Just Disappointed

We've have all seen pictures on the internet of people sitting in the card aisle of their local Target or Wal-Mart feeling up packs of cards, sticking them on scales, or sitting on the floor shuffling through the product.  It's a sad sight to see.....

is this guy barefoot?  Ugh.

In my cozy little corner of suburban Raleigh I do occasionally dabble in the retail card aisle of my local Target store.  The Wal-Mart near my house has the worst retail card aisle in the history of retail card aisles.  My retail purchases tend to be small quantities of products that I am not going to put together as a set, or sometimes something that I am not sure about collecting so I dabble first with some retail.

My wife recently sent me to Target to run a quick errand, so after completing the shopping list I walked through the card aisle and picked up a pick of Donruss Optic.  It's a product that I am not going to buy a box of, but I like the looks of some of the cards.  If Panini were a licensed card manufacture I would probably be more willing....

So, I quickly grabbed two packs and checked out.  I went out to my car, opened the first pack, and flipped through the cards.  Pretty nice stuff.  Then I went to open the second pack and.......

I really didn't have to do much to open the pack of cards.  The top of the pack was slit open with a knife, or a razor.  I am not sure how I missed it in Target, probably in too big of hurry, but I felt completely disappointed.  

First off, I ended up getting a couple of nice Cardinals cards out of the packs.  

I pulled two Magnueris Sierra cards.  The colored parallel actually came out of the pack that was cut open, the white base card came out of the sealed pack.  I also ended up with a nice looking Yadier Molina card.....

If only Panini would only make cards of catchers wearing their catchers gear........

Which brings me back to the whole retail pack searching thing.  I know many adults who go into places like Target and Wal-Mart, pick up some retail packs randomly from the card aisle, and open them after buying them.  Sometimes they are really happy, sometimes they are not.   I once had a great blaster box of retail cards.....

I will never forget pulling this card out of a pack at the same Target store where I bought my two packs of Donruss Optic.  You know who else buys a lot of retail packs?  Kids.  I work with kids.  I have given away packs of retail baseball cards in my class.  I have had kids pull really good cards out of packs.  One of my best ever was a 2015 Jeter photo variation card.....

That's a tough pull right there and it made the kids day.  Guess what happened later that week?  Same kid walks into my room with a stack of cards that he and his mom picked up at Wal-Mart.  We sat down before school, flipped through the stack and talked about what cards he liked and what players were his favorites.

More recently, I had a students pull a Luis Gonzalez autograph out of a repack box I had bought and given the packs away.  Nice looking card numbered out of 25.....

After researching Luis Gonzalez, the student is a Yankees fan, they decided that they liked the idea of pulling an autograph, just not Luis Gonzalez.  I brought in a few Yankees autographs and swapped them out for Luis.

I have been on this soapbox before, but there are many adult collectors and not many kid collectors.  It would be nice to attract my kids into baseball card collecting, but having people pack search and wreck the chances of a kid getting a nice card out of a retail pack is reprehensible.

How much does a Luis Gonzalez autograph cost?  Not enough for grown up to sit on the floor of Target and feel up a bunch of packs of cards for an hour.  Just disappointed.

I Love The 90s Cardinals Part 6 - Chad Hutchinson

Over the years the Cardinals have had several two sport athletes.  A quick rundown of a few.....


Bob Gibson played basketball at Creighton and briefly for the Harlem Globe Trotters.....

Brian Jordan played football for the Atlanta Falcons......

more recently, but a little more obscure, outfielder Adron Chambers played football at Mississippi State.

Back in the late 1990s the Cardinals tried bringing in a two sports athlete from Stanford.  Chad Hutchinson was a stand out for the Cardinal in both baseball, as a pitcher.....

and played quarterback for their football team......

In the late 1990s the Cardinals had rolled the dice on several high-end, high dollar, draft picks.  Some, like J.D. Drew turned out fairly well.  Others like Rick Ankiel were sort of a mixed bag.  As for Hutchinson....

