Random Ray - 1999 Topps Gallery

I was always a big fan of the Topps Gallery cards in the 1990s. 

Good looking set with nice inserts.  

Here is the front of the 1999 Topps Gallery Ray Lankford card.  

The texture on the front of the card is really neat, but unfortunately lost on the scan. It's printed on card stock, but has sort of a canvas feel to it. Definitely a unique feel to the card when you pick it up. Previous renditions of this product had a frame design around the edge of the card, which allowed for a bigger player picture, but I like the white edges with the hazy, colored border around the photo.  

The base cards all had an action picture. Here we have Lankford looking in towards home plate as he is running. It's likely a hit and run, but we will get that on the back of the card. Ray had good speed until the end of his career when his knees got a little gimpy. Even after he moved to left field and stopped stealing bases, Ray was still a good base runner.  

Definitely an old cookie cutter stadium here with the astroturf and baggie, likely covering up football seating, behind the outfield wall. Leaning Philadelphia. 

Back of the card.  

I am not big on busy card backs, but this one actually works for me.  

I like the picture at the top. Easily the highlight of the back. A little curious as to what is going on in the picture. Guessing that Ray is looking for a ball mark on the bat. Something you don't see everyday on a baseball card.

I also love the stat breakdown in the middle where you can see the player performance by month. Something different, impressed that they had on-base percentage on a baseball card pre-Moneyball.  Ray had a really good September in 1998.   

The bottom section is fine. I think I mentioned on a previous Random Ray post that the default Topps comment for the back of a Ray Lankford card was that he played football at a junior college and rushed for 1,000 yards. The Carl Nichols factoid appears frequently too, but he was a catcher, not an outfielder. Guess the editor was having an off day. I actually wish they had skipped this information and gone into more detail about the front picture under the Front Photo heading.  

Clearly, he's running on a hit and run. Who was hitting and where were the playing? Did they win? It was 1998, so McGwire probably hit a home run and they lost.  

Hope You Can Help The Ballclub......

Do you play fantasy baseball?  

I had not played in roughly a decade, but decided to take on a team this year. I figured I was going to be a little rusty, so I just signed up for a team on Yahoo.That's all people do on Yahoo these days, right?  

Anyway, my team is doing well. I am currently in fifth place a few games out of first place in a 12 team league. My team is heavy on offense, I tend to fill in my pitching stats by picking up probable starters. I have always used that approach with my teams and it has generally worked well. 

Anyway, besides playing fantasy baseball for the competition, I learn a lot about some players I might otherwise miss. It also is a great excuse to go find some baseball cards of these new found players. There are several non-Durham Bulls/non-Cardinals who have helped my fantasy baseball team this year and four of them have also joined my baseball card collection. 

Hope these guys can still help my baseball team and my card collection.  

First up, Braves pitcher Bryce Elder.  

He's won a bunch of games and has a low ERA. Not the best strikeout pitcher, but a solid contributor to my baseball team. I worry that his first half performance has been "smoke and mirrors", but I am not really attached to starting pitchers. I will move on to someone else.  

In the meantime, Bryce has some nice on-card autographs. Picked up a 2021 Heritage Minor League card from his time in the Gulf Coast League.  

Next up is Yandy Diaz.  

Yandy has also been a good average and on-base player, but the extra base hits have been a pleasant surprise this year. I originally had him on my roster to balance out some of my power guys who hit for a lower average, but Yandy is actually hitting home runs this year.  

Yandy is on the Rays, so it might be a little surprising that I don't own one of his autographs already. However, Yandy was never actually on the Durham Bulls. He came up with Cleveland, played part of two seasons with the Guardians, and then was traded to the Rays. Yandy never touched Triple-A with the Rays and won't at this point barring an injury-rehab assignment.  

Yandy has only two certified autographs, both stickers, and they are messy. Yandy has a really tall signature and should not be trying to squeeze it onto a sticker autograph.  

Next.  

I kind of dig this card as much as I have enjoyed Mitch Keller's wins and strikeouts during the first half of the baseball season. When did this guy turn into a good player? He's like the one pitcher on my roster, not quite, that I won't release after every start and resign two weeks later.  

The card is a Bowman Tek, which only lasted one year. It was like Topps Tek, but with prospects. I am guessing it was not a very successful set and this card only cost me $2.  

Last one.  

