Dinged Corners

2011 Lineage: our first look.

2011-11-05T16:20:00.000-06:00

When we asked you what cards we should look at now that we've reemerged, Topps Lineage was one design you described that caught our attention. Although we sought a blaster, all we could find in our puny little non-baseball card town was a rack pack. We grabbed one, opened it, and found some Toppsy looking cards at first--

but in the middle, a couple of interesting variants:

Tony Perez and a tiny little baby Johnny Bench...great vintage uniforms, logos, and the little gold all-star rookie symbol. Love how the older photography shows no concerns about the background--in fact, Mr. Perez has several random legs emerging from his elbow and little dot people in the distance. A+ for detail: Mr. Bench has a fantastically dirty knee and one of the big old catcher's mitts. His brow is furrowed, which it shouldn't be if he is looking into his own future.

Then there's the shiny:

Double rainbow all the way! This card made us remember that for a brief moment we actually felt sorry for the Rangers as their world imploded around them during this World Series. We doubt that Mr. Beltre takes much comfort from thinking, "well, at least there's that shiny card of me in Topps Lineage."

And, look:

A Mets card! A fake relic card! Well, it's a relic of something, but apparently not anything to do with baseball: "The relic in this card is not from any specific game, event, or season." Does that mean it's also not from any specific team or person? Anyway, poor Jason. Perhaps after they shrink Citi Field a little, he and David Wright will have a better year next go 'round. By the way, the relicky card is smaller than the others. What is the meaning of this?

Anyway, it was fun rackin' up a rack pack to make up for the recent lack of stacks and backs.

Girl sasses baseball players who wear glasses.

2011-11-03T22:01:00.000-06:00

Orel Hayhiser's glasses here accentuate his earnestness. Do you love baseball cards that don't depict bats, baseballs, bases, or any facet of the game? Then this one is for you. Unfortunately, there is so much to say about this card we don't have time to list everything. It would take months.

It's Lowell "Wild Pitch" Palmer behind those Foster Grants. And what is the standout element of this card? We'll wait.

Tap tap.

Correct! Shea Stadium in the background.

Question for our old baseball card friends.

2011-10-31T14:27:00.000-06:00

And by old, we mean wise. Certainly, none of us is getting older.

If you hadn't bought any baseball cards in, ahem, quite a while, what blaster box, rack pack, hobby box, or, for that matter, eBay deal would you pounce on right now in order to get yourself all happily back into the swing of things?

What set or current design rocks?--yes, that's part of the question, but sometimes even if it's not the bestest set in all the world, there's a compelling buy out there--such as a hobby box that tends to be weighted with cool stuff. That's what we are asking.

So: what should be our first baseball card purchase in a long time that will return us firmly to a cheery mood about cardboard?

Joe Buck's eyebrows and other World Series questions.

2011-10-29T16:41:00.000-06:00

Do Joe Buck's eyebrows look alarming to anyone? Not as alarming as Ron Paul's eyebrow actually falling off during one of the bizarro world Republican debates, but close?

Mr. Buck did a nice job of announcing this go-round, but there was something about those eyebrows that made us glad we didn't get many visuals. He has a sonorous baseball voice, though, and when he said, "We'll...see...you...tomorrow...night" after Mr. Freese's home run in Game 6, well, it almost made us sniffle.

Other questions that came up:

Texas blew the lead five times in Game 6 (!) and twice was within one strike of winning the World Series. How bad must the Rangers feel? It's not fun to lose, but to lose with ignominy, that's tough. We did not feel sorry for Nolan Ryan, though, because he looked like a thug in that dark overcoat.

Was there a Bill Buckner moment for the Rangers?

Did everyone in the East stay up for the whole of Game 6?

The last team to win a Game 7 of the World Series was the 2002 Angels. Does anybody remember that? If not, what does this mean in the great scheme of our attention spans?

Future ingredients for the best jersey cards ever made.

2011-10-28T17:26:00.000-06:00

The Before and After of David Freese's jersey, shredded by joy.

There's nothing like an epic baseball game to shake people out of their baseball doldrums...and last night's rapid-fire, bizarro-world, what are they thinking?, OMG World Series Game 6 did just that. After months of inexplicable torpor, suddenly we cared about baseball again. The corporate tinge faded, the overpaid galoot factor didn't matter, and everything crystallized into a perfect baseballian tangle of wonderful moments.

We hope you'll forgive us for disappearing and we hope you'll have us back, although there's no telling what we'll actually write about....bb cardboard is so well covered on the intertubes these days! Amazin'.

Photo: Off the Bench

2011 Topps Heritage coin cards: turnabout is fair play.

2011-04-01T17:07:00.001-06:00

The 2011 Topps '62 Mint cards are selling like gangbusters on eBay. Apparently, you can collect these in two categories, and we don't just mean coins and cards. First, the easy category, which is the coins that face every which way:

Or, second, you can try to find 2011 Topps Heritage '62 Mint cards where the coins face rightside up (we like this one because Ernie is smiling AND signing, and George seems to be attempting eye contact):

Best Baseball Player Names Department: a slugger named Belt.

2011-04-01T16:37:00.002-06:00

And what a promising start at first base on a team that, until last year, hadn't seen a World Series win since 1954.

You go, Brandon Belt.

It's more fun card shopping when pack searchers go away: 2011 Topps Heritage.

2011-03-26T19:21:00.000-06:00

Today we had reason to be in an entirely different town in our state, and because we had to get a new iron we stopped at Target while in this entirely different town. Oh by the way, the reason we had to get a new iron is that the one we owned previously turned into a fireball in my hand yesterday, causing a second degree burn and what the Urgent Care doctor called "a shrapnel wound." So really, the whole concept of pack searching is something we truly see in perspective, as we feel fortunate that a) our children were nowhere nearby when this happened and b) my injuries weren't far worse.

But I digress.

Since the one card shop we used to frequent closed a while back, and ever since I realized that the fellow who works at a store near our Target stops by there EVERY DAY to pack search and remove absolutely anything of extra thickness or weight, we've stopped spontaneously picking up baseball cards while on errands. Perhaps you've noticed this, as our grumpiness has contributed to our relative quietness. It's not that we only want autographs or game-used cards--that is not the case--it's that we want a fair playing field.

So because we were not on our own turf Target, I did in fact stick my uninjured hand into a box of 2011 Topps Heritage and remove a pack. I did not, even for a moment, feel up the other packs in the box.

When we got home, we opened the pack and there were three really fun cards inside: one was a Kyle Drabek. I dunno, we just wanted one, ok? Isn't it kind of great?:

Another was a handsome looking Michael Young card:

He just looks so darned classic: square jaw, muscles rippling, uniform logo, distant field. He brings to mind the distant era when baseball player men were, well, men rather than spoiled brats. It's impossible not to like this darned card. Also, the back is great

as it has a vintage style cartoon of a player signing autographs for kids. Also in the pack: a bat bit:

Sure, it's a bat bit of Scott Rolen, a player we don't care much about, but here's the thing. It has the classic Clubhouse Collection yellow bottom third in the red oval, and Mr. Rolen is smiling. AND on the back: more kids and a polite looking player!

Again, it's a cartoon and thus a fantasy, but we can dream, can't we? The overall Baseball Cardness of the Rolen bat bit card is very fine indeed. A wood shaving in a cardboard card works, doesn't it? All of a piece.

So that is what it must feel like to wander into a store, buy one pack, and be happy with the results. Hasn't happened in months and months. And months. The thickness of the cardstock is pleasing, too. We're going to go read your reviews of 2011 Heritage but our view is: five out of a possible five dings!

Baseball card simple gifts.

2011-02-08T21:03:00.001-07:00

So I'm looking around to see if there's a neat new David Wright card I can pick up for the kid, something in the spirit she'd truly like, and come to find there are plenty of brand new cards I'd never laid eyes on.

Some wth a strange egg yolky background:

Some alarming:

On the one hand, it's elaborate, red, and interesting. On the other, it brings to mind drapes that are too dark and heavy in a mahogany paneled room.

Then I found it:

You know, sometimes it's still good just to go with plain old cardboard.

What Super Bowl moment will Allen & Ginter choose...

2011-02-06T20:23:00.000-07:00

...this time around?

An autographed card in every single pack, please.

2011-02-05T20:27:00.000-07:00

Old Judge T-96...apparently the theory was, any autograph is better than no autograph. Thus, you got an autographed card in every pack of these mid-1990s cards.

There are many ways these cards are pleasing...the vintage style, the size--between mini and regular, the good intentions. Sure, there are some vaguely troubling matters too, such as: no MLB license? Strange Photoshop/airbrushed hats? Mostly players you never heard of?

Based on our encounter with these cards, and the theory that something is better than nothing, we've decided Topps should put at least one signed card in every single pack of cards they sell. Without jacking up the price too much. Maybe not Opening Day, but that's the only exemption, to keep them at 99 cents per pack for the little ones.

Impossible, you say? As you know, in the United States of America, nothing is impossible. Too much signing, you say? If these Old Judge minor league guys could sign 6,000 cards, then what's the biggie? And as we've noted before, Hall-of-Famers have even been asked to sign thousands of cards to distribute in boxes of FOOD.

Yes, uh huh, so that's what we're saying. Get a signed card in every pack. Minor leaguers are acceptable in a pinch. All in favor say 'aye.'

BA Benny's blog has a nice post on opening a pack of Old Judge.

1. We confess what we like and want you to do the same. 2. We are freezing.

2011-02-04T10:42:00.001-07:00

Thanks to the weather...-14 degrees yesterday, f'rinstance...that's MINUS 14...we've had some down time. Down? Why you ask? Little things like subzero temps, an official "State of Emergency" because WHOOPS we're running out of natural gas in New Mexico, even though NM produces natural gas, all schools and public buildings in the state are closed down, you know, that sort of thing. And yet Collective Troll has the nerve to comment that he had to turn on the AC! :)

So in our lockdown mode we've happily been looking at your blogs, checking eBay and Blowout, and assessing what needs to happen up in our cardboard. Yesterday we ordered a nice bunch of autographed Old Judge cards so at least we'll have something to trade when that need arises.

The card atop this post is from a Peanuts set Lucy has from the '90s.[ Isn't it strange that "1991" = twenty years ago??] Woodstock helps depicts our slightly overwhelmed card feeling that is causing our hat to fly off.

One question: did anyone like the black background cards from Topps? We found a complete set of those that we got on eBay last year. Will Topps do this again?

The black effect worked particularly well with midair moments and strange scenarios.

What the...?

