Final Contest Update and Some Current Cards

Featuring some guys who didn't get traded today. 

First things first- let's talk about the contest. There's just one college football game left to decide (even though I swear pitchers and catchers are getting ready to report any day now) and by my calculations the contest has already been decided. Much like a Final Jeopardy contestant with more than twice as much money as everyone else, GLM1 (Targeting Confirmed) looks to be this year's champ. We will double check the scores as soon as Monday's championship game is in the books, but it looks like all of the action to watch will be for the runner-up prizes.

On the night Jose Martinez was traded away, let's check out a few cards of guys who are still with the St. Louis Cardinals (for now?!) courtesy of cards as i see them.

When I first heard an outfielder from the major league club was going to be one of the key pieces sent back to Tampa Bay (the Cardinals acquired one of their top prospects in Matt Liberatore), I expected it to be Harrison Bader. Bader's defensive skills would have him near the top of the MLB center field class, but his struggles at the plate made him essentially unplayable as the playoffs went on last season. A short minor league demotion seemed to bring more life to Bader's bat last season, but let's hope that a full offseason can bring about a more permanent change.

Here's Paul Goldschmidt, wearing one of those numberless photo day jersey that I complained about last night. Please note that I did not make any sort of New Year's resolution to complain less about trivial things in 2020.

Like Andrew Miller at the top of this post, Adam Wainwright was held over for the High Series in last year's Topps Heritage line. Unlike Miller, Wainwright is not new to the team. It's just that nobody expected Wainwright in 2019 to be a big contributor. He still has a few tricks up his sleeve, though, and we'll be seeing more of him.

The Dark Side of Ginter

Some sleek online exclusive Cardinals from @BubbaStup and his stash of Ginter goodies. 

Super Allen & Ginter collector Bubba occasionally tosses a few things my way. This time, along with a few want list insert needs were a collection of six Cardinals minis from the latest edition of the dark and mysterious Allen & Ginter X!

These cards always look good, but I'm somewhat surprised that Topps has kept this online exclusive set going after all these years. Even though they might prove to be even more difficult to obtain, I kind of wish these were the "hot box" exclusives that you can find in certain hobby boxes instead of those somewhat shiny foil cards. I might even consider springing for a box for once if they did something like that.

The dark background and black frame gives kind of a weird Harry Potter-esque feel to such an old portrait. Well, it seems gothic, at least. Perhaps I went too far when I mentioned Harry Potter.

This is the mini X version of Matt Carpenter's "are you serious right now?" card. The Cardinals have had the unfortunate trend of wearing numberless uniforms for their photo day in recent years, which really bugs me. Do you know what bugs me even more? That Topps Photoshopped that 13 right back onto his uniform... and did it very poorly. (See also Bader, Harrison.)

Tyler O'Neill's arm is sorta covering where the number should be, so they let it go.

Same deal with Yadi here, although I hope that Molina has some sort of no-Photoshop shenanigans policy in his Topps contract.

Fresh Arms, Fresh Ink

A couple of card shop pickups, no big deal. 

On a vacation day last week, I headed out to the suburbs and stopped in a card shop for what ended up being just a few minutes. The guy apparently had a few errands to run and needed to leave, and when you're basically a solo operation that means you get to kick everyone out of the store. There aren't any card shops that I'm aware of in Portland proper, so my visits to these types of places are rare, but I also didn't feel like sticking around the area longer than I needed to when I had things to do back in the city.

I accomplished what I set out to do and bought some supplies. I also snagged a couple of nice looking chunky 2019 Panini autographs of Cardinals hurlers. Dakota Hudson wasn't blowing anyone away last season, but at least superficially he seemed to be a decent arm in the rotation in 2019. Only time will tell if Hudson is a starter for the long haul, but he hasn't really done anything to call his role into question as of yet.

On the other hand, it seems like the Cardinals aren't entirely sure what to make of Daniel Ponce de Leon. He was kept on a very short leash last season, so his contributions to the team felt pretty minimal. It will be interesting to see if he's given another crack at making the rotation, which is starting to feel crowded with Gwang-hyun Kim being added to the mix. Adam Wainwright is coming back. And, yes, it does seem like the team will highly encourage Carlos Martinez to remember that he was once (actually twice) an All-Star starting pitcher and push him to claim one of those spots. 2020 will be an interesting year for St. Louis pitchers.

Money Cards from the Dime Boxes

The @dimeboxman delivers! 

Now that we're past the holidays, it's time to reach back into the vaults and talk about what people were sending me back in the fall. That's how backlogged I'm getting here. A disclaimer - there were a few other surprise packages I received last month that extended warm holiday greetings, and they are very appreciated and will be featured here as soon as I can get to them.

