Jeter Against the Orioles

This will be one of the few Yankee related posts you'll see on this blog, but if I'm going to post on any Yankee, it may as well be one that has certainly represented Major League Baseball with class, Derek Jeter.

Jeter has likely taken his last swing in Camden Yards. his possible last at-bat coming in the 8th inning Sunday night in a 3-2 loss against the Orioles and Andrew Miller.  He went 0-4 in the game, but finished his career at Camden Yards with 184 hits, most from any visiting player.  Funny enough, Kelly Johnson, who's already played for the Yankees and Red Sox this season, had the walk-off hit for the Orioles. It seems unlikely that the Yankees make the playoffs at this point and the odds are even slimmer that the Orioles and Yankees meet in them.

When I was younger I received a complete set of 1993 Upper Deck as a gift, probably a birthday or Christmas present, I can't recall. One of the better cards in the set is Jeter's rookie card, although I don't think it's worth as much now as it once was.

Looks like some of the other prospects include Carlos Delgado, Cliff Floyd, Manny Ramirez, and Charles Johnson. Pretty good group when you add Jeter as well. I appreciate the simplicity of these cards.

One of the few Yankee cards I am glad to keep a part of my collection. As the fans at Camden Yards did over the weekend, I applaud Jeter for a great career.

Back to non-Yankee posts tomorrow!

More Ripken Stacks

While the Braves are now below .500, the Orioles have kept on winning despite injuries and suspensions and are now division champs for the first time since 1997! And so, in honor of this, I'll post and talk about some of my favorite Ripken cards!

Turkey Red was one of my favorite basketball sets from the mid-2000s and I was pleased to come across this one in my stack of Cal cards. Just a unique set.

The card in the center from 2000 Upper Deck Ovation did not scan very well, but it's a cool design with most of the card being taken up by a baseball with a different texture there from the rest of the card.

If there's a player that belongs in a Pure Grit insert set, it's Cal. Not sure if I've mentioned this, but I also like shiny cards, and this insert is shiny, even if you can't tell from the scan.

Continuing the trend of cards that didn't scan well, this Piece of the Game insert from 1998 Pinnacle Plus mostly talks about Lou Gehrig on the back.

This 2000 Prism card actually scanned very well. The back of the card wastes so much space, as only one year of stats appears on the back. Cool card for sure, though.

And another favorite Topps brand, Gold Label. Just a great design and a card that I think I picked up at a card show back in the day. The card mentions one game against the Braves in June of 1999 where Cal scored 5 runs, the first time he'd managed that feat in his career.

On to the last row! This Flair Greats design isn't one of my favorite, but how can I not like a card picturing Cal from the early days of his career. I appreciate a card back that has a lot of stat, and this one has 16 years of stats, missing just the early years of his career.

This 1999 Revolution card scanned decently, but the gold and white really looks great with the Orioles uniforms.

And finally the card that I may as well not even post since it scanned so poorly, an insert from Fleer Focus called 'Focal Points', in case you can't read it in the scan (which you probably can't). This card has an orange background which you can't see in the scan, and goes nicely with the black Orioles uniform. I enjoy lesser known tidbits on the backs of cards, but this card tells about his home run total (over 400), hit total (over 3,000), and his two gold glove awards.

Getting close to documenting all the Ripken cards in my collection. More to post about soon!

This is What Massive Power Looks Like...

...according to the 1995 Emotion card for Ryan Klesko.

Seeing as this is my largest baseball player collection and I need to get my havelist up to date and into pages and out of stacks, I will continue to share some of my favorites as I go.

First up we have the horizontal cards, starting with the already mentioned 1995 Emotion set.  All three of these cards scanned great and have good color, especially the Emotion.  The Emotion card brings up a fact you may not know about Klesko, that he is a former pitcher. He pitched at Westminister (Calif.) High School, and an arm injury sustained while pitching for the USA Junior Olympic team halted his pitching career. This AJC article from 2011 mentions if not for this injury he may have been drafted as a pitcher.

As I've mentioned I always enjoy cards where players are signing autographs for fans.  Klesko's autograph should be an affordable one I can add to my collection someday.

