Random Ray - 1996 Leaf Preferred

Leaf Preferred was one of the thousands of baseball card products that Donruss made in the mid-1990s.  If you bought baseball cards back in the mid 1990s, this set came with one steel card in each pack.  You read that right, steel card.  The packs weighed a lot and full boxes could have been used as a barbel.  I will do the steel card another week.  For now, I am going to do the base card.  

Did anyone really care about the base cards in Leaf Preferred?  

I think everyone I know who bought a pack of these cards considered them an after thought.  The steel cards were the real attraction.  Still, I like the photo that Donruss used on the Ray Lankford card.  It's something different and unique.  

This would be a great card to use in a caption contest.  What is happening in this picture?  Maybe the catcher said something funny.  Maybe Ray just missed his pitch.  Maybe something funny happened in the stands?  Maybe nothing funny happened at all and Ray fouled a pitch off his foot?  Your guess is as good as mine.  I just like that the picture shows something different than the typical action shot.  

The card design looks like every other Donruss card product from the mid 1990s.  

I also like that the picture was taken in Wrigley.  I think I mention it once a week, but that stadium is a great backdrop for baseball cards.  

Back of the card.  

Another action photo.  I think this is also in Wrigley, but it's hard to be sure since it is blurry, but the long sleeve shirt under his jersey looks similar to the one on the front of the card.  Seems like a good possibility that the two pictures were taken during the same game.  

The stats are really basic.  A little disappointed that stolen bases are not one of the stats.  Ray had a 20-20 season in 1995.  Pretty good numbers considering he missed a month of the season and the 1995 Cardinals were a bottom 5 team in the league.  

2021 Blake Snell Autograph Count: 2

I am really gaining momentum now.  Two Blake Snell autographs in two days.  

This is out of Topps Definitive.  It's some $2,000 per box product that was never on my radar.  I bought this card for less than $20.  Not a very good return on that amount of money for somebody out there.  The design of the card is decent.  Huge chunk of jersey, picture of Snell, some geometric shapes floating around the middle of the card.  Seems on par for a high-end Topps product.  I like the dead space at the bottom of the card for the player autograph.  

Back of the card.  

I had to go back to the previous post to see if the card back was the same as the previous card.  It's not, but there are a lot of similarities.  My next post is not another Blake Snell autograph.  I will be lucky to pass 5 this year.  

2021 Blake Snell Autograph Count: 1

I went back and looked to see how many Blake Snell autograph posts I had made at this point in 2019.  The answer is 19 for the year.  I am happy to be making my first of 2021.  There are fewer Snell autographs this year, but I am also still not sure whether or not I am going to do much with his Padres cards.  For the moment, I have decided to collect the 2021 Snell autographs that show him in a Rays uniform.  

The first Snell autograph of the year is out of Tier One.  I like the blue and gold color scheme along with the frame around the card.  Not sure about some of the design elements around the frame.  The top and bottom have the lattice design, the sides have a partial frame, but no lattice?  Alright.  

I like the head-on photo of Snell pitching.  It would be cool if we could see his hand better.  What pitch do you think he's throwing?  I'm going curveball.  

Flip the card over.  

The standard "Congratulations" card back.  You were expecting something else?  

Random Ray - 2000 Pacific Aurora

I really liked Pacific Baseball cards during the 1990s and early 2000s.  They started out as the Spanish card manufacturer, but got away from that at some point in the late 1990s.  The company had some really neat and innovated products.  There are always lots of well-designed insert sets, parallels, and die-cuts that went along with Pacific baseball cards.  I have plenty of Ray Lankford cards that fit into those categories, but I use my Random Ray posts for base cards.  

A simple Ray Lankford card.  

Aurora was a lower-end product that was often sold at retail stores.  I believe that it started out guaranteeing an insert per pack.  They were not great inserts.  The 2000 set was the most popular edition of this set because it featured Ken Griffey's first card on the Reds.  

Here is the Ray Lankford card.  

Simple enough design.  

Reminds me a bit of the 1963 Topps set with the large color photograph and the small black and white photo in the corner.  I also like the horizontal orientation of the card.  The background is a little odd.  The solid red background color is fine, but the pattern is rather odd.  On the left-side of the card the pattern looks like its carpeting or sand.  The right-side looks like something out of the background themes from PowerPoint or Google Slides.  

The back of the card is not the best, but this was never the strong suit of Pacific.  Always simple with really basic stats and a photo of the player.  I am not going to post scans of all the Pacific card backs from the late 1990s and early 2000s, but they made a little more effort than normal here.  

Just a screen shot off of Ebay.  Most Pacific cards had a stock photo from the team.  