The always generous Nick of Dime Boxes fame sent me a big stack of stuff back in September which allowed me to remove a whole bunch of numbers from various lists I keep. Nick is sort of the baseball card version of what you might call a crate digger if we were talking about music, which we're not. It seems that he's always digging deep to find the most interesting cards out there.

Here's an obligatory 2002 Fleer Greats scan, for example. If every post I wrote featured a card from one of the Greats sets, this would be a vastly more interesting blog.

Nick sent a bunch of great oddball stuff, including a whole stack of cards like these. I wasn't able to find a whole lot about this set and it seems to be somewhat poorly cataloged over at TCDB. The cards feature The Gas House Gang and all seem to have numerous variations (including the header that sometimes says 1934 Cardinals and other times says The Gas House Gang.) The backs have a 1974 TCMA copyright. I'm not sure how to check them off any sort of list, but they'll all be headed for my team binders nonetheless.

Many of you are probably familiar with these scratch cards from Topps. These weren't attached or anything -- I just felt like scanning them all together. I do have a want list for these, although it's another complicated set because I believe there are variations on the back. And then, do you want both separated and fully intact cards? Decisions, decisions...

This is a familiar photo of Dizzy Dean and a bunch of baseballs from some sort of (trivia? game?) set from 1989.

When finally putting together my minor league want lists, I was fascinated to learn that, going back a couple of decades, most leagues put out All-Star and "Top Prospects" type sets in addition to all of the team sets for each individual team. Here's one of the All-Star variety of current Cards starter Dakota Hudson.

Justin Williams, one of the players acquired in the Tommy Pham trade, has yet to see the field with St. Louis but looks great here on this Independence Day themed parallel. Or, at least the card looks great. I really like both of what Panini (Donruss) and Topps did with these parallels. I just wish they were easier to pull (especially the Topps ones.)

One half of Keith Hernandez's rookie card is looking pretty psychedelic on this shiny Archives Reserve card that I needed.

Nick also sent a handful of those Baseball Card Magazine cutout cards. I do sort of miss the old Krause Publications magazines and all of the crazy ads in those things, even if I never really took advantage of any of them and probably just bought them for the "cards".

Here's another Fleer Greats card. This one is from 2004 and is a Cardinals themed insert... the best kind of insert, really. It's also numbered (to 1928) which is pretty cool.

There are tons and tons of "Greatest" inserts in the various 2019 Topps flagship releases (including parallels) and I'm afraid that I need many of them. I don't need this one any longer, though!

Nick also sent a ton of needs from a couple of then-fresh releases. I'll just show a few cards here. This poker playing pro seems to have a lot of extra background ink on his card, making it appear quite a bit darker than other base cards in the set. I wonder if all of his cards are like this or if it was some weird printing goof.

Zack Greinke is serious. Always serious.

Nearly half of the package was from the Heritage High Numbers collection. I was happy to get this Duplantier card from the usually elusive Rookie Performers inserts, even if I have no idea who he is. He also looks rather serious. Maybe something was going on there in Arizona that I don't know about.

Thanks again to Nick!

A Breakdown Holiday and a Contest Winner

From @breakdowncards come more greetings of the season, plus a Belking winner announcement. 

The last of the holiday posts comes from cards received from Santa Gavin of Baseball Card Breakdown. Along with this very limited ornament that would look fantastic on any Christmas tree, Gavin sent over some wonderful additions to my Cardinals team collection.

This seasonally appropriate card will end up in Erin's binder. Erin was a little more enthusiastic about the card stuff when I started up the blog thing, but she still wants all of your Yadis (and Altuves).

Here's a snazzy (yes, I just used that word) pair of refractors from the 2018 Topps Chrome set. I think I'm in the camp that hopes that Ozuna will end up back with the Birds, warts and all. I just don't see anyone else out there in the market or coming up from the minor league ranks who could immediately replace the offensive production Ozuna is capable of.

You can probably tell by the clarity of this scan (from my budget priced scanner purchased at a Circuit City going-out-of-business sale) that this is also a refractor. Descalso was mostly a utility/bench guy for the Cards, but he has turned out to have a pretty lengthy and productive career overall.

I should start calling these ska cards. They have that checkerboard pattern, although they're not quite black and white.

I didn't get a chance to purchase any Topps Finest this year (do I ever?), so I am always happy to find Cardinal needs from this set.

Shortly after receiving the holiday envelope, Gavin and I also met up for another in-person card exchange, which netted me a few primo serial numbered cards. Junior Fernandez is someone I'm pretty excited about, with this blue "paper" Bowman card coming off of my theoretical needs list.

I think I own entirely too many Michael Swinson cards for a guy who topped out at A ball and left the game six years ago. That being said, I didn't own this blue refractor of his... but now I do!