Why oh why do we succumb to gimmicks? Aw heck, we make the following confession: we like these; we like multi-colored game-used jersey cards; and we like autographs. Why not just admit it? The only thing that saves us from being completely shallow is that we also like vintage--the more dinged the better.

To make us feel better, and perhaps make us feel warmer, would you please confess that you kind of like regular cards, but bells and whistles make you happier? If what you do is try to complete sets and all that kind of intellectual pursuit, then keep your fancypants inclinations to yourself. This means you, Dr. dayf and your kind, although we will accept secret side enthusiasms if you care to share them.

While the cat's away...

2011-02-01T17:56:00.000-07:00

So as I've been starting to get back into a baseball card and blog cycle, now and then I've been picking up binders from the shelf and pondering them. I came upon one today that did not look familiar and realized it was one that our daughter Lucy has been putting together on her own. And my, this kid likes to categorize.

So there are pages throughout the binder with a sticky illustrating what the page represents. This one is the catch-all "different expressions,"

which must mean when you are ten, it's no longer absolutely necessary for everyone to be smiling. There are many other categories, such as "down,"

representing players with their heads down.

I pulled out one more page, which is, symmetrically enough, "up," which denotes guess what?:

players with their heads kind of tilted up.

Which makes sense, eh? It's comforting to know at least someone around here is organized.

PS Ice, dangerous cold, and insanely difficult driving are making life a little complicated here. We hope you are somewhere warm.

Birds of a feather...

2011-01-31T13:35:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow we'll introduce you to Roger, another ranger at my park, who has a wonderful collection of baseball cards. We'll begin with the story of his meeting Brooks Robinson. But one of Roger's other interests is birdwatching, as it used to be called, or birding, which is the preferred term now.

One of my roles as a ranger at this park is not only to know about history and cultural resources, but also natural resources, and my weak area has been birds. In the summer especially people approach me and describe a bird they saw on one of the trails and then ask, "what was that?" So this summer I'm determined to know a lot more birds to answer that question confidently more often.

Once you open your eyes to birds--and I only started to after finishing my full-time schooling late in December--you wonder how you could have been oblivious to such beauty and joy for so long. We have a bald eagle living on the river in the park, and it's a delight to see him soaring overhead. I've also enjoyed recently evening grosbeaks (who dart around before cold weather or a storm), dark-eyed juncos, a Townsend's Solitaire, red-tailed hawks, Cooper's hawks, a ladder-backed woodpecker,

a rock wren, white-headed sparrows, magpies, scrub jays and beautiful Mountain and Western bluebirds. For starters.

They are so engaging to watch and to learn about. I study pictures and songs and go on walks with Roger, who knows them all and identifies them when I'm unsure so I can laser their images into my memory.

My point, and I do have one, is that I think there are similarities between baseball card collecting and birding...such as becoming well-versed and informed about a subject; the thrill of the hunt; the pleasure of finding something new; and so on. With birding, enjoying nature is part of the experience, which has nothing to do with cards but does have something to do with going to baseball games.

Dare I ask, are there any birders out there?

[Related collectibles and collector urges we've written about: Coca-Cola, Coins, squished pennies, comics (Betty and Veronica, Satchel Paige, Will Eisner and Dan Burr, and more.]

Essence of vintage.

2011-01-30T11:32:00.002-07:00

And by essence of vintage, we mean fake.

But we also mean vintage STYLE conveying retro cool and cardboard aesthetic. There are whole sets that manage to do this, of course, from Ginter to Goodwin to Heritage, but what follows are random cards that we've come upon through trades or nickel bin finds. We don't have the sets or even many other cards in the sets.

In the first case, we think there's only three other ballplayers to be had in this whole Topps (in the good old T.C.G. days) set. This is Topps "Who Am I?":

This card may in fact be cheating because it really is old--although not old enough to be contemporary with Babe: 1967. George Herman all combed and colorized:

The 1967 "Who Am I?" cards that still have the disguise coating on them are the ones to have for real value, of course--it would be worth $500 or more don't you think--

but we like that we can actually see the Bambino on ours. So for us this card is NOT truly vintage in its Ruthiness, but rather in its status as a sixties card. It's only ESSENCE of vintage as a Ruth card.

Let's move on to the next card, which is much less confusing: Upper Deck "Legends of New York" picturing Yogi with his Mets jersey and a splorg of orange (we have several from this set thanks to the dayferminster):

Yogi is very straightforward. The card contains bits of essence of vintage: the old Mr. Met, black and white photo, and words like "legend."

Now, here are floaty heads from the UD Vintage series--my frends, does this not thoroughly capture Floaty Head Essence?:

almost all of us look a little mad, don't we?

Then there's the "Turn Back the Clock" series. Here's Gil Hodges, gentleman and Mets manager:

And a Bowman Jackie Robinson. Sometimes Bowman does shiny reallllly well:

So! There's some essence of vintage. What are your favorite fake vintagey cards?

2011 hope in a box (or pack): any advice?

2011-01-29T11:38:00.002-07:00

What products are you looking forward to most for 2011? Having just gotten back to thinking about baseball cards, we apologize for being behind on all this. Perhaps we should begin with Topps Heritage. Much like Woody Allen used to advise that if you want to act like you know something about classical music you should look off into the distance and say, "Ahh, Bach," we believe in the realm of cardboard, you simply need to say "Ahh, Heritage."

We are not huge fans of the 1962 woodies design, but we still love you, Heritage. And as for the baseball bucks, how great is it for Topps to pop a 1962 coin in a 2011card?:

Makes us kind of happy just thinking about it.

The only problem with the pairings is we usually like the past player more than the present. No offense, Mr. Votto, and above, Mr. Sleepy Eye Castro.

1962 was a very good year! Also, we're looking forward to Topps Opening Day, because there are mascot cards and because Lucy likes opening the packs:

What do you think about Gypsy Queen? Should we have high hopes for that one or no?

Although stamps paired with baseball cards seem almost as good as coins paired with cards:

If this isn't lovely, we don't know what is.

Anyhow, advice you can lend about what's coming, what to look for, what you're definitely going to buy, would be greatly appreciated.

Dinged Corners returns. Hi.

2011-01-28T12:54:00.001-07:00

Greetings, wonderful baseball card people. We've been gone since August because of full-time school, full-time work, and then a scary health matter, but we are emerging and we miss you and thus we is back. Good timing, too: it's practically spring training.

Our card mojo is in a state of revision: with the demise of the lone baseball card store we liked within a two-hour drive from us, and with the apparent decision by the closest Target to carry only iffy junkiness which is quickly picked over by our local pack squeezers, we need to devise a new way to enjoy a card spree now and then. We start today with one lone pack of Bowman Chrome 2010 because we were at Target yesterday feeling hopeless and had to start with something. Tonight maybe we'll get the eBay account dusted off. We miss our old brick and mortar haven, Derek's Dugout. He had to go off and get married and find a real job! The nerve.

We were so excited to return to the blogiverse that we forgot we like to post the pack itself, so here is the smashed pack we forgot to scan before tearing:

Inside said pack we found a Josh Hamilton swing card in which his bat is completely cut out of the picture, but a little wrist and catcher's mitt makes an appearance. Interesting layout. You see that thought balloon? He's thinking, "gosh it's dark in here."

Trust us, the grass looks well-mowed and Josh's pants are too long, which makes him look as if he's wearing pajama bottoms. Jammies are the couture that baseball uniforms most closely resemble anyway.

The card is shiny, so we can't say it's bad, but neither can we say its CHROMEy, because in what world do these cards look like the bumper on a '56 Thunderbird? In a sense "chrome" is a fib. Anyway, the "Bowman Briefing" on back includes the odd sentence, "Laces lasers to all fields." Good for Bowman for bringing back a vintage, unhinged cardback writing style. The letter G looms in the background although you probably can't see it because of the Through a Glass Darkly scan.

As for Junior, well. He no longer benefts from rear angle views.

And a letter G looms on the lower right on his card as well. Hm.

The third ($2.99 for three cards? a dollar a card? is this for real?) and final card, white border, is of a Met.

Mr. Schwinden has that "whatchoo want?" pose baseball players are so good at these days. Add a more pronounced sneer and you can bet a kid just asked for his autograph. No lurking letter G, though. Nice glove. Best sentence on back: "Pounds zone with tailing two-seamer." It also says "can throw change-up," but for a moment we thought it said "can throw up change."

Thanks for being there! We mean it.

PS BTW One of the other park rangers I work with is a baseball card collector and more important, appreciator. He's much like some of you in that he truly knows the game, its history, and its players. He has many cards, including vintage ones...so prepare for a regular Card Ranger feature at Dinged Corners, with scans from his awesome collection, beginning soon!

Gil Mensch, er, Meche: when the party's over, do you leave?

2011-01-28T11:00:00.000-07:00

This guy has done something unusual in professional baseball.

Last night I read an article in the New York Times titled "Pitcher Spurns $12 Million to Keep Self-Respect." It tells an unusual story about the Meche-ster.

With millions lurking out there for the taking by him, do you know what he did? He turned in his glove.

The Royals had signed him to a five-year, $55 million free-agent contract before the 2007 season, back when he made the American League All-Stars. By mid-2009, his body began to fail him; he started nine times in 2010 without a single win. So, in an unusual move for MLB-ers, he's not taking the remaining money. Why? Because he wanted to EARN it, and he knows that going forward, he really can't. Also, he says he has already made $40 million playing baseball, and "that's enough."

The question is, if you had $12 million remaining on your contract and you could just sit on the bench and collect it, would you?

Winner of the forehead trials. Undeniably.

2010-08-30T12:38:00.000-06:00

There's so much great about this card that it brings tears to our eyes. Not the least of which is that Mr. Forehead apparently did not think it important to dress in a baseball uniform for his Topps baseball card photo. Before we receive a slew of emails telling us that we are pitiable idiots for not realizing this is in fact a baseball uniform, we say, well, it doesn't look like one.

The entry is from Travis at punkrockpaint. I trust the rest of us agree that we should fold our cardboard tents and go home. In the meantime, we at the Corners will work on putting together an adequate prize.

Final call for fierce foreheads!

2010-08-25T16:51:00.005-06:00

From Mark's Ephemera we received the following three cards. Do you like Brett Favre with a cheesehat forehead, nearly impaled by goal posts, and tiny helmet in foreground?:

"Behold my forehead."

