Around The Card Room, Take 4

Most of the early 2000s Cardinals bobblehead giveaways were connected to players winning various awards. In 2003, the team did an Edgar Renteria bobblehead day against the San Diego Padres for winning the 2002 National League Gold Glove at shortstop. My parents had season tickets, but were often willing to give up their tickets on bobblehead days. The lines to get into the stadium tend to be long and certain fans are rather aggressive.  

I was willing to play along for an Edgar Renteria bobblehead, which doesn't really sound interesting until you hear about what happened during the game. It was a rarity in a Hall of Fame career.  

First, the bobblehead.  

It's a solid bobblehead. I like the Gold Glove and the Cardinals always do a nice job of making good figurines of their players.  The piping around the front of the jersey has faded a little over time, but that's to be expected.  

The back is nice as well. 

Now, about the game. The Cardinals were playing the Padres. The previous night, the Cardinals had won the game on an Albert Pujols home run in extra innings. It was actually his first career walk-off home run. The video is below, notice Albert does not run when he first hits the pitch and Padres catcher Gary Bennett lingers around home plate as the Cardinals come out of the dugout to celebrate.  

In the postgame write up, Pujols said he did not run, which angered Bennett, because he thought he got under the ball, he hit it towards the end of the bat, and left fielder was actually tracking the ball like he was going to catch it.  In summation, it was either a fly out to the left fielder or a home run.  

Fast forward to Edgar Renteria Bobblehead Day. Albert Pujols comes up in the first and Padres pitcher Adam Eaton hits him with the first pitch. Gary Bennett got in his face and Albert pushed him out of the way. No video of the fight, but there is an AP Wire photo.  

Pujols was replaced with reserve outfielder Orlando Palmeiro.  

This was the only time in Pujols career that he was ejected for fighting. I actually had an interaction with Gary Bennett on Twitter a few years back about this fight. Believe it or not, but Gary thinks baseball players should put their heads down, play, and not celebrate.  Hard to believe.  

Gary wants you to know that it was a curveball and the pitch hit Albert on the shoulder.  

Bowman Season

Topps brought Bowman back while I was in late elementary school. I really enjoyed the cards outside of the fact that they did not fit very well into plastic sheets.  I did not buy any special sheets or boxes, and it's pretty easy to flip through my 1989 Bowman cards and figure out the ones I actually opened in 1989, versus the ones I have opened later in life. I love them still the same. 

My best memory of the 1989 Bowman set was pulling my first Ken Griffey Jr. rookie card.

Great card.  Really underrated in my opinion. 

In the 30 years since I opened my first pack of Bowman cards, I have generally enjoyed this product.  There were some blah years during the early 1990s where it felt like a second Topps base set, but I even enjoy looking at those cards from time to time.  For example, the time that Topps squeezed a Jamie Moyer Cardinals card into the 1991 set.

Not the finest moment of his career, and not many cards were made of him wearing a Cardinals uniform.  

When Bowman transitioned to being a prospect heavy set in the mid 1990s, I played along and found all of the cool rookie cards.  I watched the Cardinals, and did not know much about Minor Leaguers at that point, but I learned.  If nothing else, I would find cards of the Cardinals prospects.  I have all my favorite Redbirds from the 1990s and early 2000s who had really good Bowman cards.  

Scott Rolen.  

Chris Carpenter.  

Albert Pujols.  

They made Bowman spin offs like Bowman Chrome.  Yep, got those too.  

Another good 1990s Cardinals player.

Eventually, I even picked up the really popular rookie cards, like Vladimir Guerrero that I did not pull out of packs, or buy at the time the Bowman product for the year was released.  

Bowman Autographs.  Huge fan.  

I have always had a soft spot for the 1997 Bowman Lance Berkman card where he is standing by the old pickup track in front of the AstroDome.  Got to fit this card into the post.

Yes, it took money to buy Bowman cards, but they were a reasonably priced pack of cards.  It was a set you could assemble on a budget.  When players did not pan out for whatever reason?  

Who remembers Matt Anderson?  Nobody spent a small fortune on his cards, at least I do not think they did.  Probably not.  

I loved Bowman, but they feel different now.  How does someone go from thorough enjoyment of a baseball card product to annoyance and negative feelings?  I would like to point a finger squarely at the Steven Strasburg craze in 2010 as the starting point. That entire summer was filled with baseball card people going crazy over packs of Bowman cards, Strasburg autographs, and all the different parallel cards.