I really like the sepia photo that they used on the back of this Aurora card.  It adds a little more personality to the card.  Especially given the reddish-brown and gold color of the font that was used for the writing above the stats and the player name.  

Not the flashiest card, but solid for a something out of a retail-oriented product.  

Not Up To The Standards Of Jon Jay

We've reached the point during the calendar year where I have stumbled upon an acetate baseball card.  I am a long-time fan of acetate baseball cards, always have been.  Usually I find one of these cards earlier in the year, but without buying much current year product or even single cards, it is taken a little longer in 2021. 

Most of my acetate cards in the past were either parallel cards from the Topps base set or autographs from products like Strata or Clearly Authentic.  My first 2021 acetate card comes from the Clearly Authentic product in the form of a Scott Rolen autograph.  

The scratches are on the case and the autograph is not faded, the ink shows lighter on the acetate cards due to the translucence of the card.  Solid picture of Rolen and I like the design of the 1986 Topps cards.  Obviously, I wish this were a Cardinals cards.  Topps has made a ton of Rolen cards this year and they are seemingly almost all Phillies cards.  

Do Phillies fans even like him?

The back of the acetate card is one of the coolest parts of these cards for me.  

The blurred background behind Rolen does not look very good here.  The back of the acetate cards usually pop with a colored background and a reversed black and white image from the front.  This feels muted and drab.  Although, I always think the player signature showing through in reverse is neat.  

Like all acetate cards in my collection, I like to compare them to my 2014 Topps Acetate Jon Jay.  It's my gold standard acetate card.  It's not autographed, but the colors and photograph on the card are amazing.  

On the front of the card, I like the reds and greens on the accents of the Cardinals uniforms and the bleachers against the green wall and shrubs.  The look nice on the back of the card too.  

Look at the contrast with the black and white photo of Jon Jay and Matt Holliday on the colored background versus the card back above with Rolen.  It's not even close.  

I love the new Rolen autograph, but it falls short as an acetate card.  

Random Ray - 1990 CMC

Ray Lankford started the 1990 season in Triple A with the Louisville Redbirds.  The team was talented and featured several players who would go on to be starters with the Cardinals during the 1990s.  Lankford played center field with Bernard Gilkey playing left.  The two middle infielders were Luis Alicea and Geronimo Pena.  The rotation included Rheal Cormier, Omar Oliveras, and Ken Hill.  Five of the seven, minus Alicea and Cormier, would debut with the Cardinals before the end of the 1990 season.  

The Redbirds finished as the fourth best team in the American Association, in large part due to the fact that the aforementioned players were largely on the Cardinals by the end of the season.  All of the late season Cardinals call-ups made an appearance in the CMC Louisville Redbirds team set, including Ray Lankford.  

Lankford was called up at the end of August a week before the team traded Willie McGee to the A's and was starting centerfielder for the last month of the season.  

The design is not the best and photos are all taken from the stock photo team shoot.  Every single card in this set features a picture of the Louisville players standing in front of the scoreboard wearing the same off-white home jersey.  There is a second set of Louisville Redbird cards from 1990, Pro Cards, that has a picture Ray standing in the same spot, but wearing a red batting practice jersey. 

I can't say that I can really blame CMC for using the team stock photos. They made sets for a lot of the Minor League teams in the late 1980s and 1990s.  Were they really going to go around to all the Minor League teams and get photos of the players?  Most current Minor League team sets have better photography because card companies contract with local photographers to mix in some action shots.  The next time you run across a recent Minor League card look at the back.  Guarantee you there is a photo credit.  

 

The back is simple with Ray's previous Minor League stats.  Check out that photo in the top corner.  As I was saying above, stock photo.  

Not my favorite Lankford card by any stretch, but it's hard to be critical of Minor League cards from the mid 1990s and earlier.  Plenty of limitations and reasons why these sets turned out the way they did.  Just neat to be able to see pictures of players before they reached the Major Leagues.  

Dysfunctional and Talented

I spent a little bit of time last month working on my collection of 2006 Durham Bulls baseball cards.  That was the first full year that I lived in North Carolina.  It was easily one of the most talented Bulls team that I have seen.  High draft picks, Top 100 prospects, future Major League All-Stars, a World Series MVP, and plenty of other solid Major League players. 

The team was also easily one of the worst Bulls teams that I watched in terms of on-field play and their finish in the standings.  In the 15 years, I have been watching the Durham Bulls, it's the only one to finish in the bottom 5 teams in the International League.  

In spite of their lack of wins, the 2006 Durham Bulls is still a fun group of players to collect.  

You've probably seen a few of these guys.  

First up is a pair of B.J. Upton autographs.  Nothing too hard to find, not sure why I am only getting around to these two at this point.  