His shininess:

The following three are from the great gcrl, beginning with Gibson:

Huh:

Yes, inset foreheads are acceptable:

From Alex, we celebrate this amazing hockey card forehead:

Here we took the liberty of finding a picture of a card dayf mentioned, thus breaking our own rule that we would prefer scans of cards that bloggers and readers actually own. He undoubtedly owns it, but this isn't dayf's own personal copy. Still. 1) rules are made to be broken and 2) LOOK AT THAT FOREHEAD. Do bald pates have an unfair advantage?

Here are entries from the insanely creative punkrockpaint:

wrinkly:

wrinkly and running:

proud:

We will provide a forehead poll shortly. Ouch, that sounds painful.

....and here are the cards from our original post:

From Shane D., Mr. Harrist happily models a perfect forehead, as its fierceness is enhanced to a degree that renders its size at least equal to home plate.

Also from Shane D., we have a Steve Howe. He often looks 12 years old on his baseball cards, but here his age has skyrocketed to roughly 19. Is it our imagination, or did old-style caps gargantuanize foreheads?

From Steve D., who doesn't have a blog but is willing to play, we have this card of Dave Stewart, whose forehead looks fierce enough--and then is helped along by his perfect "you talkin' to me?" expression.

Another fine Steve D. card: We can't rotate this because we're lame, but the sideways effect is OK because it makes Harold and his eyeblack look like a living emoticon. His forehead is certainly scrunched; the question is, would you call that a fierce scrunch or a worried scrunch?

This contribution from Pulitzer-Prize winning blogger (well he would be if they had Pulitzers for bbc blogs, which they oughta) Night Owl is impressive, and quite satisfying in ferocity, until you see N.O.'s second contribution:

The shine! The square footage! The forehead balancing the name circle!

Here's a contribution from Matthew G. of the classy Number 5 Type Collection. We'd say something about this one, but we're frightened and must hide under the dining room table.

This one from Bo is good because not only is the forehead in partial shadow, but there's something written under the lid of the cap. However, it's the following contribution that rocks, because of Bo's narrative for it:

"Darren Lewis grits his forehead"

Now that's good baseball card blog writing!

Last but certainly not least is this contribution from Paul:

Excellent not only regarding foreheads, but because this card could also qualify in other categories, such as: "tiny hats," "massive eyebrows," and "crooked yet impressive mustaches."

Thanks to all of you for participating. The poll will appear ~~tomorrow~~ Wednesday (just in case we get more contributions before then). Those too lazy to suggest cards will, perhaps, at least find the time to vote. ;)

Blogger challenge: Fierce Foreheads.

2010-08-20T19:50:00.000-06:00

We challenge all readers, lurkers, and bloggers: send us a picture of your fiercest forehead baseball card--preferably one in your collection. We'll post them all and then have a community vote. We need to play more as a group, and since we can't flip 'em, we will post 'em instead.

Can you enter more than once? Of course, this isn't Moscow. What if there's a tie? There'll be two victims. We mean victors. What is the prize? The UNDYING ADMIRATION of the baseball card blog community and possibly something else based on your favorite team.

Let the ferocity begin!

Allen & Ginter blaster for you. UPDATE.

2010-08-18T20:37:00.000-06:00

Packs five through eight have been added at the bottom of the post.

Remember, other than Mets, if you need or want any of these cards, just email us with your address, and we'll mail them out tomorry.

First pack:
6 Bumgarner
52 Floyd
64 Beckett
TDH43 Broxton
L0212 Cronos:

Pray tell, did Mr. Cronos hit his thumb with a hammer? You'd think the leader of the Titans would be a little more circumspect.
Also:
205 Keflezighi

Pack two:
TDH64 Hamilton
70 Votto
137 Zimmerman
146 Lee
313 Doumit

Pack three:
Uh-oh! We need to keep two from this pack, one for each kid--Jordin Sparks for the teen and a Chihuahua for Lucy. Ok?

Here are the lesser, puny, mewling shadows of cards, so very unchihuahua, included in the Chi-Sparks pack:
TDH20 Sabathia
31 Montero mini (Ginter guy back)
49 Mejia
171 Young
268 Kilby

Pack Four:

Sacagawea looking...old? Our daughter pronounces this 'Sah KAH jah way ya' and it sound right. Is it my imagination or does Mr. Dunn bear a slight resemblance to her?
Also:
2 E. Cabrera
TDH1 Utley
338 Liriano
347 O. Cabrera mini

Pack Five:
THD59 Pence
MM10 Brachiosaurus:

7 Howard
147 Guzman
154 Francisco
287 Brees

Pack Six:
101 Buehrle
170 Gonzalez
246 Sito mini
270 Poser:

TDH24 Votto
Checklist Two
332 Nolasco

Pack Seven
148 Donovan
224 Stewart
265 Morales
TDH75 Rivera
286 Revolving Door

Crack the Code :(

Pack Eight

54 Hawk

71 Pence mini (Ginter back)

256 Porcello

269 Burnett

344 Holland

TDH62 Youkilis

So...hmm. Hmm. Er. We like the chihuahua and the revolving door!

We're baaaaaaaack. Also: who is the face of your team? Also: free cards!

2010-08-18T18:27:00.000-06:00

So! I picked this up on eBay for a song for our daughter Lucy, 10, because she now loves David Wright more than baseball or even the Mets. However, as she becomes more aware of how our world works, she said today, "I hope he doesn't quit the Mets" because they are doing poorly and behaving thuggishly.

There is a heartbreaking notion: what would we do if David Wright goes to another team, ever? It's almost as unthinkable as Derek Jeter leaving the Yankees. The players who are the "face of a team," such as Ichiro on the Mariners, upturn the entire baseball world if they flee. Don't flee, David! Who is the face of your favorite team?

By the way: shortly--this evening--we're going to open a pathetic little blaster of Allen & Ginter. When we do so, please feel free to email us if you need any of the cards, as we won't keep any except Metropolitans...and only certain Mets at that. Just include your address in the email and we'll mail it or them off to you tomorrow, Thursday! A way of saying "hi, we're back."

Checking in! and a Topps 2010 Series Two pack.

2010-07-15T17:43:00.001-06:00

We're almost back--three more projects, two more weeks of school, and we'll have days off again! Today for the first time in forever we had to run an errand (done expertly fast, between classes, at Target, our PBOS* of baseball cards) and we picked up a single pack of 2010 Topps Series 2. We are always determined to find something to like on at least three cards in a 12pack, no matter how stinky the assortment might be. This pack is a pleasing tentative return to Cardboardville because we found one card we loved. It is good to experience a flash of that hopeful, gee whiz feeling when looking through a pack. Here he is:

This is a mockup, correct? This card doesn't actually exist, no? Normally we'd google and find the answer but don't have time right now. Anyhow, on the back of the "Vintage Legends" series my only quibble is maybe Topps could explain what it's doing. As in, "this is a mockup," or "we did a reprint of this card because it was one of the most sought-after or toughest to get" or "this was a popular bike spoke card" or whatever. A little card history about the cards themselves, Topps, when you go all vintage on us, along with baseball history, would be sweet. Do you agree? Aren't we about cards as much as baseball?

Then there was this:

which we like because it is a classic midair moment, and because it contains seven human limbs but only one baseball cap.

This one is good too, because it contains two baseball players, ten spectators, and a fellow's rear end. Our guess is he has just delivered his buddy a $14 hot dog and would like to wiggle back into his seat. Can you imagine being immortalized in this manner on a baseball card? It would not be ideal.

Anyhow, we're looking forward to getting some more cards and getting back into the mix come August. See you soon!

*pathetic but only source

Players and specs. And a question!

2010-06-08T17:06:00.000-06:00

Quick note: It turns out that starting a new job and taking three classes on your two days off makes it a little difficult to post. That's why we've been so, um, low-profile lately. We fully intend to revive in August so please don't give up on us!

Today someone asked us: who was the first player to wear glasses in a Major League game? Bruce Markusen of Bronx Banter/Baseball Toaster answered this question in 2008:

"The first major leaguer to wear glasses during a major league game was 19th century workhorse Will 'Woop-La' White, who completed 394 out of 401 starts in his career. (I wonder what his pitch counts were like.) In 1877, White wore a pair of eyeglasses for the Boston Red Sox Stockings, who were then a National League franchise. [Does anyone out there have a photo or a card of Woop La?] After White finished donning the spectacles for Boston, no other major leaguer would sport glasses for another 38 years. In 1915, pitcher Lee "Specs" Meadows cracked the 20th century glasses barrier with the Cardinals. Like White, Meadows was a very good pitcher, a winner of 188 games over a 15-year career.

Up until 1921, only pitchers dared wear glasses during games. That changed when George 'Specs' Toporcer became the first position player to make the transition. A singles-hitting middle infielder who played for the Cardinals, Toporcer wore glasses for the balance of his eight-year career in St. Louis."

Do you have any other insights about spec-wearin' players? Since both Lucy (our daughter the card collector) and moi have been known to sport spectacles, we have another urgent question. We'll print it embiggened for everyone who might be nearsighted:

What's the best baseball card ever made of a player wearing glasses?

Hey hey Boo Boo.

2010-05-29T22:15:00.001-06:00

As noted earlier, after recently starting a new job as an NPS Park Ranger, it's become necessary for me to apply every waking moment to planning tours, studying the park's interpretive themes and scads of procedures--and this does not allow for much Non-Blitzed Time right now.

This crunch should diminish after adapting, one hopes, but in the meantime here are my two encounters with park visitors this week that relate to baseball. Because New Yorkers are a rare commodity out here, when they do appear we find each other. For instance, yesterday I said to one woman, "Flushing?" and she knew this remark had nothing to do with the water closet. "Bayside!" she replied.

Shortly thereafter, a Mets-hat wearing gentleman told me that his family had at least one family member in attendance at every Mets game at Shea Stadium over the past ten years. When I asked him his assessment of Citi Field, he said that neither he nor anyone in his clan had been there yet. (For quite the opposite stance, see Paul's Random Stuff for a cool Citi Field tour.)

Then a gentleman who had RVed himself, his wife, and four lovely children all the way from Port St. Lucie, Florida said he stopped watching baseball in 1994 because of the strike and had never gone back. Even though he lives in the spring training home of the Mets!

Both of these statements point to a truthiness we'd rather not contemplate. :(

On a happier Metnote, look at this spectacular card we received from the kind and insanely generous Gentleman David at Tribecards (for whom we compiled a small package that should, at our current rate of speed, be mailed out no later than 2012):

It's shiiiiny!

We wonder if a modest stick of dynamite might liberate Mr. Wright from his lucite lockdown.

The baseball night we missed but will still remember.

