It's mailing again.....

I got an email last week from John of NJ Devils Cards and Old School Breaks. He had lost my address and wanted it again. Sure, no prob.

This week, a small present arrived at my door. What goodies will be inside? With John, you never know... it's usually something obscure, just the way I like it.

Greg Maddux eX... my cropping skills on the rounded corners needs work...
Henry!

A really shiny Warren Spahn. My scanner killed this card... I have never seen a card so wonderfully shiny...

A Finest Chipper. Aren't all Chippers Finest? They should be. And a Pox on Beardy and Motherscratcher for not considering the current batting champion and future first ballot Hall of Famer a star.... A POX!

I have the Auto Refractor of this card.... it's much shinier...

A Kelly auto... on card... very sweet!

some hockey to round things out.... A future Flame who just joined us this season, lit it up, and will now leave for a helluva lot more $$$$ to some other team in the fall...

and a jersey card of former Flame Chuck Kobasew... he's with Boston now. And we don't like Boston, now do we?

Thanks John! Always appreciated.

Say it ain't so....

still reeling from my shameful post earlier... I seek solice in the familiar. And what do I find?

Archie is getting married. WHAT?!?!?!!!!!?!
Yep. Tying the knot. Hell, I didn't even know he had graduated high school yet.

So boys... who will it be?

I feel no shame....

I've read the blogs. We all have. No one likes 2009 Bowman. It's horrible. It's got a crappy checklist. There's no super low printed X-fractor auto rookies in it. It's black. No one likes black.
The world would be better off if we took the designer of this set out back behind the woodshed. We could tell people that "they went to live on a farm, where they could run and play all day."
One small problem. I like it. I like these cards. It has good photography, a nice design, and it's affordable.
I like the parallels... first blue...

and then Orange... I'm a big fan of orange...

So hear me Bloggers! I like this set! And if you don't, send me your damn cards. You there... the one with the blaster... send it to me. That box break you just panned, send 'em my way.

I'll give them a good home, and love them and squeeze them and call them Geor... well, never mind.

Just send them to me so I can appreciate them the way it was meant to be.

By the way, one of my favourite cards of all time is 2008 Bowman Chrome Orange...

Don't judge me....

the latest update...

Round three of the NHL playoffs ended tonight, (otherwise known as the semi finals) as Detroit eliminated Chicago in overtime of Game 5.
Pittsburgh awaits Detroit in the Final after sweeping Carolina.

Round three results:

Madding - 12 pts
Greg - 10 pts
The Ghost of Cory Snyder - 7 pts
theHamiltonian - 6 pts
Zman - 5 pts
Night Owl - 5 pts
ShaneDiaz - 5 pts
Dayf - 5 pts
Tunguska - 5 pts
Roofgod - 5 pts
Matt R - 5 pts
kevincrumbs - 5 pts

added to the previous round scores, we have an unofficial standings of:

Madding - 29 pts
theHamiltonian - 25 pts
Greg - 25 pts
Dayf - 22 pts
Zman - 22 pts
Matt R - 20 pts
ShaneDiaz - 18 pts
Kevincrumbs - 17 pts
Tunguska - 16 pts
Roofgod - 16 pts
theghostofcorysnyder - 15 pts
Night owl - 11 pts

awesome! Madding shoots into the lead! A reminder.... all point totals are unofficial. (pending whomever sends me the best cards in the mail before the end of the contest...;>)

Tommy watch

The days are possibly numbered.... We are getting to that point in the year when players can be called up without losing a year of eligibility, or becoming a "Super Two" player.
That means that Tommy Hanson could be called up any day to begin his Hall of Fame career.
Last night Tommy made his 10th start for AAA Gwinnett, leaving in the 8th inning of a 1-1 game.
Tommy is now 3-3 in 10 starts. 1.48 ERA 60 2/3 IP 82 K's 17 BB's

Cards I want to see made...

More of my contributions to the Goose Joak Project... knocking off a few more of the pitching staff...

I think this Kenshin guy is going to be good.... watching him dominate the Blue Jays and Roy Halladay was sweeeet. I didn't think Japanese pitchers pitched with that much emotion...

Oh oh...

Kansas City Royals skipper, Trey Hillman was ejected in the 8th inning of today's 13-1 Tigers victory for arguing what looked like a rain-induced, "let's hurry this game up," punch out from home plate umpire, Paul Emmel.

After Emmel punched out William Bloomquist (who K'ed three times) on a low and outside slider from Zach Miner, Hillman said something to the affect of "Wrong call, blue," and Emmel took exception by throwing him out of the game. Hillman came running out of the dugout and got his money's worth, but Emmel got more than what he wanted.

After Emmel looked like he wanted the argument to be over and started walking away, Hillman got back in his face and appeared to accidentally spit in his eyes. Emmel recoiled as he tried to dislodge the saliva from his eyeballs while Hillman continued to yell. Great theatrics out of Emmel. It'll probably earn Hillman a nice little fine. You can even read Emmel's lips saying, "You just spit in my eye," afterward.

I wonder where Roberto Alomar is right now? He's probably smiling....

h/t to Detroit 4 Life

In a rut...