The last card from Gavin was this fancy Leather & Lumber thing from the adventurous set that Panini put out this year. You only get 10 cards, but I kind of want to break another blaster of this stuff. This die cut Miles Mikolas card is numbered to just 25 copies. Fantastic.

Now, if you've made it this far, you're probably here for a contest update. We didn't have all that many entries for the Belk Bowl mini-contest, and probably not coincidentally, no one was all that close. Only a few folks picked Kentucky (correctly) to win, and The Bucs Stop Here was the closest with a score differential of 29. Congrats!

Christmas Cards from Cardboard Collections

More seasons greetings from @flywheels in cardboard form. 

Another fine holiday themed envelope arrived in my mailbox just in time for Christmas with some cards from Colbey of Cardboard Collections. Included were a couple of cards from the almost-too-over-the-top Walmart-exclusive Topps Holiday set. We don't have a conventional Walmart (or at least one that sells cards) where I live, so these through the mail dealings are the only way I can pick up stuff like this.

This one isn't an exclusive, but it sure looks nice. If I was smart and wanted to free up a ton of space, I would get rid of all of my Allen & Ginter cards save for the black minis, because they always look great.

Back to the Holiday set here with Marcell Ozuna, the man without a team. This is one of the extra-sparkly parallels that even has glitter on it. I don't know what the official name is for these. Holiday cheer?

Colbey also sent some brand new Hoops needs for my Blazers team collection. Portland's basketball team is in dire shape at the moment. The less said about them right now, the better, but the cards are always appreciated. It's been hard to find basketball cards at all lately with Zionmania still a thing.

I saved the big one for the end here as Colbey delivered my second Paul DeJong chase card of the week. The All-Star Game was, of course, in Cleveland this (well, last) year - so we get this Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame guitar themed jersey card. Not bad!

Happy 2020, everyone.

Good Luck Ducks: Rose Bowl 2020

More like Piss-consin. 

The new year is the time to reflect on what happened in the past 365 days, but for college football any bowl game is a time to reflect on what happened during the season and how the team got here. I feel that I've been a bit tempered in my enthusiasm with this Ducks team in this space, but this has to be acknowledged: it was a really good year for the Oregon Ducks football team. Short of making the somewhat farcical College Football Playoffs, the Rose Bowl has always been the goal of the Pac-(12) conference teams, and it still feels sweet despite the what-could've-beens.

This will be the final game for QB Justin Herbert, a Eugene native whose childhood photo wearing a Joey Harrington jersey will likely be shown once again at some point during today's broadcast. Herbert was thrown to the wolves immediately and suffered a 70-21 defeat to a bitter rival in his first start. He had nowhere to go but up from there, and he certainly climbed. He won't enter the pro game with the credentials that Marcus Mariota earned, but considering Mariota's current NFL standing, that might not even matter.

The Ducks face off against a very good Wisconsin team, who likewise are ranked in the top ten despite three losses this season. Oregon last faced the Badgers in 2012 in, you guessed it, the Rose Bowl. Some dudes in green uniforms and silver helmets beat some Russell Wilson guy to earn the right to put stems of roses in their mouths. Oregon gains a bit of health today by getting talented freshman receive Mycah Pittman back. After steamrolling Utah and putting some doubts to rest about their offensive scheme, Marcus Arroyo will be in the offensive coordinator position for the last time as he is set to become UNLV's head coach for 2020.

• The Last Game: Oregon thoroughly dominated the Utah Utes in the Pac-12 Championship despite being considered an underdog. Let's just say it was satisfying. Okay, it was super satisfying.
• Know Your Opponent: Badgers fans are still hung up on some sort of fumble from the 2012 game. Hmm.
• The Unis!: In a nod to the Rose Bowl from 8 years ago, the Ducks are going with nightmare green and silver helmets. Close enough, I guess?
• Mario Cristobal's "Crystal Ball" prediction: "I think anything regarding a bowl, an opportunity postseason-wise is always an opportunity to build tremendous momentum." Signs point to yes. 

• Luke Skyywalker's Crystal Balls say: Well, it's more than a bit of a stretch, but 2 Live Crew once sampled a classic Guns 'n Roses song and... well, I'm probably done with this gimmick forever. That's where it's at!

Game time is 2:00 PST on ESPN. Chris Fowler and Kirk Herbstreit are on the call. Go Ducks!

But wait, there's more! Loyal friend of the blog Dennis of Too Many Manninghams has many reasons to root against Wisconsin, being a Michigan Man. Dennis has provided many of the cards featured here in the Good Luck Ducks posts over the years, including the awesome Jalen Jelks autographed card shown here today. This "bonus" Badgers card was defaced with the best of intentions, and I feel honored to show it off here.

Yessssss, indeed! Quack, quack, quack!