2010-05-21T22:57:00.001-06:00

Yesterday was an exceptionally beautiful evening for baseball at Isotopes Park, but we couldn't make it to the game. AND it was Baseball Card Night! First one we've had to miss in three years! So imagine our surprise coming home today to find a bubble envelope that included this little stack:

2010 Albuquerque Isotopes baseball cards!

Said stack featured favorite players in high-gloss glory:

...and the rest of the gang (yes we know Josh Towers was released today; he was having control problems. But we still like the dude).

So rather than feel blue over what we missed, we were happy that we know someone nice enough even to think of us on card night! The kind person also included this small wonder in that bubblelope:

National Parks Collection Trading Cards!

Are these kind of stunning?

Uh-oh.

Thank you, Kris!

We lack the oxymoron Met.

2010-05-20T10:42:00.001-06:00

We face a deafening silence when it comes to Angel Pagan. O heavy lightness.

How can this be? Well, it just is. Mr. Inside-the-Park Homerun (thanks pete27) and Triple Play In the Same Game is a card collection area in which we are sadly lacking. We will start by seeking this 2002 Bowman Heritage, which is a nice-looking hunk. Of cardboard, that is.

When we realized that we don't have any Angel Pagan cards other than 2010 Topps, we came upon this impressive site, The Amazing Shea Stadium Autograph Project, in which handmade Shea Stadium cards are sent TTM to Mets who played from 1964-2008. That's where we came upon this post about Mr. Pagan. This is a nifty way to collect your team and not always rely on the evildoer card companies. We'll add Amazing Shea to our blogroll when we can fix the mysterious glitch that isn't allowing us to add anything new to Sonically Sealed. Has anyone else had this adding-to-the-blogroll problem?

This is another sweet card, posted in October 2008 by great Mets fan Paul's Random Stuff:

And it looks from the evidence as if Mr. Pagan is not averse to signing TTM. This one is from Sports Autos TTM, and reveals quite an alarming decline in penmanship:

As we fix these card omissions, in the meantime, Mr. Pagan, we know you'll continue to hustle.

I wanna be a Park Ranger.

2010-05-18T19:56:00.001-06:00

Next week, I'm starting a new job that took me a loooong stretch of Reinventing Self to attain. I'm going to be a Ranger in the National Park Service.

Along the way, I've discovered that many folks (besides our family) "collect" National Park passport stamps

and their kids earn Junior Ranger patches:

or badges:

whenever they visit a national park.

Whoa, even in my career choice there's a collecting component. eek. As for the Park Passports, there are more than 390 American National Park units (including Parks, Historical Parks, Monuments, Historic Sites, Battlefields, Seashores, and so on) with at least 600 stamps available nationwide. You can get the NP Passport Stamps at no cost at visitor centers and ranger stations. The stamps are usually found at the desk in the visitor centers; you may have to ask in the case of ranger stations, when they might be tucked away. The stamps always include today's date, and serve as a record of each park visit. This is when we started:

The program began in the mid 1980's and is a somewhat addictive way to collect a souvenir during your travels. Our kids have certainly compiled a ton of them--and the same is true for their park badges and patches. For those, serious effort and a more long-term commitment is involved: the kids have to study the park and answer a series of questions in a Junior Ranger booklet. When the questions are answered correctly, the kids raise their hands and take a conservation pledge with a Ranger, who presents them with a badge or patch (in some parks, the kids can choose; in many, the switch has been made to patches).

Some people take such collecting pursuits seriously indeed. We've discovered, via other ephemera that many of you have confessed to (such as squished pennies), that when you scratch the surface of a baseball card collector, there are other collectivities lurking behind the cardboard.

Anyway, I'm not one of those modern citizens who seems not to like or trust our government; in fact, quite the opposite. So I hope to do the NPS proud. This summer, I'll be taking classes and more training (including cool skills such as Swift Water Rescue) as well as starting the new job so the summer months may be on the busy side. However, since Dinged Corners is a sanity outlet, I intend to continue flying my Card Freak Flag proudly.

In any event, thank you all for being good, patient Baseball Card Blogtown friends, even as I've had to spend so much less time compiling and trading this past year.

A cardboard blast from the TTM past.

2010-05-15T14:19:00.002-06:00

We almost forgot how much fun sending baseball cards TTM is until we unexpectedly received this in the mail today:

We also received this:

We sent these cards out well over a year ago--in fact, it may have been two years ago--so it was a nice surprise to have them returned. Mr. Brookens was a handsome rake and has aged gracefully:

That's him on the left, with Detroit manager Jim Leyland.

He focused on his family (including coaching his three girls, now in their 20s, in fastpitch softball) after finishing his career--and good for him!--but since last year he's been back as the first base coach for the Tigers. He has said the reason he and so many other members of the 1984 Tigers went into coaching or managing at the professional level is their manager, Sparky Anderson, from whom it was easy to learn. He became a 12-year major league veteran, playing seven positions (all except pitcher and left field) and batting .246 with 71 homers and 431 RBIs. Mr. Brookens played mostly third base.

What is your baseball refuge?

2010-05-13T21:20:00.001-06:00

Summer is almost here. Imagine that you need a break from the day to day routine. What is your favorite baseball getaway? For example, we enjoy Triple A day games at Isotopes Park with seats on the third base line

so we can see the mountains.

Is this cheating?

2010-05-13T17:01:00.000-06:00

The Colorado Rockies allege that Phillies bullpen coach Mick Billmeyer used binoculars to steal signs from catcher Miguel Olivo during Monday night's game, which proved to be a 9-5 win for Philadelphia.

Now, everyone knows that sign stealing happens. And it's one thing for players to use their own wits and their own eyeballs to "steal" the catcher's signs to the pitcher. But what if tools and coaches are employed? Is that far more cheaty?

Not that this proves anything, but MLB has issued a "warning" to the Phillies.

Dallas Braden presents David Letterman's Top Ten List...

2010-05-11T23:10:00.001-06:00

...and Alex Rodriguez doesn't.

Dallas Braden of the Oakland Athletics followed up his perfect game Sunday by delivering the Top Ten List on Tuesday’s “Late Show With David Letterman.” Braden’s 4-0 no-no-no over the Tampa Bay Rays was the 19th perfect game in Major League Baseball history.

The Top Ten Thoughts That Went Through Dallas Braden's Mind

While He Threw His Perfect Game

10. Grandma's right--stick it, A-Rod.
9. I did it! Oh crap, it's only the fourth inning.
8. Seriously, how cool a name is Dallas Braden?
7. Now maybe Justin Bieber will notice me.
6. I must not tell the world I'm Iron Man.
5. This is so [blankety blank] but for $50,000 you can have my glove.
4. This next pitch: eyes closed.
3. Even I've never heard of me.
2. I should at least give up one hit so I don't have to do Letterman.
1. Maybe I can give Kate Hudson a call.

Department of Rockin' Baseball Names We Hadn't Heard Before

2010-05-10T21:04:00.001-06:00

Icebox Chamberlain

1888-89 Goodwin & Company

Chappie Charles

1909 American Tobacco Co.

Pop Corkhill

1887-1890 Old Judge/Goodwin & Co.

Handsome Henry Boyle
1887 Buchner Gold Coin

Steamer Flanagan
1909 American Tobacco Co.

Moose Grimshaw

1909 American Tobacco Co.

Hunky Hines

1887 Goodwin & Co.

Honest John Morrell
1887 Goodwin & Co.

(actually, Honest John looks hunky and Hunky looks honest)

Old Hoss Radbourn

1887 Goodwin & Co.

Bugs Raymond

1911 American Tobacco Co.

Tubby Spencer

1910 American Tobacco Co.

Dolly Stark

1910 American Tobacco Co.

Dummy Taylor

1910 American Tobacco Co.

Sailor Stroud

1911 American Tobacco Co.

Rollie Zeider

1912 American Tobacco Co.

Pud Galvin

1888 Goodwin & Co.

Gavvy Cravath

1910 American Tobacco Co.

What's in a name? That which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet.

Romeo & Juliet, II, ii, 1-2

All images are from the Library of Congress American Memory Collection

Happy Mother's Day...

2010-05-09T10:40:00.002-06:00

...to all moms and, in fact, to all the loved beneficiaries of moms. Here is Nick Bertke's (Pogo's) tribute to his mom and her garden. Enjoy the mellow.

>

1950 Bowman: Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?

2010-05-08T18:47:00.000-06:00

In 1950, baseball cards hadn't yet found their full mojo. Topps was two years away from its first classic design. But is there a more innocent, unhindered, aesthetically appealing set of baseball cards than 1950 Bowman? This set needs help from the words of William Shakespeare.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimmed,

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,

Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

1950 was the only year in which Bowman alone produced a national issue of baseball cards. This set numbered 252. The cards measured 2 1/16" by 2 1/2".

Cardboard Gods followup...about one of our own.

2010-05-06T18:00:00.001-06:00

There's no excuse for me, really. I'm busy, yeah. I've been taking extra courses and getting certifications and yada yada. I'm assistant-coaching volleyball, we're preparing for Lucy's birthday party (this Saturday, she'll be ten!); making lots of intricate plans for the next few months. Et cetera. All that by way of saying I think I missed an important development. But there's still no excuse.

Yesterday-ish, I posted a fairly thorough review of Josh Wilker's book Cardboard Gods. There were many elements that I didn't mention. For instance, at the end, the author includes an unusual dedication:

I'm sorry this doesn't scan well, but I have an advance proof copy of the book and the illustrated pages are fuzzy and don't come through clearly. The dedications are for Parent, Parent, Parent, Brother, and Wife and include vintage photos of each. The cards are based on the 1975 Topps design. When I saw this page, I almost became verklempt. It's really a lovely and compelling dedication format.

I appreciated it, but didn't look closely at the text of the acknowledgment page. There are many names but one stands out:

Yes, that's the development I missed. Punkrockpaint designed those cards for the dedication page. Apparently he's been too modest to say, "Look what I did!"

Beautiful, Travis.

Owings and Moyer vs. the Mets. Case unresolved.

2010-05-05T21:54:00.000-06:00

As you may know, we like the Mets. But we also like (and collect) Micah Owings

and Jamie Moyer:

When these guys beat the Mets, how do we resolve our conflicted feelings? In the case of Mr. Moyer, despite rooting for the old guy our rivalry with the Phillies is victorious. Sorry, Jamie.

With MO it's tougher. Do you ever have this problem? Root for a team, but like certain individual players that play AGAINST your team on occasion?

Good lord let's hope there's no Subway Series*, because then it would be Curtis vs. the Mets.

Yes, you meanies, we fully realize a Subway Series* is highly unlikely unless the Mets discover consistency. Meanies.
:(

Cardboard Gods: a baseball carding-of-age memoir.