The Cardinals drafted him the second round of the 1998 Draft and paid him $3.5 million dollars not to touch a football.  His first summer in the Minors was successful.  Hutchinson pitched in 8 games, 44 innings, with 51 strikeouts.  At the end of the 1998 season he started appearing in prospect rankings.  Baseball America had him as high as 42nd.

Card companies started cranking cards of the high end prospect.  My favorite was his 1999 SP Signature Series card.  Obviously a lot of great Cardinals cards in this set, but Hutchinson was one of the good prospect cards at the time....

All of his rookie cards are Upper Deck products.  This card is obviously the best of the group.  He had three other cards that year:  Upper Deck base, Upper Deck Victory, and SP Top Prospects.  The Prospects card pictures him in a Prince William (A Ball) uniform, but the rest use the same exact picture.....

There were a few more baseball cards of Chad Hutchinson after this card, but not many.  He stayed in the Minors the next two years and seemed to regress along the way.  He finally reached the Majors in 2001, pitched 3 games, and ended his baseball career with an ERA of 24.75.  His record was 0-0.

Then Hutchinson disappeared from baseball and reappeared as a quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys.   He started 9 games in 2002, threw more interceptions than touchdowns, and the team only won 5 games.

Pretty sure that would be deemed unacceptable for that franchise.  In 2003 he was a back-up in Dallas behind former Cubs prospect Quincy Carter.  Hutchinson was a back-up for the Bears the next season, he did manage to start 5 games along the way too, but did not have a good performance.  That was the end of Hutchinson pro sports career.  

Like Rhys Hoskins, But Cheaper

There have been so many home run hits this year.  It seems that no matter what team's stat page you check out, there are tons of players who have crossed the 20 home run mark, or more.  Is it now common place that the majority of position players are going to end up hitting 20 home runs, give or take, assuming that they receive a decent number of plate appearances?

I decided to flip through my cards a few weekends ago to check out some of the cards that I had from the big home run hitters during this baseball season.

Of course there is Mike Stanton.....

who is nearing 60 home runs.  As a Cardinals fan, I remember the excitement around the McGwire/Sosa home run chase in 1998.  I got to see Big Mac's 70th home run in person.  It feels odd that there isn't a little more excitement surrounding Stanton's pursuit of number 60.  I will be watching this weekend, feels like more people should be too.

The American League has Aaron Judge.

He has crossed 50 home runs and broken Mark McGwire's rookie home run record, which was set with the A's in 1987.  Judge is not only leading the AL in home run, he also is leading the league in strikeouts and walks.  Pretty cool feat.  

As a Cardinals fan I have had fun watching Paul DeJong....

who has 25 home runs, 51 extra base hits, it just over 100 games this season.

Recently I decided that I was going to try and track down a few other players who have enjoyed break out season during this baseball season.  I made a list and went out looking for what was out there.  The most obvious choice, given I am going with the whole home run theme, would be to try to find a cool Rhys Hoskins card.  He was the International League MVP this year, so that's where I started my search.

However....

there are not many of them and they are all off brand, non-licensed, cards like Leaf and Panini.  Although someone tried to flip me one of these for my Judge autograph.  LOL.

So, I went to the second name on my list, which was Matt Olson from the Oakland A's.

and I was shocked.  It was the opposite of looking up Judge cards, or Hoskins cards.  I think Judge and Hoskins are fine players, but when you look up auctions for young players and think, "I could buy this card or a very nice Stan Musial card" it's time to just keep moving....

Olson's cards, when I bought this one, were under $10.  Has anyone actually look at his stat sheet?  They have doubled over the last week, or two, but I still ended up with two of his cards.  One for today, another for a different day.  Here is the first one......

I love the Bowman Inception cards and could not pass this one up.  The art/pictures always seems really well done and you always get an on-card autograph with this set.  No stickers stuck on cards.  The back of the card.......

What's not to like?

Some quick numbers on Olson and Hoskins, as a Cardinals fan I can tell you they are both better than DeJong.  Hoskins is at 48 games, Olson is at 59 games, so there is going to be a little disparity between some of the counting number stats.  Olson is at 24 home runs, Hoskins is at 18.  Olson's slash line is .259/.352/.651, while Hoskins is .265/.401/.642.  Olson is at 2.4 WAR and Hoskins is at 2.1 WAR.  Too me, the biggest difference is the fact that Hoskins takes walks, Olson is more of a free swinger.

