Ray Lankford was once in the All-Star Game Home Run Derby.
The video is kind of grainy and Chris Berman spent the majority of Lankford's time batting talking about Mark McGwire and Ken Griffey Jr, all of which reminds me that Chris Berman is in the same ballpark as Matt Lauer.
Here is a photo of Ray in the 1997 Home Run Derby at Jacobs Field. Errr Progressive Field.
Ray did not win the Home Run Derby, but he did get a Pinnacle card commemorating his appearance in the annual All-Star Game event that happens to be a personal favorite. For this post, I am actually using the Jumbo version of the card. It's larger than the regular card (of course) and it also has a different card number. The regular Pinnacle Lankford card is 195 in the set, the Jumbo card is 14.
Here is the front of the card......
Let's start with the obvious. "Goin Jake" is a great subset name for this group of All-Star Game cards.
The picture of Lankford in the foreground is from the Home Run Derby. Nice action shot of Ray taking a swing during the derby. I kind of dig the All-Star Game batting practice jerseys with the National League label going across the front with the All-Star Game logo underneath and the team logo on the sleeve. I thought the Cardinals had kicked the circle logo with the Redbird logo to the curb at this point, but apparently not.
The background is the interesting part of this card. I assumed that this picture was from the All-Star Game introductions, but there are way too many players wearing jackets and uniforms that match. Watching the player introductions from that All-Star Game, the players did not wear jackets and the players still wore their team uniforms. No goofy Nike All-Star Game jerseys.
I would guess that the background picture is from something like the Indians Opening Day Game or maybe a playoff game. Some other event that featured player introductions.
Back of the card.
Nice write-up on the back for Lankford. I am dumbfounded how it took Ray Lankford until 1997 to make an All-Star team. The Cardinals were terrible in the 1990s, like one player at the All-Star Game bad, but Ray Lankford was typically their best player. How did it take him this long to make it?
A few minutes of research shows that people were still voting Ozzie Smith on the All-Star team even after his throwing arm fell off at the end of his career.
I like that we also get a second photo from the Home Run Derby.
Overall, a really nice card celebrating one of the best moments of Ray Lankford's career.
I loved the late 1990s Skybox EX sets. They are one of the best acetate cards sets ever produced and I was really sad when the product moved to a more standard baseball card in 2000. The standard baseball card trend continued in 2001 and 2002 when the product transitioned over to the Fleer brand. Luckily, Fleer produced one final acetate EX set in 2003.
These are not quite as good as the 1998 and 1999 sets, but it's in the same neighborhood.
Here is the front of the card.
The background is transparent, while the Cardinals logo, player name and number are all translucent. The squares and player picture are all solid. Just a really nice looking card. I love the action shot of Pujols hitting. The colors are nice too. The two background squares have a reflective finish that has a warm glow in the light that matches the gold and red color used for Pujols name at the bottom of the card.
Back of the card.
The stats on the back are a little bit odd with them just being placed in a list on the square area. Still I understand the need for the design given the square shape is the one constant on all of the cards in this set. I also like the lower group of stats showing the career highs for the player. Pujols had only played two years at this point, but the career high numbers are still really impressive.
I never understand people who are mean to Minor League players.
Generally speaking, Minor League players are underpaid and are working hard to make the Majors.
Be kind to the Minor Leaguers, they might just be nice back to you.
My latest Around The Card Room item is a game-used bat from every Rays fans least favorite number one overall draft pick, Tim Beckham. The biggest problem with Tim was that he was a fairly average Major League player who was not Buster Posey. I am not going to rehash the whole saga of Tim Beckham, but here is a two sentence synopsis:
The Rays selected high school shortstop Tim Beckham first overall in the 2008 Major League Draft ahead of Florida State catcher Buster Posey, Vanderbilt third baseman Pedro Alvarez, and others. Buster Posey helped the Giants win the 2010 World Series and no Rays fan has ever forgiven Tim Beckham for making this happen.
Tim Beckham was a good player for the Durham Bulls and I never saw the need to complain about him. His numbers could have been better, but it was also clear he was a highly skilled player. Beckham was exciting and talented even though his name is not Buster Posey.
In fact, Tim Beckham was one of the regular players on one of my favorite Durham Bulls teams. His second season with the Bulls was in 2013 and the team won the International League Championship. The featured Wil Myers, Chris Archer, Merril Kelly, Jake Odorizzi, Kevin Kiermaier, and many other Major League players. Pretty good company.