2010-05-05T17:52:00.002-06:00

"By the time I got this 1976 Steve Garvey card, my identity outside of baseball was as an outsider and a weirdo in my own town."

Recently I was contacted by Seven Footer Press to see if I might like a review copy of a new baseball card book. I'd perused the author's website so felt confident it would be a literate account of 1970s baseball cards, and I was right. But it is also more.

Josh Wilker, the author of Cardboard Gods: An All-American Tale Told Through Baseball Cards, had a complex youth in which he sought a sense of belonging but rarely found it except in cardboard. That is, he found a steady connection to the world at large through baseball cards, which came to represent to him constancy and serve as an unbreakable link to his older brother.

The author also has a website (Cardboard Gods) and some of the book's narrative appeared first there, such as in his posts about Rowland Office

or Mike Cosgrove. But the book does quite a bit more than refine his card bloggery. In this unusual memoir, the author pulls together stories of his growing up through talking about baseball players from 1974 to 1981 using baseball cards as touchstones. Mr. Wilker's signature style is to draw an emotionally intelligent direct line from a particular card and what it represents in the narrative of his own childhood.

We all have our own reasons for enjoying baseball cards. What got me started on collecting them was not a specific card or set, but a book. To many people, including me, the best baseball card book ever written is The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum book by Fred C. Harris and Brendan C. Boyd. All card blogs on earth certainly owe a debt of gratitude to these pioneers who simply looked at baseball cards and wrote about what they saw.

Cardboard Gods has a welcome, familiar Flippingesque ring, such as in Mr. Wilker's ruminations on players named Cy, or fantasies brought on by characteristics such as the usually-off-center appearance of 1975 Topps cards:

In years to come I'd wonder if the process of making cards that year was not standardized and mechanized at all but instead one that relied on the judgment and dexterity of a nineteen-year-old Coast Guard dropout named Smitty who'd just spent his break smoking a joint out by the Dumpster.

That sounds almost like Boyd and Harris, doesn't it? However, then comes this:

But when they first came into my hands, the mistakes riddling the 1975 set made the universe captured by the cards seem to my seventeen-year-old self to be homely, disheveled, approachable, as if my Mount Olympus was as close at hand as a bake sale advertised by mimeographed page tacked to an elementary school bulletin board. I needed to feel this closeness that year more than any other.

Reading reviews of Cardboard Gods on Amazon, one fleeting criticism I noticed is that more baseball and less personal narrative might have been preferable for some readers. In the first 30 pages or so I thought that also, but soon became drawn in to the seamless connection that Mr. Wilker makes between collecting baseball cards and building an emotional anchor in a tumultuous life.

One beauty of Mr. Wilker's approach is that it connects the reader back to something that's truly been lost: the importance of baseball cards to kids. Remember them? Kids?

Before amassers, before eBay auctions, before high-end collectors, before hyping Honus Wagner, kids handed sweaty quarters to small shop proprietors and tucked packs of cards into their back pockets. Then they went and opened those packs of cards hoping to find favorite players, seeking cards they didn't have yet. Sometimes they were disappointed and found mostly doubles. Sometimes they found their favorite player or a major star. They traded cards, flipped them, spoked them, created games around them. These kids' main card containment units were shoeboxes and rubber bands. The purity and simplicity of the card collecting past almost brings a tear to my eye. Mr. Wilker skillfully draws from this lost power.

I won't reveal the full poignant scope of this memoir because it will diminish your enjoyment of Mr. Wilker’s enviable talents as a storyteller. But here's a hint. He knows well that baseball cards mean more to many fans and collectors than the game itself, than the act of collecting. What better way to build connections than with people who have a shared interest? When Josh Wilker looks at baseball cards, he sees a web of shared experience, heritage, history, and hope, and thanks to his writing skill, we know exactly what he is saying.

The final page includes a hat tip to Harris and Boyd, the latter of whom even surfaced briefly to provide an appreciative blurb for Wilker's Cardboard Gods, which is now my second favorite book of all time about baseball cards.

Fan runs amuck, gets TASERED on the field.

2010-05-04T08:37:00.000-06:00

Whew, I really dunno about this.

Jackie Played Hardball, Too.

2010-05-02T13:45:00.002-06:00

As the mother of two wonderful daughters, Dinged Corners has long been interested in the place that women hold in baseball history. But there's so much to know. For instance, last month, the kindhearted and reliable gentleman Steve, who runs the White Sox card blog, emailed this photo to us:

On March 28, 1931, 17-year-old Jackie signed with the Chattanooga Lookouts, a Double-A team. Yes, that's Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth watching her warm up. (The fellow looking over her left soldier is priceless, isn't he?)

For a while we didn't realize the significance of this Obak card, but now we do:

In terms of educating me, dear card blog people, it takes a village.

Why are Ruth and Gehrig posing with Jackie?

On April 2, 1931 Jackie Mitchell entered baseball history by striking out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in an exhibition game in front of 4,000 fans. Yes, a 17-year-old girl struck out The Colossus of Clout and and The Iron Horse. Now, Babe Ruth claimed in later years that he “let” Jackie strike him out, but this does not explain why he is said to have displayed genuine frustration when he left the batter’s box.

In any event, striking out Ruth and Gehrig did not work in Jackie’s favor; a few days after the game, baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis voided Mitchell's contract, claiming that baseball was "too strenuous" for women.

This all happened in 1931--you know, waaaaaay back when girls did not play professional baseball. Oh wait! Girls still do not play professional baseball.

Until 1937, Jackie barnstormed with male and female teams and pitched for a while with the House of David team that traveled the nation. Jackie stopped in 1937 at the age of 23, and surprisingly did not even come out of retirement for the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. She went to work in her father's optometry office and played now and again with local teams.

She lived in the Chattanooga area for the rest of her life, and threw out the first pitch at a Lookouts' game in 1982. Jackie passed away in 1987 at the age of 73, and will always be known as the girl who struck out two legendary baseball players.

An interesting sidenote is that Jackie was taught to pitch by her father and by one-time neighbor Dazzy Vance, the Brooklyn Dodger.

Lineup for Yesterday

V is for Vance,

The Dodgers' own Dazzy;

None of his rivals

Could throw as fast as he.

Ogden Nash

Dazzy didn't mind giving Jackie pitching pointers when she was eight years old. Perhaps his influence helped Mitchell develop her odd, well-controlled, tough-to-hit side-armed delivery.

The Chattanooga Lookouts (named after Lookout Mountain) are still a minor league team that plays in the Southern League and is a Double-A affiliate of the Los Angeles Dodgers. (Our local Isotopes are the Triple-A affiliate). Other notable Lookouts: Harmon Killebrew, Ferguson Jenkins, Alvin Davis, Austin Kearns, Trevor Hoffman, Joey Votto, Jay Bruce, Homer Bailey, and Edwin Encarnacion.

If you have kids who may be interested in Jackie's story, another good place to start is Jean Patrick's site, which includes a wealth of history and background.

And hey. Perhaps Topps should do one of its Heritage sets about Title IX, passed by Congress in the summer of 1972, paving the way for expanded opportunities for women in fields such as higher education and sports. Specifically, Title IX banned sex discrimination in any educational institution that receives federal funding. And the number of women participating in intercollegiate athletics has more than quadrupled, while the percentage of girls engaging in athletics in general has vastly increased.

Perhaps Jackie would be pleased.

Eyeblack, bit, tech, gargantuan: a card miscellany.

2010-05-01T21:38:00.000-06:00

Jacobmrley, who can't stop himself from being generous for no good reason, sent along a great batch of cards including some 1972 Topps we needed:

Look how this selection almost bowled over Tom Seaver!

In Action and posed: classic Willie Mays.

Harmon Killebrew wields a terrifying bat and then makes good use of it.

See this sequence?

49 Willie Mays, 50 Willie Mays, 51 Harmon Killebrew, 52 Harmon Killebrew--thus filling a 4-card gap.

Yaz. This baseball card is PERFECTLY dinged. This is Platonic eau de baseball card.

We had never seen these: a Dante old technology card and a Barry Bonds old tech. What is more scarifying, Dante's ginormous eyeblack, or his mullet? Are both of these elements beaten by the Bonds earring?

New (to us) Curtises. His straightforward, no showboating style of play is tops, and ok we admit that we do wish he was on our recently trounced-by-the-Phillies Metropolitans.

A new Zito bit!! The placement of the white jersey over his white pants is rather interesting.

This is great text. Not smoothly written, perhaps, but it tells you exactly what you get, no funny stuff: "the card you've just received contains a piece of an authentic game-worn jersey, WORN BY BARRY ZITO." Well sure, maybe Zeet wore this bit while mowing the lawn, or more likely while burning incense and strumming a guitar, but at least he wore it. Thus, we could submit this as DNA evidence if it ever becomes necessary.

Frenchy! Look at the effort! And a giant, looming Johan, crushing the terrain below his expensive shoes.

Thank you, jacobmrley!

Tomorrow is Free Comic Book Day.

2010-04-30T19:51:00.000-06:00

Our kids always like the fun spirit of Free Comic Book Day, which is tomorrow, May 1. Maybe your kids do too? Or maybe, since we baseball card collectors are a little bit kidful our own selves, we might enjoy stopping by the local comic shop tomorrow almost as much as our children.

Here's a link to all the titles that are available. And here is the Store Locator to find the friendly FCBD shop near you.

Lady Gaga!:

VW Flower Power Bus:

Does anyone remember the TV show?:

John Stanley did later editions of Little Lulu, among other titles. This book is edited (and the cover art is by) the great comic artist known as Seth:

Kids of all ages like DC Kids:

So check it out!

Card people: how has technology changed your reading habits?

2010-04-29T09:12:00.000-06:00

Besides moving you beyond Beckett, that is. Kindle? iPad? Internet-only? Dead trees? What are you reading right now and how are you reading it?

And if all technology shut down tomorrow, how would you find out about, seek, and trade baseball cards?

Remember the Maine! And the Wright and the Bay. And the Ike!

2010-04-28T18:19:00.002-06:00

The Mets just finished one of their best homestands with another victory. The Mets beat the Dodgers, 7-3, to complete a three-game sweep and conclude their 10-game stand at Citi Field with a 9-1 record. That matched the Mets’ best record for a homestand. The Mets were 9-1 from Aug. 16 to 24 in 1969 and again from Sept. 12 to 22 in 1988.

The adorable right-handed starter John Maine (1-1), pitching for the first time since his worrisome but vague left elbow injury in his last start, had his best game of the season and earned his first victory. He allowed three runs, only two earned, and four hits, and struck out nine, including the No. 3 hitter Andre Ethier three times.

