Let's Go Duke! Let's Go Duke!

I am from the Raleigh-Durham area, so if I am making a post about Duke maybe you are expecting something about basketball.  Apologizes to those who live in Raleigh or Durham who hate the Raleigh-Durham thing, it's sometimes a necessary evil to give non-residents an idea of where I reside.  I live in Raleigh.  Back to Duke.

I throw those types of posts on college sports every once in awhile plugging one of our three local ACC schools.  Recently I did go to a Duke football game and saw them play Virginia Tech, but this post is not about that event, not really about Duke University at all, but here is there football stadium, if you have never seen it before......

Little stadium, cool place to watch a game though, not a bad seat in the house.  

Nope.  This is actually going to be a Cardinals post.  We are talking about relief pitcher Zach Duke whom the Cardinals traded for this past summer to help out with the team's leaky bullpen.  I recently had the chance to pick up an autograph of the LOOGY (Lefty One Out Guy) pitcher.  Card brought back some pretty good memories of the mid 2000s.  

I know that Bowman's Best has been a thing the last year or two, but the set disappeared for a long time after having a nice run in the 1990s and early 2000s.  Not entirely sure why Topps pulled the plug on the product for the better part of a decade, but I always really liked these cards.  The Duke card, from the 2004 set, featured him on the Pirates where he started his career as a starter.  

I like how Topps did the backgrounds on these cards, not quite sure how I would describe the effect, but I like the look.  When I landed this card I had to guy back and see what other Cardinals players I had autographs of from this set.  Zach Duke is definitely a little bit of middle ground.  

The best card I have from the 2004 Bowman's Best is this guy.......

While the Yadi rookie is nice, there are always a few duds in these Bowman autograph sets. Someone has to wash out in A Ball and some of them have nice looking baseball cards.  Like this guy.....

Travis actually made it all the way up to Triple A with the Cardinals, just never cracked the Majors.  Scott Rolen was in his way though, pretty understandable.  He did have one monster Minor League season in Double A.  

Zach Duke is already out for next year with an elbow injury, so hopefully at some point he can bounce back and pitch a few more games with the Cardinals.  I love the autograph, but sometimes feel a little conflicted picking up cards of players who just briefly appear for my cheering interests.