Bryan Reynolds is my glue guy. I have Ronald Acuna, Corbin Carroll, and Wander Franco doing a lot of the heavy lifting for my offense, but Bryan Reynolds helps out everywhere. His average is decent, he hits for power sometimes, and he steals bases. At the end of the week when I look at my totals and see that I won a category by 1 home run/stolen base/run, I can look down and see that Bryan Reynolds is the player that put me over for the week.  

Fist bump.  

Reynolds was good last year and I guess his cards are becoming more popular.  At $12, this is the most money I have spent on a modern Pirates card in at least a decade. 

Only $9.99, Part 2

 The second half of the 2023 Durham Bulls. 

This first group is soild. All of these players are 25 or younger and all of them will end up in the Majors at some point in the near future. Although, LaSorsa got traded to the Nationals. Manzardo and Mead will likely be starters with the Rays, Misner is a great defensive outfielder. McKendry is a middle of the rotation starter.  Lopez is a good left-handed reliever.  

Mead is the best prospect in this group and should be the Rays third baseman by the beginning of next year. He is consensus Top 100 prospect across the board. The Rays actually got Mead from the Phillies in a trade for a Minor League relief pitcher. Pretty good deal.  

In this group, I like Rene Pinto and Luis Patino. The Rays got Patino from the Padres for Blake Snell. Rene Pinto is a catcher who seems fairly talented, but he's on his third season in a row with the Bulls.  As good as the Rays are at making their own players, they are not good with catchers. Pinto is honestly one of the better homegrown catchers I have seen over the past decade.  

Card backs, a little crooked.  

Last few players along with the manager, pitching coach, hitting coach, and strength and conditioning coach. Brian Reith is the only coach on the Bulls who played in the Majors. He was a middle reliever and spot starter for the Reds in the early 2000s and ended his career with an ERA of almost 6.  

The bios of the coaching staff.  

Trainer, trainer, bench coach, mascot. 

 I like Wool E. Bull's giant Championship Ring. I have never seen him with that ring.  

That's all for the official 2023 Durham Bulls team set. Funny thing, I basically ran into a second Durham Bulls team set this week. I will have to post it in the next few days.  

Only $9.99, Part 1

The past two years, the Durham Bulls have had some high-end prospects on their roster. It would have been fun to own a Durham Bulls team set from one of those two years, but unfortunately a small group of Ebay sellers bought the majority of the cards and are currently selling them at a small profit.  

The sets are $9.99 in the team store.

I honestly cannot comprehend spending $40 on a Minor League team set and am a little disappointed that people actually bought these cards at that price. 

You know what they say about feeding trolls.....

Nobody on the 2023 Durham Bulls has the ceiling of Wander Franco, but they are still a really good team with several Top 100 prospects. They are currently in second place and likely won't catch the first place Norfolk Tides (Orioles) before the end of the first half.

I attended a Durham Bulls game last week and had the good fortune to find a copy of the 2023 Durham Bulls team set.  

My view for the game.  

This is the first half of my $9.99 Durham Bulls team set.  

I am actually impressed by the number of cards included. These are typically between 25-30 cards, but the 2023 Bulls set comes in at 41 cards. I scanned them in groups of 6, but also made a single card scan of one card to give you a close up of the design. There will be 19 cards in this post, 21 in the second post.  

This is the last card in the set.  

Ripken The Bat dog appears at one Durham Bulls game per home stand. The team actually borrowed the concept from the Greensboro Grasshoppers who have had bat dogs for as long as I have lived in North Carolina. That's been a few minutes.  

Ripken is a bit of a local celebrity. He also retrieves the kicking tee at NC State football games and does puck drops with the Carolina Hurricanes.  

As for the design, it's simple and I really like it for a Minor League team set. Save the flash, give me nice photos of the players. The back is similar with a simple design, but I like that there is a second picture on the back. I will have to go back and look, but I don't remember another Durham Bulls set with this feature prior to this year.  

Ripken has a write up on the back, along with a few of the other coaches and staff member included on the checklist, but the player cards have their statistics.  

First group of cards.  

Basabe, Aranda, and Taj Bradley will all be regulars in the Majors at some point.  

Brigden and Bristo are 4A players.  

Not sure about my mind is made up about Roberto Alvarez. He's a good defensive catcher, but not the best hitter. Feels like good defensive catchers always stick around. I saw him Roberto Alvarez pitch a few weeks back in a game where the Bulls were losing badly.  