In a normal world there probably wouldn't be a $100 difference between a Hoskins and Olson autograph, but here we are.....

More Archives Cards. Yes, Cardinals.

I have already covered all sorts of Cardinals autographs that I have picked up from this year's Archives set, but haven't really touched any non-Cardinals from the yearly Topps product.  So, I actually have recently ended up with a non-Cardinal.....and two other players with connections to the Cardinals.  The Archives autograph checklist was deep for the Cardinals this year, even if the former Cardinals players appear in other uniforms.  

Non-Cardinal first.  I liked this card because it was an Expo and......

I have always really enjoyed the design of the 1986 Topps cards.  I tend to like the Archives cards a little better when the player and card design match, Alou is a 1990s and 2000s player, but I was willing to overlook it here based on price and the fact that everyone digs finding Expos cards.  Alou was a nice player too, even if he spent a lot of his career successfully hitting baseballs off of Cardinals pitchers.  

Card back.   

Very nice.  Next up is a former Cardinals Rookie of the Year and owner of a cool unibrow....

Moon is probably best remembered for his years with the Dodgers, which took place in the late 1950s and early 1960s when the team first moved to the West Coast.  The Dodgers played briefly in the Los Angeles Coliseum while Dodger Stadium was being built.  It had unique dimensions which Moon took advantage of.....

by trying to hit the ball at the short left-field fence which also featured a high screen.  In 1959, Moon had 19 home runs, 11 triples, and 26 doubles.  Many of them involved that short porch in left.  While he was with the Cardinals, Moon won the 1954 Rookie of the Year Award with a .304 average, 12 home runs, 76 RBIs, and 18 steals.  

Card back.  

Last card.  Also a former Cardinals player.  

Tito Francona spent 6 years with the Indians and 3 years with the Braves.  The rest of his career was spent seven other teams which included the Cardinals, Orioles, Athletics, Phillies, Tigers, Brewers, and White Sox.  The Indians used him as a starter and he had a few nice years playing everyday.  In 1959, in 122 games, he hit .363/.414/.566 with 20 home runs.  After his time in Cleveland, he ended up in St. Louis where the Cardinals used him as a reserve corner outfielder and first baseman.  Basically the same things as Terry Francona as a player.  

Card back 

This card is the blue framed parallel, so we have the serial number on the back of the card.  Overall, very happy with my three new Archives cards.  

I Love The 90s Cardinals #5 - Hector Villanueva

Every sport has a lovable backup.

Football has the backup quarterback.  

The headset, shirt tucked into their pants, sometimes a clipboard.  This #13 character surely became an accountant or something......

Basketball teams always have a few guys on the end of the bench wearing warm-ups.  You are not getting in the game when you're scrimmage jersey is a different color than James Worthy....

Who is number 10?  I hope he is a grad student, or assistant coach playing along in practice.  These freshman will be lucky to ever see playing time.  

Hockey has the backup goalie.  

No helmet, goofy turtleneck, sometimes a baseball hat that can be found in the team store.  Doubtful that this guy ever did anything either.  

Baseball has the backup catcher.  

No actual catchers gear, some towels and cool wristbands, and it looks like he worked hard stretching.  All just to sit on the bench behind Mike Matheny.  

Back in 1993 the Cardinals had Tom Pagnozzi as their everyday catcher.  He was a Gold Glove caliber catcher, just did not always hit.  The Cardinals ran through all sorts of backups for Pags over the years, I think Hector was supposed to bring some pop off the bench.  In 1991, while playing with the Cubs, Hector his 13 home runs in just under half of a season.  

1992 wasn't so good, so the Cardinals were rolling the dice a bit to bring him in for the 1993 season.  Let's sum up the Hector Villanueva year with the Cardinals with a picture and a few numbers.  

Hector definitely has that old school catcher's physique, but even if he were in the best shape of his life, he would not have hit/on-based his weight as a Cardinal.  Considering the Hector Villanueva era in St. Louis lasted exactly 17 games, 55 at-bats, I am not sure how much we could have honestly asked of Hector.  