As the President, Vice President, Treasurer, and only member of the Tim Beckham Fan Club (I am joking, kind of....) I was gifted a game used bat at the end of the 2013 season.
Here is the bat:
There is a small, horizontal crack in the handle, which is why there are two pieces of tape wrapped the bat. Outside of the crack, it's a really nice game-used bat. Looking at all the ball marks, it was clearly used for awhile before it cracked.
Beckham signed the barrel with a silver paint pen.
You can see a few of the ball marks around the signature and the label on the bat.
Here is the knob of the bat.....
Interesting that there are no markings here, just the manufacturer sticker. I own several used bats and I believe this is the only one without any sort of markings or identification on the knob. Maybe he was the only player on the team who used this brand of bat or it stood out without marking the knob.
Here is the barrel of the bat, which has been cupped out.
Overall, this Tim Beckham bat is one of my favorite Durham Bulls items in my baseball card room and it hangs prominently next to my Ozzie Smith bat.
The Ozzie Smith bat needs a post one of these days.
The 2023 Topps Heritage Blake Snell Autograph is the 81st Blake Snell autograph in my collection.
I was excited to see a few brand new 2023 Blake Snell autographs come up in the past month. I was worried for a second that he had stopped signing for the year. It is his walk year, so I figured he might just be strictly focused on pitching this year. He has definitely slowed down. There are currently two out there with this being the first current year autograph I have added to my collection.
Here is the front of the card.....
Typical of the Heritage cards from this year, which borrow the design of from the 1974 Topps, this Snell features a tightly cropped portrait style photo. The Padres cards all have the orangish-brown team name boxes and yellow picture frame. Snell's signature has its usual appearance. It's Heritage, so the autograph is on-card.
Very nice looking card front.
Back of the card.
I like that the Heritage autographs have the same back as the base card with the exception of the card number in the top left corner. You get the autograph, plus all the player stats, two really cool factoids about Snell's 2020 World Series appearance, the player information, and a cartoon of Blake Snell holding a what is supposed to be a Cy Young Award.
Sounds a bit like an infomercial......
But wait there's more.......
Not really.
Remember that time Blake Snell was pitching for the Rays in the World Series and had a ton of strikeouts and a two-hitter in the sixth inning and then the Rays manager pulled him out of the game?
This week's Set Appreciation Post has a special guest, my six year-old daughter.
She is a kindergartener who has some strong opinions on life and a love of art work. Parts of our house are frequently converted into art galleries for whatever art she is working on at the moment. Her art does not always stay on paper though. Sometimes, it appears in other forms.
For example, after returning home from a trip to Washington, D.C. this spring my computer was covered in sticky notes. Each sticky note was its own piece of art work, but it also somehow formed a larger work.
The explanation would take several minutes and there would be no baseball cards in this post if I wrote everything she said about the sticky note art work.
She already has some opinions about my baseball cards.
For example, according to her, my baseball card boxes are all pretty boring because they are plain white. She thinks that I should have the outside of the boxes match the baseball cards that are on the inside. At some point last year, she attempted to decorate the boxes for my autographed cards, which all have the letter "N" scribbled on the outside of them. She had bigger plans that her stopped. According to her, someone wrote on the cards inside the box, so she wrote the first letter of her name on the outside of the box.
They match and she is willing to add more art to the outside of the boxes.
I have not allowed her to continue to do her art work on my baseball card boxes, but that did not stop her from doing one final piece of art work on my box holding my copy of the 1995 Select Certified set. The cards are bright and shiny, so the box should match, right?
Here is the top.
Here is the front.
Her median was 1990 Upper Deck team logo stickers.
Let's talk about the cards.
Each of us will provide a take on the 1995 Select Certified set.
Here is the basic design of the 1995 Select Certified cards.
I really like the dark greyscale background behind the color photos, which is something different. I also like the card stock and texture. It's not exactly a thick paper stock, but definitely has a sturdy feel to the card. There is a glossy finish, which I think is interesting on a card that uses a greyscale background.
My daughter does not like this design and wants to know why a brighter color like purple was not used in the background. She suggests a pattern that you could color in like a coloring book.
That's actually not a bad idea.