He was throwing in the mid 40s.  

He did not give up a run.  

Back of the cards.  

I like that they included a details about how the player ended up in the Rays organization. International Free Agents and Draft Picks by the Rays tend to turn out pretty well, signed as a Minor League Free Agent is code for journeyman Minor Leaguer. 

Second group of cards.  

Brujan is the only prospect in this group.  

The rest of these players have all been in the Majors at some point and are trying to get back there, or spending their time shuffling between the Durham and Tampa.  

It would be nice if the Rays left Vidal Brujan up in the Majors or traded him to a team that would leave him in the Majors. Maybe at the trade deadline this year.....

Last group of cards for this post.  

Two of my favorite Bulls players are in this group. I am a big fan of Niko Hulsizer and Tristan Gray. I don't think Gray is much of a prospect at this point, but he has a huge swing and hits a ton of home runs.  Last year, Gray led all of Triple A in home runs. He's slowed down a bit this year, but still fun to watch.  

Hulsizer is one of those sleeper prospects. He's been around for awhile, but every time I see him he looks better. He's got a couple of really cheap Bowman autographs, if you're into rolling the dice on prospects.  

The rest of these players are Minor League free agents who are hanging onto their careers in Triple A.  

Here are the card backs. 

Sorry, Trevor Kelley is crooked. 

Random Ray- 2023 Donruss

I am surprised to be here writing about a brand new Ray Lankford card from a Donruss set.  

I thought Ray might get a Topps Archives card at some point, but Donruss?  

Here is the card.  

The front is really busy, but it does a great job of distracting me from the fact that the Cardinals logo has been airbrushed off the front of Ray's jersey and hat on the front of this card. The photo is obviously from Wrigley Field and was taken during the 2004 season, as Lankford is wearing 12 on his uniform. He wore 16 the rest of his career, but Reggie Sanders was wearing 16 for the Cardinals in 2004.  

Ray Lankford was a bench player in 2004, so I thought I might be able to narrow the photograph down to a single game. However, the 2004 Chicago Cubs had zero left-handed starting pitchers, so Ray played a lot of games against the Cubs that season. Many of those games were day games at Wrigley Field.  

Back of the card.  

A little less busy than the front of the card and I like the green color.  

The write-up on this card is also really nice. It would be really easy to write up something about one of Lankford's seasons from the late 1990s when he was batting behind Mark McGwire. He had some good stat lines, but I like that Donruss went with numbers from early in his career, little bit more challenging, and made a good connection with another player from St. Louis.  

Very well done, Panini.  

Excellent card.  

Sellers' Regret

I used to love Pacific autographs.

I had tons of them.  

One of my favorite Pacific autograph sets were the Die-cut autographs in the 2000 Omega set. They were great looking cards. 

Here is my copy of the Gary Sheffield autograph as an example.  

I did not have the whole set or anything. Putting together whole autograph sets is not really my scene. Always seems like a lot of time and money to accomplish that sort of thing, but I know there are plenty of collectors whose opinions differ from mine. 

So, roughly ten years ago I ran into such a collector in a Facebook collecting group. We had actually made a few trades when he posted that he trying to finish up a project to complete the Pacific Omega autograph set. He was missing two autographs, both Cardinals. Cal Eldred is a White Sox on his card, but I owned the card because he was on the Cardinals for three years.  

I sold him the two cards.  

Do I miss Cal Eldred?  

No. 

Do I miss the other card? 

All the time.  

I have not been the best about searching out Ebay and COMC for the card, but I also no that it does not come up often and can cost more than I am willing to spend when it does appear. Well, this weekend I saw a copy on a Facebook group for a reasonable price and ended up buying it.  

The card.  

One of the worst cases of sellers' regret that I have ever experienced.  

I have plenty of other Jim Edmonds autographs hanging out in my card room, but this was always one of my favorites. In retrospect, it is kind of crazy that I sold it, because I rarely sell off my cards. I give them away and I trade, not a seller though. I was being too nice.  

Here is the back of the card.....

Love that Pacific gives you a write-up about the player rather than one of those "Congratulations" messages that are typically stamped on the back of certified autographs.  

Love that Pacific used a picture of Jim Edmonds with frosted tips in his hair. It's the type of fashion statement that is the perfect intersection between bad late 1990s/early 2000s style and the persona of Jim Edmonds, or "Jimmy Ballgame".