I have at least 6 copies of this 1999 Topps Klesko, which means I should show off at least one of them on this blog post, right? The fun fact from this card back reads that Klesko hit a home-run against St. Louis that allowed Atlanta to break the 1941 Brooklyn Dodgers record for most consecutive games with a homer, the 25th straight game for Atlanta. I love baseball cards for these type of facts.

And that concludes the Braves portion of the post.

This is the only black and white card in my Klesko collection. This is another set I will likely want a team-set of Braves and Orioles from. The second card... well I just enjoy Topps Heritage.

Here we have different post-swings from Klesko. Looks like he hit both of these balls in the air. I'm going to assume they were both home-runs. The 2001 Topps Opening Day notes that Klesko led baseball in stolen bases among first baseman in 2000, stealing 23 bases. Impressive for a power hitter.

And lastly one of my favorite die cut sets from 2003 Upper Deck Standing O. Despite this being a tiny card, the die cut still has room for three years of stats and a lengthy write-up on the back. 

One of these days I'll have my full Klesko collection listed!

Sizemore in Boston

As I mentioned in my first post on this blog, my wife and I took in a Red Sox game against the Twins on our honeymoon in Boston back in June.  Rubby De La Rosa, a promising young Red Sox starter, gave up just 1 hit in 7 innings to help the Red Sox get a 1-0 win, the only run scored on a sac fly from Mike Napoli.

While at Fenway we decided to pick up some souvenirs for ourselves as well as family and friends. We both decided to get a player t-shirt.  I advised my wife to get a Dustin Pedroia shirt, a safe pick. His contract with the Sox runs through 2021, and even if he leaves Boston in the near future, he's had a great career with the Red Sox.  We had also seen a shirt earlier in the evening that said 'Pedroia the Destroia', which made my wife feel good about this pick.

For my shirt, I wanted to get a shirt that less people would own, but I also wanted a player that I was familiar with, a player that I liked.  Well I saw the name Sizemore up on the wall, and that was a name I knew and a player I liked from his days in Cleveland.  I knew he was coming back from some injury troubles, but I remembered he had won a spot as a starting outfielder to start the season and had started off pretty well.  I did note that he wasn't in the lineup for the game we were currently attending, but I figured he was just getting a night off and we might see him as a pinch hitter later on. While what I knew his about his early season start was true, what I didn't realize was that he was hitting .216 on the season and had played his last game for Boston the day before.  

For those of you keeping track, here is the timeline:

Sunday, June 15th- Grady Sizemore plays his last game for Boston, going 0-4 with a walk and a strikeout.

Monday, June 16th- My wife and I attend a Red Sox game, where I purchase a Grady Sizemore t-shirt.

Tuesday, June 17th- Grady Sizemore is designated for assignment.

Ouch.  And so I present my Sizemore Red Sox #38 shirt.  I'd say I got what I wanted, a pretty unique shirt.

I'm pleased to report, however, that Sizemore is hitting .283 through 48 games for the Phillies since being cut by the Red Sox. 

Is this story reason enough to add Grady Sizemore as a player I collect? I think so.

First Team Set Want list - 1999 Ultra

I've enjoyed collecting Ultra sets over the years, and although I don't have a desire to pick up complete sets, Braves and Orioles team sets give me a taste of set collecting without picking up hundreds of cards.

Last month I posted about a stack of Andruw Jones cards in my collection, one of which is from 1999 Ultra where he has jumped up onto the wall.  Not only do I like the action shot in this card, but the text on this card as well.  I've decided 1999 Ultra will be the first team set I go after, for both the Orioles and Braves.  Here are the team checklists per TeamSets4U.com:

Braves:

1 Greg Maddux

17 Walt Weiss

25 Andruw Jones

48 Andres Galarraga

71 Tony Graffanino

156 Chipper Jones

187 Michael Tucker

203 Denny Neagle

217 Greg Maddux Season CROWNS SP

242 Bruce Chen PROSPECTS SP

247 George Lombard PROSPECTS SP

The only one I can mark off the list is the Andruw Jones.  All others will go onto the What I Collect page.  My only complaint with this checklist- where are Glavine and Smoltz, while Denny Neagle shows up on the checklist instead?  

