder who was in charge of coming up with things to say on these subset cards like "Batter Bafflers". Really? You have Dice-K and Beckett and that's the best you can come up with?

I guess the jury's still out on Clay Buchholz. Rookies/young pitchers who throw no-hitters can seemingly go in any direction. For Clay's sake, we'll hope he won't go the direction of former Cardinals Bud Smith and Jose Jimenez.

***

I may be purchasing a cheap all-in-one printer/scanning combo machine in the very near future. The Brian Barton card at the top of this post is a good example of why, though I also haven't owned a proper printer since my early model mid-'80s Mac that I used to write papers with in high school (which was not in the mid-'80s.) If anyone has any recommendations (or un-recommendations), feel free to leave a comment. I'm planning on hitting up the recently bankrupt Circuit City today, although internet chatter claims that their liquidation sales are pretty much a scam and nothing more.

***

Speaking of 2008 Heritage, I finally got my want list for that monster of a set together and it's now on the sidebar. I definitely welcome trades, and if you can't find anything else to trade me and you have extras of this stuff, I'm sure there are plenty of cards I need that you have.

***

The Blazers posts will return at the All-Star break, which is coming up in a week or so. I went from being burned out on them to just being lazy and forgetful. I will also have a shiny "new" hobby box to open that I will do as soon as I get this scanner thing resolved.

Consolation Prize Blaster

It's 2009, right? So what am I doing with another box of 2008 stuff on the blog? Well, I'm like that kid on the block that got the Nintendo like two years after everyone else. It wasn't like I didn't try, though. But I only had time to hit one Target last weekend and I've had to work all week. Maybe this weekend will be fruitful, but in the meantime, here's another blaster of the High Heritage Series of Rookies, Bench Players and Near-Stars.

Pack 1:
512 - Ryan Sweeney (Now there's a Ryan Sweeney? I couldn't even keep Mark Sweeney and Mike Sweeney straight.)
565 - Dana Eveland (No RC logo but he has the Rookie Stars design.)
543 - Greg Smith (RC)
622 - John Baker
514 - Brandon Backe (Huge Albert Pujols fan.)

689 - Eric Patterson (SP) (Part of the Rich Harden trade and brother of fantasy flub Corey.)
UH267 - Gregorio Petit (RC)
UH107 - Jason Varitek All-Stars (Can't complain much about Jeter always making the All-Star team when this guy makes it.)

Pack 2:
640 - Joe Crede

660 - Dioner Navarro (Nice shades. His head and mask take up like 60% of the photo.)
600 - Miguel Tejada
538 - Brian Buscher (Not sure who he is, still. These cards are starting to look awfully familiar.)
599 - Joe Inglett (He could be a fake player and I wouldn't know any better.)
FB9 - Carlos Delgado Flashbacks (Got it already.)
UH40 - Jon Rauch
UH69 - Chad Moeller (One of the guys the Yankees desparately turned to when Jorge Posada went down.)

Pack 3:

524 - Hiroki Kuroda (RC) (Nice touch with Kuroda's Japanese stats on the back.)
620 - Cristian Guzman
630 - Ryan Ludwick (The back references his All-Star appearance as "last year" on the back when it was actually 2008. Little things like that bug me for some reason.)
549 - Jeremy Sowers Black Back
537 - Toronto Blue Jays
TN1 - Ernie Banks / Jimmy Rollins Then & Now (Have it already.)
UH266 - Rob Mackowiak
UH68 - Jonathan Papelbon All-Stars

Pack 4:
503 - Johnny Cueto (RC) (Another Cueto.)
670 - Joakim Soria
680 - George Sherrill
501 - John Danks
655 - Angel Berroa Black Back (Still trying to live up to his 2003 Rookie of the Year award.)

700 - Eddie Kunz (RC) (SP) (I did a double take when I saw this. Why is he familiar? Eddie was on the back-to-back College World Series winning Oregon State teams. I had no idea he made it to the majors already.)
UH231 - Chris Davis (RC)
UH35 - Hanley Ramirez All-Stars

Pack 5:
554 - Vicente Padilla
652 - Glen Perkins
517 - Brian Burres
614 - Russell Branyan (Has averaged 1 HR almost every 15 ABs in his career, according to the stats on the back. He's also only averaged about 12 per season.)
665 - Texas Rangers (I have about 5 or 6 of these cards now.)
612 - Jeff Baker (Lots of him, too. I don't think he's a rookie, with 239 ABs over three seasons going into 2008, but he has the RC logo anyway.)
UH109 - Alberto Callaspo
UH279 - Alex Hinshaw (RC)

Pack 6:
502 - Jamey Wright (Wright made 4 appearances for the Cards in 2002. I wonder if he has any Cardinals cards. Maybe I have one already and I forgot about it.)

505 - Chase Headley (Somewhere on my hard drive I have pictures of Headley that I took at a AAA game in Portland last April.)
506 - Takashi Saito (Has both Japanese and Major League stats on the back.)
605 - Greg Reynolds (RC)
621 - Jeff Samardzija Black Back (RC)
712 - Jack Hannahan (SP)
UH1 - Kosuke Fukudome (RC)
UH83 - George Sherrill All-Stars (Remember "All-Stars", Seattle? You used to have some of those. Now you just have Ichiro.)

Pack 7:
674 - Paul Maholm (Was a decent late season fantasy pickup for me.)
637 - Tim Redding
634 - Manny Parra
613 - Houston Astros (Bleh.)
666 - Jason Michaels (Double bleh.)

C251 - Jonny Gomes Chrome 1581/1959 (Erin likes him because of a card in which he was flying about.)
UH32 - Cody Ross
UH197 - Michael Young All-Stars

Pack 8:
624 - Scott Olsen

593 - Nick Blackburn (RC) (Just your average sideburns-wearin' Twinkie.)
574 - Mike Pelfrey
566 - Bryan LaHair (RC)
539 - Kelly Shop Vac Black Bac
RP8 - Carlos Gonzalez Rookie Performers
UH26 - Chris Iannetta
UH153 - Armando Galarraga (RC) (Another one of my fantasy guys last year.)

Well, I should have expected this after the last blaster I got. But I still wasn't happy that all of my inserts were cards I already had before. I guess it's finally time to get that want list ready.

Phun with Phungo

Last week I got a surprise package from deal at Phungo, containing a couple of Cards cards from my want lists. I'm missing a surprising number of 2007 Upper Deck cards, especially from Series 2. Here it looks like Gary Bennett is celebrating one of his four big HRs that all came in the same week of 2006, most likely the walkoff grand slam against the Cubs on 8/27 mentioned on the back. It's crazy to think that the Cards probably wouldn't have won the 2006 title without Gary Bennett.

I'm seriously considering collecting Chris Carpenter cards beyond just his Birds on the Bat cardboard displays. I love watching him pitch.

I also am the proud owner of some shiny new Phungo Cards. Check out the blog for many more of these cards. Kenny Mayne is my favorite ESPN personality of all-time, so this was a fun one to get.

Ryan Ludwick has far too few cards in a St. Louis uniform, so this is a welcome sight as well.

Again, check out Phungo for more - you may even learn something!

Super Big Game

Go Cardinals!

Details after the game tomorrow soon on A Pack A Day.