Needless to say, the card is staying in my collection this time around.  

Pujols Post - 2003 Fleer Ultra

The card lists Albert Pujols' position as outfield, but I am going to ignore that and focus on the fact that the front of the card shows him playing third base. The Cardinals traded for Scott Rolen in the middle of the 2002 season, so this was the end of Albert's run as a third baseman.  

Soak in that picture.....

It's really nice.  

Beyond the photograph, the design of the front is fine for a Fleer Ultra card. The yellow is a little much, but at least it's a secondary color on the name bar. The whole thing could be yellow and that would stink. 

Back of the card.   

I love the red background with the white print. It really pops. The yellow is a little harder to ignore on the back of the card, but still not bad. Again, I can live with it.  Nice little write up too.  

Overall, this is a great card.  The picture on the front makes it all work.  

Something Different

Roughly 95% of the posts on this blog are about Durham Bulls or Cardinals players. That might actually be a touch low. 

Anyway, in an attempt to branch out, I have decided that there are other good players on other teams. Some of those good players have baseball cards and some of those cards might look nice in my collection.  

Enter Luis Arraez.

He is hitting .400. That's really all he is doing. Beyond the .400 average, Arraez has hit1 home run and stolen 1 base. So, not much power and not much speed, just hits.  

I recently bought one of his autographs, which came from last year's Gypsy Queen set.   

I have no idea what Topps has done with the design of this product in recent years. The important thing is that it's an on-card autograph.  

It would be cool to see someone hit .400 and Arraez seems to have a chance.  

Go team.  

New Season, New Players

We are 60 games into the Minor League Season.  

I have been to a few Durham Bulls games this year.  

There are a lot of new faces on the team this year and I have been working hard the last few weeks to pick up some cards from the new players. I am going to sort them out by quality of prospect, but some of these players are flying completely under the baseball card radar.  

First up, Taj Bradley.  

He's actually pitched a bunch of games with the Rays this year. As good as the Rays have been, they have had a ton of pitching injuries. Taj Bradley is a Top 100 Prospect across the board, throws hard, and looks like all the other pitchers the Rays crank out. Somehow he has a bunch of autographs that are between $10-$20. I have not seen Taj in person yet this year, but I imagine the Rays will send him back to Triple A once some other pitchers come back.  

Next up is Curtis Mead.  

He's going to be the third baseman for Rays at some point, but he's currently on the injured list for the Bulls. Mead is not a new face. He debuted with the Bulls back in 2021. I actually got to see his Triple A debut, which was a little odd. The Rays had to call someone up unexpectedly, the Bulls had a thin roster, so they promoted Mead from A Ball (Charleston, SC) because he could drive to Durham for the game. 

I went for Adley Rutschman, but also got Curtis Mead and Felix Bautista.  

Mead is another Top 100 Prospect. He's also Australian, that's a bonus. 

You do not get many MLB players from Idaho, but Kyle Manzardo is from the Potato State. He is also another Top 100 Prospect. Good looking first baseman/outfielder, nice looking left-handed swing.  Super cheap baseball cards too.  

This is actually a double. I picked it up in a trade, but still love Jonathan Aranda. He was on the Bulls last year, back this year. Aranda can hit, but does not really have a defensive position. Should I say it?

He's a Top 100 Prospect, but only on the Baseball America list.  

That's four Top 100 Prospects and none of them are the best player I have seen in a Bulls game this year. It's tough watching the Bulls some days. 

On to a pair of non-Top 100 Prospects.  

Picked up a pair of Kameron Misner cards. He's a Missouri native, from Poplar Bluff, and also played at Mizzou during college. Misner was drafted by the Marlins and traded to the Rays last summer for Joey Wendle. No Rays cards yet, so I went for a Marlins rookie card and a sparkly Mizzou card from Panini. 

Misner is a really good defender in the outfield, but not the best hitter. Although, he has a crazy walk rate. Misner has around 200 at-bats and has walked almost 40 times. He's doesn't quite lead the league, but close.  

Last one for tonight. 

Tanner Murray has only played a few games this year. Three of them were with the Bulls. Why did I get this card?  I am a sucker for combined shipping and this card was two dollars. That's a pretty good deal for a Bowman Chrome autograph.  

Murray was decent in the lower Minors the past two years, so why not?  

A few more Durham Bulls related cards next week.