Maine gave up an unearned run because of a throwing error by Jose Reyes, who has otherwise been looking okay lately. He allowed a two-run home run to Russell Martin that made it 5-3 in the fifth inning before the Mets pulled away!

Wright had a double and a single and Bay had a run-scoring double in the Mets’ two-run seventh inning. Ike Davis had two hits and a run batted in. Wright Bay Davis, we love you. In 10 games, Davis is hitting .355.

Also Frenchy (thank you dear dayf), Angel Pagan and Alex Cora drove in runs with key hits in the inning.

Is this more attributable to sloppy playing by the Cubs, Braves, and Dodgers, as some wags have suggested, or to improved playing by the lovable losers? A little of both perhaps (the other sides didn't have impressive relief pitchers) but we hope mainly the latter. Although even manager Jerry Manuel--who this week isn't going to be fired--has said the Cubbies, Braves and Dodgers seem to be "going through a downward spiral."

Still. Even our long-laggardly bullpen worked well as Fernando Nieve, Pedro Feliciano and Francisco Rodriguez threw three scoreless innings. And Pelf is a good starter!

Four pitchers? Is the MLB sofffft? But that's another post. Let us end on a rare hopeful, wide-eyed, skipping through the outfeld green green grass note about our home team.

Yes, we realize this is a bit much. But when there's a little good news, why not savor it?

Curious Chicle.

2010-04-27T21:02:00.001-06:00

The C is curious.

The glare: curious.

Curious are the faded legs.

Giant beige diamond lurking behind--curioso.

Op art background = curiousity-inducing.

Nolan's chin makes us quite curious about the art.

Pujols batting where? The Alamo? Curious.

Additional chin curiousity. Chinosity.

Might Zito be getting his zing back?

2010-04-24T23:27:00.002-06:00

Tonight, Zoolander outpitched Adam Wainwright to win a pitchers' duel. BZ resembled his Cy Young self back when he was with Oakland. He allowed three hits, three walks and struck out 10 over eight innings/114 pitches against the Cardinals.

Pinch-hitter Andres Torres singled in the go-ahead run in the eighth and San Francisco beat St. Louis 2-0. (And BZ's buddy Brian Wilson pitched the ninth for his fourth save in four tries.)

A while back we melded Mets and Zito a little in this post. Well, in a six degrees of separation kind of thang, please note that Wainwright was coming off a complete-game 5-3 win against the New York Mets last Sunday.

So thank you, Barry, for the Amazin' payback.

Heh!

Thanks to Bailey and Heartbreaking for the Zito/Mr. Met image.

There's something happening here...

2010-04-21T19:54:00.001-06:00

...but you

don't know

...what it

...do you,

Mr. Jones?

We were putting away some random cards and came upon these all in a row and apparently as a result, this Bob Dylan song came into my bantam brain. It's a great song.

This Needs to be Cardified Department: a Bronx midair moment.

2010-04-21T13:49:00.000-06:00

And we refer not to the Bombers but Fordham U. Now this is a midair moment that is a true display of athleticism. Despite the fact that the announcer is apparently Sean Hannity, his enthusiastic "a circus slide! a clean leap! a Tilt-a-Whirl!" is a memorable call. This will have to, someday, college game or no, be memoralized in a Topps baseball card:

Kownacki leaps over the catcher @ Yahoo! Video

Boxed Topps.

2010-04-20T22:48:00.003-06:00

Hey guys! We picked up a little tiny Box o' Topps cards. One question that arose as we scanned a batch of cardboard is, whither Mets? Not a one! Lots of Florida cards, though!

This is the high desert Southwest. So Topps. Pssst. Don't send Florida cards to the Southwest. They're lost on us! Just sayin'.

We did kind of like Honus Wagner's befuddled mug on the box. And although we may have been hoping for the Tom Seaver Refractor, this one showed up instead, which is not a terrible consolation prize, except for the B:

There was also some quite respectable midair momentry:

And of course the inevitable gimmick:

And some apochryphal text-writing. For instance, is it true that Kenshin went to Atlanta because there are supposedly 350 Japanese companies in Georgia? Hm:

Also iffy:

The text on the back of this card does not explain why there are 3,000 people not only lining the walls but also on the field! What a lost opportunity. NARRATIVE, PLEASE!

Contained in this box of 55 cards were several depicting four players:

And in this case, four and a half people, if you count the spectators:

A Zito Effect!:

This is a pretty card of Coors Field, a very pleasant ball park. You can take the light rail there, and then take a short, pleasant walk through a nice neighborhood to reach your seats.

Also, the entry to the green green grass view is dramatic and pretty and all classically baseballular:

We end with Reggie Jackson admiring the handiwork of his own 450-foot home run (although it's not entirely clear where he is standing as he does so; where is everyone?):

Anyway, thanks for looking at some baseball cards with us.

"There are no shortcuts," says Hank Aaron.

2010-04-09T09:27:00.000-06:00

There's a small element of crotchety in what 76-year old Hank Aaron recently told the Associated Press, but there is also core truth in his concerns about baseball in 2010. He expresses impatience about the following:

Hitters are obsessed with the long ball and at-bats take too long
Players don't have the discipline not to get themselves into the celebrity-obsessed culture
Hitters glare at pitchers if the baseball is "even a baseball card's width inside"
There are few dominating pitchers and pitchers rarely finish what they start (i.e., managers rely too much on the bullpen)
Catchers go out to the mound more than they should
Stepping out of the batter's box frequently also adds to inning length
There are not enough day games so parents can take kids and grandparents can take grandkids
Designated hitter should expand to NL--"It ought to be uniform"
Too much disunity between union and owners

He doesn't even mention steroids. Of course, we all find joy in baseball even though many elements have become corporatized. The baseball card joy link is especially evident to us right now, what with, for starters dayf's Blaster League, Night Owl's reveling in the free preview, White Sox Cards' ongoing happiness, and Oriole Cards O' the Day's compelling card narratives.

So the joy is there, but it's intriguing to hear the views of one of the great players of all time as he contemplates how much the game has changed.

"I left my road grays in San Francicso."

2010-04-08T13:00:00.000-06:00

There oughta be a baseball card insert set of misspellings in the big leagues (remember the Washington Natinals?).

Cardboard OCD: A review of Mint Condition by Dave Jamieson.

2010-04-07T22:45:00.001-06:00

The narrative begins with an uncomfortable juxtaposition, especially to anyone interested in Civil War history:

Although an estimated five thousand Union soldiers would eventually die of starvation and disease inside its wooden stockades, the Confederate run prison camp at Salisbury, North Carolina, was a great place for a ball game.

Fetid prison camp/baseball. Next, Jamieson goes on to discuss 19th-century Americans' propensity to use tobacco and sell it, for the almighty profit, to children.

If you haven't been put off by the book opening with these two subjects, you are a lucky reader, because the rest of this fine narrative is matter-of-factly peppered with compelling baseball card facts. For instance, are you aware that Lewis Ginter was a major in the Confederate army? Do you know why completing an original Old Judge set is "hopeless"? The extent to which tobacco moguls and baseball card collectors are inextricably bound? ("Conventional wisdom holds that the cigarette launched the baseball card. But one could just as easily argue that, in the United States, the baseball card launched the cigarette.")

The reason baseball card collectors would enjoy Mint Condition: How Baseball Cards Became an American Obsession by Dave Jamieson is that the book offers up different angles and new takes even when covering familiar ground. The stories we've heard over and over...such as the inevitable Billy Ripken FF bat saga, or the sinking into the ocean of 1952 Topps cards...are presented anew, with plenty of fresh details engagingly presented.

Card history. Jamieson takes us through a brisk history of cigarette cards, how baseball cards helped gum and candy makers survive the Great Depression and kept children in touch with the star players of the day, and proceeds right up to Topps' first possible sign of an Achilles heel--when Marvin Miller, chief of the Major League Baseball Players Union, fought with the company and won concessions that doubled the players' fees for appearing on cards. Then, as you all know, an antitrust suit allowed the entry of new card manufacturers in 1981. What came next, with the dramatic increase in licensing fees and the strike of 1994, led to, shall we say, the rise of Pokemon and the downfall of kid devotion to small rectangular cardboard pictures of men in little hats. (Read Chapter 9, titled "Gem Mint Ten," for that whole story.)

In fact, these days, according to Jamieson, sales of sports cards are less than one-quarter than at their pinnacle in 1991.

One of our favorite elements in the book is Jamieson's character study of card collector cult hero Jefferson Burdick. It seems likely that J. Burdick lacked people skills, but Jamieson makes us care about the man as well as what he did (amass hundreds of thousands of rare vintage cards). And with this closer look we can also recognize signs of his ilk in the modern world--men devoted to obtaining and cataloging in a completist frenzy. Before the days of slotted binders and top loaders, you must picture Mr. Burdick faithfully pasting thousands of cards into books. Yes, pasting.

Burdick and T206. Jamieson avoids standard coverage of the overworked T206 Honus Wagner card story by focusing on Michael Gidwitz, the investment adviser and collector who owned the Wagner for a while. When you compare the actions of the pure-of-heart Burdick with those of the manipulative, somewhat crude Gidwitz, you can trace the downward vector of collecting. So focus instead on Jamieson's visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to view the cards; he paints a deft word picture of the lonely but singledminded pursuit that Burdick entrusted to MoMA for posterity. Jamieson sheds impressively unjudgmental light on Burdick's character and makes vivid his impressive accomplishment.

The strongest insight provided may be Jamieson's overview of when and how aggressive card amassers (including Gidwitz, but many others as well) went in search of private collections of cardboard at low prices at exactly the right time. Unlike school kids, these men (and apparently, they all were men) seemed well-aware of cards becoming commodities. In fact, by buying low and selling high, very high, they helped make baseball cards commodities.

Another theme, and this perhaps was the most helpful for me, is that from the early days of the game up until the strike, major league baseball owed a sizable debt to baseball cards. Which begs the question, does it still, or have the tables turned?

One diversion that card collectors with a nonsports bent might particularly enjoy is Jamieson's informative look at the grossly politically incorrect Horrors of War set,

the graphic Civil War News cards,

and the imaginative but offputting (see for instance cards 22 and 36, purposely not pictured here, quel horreur!) Mars Attacks:

Jamieson provides a fascinating examination of what Topps execs and artists were thinking as they produced those cards.