I would just say I'll go after a different year instead, but this is my favorite Ultra design.  Plus, the Orioles checklist for this year is great.

Orioles:

16 Brady Anderson

83 Cal Ripken, Jr.

96 Mike Mussina

105 Scott Erickson

114 Eric Davis

123 Armando Benitez

143 Rafael Palmeiro

177 Roberto Alomar

213 Cal Ripken, Jr. CL

243 Ryan Minor PROSPECTS SP

Two Ripken cards, Alomar, Mussina, and a personal favorite of mine, Scott Erickson.  Was this team particularly great on the field, no they weren't.  But it's a team I enjoyed watching in my childhood, and that's good enough for me.  The only guy missing here that I feel like should have been included is B.J. Surhoff.

So I will be looking to pick up Braves and Orioles from this set, and likely other Ultra sets in the future (2004 and 2005 Ultra are my other favorites).

Bowman Platinum and My First Ever 2014 Set Rankings

Generally I like shiny cards, especially ones of my favorite players. That's why I decided to add a few cards from 2014 Bowman Platinum in my recent Just Commons order.

And honestly, the lack of color on the design with a blurry background leaves me feeling 'meh' on these cards. They do look slightly better in person than they scan, because of course they are shiny. And of course I am glad to add any cards of these guys to my collection, but I feel like this is a base set that's missing what makes cards appealing to me, good action shots where you can see more than just the player, and/or more color.

And here we have the backs of the cards, with minimal stats and the metallic look.

I realized while scanning these cards that I've developed a sort of internal ranking on the 2014 base sets as I've picked up at least a few base cards from a lot of them. So of course I feel like I should share these rankings with you. I am only going to include sets that I have actually picked up cards from. We're going from least favorite to favorite here.

8) Donruss - No logos, no likey. Donruss comes in last.

7) Bowman Platinum - For the reason's I've listed in this post, but at least these have team logos.

6) Topps Archives - I like some of these, but they have several different designs in the same base set. I'd rather Topps just stick to one design and go with it for that year. Maybe I'm alone on that.

5) Topps - Affordable, lots of players, and I like the design just fine.  I think 2015 Topps will come in higher on the rankings.

4) Allen & Ginter - I guess A&G comes in next. It was fun to read all the box break posts while not spending much on it myself. I don't know that this year's is my favorite Ginter design, but I like the unique cards that show up in the set.

3) Topps Chrome - I've already written about how much I enjoy Chrome. I like shiny base cards and I like any and all versions of refractors. I've still yet to pick up a refractor or base cards of my favorite players. I need to fix this!

2) Gypsy Queen - I enjoy this set each year and I think it would rank near the top in just about any year. I think the color in these cards is why I like it so much.

1) Topps Heritage - My favorite set every year. About the time I started this blog, I looked back through a box of all the baseball cards in my collection, and about a fourth of them are probably from Heritage sets over the years. I've bought more packs of Heritage sets over the years than any other, and 2014 might be my favorite base set yet. So it comes in at the top of my list.

And there you have it, my personal 2014 set rankings!

What a Wonderful Card

I was going through a stack of random Braves cards when I came across the following card of a former Braves minor leaguer.

Wonderful Terrific Monds III.  What a name.  Now some of you might be familiar with this minor leaguer who was drafted in the 50th round and played at all levels of the Braves minor league system between 1993 and 1997 before moving over to the Rockies minor league system, but he was new to me.  Wonderful is the son of former San Francisco 49er, Wonder Monds (Wonderful Jr.).  His grandfather was given the name when he was the first male born after a string of girls, which was  "wonderful, just terrific", per this baseball reference page.

It appears Monds has a number of cards between 1995 and 1997.  One of these is from the 1997 Fleer Ultra set, which I expect to collect a team set of Braves from.  Looks like I'll be adding at least one more Wonderful card to my collection in the future.