Can I buy Bowman cards at Wal-Mart and Target?  Normally, the answer is yes, but not the summer that Strasburg rolled around.  I think I ended up buying a box from someone online, but was highly annoyed that it was more expensive than normal.  At some point that summer, I was booted from a Facebook Baseball Card Group for rejecting a trade that involved me taking a Strasburg autograph and giving up autographs of Stan Musial, Ernie Banks, and Yogi Berra.  

I regret nothing.  

I saw Strasburg pitch at USA Baseball when he was at college, seemed like a pretty incredible talent, so I am not sure I could really fault people for being all in on finding his cards.  There has always been that sort of feel with Bowman since the late 1990s, it just seemed to go to the next level with Strasburg. I was hoping it would be a one year phase.  

It was not.  

The craze over Bowman has continued since, in what feels like a now annual event.  There was the Bryce Harper year, something about Kris Bryant, some other people I am not remembering off the top of my head, Wander Franco, and now we are on some kid from the Yankees who has not even played a game stateside.

I am not even going to touch a pack of Bowman cards this year.  

I may not even touch a loose single Bowman card this year.  

To me, there is simply no enjoyment in this product anymore.  I can basically narrow my dislike of Bowman down to two different factors. 

1. Money 

Money for baseball cards is finite in my world, and Bowman has become pricy.  I am not going to screen shot some baseball card stores site for this post, but they are generally selling jumbo boxes in the neighborhood of $400.  That's quite a price hike from what they normally cost.  There are better ways for me to spend my baseball card budget.  

I could buy 20 of those Project 2020 cards.  I should have bought 20 copies of the Bob Gibson card with the pirate hat.  

I recently went through a whole boat load of sets looking for missing cards, finding them on COMC or Sports Lots, and dragging them into my shopping cart.   I could finish off roughly two dozen partial sets in my card closet by buying 140 some cards off of the two sites.  My cost was less than $100 before shipping.  

That's the plan I am going with for the rest of my CoronaCon vacation.   

2. You Don't Know.  I Don't Either.  

Nobody knows what players from this year's Bowman set are going to be good ten years from now, but there are going to be plenty of people who spend a small fortune trying to guess.  That feels like a big waste of money.  

I frequently question whether people who spend a lot of money on Bowman cards actually pay attention to the number of Minor Leaguers who reach the Majors, what happens to them when they get there, and the chances of that player fulfilling their definition of the word great.  I have my doubts.  

Take the Strasburg draft.  The best player in the draft, Mike Trout, did not get taken until the 25th pick right after Randal Grichuk.  Besides Strasburg and Trout, the players with the best career numbers taken in the first round are A.J. Pollock, Mike Minor, and Mike Leake.  That went downhill quickly.  What did Mike Leake cards sell for in 2010? 

Who wants to go back to 2010, and spend a whole bunch of money buying up the Mike Trout cards?  

Bowman story time.  Gather round on the carpet.  Let me tell you about the time when I pulled the best autograph from a Bowman box, which is now borderline worthless, but one of the other autographs that was worthless at the time is really popular and expensive now.  It shouldn't be.  It's a good story.  

Everyone ready?  

In 2014, I went to some sort of half day training in a part of Raleigh that was near my card shop of choice at the time.  I miss Big D's Card Shop, great store. It was Bowman release day, so rather than taking a lunch break, I went and got a pair of Bowman boxes to open.  Food can wait. I opened my packs of cards, and got to hang out and talk to the store owner.  Best thing was that I got the best autograph possible.  

Look at this thing.

Mark Appel was the first overall pick in 2013.  He was going to be a great player.  In reality, I   probably should have scanned it in the card shop, and sold it that day.  I did not.

I was excited. 

I took it home, put it in a penny sleeve and a top loader.  The thing was going to go to from being a really good Bowman autograph to being a great Bowman autograph.  At least, that's what I told myself at the time.  It is still sitting in a box full of autographs.  Bet I might get $5 for this card on a good day.

Who were my other autographs?

Some Reds outfielder who was hitting sub-.250 in the Pioneer League, which is half season A Ball.  Threw this in a box.  Completely forgot about it for awhile.  Everyone has looked at his Minor League numbers, and knows Aquino is 26 and has not played a full season in the Majors?  (whispers) He didn't hit well away from Cincinnati, (whispering and mumbling) and he hit .196/.236/.382 during the last month of the season.  

I got someone to pay and arm and a leg for the card recently.  Glad these prospect collectors pay attention to numbers.  