More fun facts: did you know that Dr. James Beckett = born again Christian right? Or what Beckett's PhD was in? (Statistics, fittingly enough.) The 1952 Topps cards dumped in the ocean story is here ( p. 153ff). Do you grok why Pete Rose and Don Mattingly were at the nexus of driving up baseball card values? Are you aware of the role that the TV show Hart to Hart played in baseball card history? Do you know the full story of the Ken Griffey, Jr. Upper Deck rookie card? Why are we asking all these questions? Because although we knew the gist of many of the stories, this book goes well beyond gist.

Bloggers write with rain delays, fistfights in the stands, and a good deal of wandering around in the upper deck if we find anything shiny. Does this book have the same quirky, wildeyed, hopeful, high-energy fervor of many of the best card blogs? It does not. But that is not its purpose. Mint Condition, except for its utter lack of an index, is well-behaved. This is a skillfully written, thoroughly researched history of baseball cards and their place in the American experience, presented in a style that is perhaps more Ken Burns than Cardboard Junkie. Determining which is the most profound may simply depend on your mood.

Mint Condition: How Baseball Cards Became an American Obsession by Dave Jamieson is available from Amazon.

Real product or Wacky Packages?

2010-04-06T18:33:00.003-06:00

Please discuss.

Do you miss Masterpieces?

2010-04-04T19:13:00.000-06:00

We got this base set from A Cardboard Problem a while back and it's a good thing, because these proved to be yet more cards we couldn't live without. Upper Deck Masterpieces provided a little dash of difference to the same old same old cardiness of baseball cards. Not vintage. Not shiny. A little pale, a little dark. The texture of vintage linen postcards. And yet. Hard to argue with the classic poses and the overall sense of care, of not rushing.

The flying dirt and frozen action of your basic midair moment card is there, plus a little je ne sais quoi.

In some (not all cases), the people in the stands became Monet-reminiscent impressionist dabs.

Many cards reveal an interesting play of light. Inevitably paired with bad backs, though:

The image is repeated (cut and blurrier) and many of the sentences are astonishing examples of grammatical concepts such as "run-on." Baseball card backs cry out for editing in the modern world.

But the poses here are classic. This was one of Night Owl's favorite cards, and it's got everything: the flying catcher's equipment; the focus and muscle of the athlete; the sheer determination in the player's face. This is not a thrown-together baseball card produced by a bored graphics department drone.

Sometimes Mr. Hochevar has a slight Lord of the Rings tinge to his appearance, and his Masterpiece card manages both to acknowledge and dignify that. The Killebrew semi-smile makes you wonder what he was thinking.

Compare the Masterpiece Felix to the current UD Felix. What do you think? Maybe living here in Georgia O'Keeffe country has made us wish it were a painted world.

Moonstruck.

2010-04-03T11:22:00.001-06:00

You all lent great wisdom to the question, are there too many baseball cards in the world? The answer you provided was, in the interest of brevity: Yes. For more detail, see below; or, just scroll down to the next question in the next to last paragraph. We apologize in advance for being a little contrary in this post.

Night Owl said, yes, there are too many baseball cards, and that is why he focuses on sets he is committed to and tries not to allow himself a wandering eye. flywheels offers the cards he doesn't want to other collectors. (But ALL your extra cards, flywheels? What percentage of cards do you dispose of by giving them away? Don't other people have to want those exact cards?)

paulsrandomstuff allowed that there are in fact entirely too many cards, and offers the quaint notion that there ought to be one card per player per year (unless traded midseason). Despite this awareness, he says he is "too much of a packrat to throw any cards away." Thus, PRS is one who lives amidst cardboard.

dogfacedgremlin tries to stay with base sets only and avoids inserts and parallels. The rest of his cards go into player books for trade, or sit in common boxes. He says that right now, he has the space to do this, so his tone is not urgent about the imminent threat of being overthrown by cardboard and living in its midst.

The Wax Wombat gets joy (and sanity) from giving away what he doesn't need. Again, is this impulse, generous as it is, also passing the accumulation problem along to others? BA Benny defends the "too many cards" stance and says, basically, that big production numbers allow for variety, which in turns allows for blogging and trading and happily stepping down many different paths.

capewood provides some cold, hard figures: "By my count, there have been 1,275,061 different baseball cards issued between 1980 and 2009. Although that's a pretty precise number it doesn't include a lot of kinds of stuff you used to see (like K-Mart cards). So round up to 1.5 million. I'd guess that the average release of each card (considering the vast over production in the 1980s and 1990s) is 1,000,000 per card. Multiply those two numbers together and, yes, there are probably too many baseball cards."

He also notes that anything not Phillies/Astros/players he collects will be given away, traded away, or THROWN AWAY.

Who else will admit they throw away baseball cards on occasion? Is this wrong to do? Especially if you can easily recycle. The people who say, "give them to kids at hospitals"--have you ever actually tried to do that?

cardsplitter busts only what he collects...unless he wants to check something else out for kicks. It's that UNLESS that gets everyone! He has boxes piling up. He hates the idea of throwing cards away, but does give them to his children to play with. Great use of detail here: "There are a couple Donruss '92s laying on my basement floor covered in dog hair that I just can't be bothered to pick up."

GCA doesn't want every card in all the universe, but he enjoys discovery. He noted in this vein that letting one company produce cards is troubling, and if there were only a few cards made, then many collectors would quit because the fun/discovery factor would flatline.

Bo said he is "pretty omnivorous" and he's glad he won't ever be done. He too crunches numbers: "Using Capewood's numbers, and extrapolating back from 1980 to the rest of the twentieth century, you could make a conservative estimate of 2,000,000,000,000 baseball cards in existence. A card is roughly .5 mm thick. That ends up being 100,000 km, over a quarter of the way to the moon."

That's 59,000-ish miles high.

mikepelfreyshouse admits his room is built out of cards. And "also alot of late 80s junk that I'm going to build my next house out of." Ah, implicit in that statement is: a house of cards! Notes CaptKirk42, "Even just those 1980s-1990s over-production years alone had like 20 or more card companies each producing sets that had 2 or 3 insert sets (chromes, refractors etc..) Now you have what about 6 companies making about 3 or 4 sets with 3 or 4 inset subsets and about 4 or 5 variations on the base cards. Not to mention the 3 or 4 variations on GUs and Autos. [Ed. note: In other words, GAAAAAH!] As to your extra cards I say NEVER THROW THEM AWAY. Give them to someone else (an organization for kids, or a children's hospital) or RECYCLE Them. They are cardboard." Again, has anyone ever driven a pickup loaded with baseball card boxes to a hospital? Clearly, you kind-hearted folks are not from around HERE.

Back to the quarter-of-the-way to the moon concept. Wonder how high the pile of dollars would reach that are SPENT on baseball cards?

Which leads us to our next question....

Why collect something that everyone else can collect? Rather than, say, original artwork, or handmade jewelry, or handpainted tin soldiers...that is, something unique? Our theory: Most baseball card collectors, unless they are vintage specialists, are not into this pursuit for 'value.'

Thank you for providing your insights! You people rock. Moon rock, even.

Are there too many baseball cards in the world?

2010-03-31T17:28:00.001-06:00

We know there's too much overall STUFF in the world, as classically noted by George Carlin,

but what about baseball cards? Aren't there WAY too many baseball cards?

Did you know that if you stacked all the baseball cards that exist in the world into one pile, the stack would reach past Mars? Okay, that may or may not be true, but we're guessing it IS true. Do you ever find the sheer numbers of sets, cards, boxes, packs, inserts, sets, subsets, refractors, xfractors, bat, jersey, seat, and baseball relics, and the sticker and on-card autographs daunting? Does this ever make you want to curl up in to the fetal position and find another hobby? How do you, if you're a set collector especially, not get a feeling that there are simply too many baseball cards? Do you find it difficult to be selective? If you DON'T collect sets, and you open a blaster, what do you do with all the cards from the blaster that don't exactly interest you? If you're a tidy person, when do you give up?

Ode to mini cards.

2010-03-31T12:06:00.001-06:00

We don't like when there are non-baseball players in baseball boxes.

And yet if this happens with minis,

we wish on card companies no poxes.

The Wisconsin dome collapses, the Empire State doesn't even sway.

Love this Kaz, and look how Jason Bay peers at us from far away.

What are you thinking, Jason Bay? Contemplating Mets Opening Day?

We ran into Jeff once, found him fretful and sweet. This season we hope he won't be beat.

Hey, Pablo. You lookin' at me? You better fall in line;

You, sir, are right next to the author of Frankenstein.

If you tired of cards but encountered a small Young and a little Reyes,

would mini clouds and scuffs help you say Yes?

Yes to tiny cards by Ginter and Goodwin

and oh those T206

that you keep out of order just for kicks?

Some pairings are especially fair dinkum

like putting together Berra and Lincoln.

How would you rate mini cards of classic players? Although a scale of one to ten is plenty,

we'd have to say eleventy.

The name game solved.

2010-03-24T22:01:00.000-06:00

ENOS GOUDEY

LEWIS GINTER

JEFFERSON BURDICK

Jefferson Burdick, left, with his father

FRANK FLEER

ANDREW PECK

WILLIAM WRIGLEY

PAUL THOMPSON

Chief Bender by Paul Thompson, 1911

CHARLES CONLON

Christy Mathewson by Charles M. Conlon

SY BERGER

J. WARREN BOWMAN

Thanks, everyone, for playing! Mark's Ephemera was first in with the correct list.

A Baseball-Card-History Match Game.

2010-03-24T14:02:00.000-06:00

We're almost ready to post a review of the new book Mint Condition: How Baseball Cards Became an American Obsession, but in the meantime, reading so much baseball card history has inspired a game.

Can you  match the first and correct last name from baseball card history listed below? For example, if you saw "Abner" on the top list, you'd match it with "Doubleday" from the bottom list.

The first commenter to do so wins our eternal admiration, respect, and who knows what else. We hope it's not too easy. We'll check back this evening to see the results.

First names:
ENOS
LEWIS
JEFFERSON
FRANK
ANDREW
WILLIAM

PAUL
CHARLES
SY
J. WARREN

Last names:
PECK
WRIGLEY
THOMPSON
CONLON
BERGER
BOWMAN
GOUDEY
GINTER
FLEER
BURDICK

The Top Five Best Things About This Particular Baseball Card.

2010-03-23T13:41:00.002-06:00

#5) It's one in a series of All Topps Backs that completely ignore what the player on the front looks like in the cartoon on the back. Yet the cartoon kind of rocks.

#4) The text on the back capitalizes the word "Hits" AND refers to a season in terms of military or political actions: as in "the 1978 campaign."

#3) The signature on the front is presented just as swoopily as the team name flag.