There were so few Hector Villanueva at-bats that there were only actually two widely distributed baseball cards of the backup catcher.    For whatever reason, I only have one of them.  So, here is my 1990s Cardinals Hector Villanueva card.....

and there is nothing shabby about this card.  The 1993 Upper Deck set had some cool base cards with great photography.  Everything that a collector from the 1990s could expect out of one of their sets.  The Cardinals don't wear solid red jerseys during the regular season outside of BP, so this has to be from a Spring Training game.  The back of the card.....

and the back of the card shows Hector hustling out of the batters box.  It didn't last long, but it is cool to have one card of a cool backup catcher like Hector Villanueva in a Cardinals uniform.  

A few of my "backups" are probably hoping they can stick around as long as Hector.  Any faces you recognize?  

A song from 1993 on my IPod.......

McCarver Is Pretty Great, Even If You Don't Think So....

There are a lot of sports fans who do not like Tim McCarver and constantly complain about all kinds of things about his announcing.  He can be a little bit off at times, which obviously draws the ire of fans.....

and Deion Sanders......

However, this post is about Tim McCarver's baseball playing career.  Even that draws some unfounded criticism.   I was once told, while attending a Minor League game surrounded by Phillies fans, that the highlight of Tim McCarver's career was running out to shake Bob Gibson's hand after he set the World Series Game Strikeout Record against the Tigers in the first game of the 1968 World Series.....

That was pretty cool, but McCarver had a lot of more good moments in his career outside of calling a 17 strikeout effort in a World Series game.  McCarver actually won three World Series rings during his career.  Two with the Cardinals in 1964 and 1967, and much to the surprise of many Phillies fans at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park, a ring with the 1980 Phillies team.

He was only on the Phillies for a month at the end of the 1980 season, but he did get to appear in a "Welcome Back Kotter" promotional video for a local television station.

McCarver actually spent most of the second half of his career with the Phillies.  He had a stop over with the Expos for a year, came back to the Cardinals for a season, played two years for the Red Sox, but ended up with 9 years total as a Phillie.  

As a baseball card guy, I have never really been all that interested in McCarver cards.  I have a couple hanging around the collection just for the simple reason that they were needed to complete a few of the Cardinals team sets that I have tried to assemble from the 1960s.  I recently had the chance to add a McCarver card for the sake of it being a McCarver card.   The card is from a cool set too....

I thought about it.  Okay.  

I have posted a few other cards from the 1971 Topps Greatest Moments set in the past.  I also have a Nate Colbert. St. Louis native, and Cardinals Hall of Famer Lou Brock.  So, the McCarver card has a St. Louis connection too, even though the picture on the left hand side of the card is with the Phillies, the black and white photo on the right is with the Cardinals.

I have seen at least one other Greatest Moments card with a similar set up, former Durham Bulls great Rusty Staub has an Expos picture with an Astros highlight.  I had to do a little research on the caption under the picture "Becomes 1st Catcher in History to Lead Majors in Triples" to see when this happened.......

1966 National League triples leader.  Kind of a cool feat for a catcher and goes to show that McCarver did something pretty great things around a baseball field....even if you don't agree.

I Love The 90s Cardinals #4 - Donovan Osborne

There were a bunch of 1990s Cardinals players who were frequently injured, but they were tantalizingly good when they were actually on the field.  Donovan Osborne was one of those players. He was drafted by the Cardinals in the first round of the 1990 amateur draft out of UNLV, was rated as a top 50 prospect by Baseball America, and made it through the entire minor league system in a year and a half.

Osborne's first two years with the Cardinals, 1992 and 1993, were okay.  He was an average Major League pitcher on some teams that were really short on talent.  After 1993 he was injured frequently.  He missed 1994, but pitched half a season in 1995 and set a career high with an ERA+ of 109 and Ks per 9.  Osborne's best year was in 1996 when he helped the Cardinals get within a game of the World Series, won 13 games, and posted what would his career best ERA+ of 119.