I am already staying at home, but whenever and wherever Bowman shows up, I will be somewhere else buying cards that make me happy.  Probably some cards that actually have some reason attached to their value.  Hopefully one day we can return to the sane days of Bowman, because I would be happy to enjoy these cards again.  

I Love The 1990s Cardinals Part 74 - Edgar Renteria

Ozzie Smith was the Cardinals shortstop for much of the 1990s, and was eventually replaced by Royce Clayton after he retired.  In 1998, the Cardinals traded Clayton away to the Texas Rangers, in the middle of the season, for third baseman Fernando Tatis.  The Cardinals played all sorts of different players at shortstop during the second half of the 1998, none of them were good.  

Prior to the 1999 season, the Cardinals traded Braden Looper, Armando Almanza, and Pablo Ozuna to the Marlins in exchange for Edgar Renteria. 

He's wearing teal on his rookie card.  You should buy this card.  

Renteria was only 19 when he reached the Majors, and 22 when he was traded to the Cardinals.  He was a work in progress at this point in his career, but he had also made a name for himself as one of the few Major Leaguers to have a walk off hit in the deciding game of the World Series.  

Only one year of 1990s baseball cards for Edgar Renteria in a Cardinals uni.  It was not actually really all that great for two reasons.  Kind of makes this a short post.  

Reason One- Topps used the same picture in all of their products.  All of their products.

Here's his 1999 Topps card.  

  

and his 1999 Topps Finest card.  

I think the smile is slightly different.  

I could scan his Bowman card and put it on here, but you will never believe the picture that Topps used for the card.  He's actually not holding the bat, but everything else is the same.  The photographer from Topps spent a whole two minutes taking pictures of Edgar Renteria in Spring Training.  

and I am spent.  

Reason 2- He has a bunch of cards that have a Cardinals logo, but the picture shows him as a Marlin.  

Like this one....

or this one.....

Of course, there are a few different Edgar Renteria cards from 1999 that get it right.  

and they are pretty nice.  

Mailday From The Mitten

I received a nice envelope of cards a week and a half ago from Julie over at A Cracked Bat.   I will run through the cards in a minute, but I really need to get a business card or something catchy to stick into packages.  This is nice.....

My eight year old son was initially really excited about this package of cards.  He checks our mail as part of chores around the house.  If it is mail for me then it is a baseball card, and there is not much excitement over the mail for the day.  However, this package threw him off because the return address was from Michigan.  He was jumping up and down. 

My wife is from Michigan, so there are grandparents, aunts and uncles who live there are mail him stuff.  

Her hometown is actually on this map.  It's right there, next to one of the lakes.  It's a nice place.

So naturally, he opened the envelope and was a little disappointed to see that it was baseball cards, but I was pretty excited.  So, here's what I got:

First off, this was a card from a set that Julie had posted on Twitter, and we had spent some time talking about it one day.  I had never seen anything out of this Church's Chicken card set before.  Are there Church's Chickens in Missouri?  According to Google there are a dozen of them around St. Louis.  I just missed out on these back in the day.  There are even Cardinals players in the set. 

Love the design on these cards, they look like something from the mid 1990s too.  I am going to have to find more of these.  I appreciate that Julie introduced me to these cards.

More cards.

These three Cardinals are out of the 2003 EX set.  Always one of my favorite products from the late 1990s and early 2000s.  These are from the 2003.  Great looking cards.  

Next.  

I know that the Action Packed cards were an oddball set from the early 1990s that featured older players, but I do not know much about them.  I actually have two other Action Packed cards in my collection, a Bob Gibson and a Jerome Bettis, but I am a little fuzzy on how they got here.  Never really got into collecting Rams cards.  I love the photograph on the card.  Nice action shot of Lou Brock running the bases is always a winner. 

 I do not do much with Furcal, but he was on the 2011 Cardinals World Series winner.  Kind of easy to forget he was there.  This is a gold sparkle variation of his 2012 Topps base card.  Not sure the scan really did it justice, sometimes shiny and bright does not scan well, but it's a sharp card. 

This is a really sharp looking card of Cardinals second baseman Kolten Wong.  Love the die cut.  

Last.  

There are not many Ray Lankford cards in this world that I do not own.  However, he is one of the few players whom I actively welcome duplicates of in my collection.  This is a 1998 Donruss Preferred card, which was not only a great set, but also a card from Lankford's prime years as a player.  The years where card companies sort of paid interest in him. 