#2) The card does not misspell the player's name: LL, TT, DD and one X.

#1) The photo on the front appears to include a drain, through which everyone and everything on the field may disappear at any moment if the plug is pulled.

Cardboardwise, it doesn't get much better than this.

Thank you, jacobmrley, for a wonderful card.

Scouting baseball cards.

2010-03-22T21:03:00.000-06:00

Do you have a sixth sense for picking baseball talent early on? Recently we asked, "what young player, unproven but promising, have you decided to collect?" Here were the responses:

Jason Heyward:

Johnny Cueto:

James Parr:

Ian Bladergroen:

Cody Ross:

Brian Cavazos-Galvez:

Jordan Pacheco (former UNM Lobo!):

Ike Davis (Mets 1B prospect):

J.P. Arencibia:

Brian Matusz:

Interesting! Thanks for the insights. (And yes, we've got our eye on Ike around here, too.) Is anyone collecting Pedro Alvarez?

Along these lines, eTopps will produce officially licensed Minor League Baseball cards this season; think they started making some available today. According to the press release, "We will offer Minor Leaguers selectively throughout the baseball season and capture players as they make their pro debuts at the Minor League level."

Up the down Stairs-case. And a question!

2010-03-20T18:48:00.001-06:00

Forty-two year old Matt Stairs is currently with the San Diego Padres. If he makes the team's opening day roster, it will mark his 12th major league team, the most ever for a position player!

Montreal
to Boston
to Oakland (probably his most successful stint)

to Chicago
to Milwaukee
to Pittsburgh
to Kansas City
to Texas
to Detroit
to Toronto
to Philadelphia.

Eleven stops in minor league cities and a stint in Japan, and now to San Diego, where he hopes to be a pinch hitter.

Pitchers (such as Ron Villone) have played for 12 teams apiece. A position player has never done that.

He has a quirky left-handed swing. He isn't shy about admitting he always swings for a home run. He is short and, well, he has been, er, stout,

but is in better shape this year thanks to a rigorous (senior) hockey recreation league in Maine. He also claims success on the NutriSystem diet.

He is successful in the eyes of Dinged Corners because we've compiled enough first-hand evidence to add him to our Nice Players List (at right).

So Jamie Moyer is pitching at age 47, Tim Wakefield and Omar Vizquel are playing at 43. We're rooting for you, Matt Stairs. Here's to the Working Men of Baseball.

Here's the question: On the other side of the coin: what young player, unproven but promising, have you decided to collect? Leave a comment and we'll do a post on that. If you are motivated, please email us a scan of your card(s) of that player. We really want to know! Spring fever.

2010 Upper Blecch Series 1 blaster.

2010-03-11T21:16:00.003-07:00

In Upper Deck's press release announcing 2010 Series I on Feb. 6, the joy was breathless: “Obviously we’re extremely pumped up right now,” said Gabriel Garcia, Upper Deck’s Baseball brand manager. “We really went to task to find the best shots possible of the players, combined with a terrific assortment of autographs and memorabilia cards from baseball biggest stars, past and present.”

UD didn't allude in all that 'happy happy joy joy' to the utter-lack-of-logos aspect of their fiefdom.

And my goodness, the company certainly goes go to great twisting lengths not to show logos!

This fact of logo-lessness proves rather creepy, as it pushes the pursuit of baseball cards from

a legitimate collecting pasttime into the realm of simply amassing little cardboard photos of men wearing pajama-like clothing with no discernibly named team affiliation. How long can this last for UD? Is this product selling?

Wait a minute, the letter C is visible!:

There are quite a few almost-visible helmet letters. Which enhances the awfulness of these two-headed checklist designs:

Anyhow, the 600-base card set is said to include "Signature Sensations" autograph cards, but that's only a rumor in these parts, because we can buy retail only here in Fennoscandinavia. Er, that is, here in the non-densely-populated-hinterlands.

On the upbeat front, hey Darryl Strawberry, you better watch it! Yessirree Mr. Strawbs, there's a promising hitter with the current best name in baseball, Tyler Flowers,

vying for Lucy's affection:

Isn't there something poignant about that shot? What does it bring to mind? Hmmmmm. Oh, yes:

INTERMISSION: In the video below, around 3:15 is the Lucy/Harpo mirror sequence. Why can't there be comedy like this anymore?:

Back to the massively non-logo cardboard. The inserts for this set are said to include Gold Parallels numbered to 99. Didn't see that but there was a lot of other head-scratch inducing stuff. For instance:

Here we are in 2010 still asking why card companies--especially non-logo using ones--insist on placing nonsports cards in baseball card boxes? Why why why? And what use have we for baseball cards such as this?:

All right, sure, maybe we'd be less mystified if it was David Wright surrounded by, say, orange and blue flames. Maybe, but we doubt it. By the way, there was NARY A MET in this box!

nary a met nary a met nary a met nary a met nary a met

Ok, moving on. Here are a few from the 200-card “Season Biography” collection:

One positive is that the bio backs are decent when compared to the base backs:

although UD probably should rehire the graphic design staff.

Little headshots are plunked down in several places on these cards. Sometimes that's good, and sometimes

it's troubling, as when the head in question is a little pointy:

But whatev.

Then there's the 100-gold subset:

The occasional die-cut:

And the cards that make us wonder, why is everyone wearing a red hat?:

And will Mariano survive the green machine that is about to squash him?

You know that JERSEY CARD INSIDE blaster message?

We were, once again, White-Bit-Hafnered:

Hmph.

Upper Blecch victim non-logo-ladenly twistily signing off.

Cards Where Other Things Are Going On.

2010-03-04T18:28:00.000-07:00

The main point of this card is that Chad Durbin is pitching. However, the secondary action makes this a better-than-average card. Am I right?

Isn't that Curtis Granderson?

What's your favorite card where the main action isn't the reason why you like the card?

Reasons to cheer up.

2010-03-03T20:08:00.002-07:00

Because Fred will hit bureacrats in the head with his bat. In a nice way.

Defiantly upbeat, Darryl will appear on a shiny, bat bit off-center card that has this back:

CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!!!

Hoyt will be serene. There is little to like about this card, which was apparently designed by somone who had temporarily been laid off from a job designing parking lots. But we love the name Hoyt, and we love that little bit of blue stripe scrunched up into the top left corner of the jersey bit space, yearning to breathe free.

Baseball cards with pictures of more than two players, through the ages, excel. This is a factoid.

We have mixed feelings about Mike, but the point here is, what's going on in the upper right hand corner? Stare at that for a while and it actually brings your blood pressure down; medically proven. Mysterious.

We love love love the Legendary Cuts relic cards. And the old uniforms. And the chaws.

Go ahead, make his day.

Relic cards of HOF players go for relatively little on eBay. We don't understand this, but like it.

Ah, well there. We feel better.

Captain Kirk's wisdom.

2010-03-03T18:33:00.000-07:00

I've been having a horrible, wretched, frustrating week, the kind that makes you feel as if there's pressure building up in your head to the degree that your ears itch. So I'm going to take a few moments here to compile some pleasing cards. Because. It's a Pleasing Card Intermission. A PCI, if you will. A medical leave of sorts. I'm working on it right now, and soon James T. and I will present a post that is pleasing. A pleasing post. In the meantime, I also want to thank you all for keeping the baseball card blogularium churning in such a way that there are always some fun and informative posts to read. It's like Pandora's Box...always, there's hope.

By the way, as food for thought while we package our post, do you know what kind of lights Noah used on his ark?

Thank you to the erudite Rod for the nifty Star Trek cards.

Jim Bunning Assessment.

2010-03-02T17:15:00.002-07:00

"Under increasing pressure from Democrats and members of his own party, Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) Tuesday night abandoned his one-man filibuster of a one-month extension to unemployment benefits and other programs. In the end Bunning agreed to a deal allowing him one vote on an amendment to pay for the bill’s $10 billion cost. That proposal was offered by Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) last Thursday at the start of his filibuster, but Bunning rejected it because he feared his amendment would not pass....

Thousands of federal highway employees who had been furloughed as a result of Bunning’s filibuster will likely be able to return to work later this week, and unemployment insurance checks will be sent to recipients after several days of delay.

To ensure the deal is enforced, Bunning has placed a hold on all the items included in the nightly 'wrap up,' which normally entails a unanimous consent agreement to pass noncontroversial nominations and bills, a GOP aide said. Once the votes have taken place that hold would be lifted, the aide explained." Roll Call newspaper

So, Republicans are thrifty when out of power and wildly lavish when in power (tax cuts for the wealthy, plenty of war financing, use of reconciliation to push through favorite programs, and so on). On this rare occasion when baseball and politics cross over, what is your assessment of Baseball Hall of Famer Jim Bunning?

Genius? Hypocrite?

And, most importantly, how will this affect the value of his baseball cards?

Fuzzy Mets. Testing our Met-tle. Wrightful place. You get the idea.

2010-02-28T18:37:00.000-07:00

We received some outstanding Mets cards from Pack War Corky. You know, this fellow:

Fierce avatar.

Among the cards in the packet he sent were some major attention-getters. We may not be the brightest baseball card collectors on the planet, but we thought we knew most of the cool Mets cards out there. Well, Corky proved us wrong. These 2001 Upper Deck cards are fantastic.

They exist in a shady region of strange graphics that are somehow metsmerizing.

And as if this wasn't enough, these cards are fuzzy.

To clarify, the "Mets" and "NY" logos on these cards are FUZZY.

Now, Paul's Random Stuff first introduced us to these cards, but in that strong silent type way, he never revealed the Fuzz Factor! Go figure. So, being shallow, we forgot about the design. But trust us when we say that in person, they deserve attention. They undoubtedly exist with relics in some of them...but a person doesn't necessarily need relics when the card comes fuzzed. There is such a thing as Swank Overload.

Furthering our Metscard karma was the perfect gentleman many know as White Sox Cards. His is one of the first card blogs we ever discovered, and one of the first people we ever traded with. He's a mensch. He glides under the radar sometimes but is a force to be reckoned with. We know this became of the enormous number of referral hits we get from his site.

Steve sent along some 2010s of David Wright:

These are code cards, too. So Lucy will "unlock" them.

Steve also included this 2007 M&M 29/29, which we love:

And a spine-tingling (we're trying not to use the word 'awesome') Zito Effect:

Wait a minute, how did BZ appear in a Metszealous post? It's Steve's fault. We'll let it slip through this time. Deep philosophical thought: I wonder what would happen to our sanity (let alone the Mets payroll) if Barry ever joined the lovable losers?

Thank you, Corky and Steve!