Friday Five: Super Bowlish Edition

It's not Friday, but it's the effort that counts. I love a good countdown post, but I have never consistently made them. Sometimes my day job interferes with other aspects of my life. 

It's Super Bowl weekend, so I am thinking about something with football.  

There is a bit of a problem though. 

If I had to make a post out of football cards, it would be short and feature only a few former NC State players I enjoyed watching along with a few Rams from their time in St. Louis. I might have enough Mike Glennon and/or Jacoby Brissett cards to give them their own post. I know everyone loves a good Mike Glennon card, so I am going to post one and let you know I went a different direction.  

Honestly, the title was just a ruse to get people to read the post. This is actually going to be about baseball cards, but they are all of a player who was in the NFL at one point thirty years ago. 

There are videos of Brian Jordan playing football on the internet, but most are over five minutes and you're not going to watch that. I am not either. Instead, here is Brian Jordan running over Gary Bennett with Vin Scully on the call.  

As a former Cardinals player, I have a healthy collection of Brian Jordan cards, so it took a few minutes to flip through them all and narrow the list down to five cards and a marble.  

Honorable Mention: 1997 Topps Pro Shooters Marble 

Ray Lankford is also in this set, which is why I ended up with the Brian Jordan marble. The guy who was selling these insisted that I needed to buy all his Cardinals marbles if I wanted the Lankford. Pretty interesting item and they have become rather difficult to find over the years. There are currently none for sale on Ebay or COMC. Although, someone is selling a wrapper on Ebay for $18.  

5. 2001 Fleer GameTime Patch Card 

There are not many Brian Jordan relic cards out there, let alone ones with patch pieces. Add in the fact that this is the only set that has a Ray Lankford relic, and its always been one of my favorites. If only it were a Cardinal card.  I own several copies of this card, all with different patch pieces. I need to scan them all and puzzle piece together how much of the Braves logo from his jersey I own.  

4. 1998 Fleer Ultra 

This is the best picture on a Brian Jordan card and it's not even close. Maybe it's silver medal to one of the cards on this list, but it is very, very good. This is one of those cards that is fifty cents on COMC and Ebay and there is no reason why you should not own it. I also own the fancy gold version, shown below, but not the ultra-fancy serial numbered version.  

3. 1996 Leaf Signature 

This was my first great Brian Jordan card, which fittingly came out in 1996. The 1996 Cardinals were a fun collection of young players from the post-Whiteyball rebuild (Jordan, Lankford), free agents (Ron Gant, Andy Benes), and Oakland A's retreads who came over with LaRussa (Stottlemyre, Eck). Also add in Ozzie Smith and Willie McGee to mix as bench players. Few remember the team coming within a win of the World Series. Lankford and Gant were better players than Jordan during the regular season, but Jordan was incredibly clutch for the team in the playoffs. 

The best of those clutch moments was his series clinching home run off of Trevor Hoffman in Game 4 of the NLDS.  

Jordan has also signed a bunch of cards for the Topps Archives Signature products, some of which are really nice. My favorite is this autograph on his 1997 Topps card. If I were going Top 10, this would have made it. I will add it as a mid-post Honorable Mention instead.  

2. 1998 Topps 

Easily one of the best Cardinals cards that Topps has ever produced for their flagship set. This is the best picture on a Jordan card, gold medal all the way. You know the Bo Jackson card where he is wearing shoulder pads with a bat across his shoulders? That's a great card, but I think this is its equal in many ways in the eyes of people who collect Cardinals cards. If nothing else, Jordan had a much better baseball career than Bo.  

It's true.  

1. 2000 Hologrfx Piece of the Series 

Brian Jordan's lone career World Series appearance came in 1999 as a member of the Braves. He played a very well in both the NLDS and NLCS, most notably hitting a home run off of Mike Hampton in Game 3 of the first round with the Braves trailing late in the game. Had the Braves lost, they would have been down 2-1 in the Series and facing elimination on the road.  

Upper Deck made a nice World Series themed insert for their 2000 Hologrfx product, which featured the stat players from the Braves and Yankees. Each player had a relic card that featured a "game-used" piece of base. Don't get me started and also an autographed parallel numbered to the players uniform number.  

Super rare Jordan autograph shown above. Base insert card with base shown below.  

Let's do this again next weekend.  Maybe even on Friday.