I Have Never Written A Post About Chris Richard

Who is the Durham Bulls all-time home run leader? 

My Chris Richard collection started while he was in the Minors with the Cardinals. I was at my local card shop and bought a pack of Royal Rookies. It was an inexpensive per-pack-autograph product that was generally not worth your time or money. You also never know when you buy an autograph of a Minor Leaguer. It's like buying a lottery ticket.  

Here is my Chris Richard lottery ticket.  

Almost 5,000 copies sold for $5 each, but worth $2 on COMC.  

I'd have been better off buying an actual lottery ticket.  

Anyway, this was in 2000 and the Cardinals had Mark McGwire and later Will Clark. Chris Richard was traded to the Orioles for relief pitcher Mike Timlin. I got more Chris Richard cards all from packs. At the time I was not really excited about Chris Richard. He was a first baseman on the Orioles who could only hit 15 home runs in one of the best hitters parks in the league.  

"WHERE ARE THE ICHIRO ROOKIES??????" 

Would have likely been my reaction to pulling a Chris Richard Prospect card in 2001.  

Although, this is his Fleer Tradition card, so more likely.....

"HOW THE HELL DID THEY LEAVE ALBERT PUJOLS OFF THE CHECKLIST FOR THIS GUY?" 

I even got the short-printed, serial numbered Chris Richard cards, like this Fleer Focus.  

Fast forward a few years to 2007 and Chris Richard is a 4A player on the Durham Bulls. 

The 2006 season was a disaster for the Bulls, a rarity in these parts, in large part due to several younger, high-end prospects who go off the rails in every way imaginable. Delmon Young hits an umpire with a bat, BJ Upton thinks Triple A parks are beneath him and gets a DUI drinking with UNC students, and Elijah Dukes literally tries to strangle Ryan Knox while the team is waiting for their bus at a hotel. 

Chris Richard was 30 and going to provide a calming presence to the team. 

The Bulls finish first, Richard hits 14 home runs, and nothing crazy happens while the team is waiting for the bus. Success brought Richard back in 2008, 2009, and 2010.  He hit at least 20 home runs each of the three seasons and ended his Durham Bulls career with 84. A record that is unlikely to be broken soon.  

I have actually willingly collected Chris Richard cards since his stint in Durham.  

Love seeing him as a Durham Bull on baseball cards......

but there are not very many of them. 

Chris Richard still has some nice cards for a guy with a short Major League career.  

My favorite being his 2001 Topps Golden Anniversary Autograph, which is short-printed and a tough find.

2001 Fleer Focus Ray Lankford Green Parallel

The Fleer Focus set was released several times in the early 2000s by Fleer.  The set was a pretty standard release for Fleer during that time period.  The boxes weren't overly pricy and collectors had the opportunity to pull a decent autograph or relic card.  The Fleer Focus product also gave the collectors the opportunity to find a couple of different parallels of their favorite players.  In a cool twist, Fleer did not run the standard parallels of 50, 100, and 500 or other common numbers that card companies run their parallels to.  Instead, Fleer ran a lot of the parallels in the Focus set to player's stat lines with each stat being a different colored parallel.  Donruss also had parallels that ran to the player's stat lines, but Fleer started these cards with Focus.

2001 Fleer Focus Ray Lankford Green Parallel

I was recently able to add the Ray Lankford green parallel collection this week.  The green parallel is numbered to the players Batting Average or their ERA.  In this case, Ray Lankford had a batting average of .253 during the 2000 season, Fleer made a grand total of 253 copies of this card.  Ironically, better position players would have a greater number of parallel cards in this set, while pitchers would likely be the opposite.

While Ray Lankford was a career .272 hitter he had a low year in 2000 with knee issues and missed almost 30 games to start the season.  In fact, the first months of the 2000 season the former Cardinals outfielder only hit .176.  Lankford would put up a similar .250ish line for the Cardinals in 2001 before the team traded him to the Padres for pitcher Woody Williams.  Not the hardest parallel to find, but still a welcome addition to the Ray Lankford collection.