I love the breakdown of the stats by team on the back of the card. It's like the Bowman cards, but with more color and better graphics. Sure, you get less numbers, but you still get a good sense of how the player faired against each team. Bonds torched the Expos in 1994, which is saying something because they were easily the best team in the National League.
My daughter likes that Barry Bonds is willing to wear earrings on his baseball card, but thinks at least one team should use a pony or hearts as their logo.
My favorite card of a former Durham Bulls player in this set is Chipper Jones. His early cards are always fun, looks a little silly here with the huge swing. I will add that the number of former Bulls players in this set is fairly small and the other choices had rather blah looking pictures.
The card did not scan well, but Chipper is actually apart of the Rookie subset in Select Certified and the background of the card is half grey and half gold. That stamp does not exactly show a ton of creativity.
My daughter also picked out this card for her favorite Durham Bulls player in the set, although her explanation started out with, "Have you ever ate lunch with boys at school?" and ended with "making farting noises". It took her about two minutes to explain the whole thing, I will let your imagination fill in the middle of the conversation.
My favorite Cardinals card in the set......
is Bernard Gilkey.
Several of the Cardinals players are pictured in road uniforms, which are nice, but are also a gray uniform on a dark gray background. I do like the action shot on the front of this card, but also really like the way that the white home uniform with the red helmet and uniform accessories pop on the dark background.
My daughter did not pick a favorite Cardinals card, because "none of them are very nice looking" and added a "No, thank you" when I told her that she needed to pick a Cardinals card. Later in the post she does pick a former Cardinals player card for her favorite overall card from the set.
Let me off-road a few other things I like about this set, but the little one rejoins the conversation.
One of the best parts of Select Certified is the Gold Mirror parallels.
I am generally not a parallel person, but this one is well done. There were a few Gold cards in every box, no serial numbers, and it's the only parallel that came in the product. Over the years, I have put together the complete set of Cardinals and I am close to having all the former Durham Bulls players. Good looking set of cards.
If you don't dig the dark background of the base cards, these are a really nice option and they are generally not that expensive compared to the price of other popular 1990s parallels at the moment.
Moving on.
Select Certified is a small set with only 135 cards in the set. There were 28 Major League teams in 1995, so there are roughly 4 to 5 cards for each team. Small sets generally tend to stick to the big names on rosters and not stray into many subsets or special cards. Select Certified has a bit of both.
The Dodgers got a special card for having three players win the Rookie of the Year in a row.
Eddie Murray also got a special card for collecting his 3,000 hit in 1994.
Always cool to see these kinds of cards to mark special accomplishments, especially on a small checklist like Select Certified. There are also Rookie Subset cards. I posted one at the top of the post with the Chipper Jones card, but the scan did not do a good job of showing the card.
Here is another Rookie subset with a picture taken using my phone's camera.
There are actually some pretty big names in the Rookie subset with Jeter and ARod. A few others including one later in the post. The Jeter and ARod are not actually rookie cards, but still early cards that are fun to own. You can see the two-toned background a little better on photograph.
Let's bring the little one back in to finish up the post and talk about our favorite cards.
My daughter is up first with Mark McGwire.
She picked this card, because Mark McGwire is the only player in the set with long hair.
That's it, her whole reason for picking the card. I will add for context that her favorite Disney Princess is Rapunzel, and that she keeps her hair long and it must be styled everyday before she goes to school. I would like to see Mark McGwire rock some bubble braids.
I went a little different direction for my favorite non-Cardinal, non-Durham Bulls card from this set. I decided to pick the Hideo Nomo rookie card.
Every year the baseball card world goes crazy of a certain player or two. In 1995, there was Nonomania. Everyone wanted a Hideo Nomo card and this was one of my favorites. A great card from the mid 1990s, I think if I made a list of the best cards from my time in high school, this card would be on the list.
How does it rank on my list?
It has been a hot minute since I have done a set appreciation post. The last set I added to my list was the 2001 Donruss set last November. The set was terrible. The 1995 Select Certified set is definitely not terrible. In fact, it's a pretty good set of baseball cards.
Narrow it down. Looking at the top half of the sets I have posted, I think it's better than Emotion XL (they are kind of similar though) and the 2017 Heritage Minor League set. Topps TEK feels like the right neighborhood. I am actually going to give Select Certified the slight nod given its a set that you can actually complete, unlike Topps Tek's 8,100 card craziness.