It's been about six weeks since I've opened a box of cards. I haven't even opened a pack. Nothing. Walmart has a few packs of '08 low end hockey. We still have not seen any '09 baseball here in Calgary. I haven't been posting as much because of all this. The last new cards was a '09 Finest break over at I am Joe Collector.

I've been saving my money for some '09 OPC baseball when it comes out in a couple of weeks, but until then, it seems dim.

Something that cheered me up was a surprise in the mail today. not one, but TWO packages from Grant at Old School Pack Buster.



First up, a B-Mac rainbow...

then, a couple of Goudey's I needed for my team set...

of course, a few Chippers......

a couple of Turkey Reds...

some Stadium Club variations

and Smoltzie.

Thanks Grant. I really needed this.

Make sure to check out Grant's blog, Old School Pack Buster.

what I deal with daily...

"Hi hon, who's playing tonight?" she says
"Toronto at the Braves" I reply
"oooh cool. that doesn't happen often. Who's pitching?" she asks
"Halladay and Kawakami" I say
"ew. the best pitcher in baseball against your #5? this isn't going to go well. you sure you want to watch it?" she smirks...
"Be Gone Woman! We don't need any of your smack here. Go fix me a sandwich!" I bellow.

(okay, I didn't say the sandwich part. My eyes would still be swolen shut, and I wanted to watch the game)
Final lines

Kenshin Kawakami 8 IP 3H 0Runs 0BB 8K Win
Roy Halladay 7IP 5H 0Runs 1BB 6K No decision


TAKE THAT EVIL DOUBTER NONSANDWICHMAKERS!!!!!

Did you see?

There was a case break of 2007 Sweet Spot Baseball AND Football late last night over at I Am Joe Collector.

Jeff is having more and more of these breaks and always does a really good job of them. I sat out this one, as I am saving my extra cash for some new releases coming out in the next couple of weeks.
Check out the videos here and here.

IMO the football one had far better results than the baseball case.... but that usually happens. Football normally will have a better chance of getting bigger hits, simply because of a smaller checklist.

What do you think of case breaks like this? Fun? Risky?

Really?

“Unfortunately, this is a major manufacturing error.”


Ya think!?!??! Dumbass. What the hell, man? I can't even finish base sets, and people get these with regularity.
I hate Topps. I hate Upper Deck. I hate Beckett. You are all ruining this damn hobby that I love so much.

Fix it. Now.

Know your team

a special thanks to AJC.com for allowing me to "borrow" these videos...

one step closer to the Hall...

with an RBI in tonight's dominating win over the Colorado Rockies, Chipper Jones moves into 2nd place on the Braves all-time franchise RBI list.
Hank Aaron 2202 RBI's
Chipper Jones 1389 RBI's
Eddie Matthews 1388 RBI's

Congrats Chipper!

Woot!

Today's mail brought two small yellow envelopes. In the first one, Matt from Project Baseball 1976 sent over four 1976 Topps beauties to complete our trade.

I love finding other collectors who are trying to collect the same tough set as you are. It makes trading that much more fun. I send you four, you send me four. Perfect. Although Matt is a lot closer to completion than I am.

The next little goodie I received finished off a set for me. Todd (also known as darkship) sent over the last two SP's I needed to polish off '08 A&G.

I've heard that this old bird was a tough one to find. But now my binder is full. (except for some no # Fukudome card I've heard all the cool kids talking about, but that's not worrying me)

Thanks guys!

Hark, the Angels sing!

It is a great day today as it was announced that Tony Kornheiser will NOT be back in the Monday Night Football Booth this season.
Who was the idiot responsible for hiring this guy anyway? Wouldn't it be nice to put someone in the booth who knows football? Or maybe watches it regularly? What a concept.
What really gets me, is that apparently, he wasn't fired, but chose to step down due to a fear of flying. Wow. Maybe he had pictures of somebody or something.

Ex-coach Jon Gruden steps in to take his place. Awesome. Now if we could only get rid of Mike Tirico......

a little late...

Obviously stressed about missing my birthday, my friend Sooz sent me a Happy Earth Day
package in, of course, a recycled bubble envelope.

Enclosed was a lovely hand-written note. I'll never forget what it says. "Happy Earth Day! P.S. Braves still suck."

Warms the cockles of my heart.

Not to be too friendly, Sooz starts us off with John Smoltz. Still a bit of a sore spot. It might get worse if he ever takes the mound in that "other" uniform.
I love this set, but I've never been able to find packs or a box of it anywhere. Here's the rare red version.

Here we have John pitching for Star Trek:The Next Generation.

A few cards of Jeffery

Refractorrama!

Kelly Johnson

A lone card of Andruw. (don't look now, but he's lighting it up in Texas. So much so, Texas is shopping a couple of outfielders according to MLBTraderumors)

B-Mac!!!!

I like the white better than the black meself.

Hey! A 2009 Topps Finest Yunel Escobar. I'm one card closer to my team set. (I have two, Yunel and B-Mac)

and of course, no package between Sooz and I would be complete without a little Chipper love.

One of the best cards... two out of the three greatest 3rd baseman on one card!

Awesome.

I just noticed this, but out of the 40-50 cards Sooz sent, all but three of them were ultra shiny or glittery. Must be a girl thing.

Thanks Sooz! Truly awesome.