Trading Post: Epic Part II: Freds Thanks to Great Sports Name HOF

First, we have a Cy sighting over at Mark's Ephemera. Go check it out!

Also, a great contest over at Play at the Plate.

So, having declared myself a Fred McGriff player collector, I got an email from Great Sports Name Hall of Fame. I've already had great experiences with other player collectors like Troll and Chris OK and our pursuit of CCs, and HOF was pretty stoked to meet another McGriff collector. Surprisingly there are very few out there. He sent me a link to his Crime Dogs, and only asked for me to send him any thing I had not on the list. Between my recent acquisitions from Chris OK and Play at the Plate I had about 5 I could send (including that sweet '87 Fleer Glossy) plus another 5 I have from my original old-school collection, 10 in all. To send or not to send?

I mulled it over, but ultimately bowed to the awesome thoroughness of that list and decided to cut my Crime Dogs loose. In return, HOF hooked me up with a whopping 39 (!) Crime Dogs I'd never seen before. Keeping it simple, these are the highlights.

Fred being fan friendly. Nice card, nice shot, nice guy, pretty much how I have always imagined him: a fan-accessible HOFer.

This is actually a 92 UD that my scanner decided didn't need a white border and would look much better cropped, photo-to-border, like Stadium Club. Nice call cheap scanner! Love the ump, love the crowd, the ball and the baserunner arriving at the bag at the same moment. People remember Crime Dog for his offense, but he was also a defensive whiz at 1st. Dude here says Eddie Murray is the only HOFer with a high fielding percentage, and yet Fred never won a Gold Glove. Go figure...

Here we have photographic evidence that Derek Jeter is not the only player to have ever chased a ball into or towards the stands in the last 20 years, much less in the history of baseball. Fred's chasing one into the camera well gives this card a pretty cool, mis en abyme feel to it. Cameras at both ends, infinite Freds and the meaningless of it all in between...nice touch. Don't worry, the one guy in the stand with his hands on his head is also just a spectator, miscomprehending like the rest of us.

Speaking of which, this card sums it up nicely, doesn't it? "A Tale of Two Players"...two potential HOFers, one guy who played his way out of every town he ever played in, including Atl., and a guy who showed up every day to the park, took his position out at first, and just played. Two players, indeed...you'd need staples like those in the middle of the card to pull together any coherent narrative comparing their careers, that's for sure...

And then we have some more excellent cards of Fred at the bat...

Can't get enough of that swing, even if it has apparently spawned a vortex that threatens to tear the universe asunder, with you, me and Fred in it. Wow.

This swing is pretty awkward, but check out what it says there on the front...yep, Fred's no longer with the Braves, as pictured on the card. Instead, he's now with the:

Devil?!? Man, someone really dropped the ball on that one. Unless, of course, Fred really DID sell his soul to the devil to squeeze in a few last years of ball and make a run at 500 HRs, in which case listing his team on the back of the card as "Devil" is entirely appropriate.

So there you have it, and those are just the highlights! Thanks again, HOF! Hope you enjoyed the Freds I sent over.

Have a great one, everybody and Pumpsie Green, wherever you are, goodnight!