The Agony of Defeat

I have been on the lookout for a few Triple Threads over the past weeks when I stumbled upon a rather curious looking card of Cardinals third baseman David Freese.  The jersey pieces on the card appeared slightly off-white and I was hoping that I might land my first Cardinals card featuring a relic piece from the team's newly added third jersey.

The Cardinals had been one of the last team's to add a third jersey, but rather than adding a solid red or blue top, the team opted for an old fashion creme colored jersey.  Several teams, such as the Giants and Braves, have added these to their closets in the past year, so the Cardinals joined the pack.  Here's what the Cardinals version looked like in case you've not seen it:

While the third jersey still has the birds on the bat, it has switched out the word "Cardinals" for the word "St. Louis".  I woke up sometime around 4:30 this morning and it's now almost 11, otherwise I would go ahead and tell you the last time the Cardinals jersey said anything other than Cardinals on the front.  It's been a really, really long long time.  Really long.

Anyway, landing a Cardinals card with a relic of the third jersey would be really coll and a first for my collection.  I tracked the card for a few days and won this auction for a little more than $6 in hopes that the card would be the first of many creme colored Cardinals relics in my collection.  This is what the card looked like on Ebay.

After paying for the card I was eagerly awaiting its arrival in my mailbox.  Today was the day.  I ripped up the envelope and took the card out to check out the relics, paying special attention to the Mr. Freese. The card looks like this up close...

While I was counting on creme colored a closer inspection of the card shows that the relic patches have more of a pink hint to them, than a creme color.  Meaning that more likely than not, someone on the Cardinals clubhouse staff mixed in a red sock into a load of home white jerseys.  Don't get me wrong, it's still a really unique card, but it was not the sort of unique that I was aiming for in going after this card.  Find the David Freese pink relic card can best be summed up by this quote:

So, as it turns out I am still looking for my first creme colored Cardinals relic.  At least, in getting my hopes up, I created the framework for a blog post for when that special card comes into my collection.  Until then, we can't be too gloomy, there was another cool card in the package besides my pink David Freese: 

2013 Triple Threads Matt Holliday 7 Piece Relic "11 Champs" 

This is one of the better Cardinals cards in the Triple Threads set this year and I am really happy to add this card to my collection.  Holliday was the starting left-fielder for the Cardinals during the 2011 season when the Cardinals beat the Rangers to win the World Series.  Holliday, being the model of consistency, put together his usual solid season.  Luckily, a Yankees fan on YouTube managed to put his highlights from the 2011into a single video with some suspect music.