Above is a 2003 Topps autograph out of the base set.  The card below is from the 2005 Upper Deck Origins set.  Both on-card signatures.  These would have been pretty pricy back in the day.  Both cost me less than $5 combined.  

Next up is long-time Major League pitcher Jason Hammel.  He was a member of the 2016 World Series Championship team for the Cubs.  Hammel never appeared in a playoff game that season, but did win 15 during the regular season.  The 2016 Cubs actually had 3 former Durham Bulls players; Hammel, Mike Montgomery, and Ben Zobrist.  

Love this autograph.  

Next up is a pair of autographs from James Shields.  

Never a huge fan of Shields during his playing career, but I have grown to appreciate his time in Durham a little more since he retired.  He was a good player in Durham, just never understood the hype around him in the Majors.  Shields has a career Postseason ERA of almost 5.50.  Why is he nicknamed "Big Game"? 

 

Back to his time in Durham. Shields pitched the first home opener I ever attended for the Bulls in 2006.  He pitched 6 innings and did not give up an earned run.  The Rochester Red Wings did manage to score 3 unearned runs against Shields.  Upton hit a walk-off grand slam to win the game in the bottom of the 9th.  

I did not have a single Shields autograph in the collection.  At some point I owned one, but it appears I traded/gave it away at some point.  

Next up, Delmon Young.  

Only non-autograph in the post.  I don't really dig relic cards, but I liked the picture on this Bowman with Delmon standing in Comerica Park.  He never turned into the franchise player many thought he would be, but he had some great moments in his career, especially the Postseason, with the Tigers.  

Those green Devil Rays hats were terrible.    

Last Delmon autograph is a Topps Finest card.  I think I avoided all of the silver sticker autographs that I could back in the day.  Delmon has a ton of sticker autographs, so I usually stuck with the Upper Deck cards since the stickers were clear.  These are dirt cheap now.  

Last card.  

The 2006 International League MVP.  

Kevin Witt was a good prospect for the Blue Jays in the late 1990s.  They released him at some point and he bounced around between several teams before making his way to the Bulls in 2006.  He ended up hitting 36 home runs and driving in 99 runs in just 128 games.  Pretty good player, even if did not even amount to much in the Majors.  

I have several Witt autographs, but I never got around to adding this card.  He's not someone with a great signature, but this one is really weak.  The card only cost me $2 after shipping.  Not sure I can really complain at that price. 

Shades of Pat Burrell

Long ago, the Phillies selected Pat Burrell from the University of Miami with the first pick of the Major League Baseball draft.  All the baseball card companies rushed to throw his cards into packs.  I actually managed to pull a few Pat Burrell cards when they were popular and I also felt like I had somehow been ripped off.  It was not really the quality of the baseball cards that were disappointing, but Pat Burrell's signature made them hard to love.  

I still cringe to this date.  

It's hard to believe that Pat Burrell was popular at any point based on the quality of his autograph alone.  

Fast forward twenty years into the future.  

The San Francisco Giants selected NC State catcher Patrick Bailey in the first round of the Major League Draft. I was excited to see the former Wolfpack player play for the Giants and appear on a few baseball cards.  The baseball cards were actually slightly anticlimactic.  Bailey had been playing for USA Baseball for several years and had appear in all kinds of different Panini products.  

Not the best signature, but he was also in high school when this card was made.  Still, I was on the look-out for his cards right up to the moment when I saw his signature.  

It changed. 

Bailey has now been in professional baseball for over a year. Topps and Panini have cranked out a decent number of Patrick Bailey cards.  I am just getting around to adding a few of his autographed cards.   They weren't expensive or hard to find.  They just have an uncanny resemblance to the old Pat Burrell cards.  

This is a Bowman Chrome autograph of Bailey.  

I actually think Bailey has a worse signature than Burrell.  This card is actually the better of the two Patrick Bailey signatures in this post.  It's really hard to quantify, but this is a really bad signature.  This autograph feels like it's in the neighborhood of Geronimo Gil, who was an Orioles catcher in the early 2000s.  

Last Bailey card is from Bowman's Best.  

This one is even worse.  I feel so unsatisfied.  

I cannot wait to see Patrick Bailey in the Majors and I hope he has a long career.  I also hope he takes a little more time to sign his name in the future.  Bailey's autograph can only get better.  

I think.  

Random Ray - 1992 Topps

This is one of my favorite early cards of Ray Lankford.  

The 1992 Topps set was completely different.  No gum and no wax wrappers. White card stock rather than colored card stock. There were also parallel cards in every pack.  It was bizarre, but I really l like this set as a whole, especially the white card stock.  It gave the Topps cards a much needed lighter look.  