His season ended ominously in Game 7 of the National League Championship Series after giving up a bases loaded triple to Tom Glavine, which put the game away for the Braves in the first inning.

Osborne was never the same after that game.  He pitched half a season in 1997 and 1998, only 6 games in 1999, and then missed all of 2000 and 2001.  The Cardinals actually parted ways with him after the 1999 season, but he resurfaced with the Cubs in 2002.  He made 11 relief appearances with the Cubs before he was shut down and released at the end of the year.  To get an idea of how much teams thought of Osborne's potential, one only needs to look at his transaction sheet post 2002.  Lots of teams were willing to take a chance on having him pitch.  

He did actually appear in games for the Yankees going 2-0 in 9 games, which included 2 starts.  Osborne's ERA was over 7 though.  The two wins were both against the A's within a week of each other, both as a reliever.  His starts were the last two games he pitched with the Yankees.  The first start was against the Mariners and lasted one and a third innings. Osborne gave up 6 runs on 6 hits with 2 walks.  The second start was also against the Mariners, he lasted into the fifth inning, but he still gave up 6 runs.  That was the end of his career in the Majors.  

Four teams later, with a bunch of Minor League starts, he was officially done in 2006.  

Card wise, Osborne never really had that many cards.  Especially given that he played in the 1990s and was a high draft pick, there just isn't much that's special or unique about Osborne's cards.  Flipping through my boxes of 1990s Cardinals I found a few different possible cards for tonight's post, but I picked more on the card design and brand than on finding something really cool looking.  It's just not there.  

First up is one of my under appreciated 1990s sets.  While everyone was going with foil, gloss, and anything else fancy that card companies could squeeze onto a card, Fleer went old school with their 1996 and 1997 sets with no gloss, no border, just a picture and the players name.  

I know a lot of autograph collectors who love this set.  The no gloss finish makes a nice surface to sign.  I just like the fact that it is really simple and goes against just about every other card release from 1996.  The card backs were okay......

but if you notice the card number, 552, the Fleer set was also large.  As a collector, you got a lot of different players from your favorite team, not just the usual suspects.  For the mid 90s Cardinals that was usually some combination of Lankford, Gant, Jordan, the two Benes brothers, Eck, and maybe Stottlemyre (Throttlemyre).  It skipped out on the Donovan Osborne's of the world.  The stats are a little different than the set up Fleer had when I was a kid, but I like that they put the SO/9 and H/9 on the back.  Kind of different.  Color picture at the bottom is also nice, check out the blurb about Osborne's shoulder.....

Next 1990s card is the opposite of the Fleer.  It's a 1997 Score.....

The front of the card is kind of meh, which is way different from where Score started in the late 1980s with really bold colored cards.  The mid 1990s were really when the glut of cards started, new releases every week, so many similar products.  Pinnacle, which made Score, had about four other card products that looked like this set.  Was Donovan Osborne in New Pinnacle?  Pinnacle Mint?  Pinnacle?  Donruss?  Those were all really the same set with a different border.  

The back of the card is just ridiculous. 

These cards had the busiest backs in the history of baseball cards.  There is a logo in the background and a logo in the lower left hand corner.  There are Osborne's pitching statistics in the middle of the card, fielding statistics at the bottom, and two sets of splits on the right side.  Then you have the blurb about Donovan Osborne, including a little snippet about his shoulder problems.  I feel the ADD kicking in.  

I had considered using an Osborne rookie card for this post, 1991 Bowman, but decided to skip over the Bowman cards since I will probably use a few on some other posts where I am limited to just that brand.  

I forgot the music on last week's post.  I guess I could go 1997 or 1996 on this post.  I hit shuffle on my Ipod, kept flipping until a song from 1997 came up, so I will go with that year.  Not a household name on this band, but Butter 08 was the two women from Cibo Matto, the drummer from Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, and Mike Mills from R.E.M.  

While we are on Cibo Matto, I will stop shuffling the IPod and just run with one of their songs to make up from last week.  They were a good mid 1990s group and they had a CD out in 1996.  Do people listen to any of these 90s groups anymore, is it just me?