A great package of cards.  Thank you Julie, I will get you a return package at some point in the near future. 

Cardinals From COMC Part 2

A few more random Cardinals cards from my latest COMC run.  I made my first post about this batch of cards last week, which were all filling various holes in my collection, whether they be apart of a complete set, team set, or just cool card of a favorite Cardinals player.  A few more cards in this post, which is more heavy with veteran players.

The cards in this post span a decade, from 1997 through 2007, so I am going to post them in sequential order by year.  First up.....

Three Cardinals cards out of the Pinnacle Totally Certified set.  The set ran off of colored parallels, with each color having a different print run.  This is still a really popular set, a sure fire favorite of collectors from the late 1990s.  I already have the complete run of Lankford's out of this set, along with one or two different colors from the three players shown above.  I should probably try to assemble a complete set of these cards, but for the moment I am sticking with putting together the Cardinals cards.  These are three sharp looking cards.  

Next up, a card from a set that I am trying to put together.  I have a ton of 1997 Topps and Topps Chrome cards.  The base sets are both complete and I am deep on several of the insert sets.  Working on finishing out those missing cards, I actually got some non-Cardinals cards in this lot, but Andy Benes was the only Cardinals insert that I was missing.

This Eckersley is here for the same reasons as the Andy Benes card, but it's from the 1998 Topps set.  This scan really mangled his hat for some reason.  Looks like one of those old man baseball hats with the rope looking piece going between the bill and body of the hat.  Eck is old on this card, but not that old.  Plus, nobody with hair like Eckersley would ever wear a hat like that, way too cool.  

This Cliff Politte card is a spillover from the first post.  I had several of the Cardinals from the 1998 Leaf Stars & Rookie set in that post, but somehow I missed this card.  My bad.  

This is a set that I own,  Always liked the Black Diamond sets.  I have several of the parallels from the Cardinals players, just trying to finish out the team set of parallel cards.  I will have to double check my accounting, but I believe this is the last card I was missing.  

Non-Cardinal card of a former Cardinals player, Preston Wilson was on the 2006 World Series winning team.  Not specifically collecting Preston Wilson, never minded him as a player and I like him on television, but I actually really liked the Fleer Mystique set back when it came out.  I have the base set assembled, but I am missing a few of the short printed rookie cards which are all serial numbered.  

I am actually a little disappointed by the printing around the serial numbers on this card.  They looked scratched, or something happened to them.  I looked at a few other cards that I have from this set, none of them.  I am going to overlook the scratching for the moment, maybe I will go back later and get a different copy.  

I am not a big fan of the Donruss Fan Club set.  It was a pretty cheap box back in 2002 and the cards seemed somewhat repetitive from the Donruss base set.  If you cut off the words Fan Club, this feels like the runner up design for the Donruss base set.  I do like So Taguchi however, so this was sort of a necessary evil.  2002 had a lot of serial numbered rookie cards, at the time I skipped a ton of them. Slight case of fatigue from chasing down Pujols rookie cards from the previous year combined with the fact that Taguchi spent his first year with the Cardinals in Triple A.  

So turned it around and eventually became a pretty useful player for the Cardinals in the mid 2000s.  He hit an important playoff home run off of Billy Wagner in the 2006 NLCS and also was always brutally honest about the mosquito problems at Busch Stadium.  

It's a serial numbered Ray Lankford, and it's not a difficult one to find.  This is not already in my collection?  Well, it was, but child #2 somehow get her hands on this card.  I still have it, but it's in pretty poor condition at this point.  

Two more.  

I did work on the 2005 Upper Deck Reflections set back in the day, but did not touch the 2004 product.  Both were generally the standard mid 2000s Upper Deck product, but the 2005 set had some really distinctive dual signature cards.  The 2004 set was rather boring autograph wise, mainly just a few rookies, not sure any of them are really highly sought after, or worth much.  

Back to the card.  I liked Renteria a lot in the mid 2000s, but I really slowed down on collecting his cards once he left the Cardinals for the Red Sox at the end of the 2004 season.  There are quite a few serial numbered cards from his later years in St. Louis that I just never took the time to find, they are all very affordable now.  

I really like the looks of this card.  An obvious Upper Deck card.  

Last one.  I did not touch the 2007 Topps Rookie 52 set.  Seemed repetitive.  I think I have an Edward Muijica autograph, since he was on the Cardinals, but that's about it.  Did you know that it has a Jim Edmonds card in it?  I didn't either, now I own one.