Here is the front of the card.  

Lankford earned a spot on the Topps All-Star Rookie team, so his card got the cool little cup logo in the corner.  There were some good names on the list of All-Star Rookie teams in the 1992 set with Hall of Famers Jeff Bagwell and Ivan Rodriguez as the headliners.  Luis Gonzalez and Chuck Knoblauch are also in the subset.  

I also like the picture of Lankford.  This feels like it's some combination of an action shot and portrait style picture.  It's definitely not staged like a portrait, Lankford is clearly sitting in the middle of the dugout talking to people, but the card still has many of the attributes of a portrait photo.  

Back of the card.  

If you have been a regular reader for a while, you probably know my interest in Ray Lankford started after I went to a game his rookie year where he hit for the cycle.  I am a big fan of any card that mentions the cycle.  

MLB consolidated the cycle down to a 55 second video clip on YouTube.  

The 1992 Topps set was also the first time the card company used color on the back of the cards.  

All of the 1992 Topps card backs have panoramic photographs of the stadiums.  The Busch Stadium picture looks out of proportion.  The arches look really flat and wide here with little height.  I am sure that the editor of the card stretched the photo to fit the space, which is what caused the loss in proportion.  

Here is a photo looking from the inside of the stadium out, but you can see the actual shape of the arches here.  Much different from the Topps photo.  

Walgreens Magic

There is a Walgreens store that is a 5 minute walk from my house.  I have a bit of a love-hate relationship store.  The store is slow and disorganized.  I used to get my prescriptions filled there.  I dropped them when they started texting me to tell me that my prescriptions were ready, but I had to wait 20 minutes for them to fill the order when I actually went into the store.  They once lost a prescription for my daughter.  It was sent electronically.  I was speechless.  

On the plus side, it's convenient and some of the people who work there are entertaining.  There is an older women who works in the morning.  She has worked there for at least 10 years, but complains about working there every time I am in the store. Her latest complaint a few weeks back was something along these lines: "I am restocking the candy aisle this morning. I hate the candy aisle. It's all because people buy our candy and smuggle it into the theater. When the theater was shutdown during COVID, nobody bought candy." 

One women sings along to everything on the intercom and there is a college girl who dances to everything on the intercom.  If there was a lip-synching competition that revolved around only Haim songs, they would win.  

The store manager reminds people to fill out the customer surveys so he gets a bonus at the end of the year.  At least he is honest.  

In the 10-plus years I have owned my house down the street from Walgreens, I have never seen a current year pack of baseball cards in the store. I like those $5 repacks.  Always fun to see all the 1980s and 1990s junk wax in the packs.  Recently pulled a 1988 Topps Dodgers Leaders card out of one of those packs.  

Cardinal legends Pedro Guerrero and Fernando Valenzuela on the card.  

A few weeks back I went to Walgreens at 10 at night.  My wife and I sat outside on our patio while our daughter was playing in the sandbox and our son was hitting some wiffleballs.  She got bitten up by something and sent me down the street after the kids went to bed to buy some Caladryl.  I walked through the store to the back corner where all the First-Aid stuff is located, found what I came for and started walking to the checkout counter.  

I went through the toy aisle and was shocked to see a pack of 2021 Topps cards. 

A little Walgreens magic.  

I have bought single 2021 cards, but this was my first actual pack of Topps.  Pretty amazing to make it more than half a year without opening a single pack of these cards.  Even though it's August, I am going to post the first card I pull out of a pack along with the first Cardinals and former Durham Bulls player as well.  

Here we go.  First card out of a Topps pack in 2021 is.....

former Duke Blue Devil Marcus Stroman.  Long time fan.  I am old enough to remember when Marcus was a second baseman at Duke.  Almost positive I went to an NC State/Duke game at some point where the starting second basemen for the two teams were Marcus Stroman and Russell Wilson.  I like the action shot on this card.  I also like that he looks short here.  If you were not aware, Marcus is really short.  He has a whole line of merchandise he promotes based on the fact that he is short.  

Next.  

Jordan Hicks is my first Cardinal.  The yellow bordered cards are Walgreens exclusives.  Hicks is diabetic and did not play last year.  Nice to see Topps still include him in the set.  

Last one.  

Nick Solak played for the Durham Bulls in 2019, but was traded to the Rangers for Peter Fairbanks.  Solak is solid player.  Prototypical Rays guy who they ran out at 5 different positions.  The Rangers use him the same way.  He's got some pop in his bat too.  The best part of the card is the powder blue Rangers uniform.  So much better than the Cardinals.  

These aren't my favorite cards by any means, but I am happy that I finally got to open a pack of cards from this year.