Headhunting Part II: Get Your Phillies Out

Here's the deal: A Phillies fan who is also in to prospect autos has a pretty awesome EJ. Sooo.... if you have a constellation of Phillies this guy will take, I'll trade you this card: 

I'll update with a better scan later today/tonight. It'll hurt to let this one go, but them's the breaks.

Make an offer in the comment section. Then I'll pass it along! 

Blyleven and Goose GU:

Not sure how to embed these in a PM over at the Bench, so here they are!

I miss baseball...: Looking to Next Season

I'll pay attention to other sports if they're on, but baseball remains the only sport I follow. Like I find myself doing most falls, I can't wait for next season. So, I went through a bunch of cards other bloggers have sent me and found this:

It was a while ago, so who knows who sent me this card? And let's be honest, unless you follow the Rays you probably had no idea who Moore was until this. Or maybe you caught this on Sept. 22. Either way, there's a lot of hype surrounding the 22 year-old former eight-round pick in the 2007 draft. As a Rays fan, I'm on board.

Funny, but nothing on this card screams, "Dude's about to blow up!" There are something interesting stats, some typical Topps language, but Topps still lists him as "Matthew." Whatever. I'm glad he's on our side, at least until his arb years are up!

And he seems pretty down-to-earth as seen in this promo video for the Rays affiliate the Charlotte Stone Crabs.

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

Goodnight Pumpsie Green...Wherever You Are!

Pumpsie Green sounds like he might have DJed for these cats, but he was actually the guy who integrated the Red Sox, the last team to integrate, and a Hell of a ballplayer. I first read about Mr. Green in the context of Gene Conley, with whom Mr. Green went on a Kerouacesque multi-day Bender while with the Sox.

Because of the trip I've always had a special place in my heart for Green. Man who integrated the Red Sox and, as this interview with the man says, the "last of the first." Topps All-Star Rookie. Roughian. Would-be pilgrim to the Holy Land. There are complex personalities, then there are the life and times of Pumpsie Green.

This card was a gift from the father-in-law. Still strikes me how it mentions Green was the first Sox switching-hitting regular in 27 years but says NOTHING about Green integrating the Sox. Which was, according to accounts, no easy feat.

Been contemplating sending this card out ttm but have held off. Thinking I'll pull the trigger this weekend. 

EJ x 3: Thanks GCRL!

I'm going after the 2011 Topps Update EJ Rainbow. I was able to land the first two plates fairly easily but hit a snag with plat #3. As outlined here, Jim over at GRCL stepped up and took what I was offering in order to land the EJ. Thanks to Jim, here's 3/4 of the plate rainbow which, as a bonus, includes CC as a foreground lurker. Pretty serendipitous.

And then he included a TON of extra Rays, among them this gem of Fer Perez. 

We lost Fer in the Matt Garza trade, he was later picked up by the Mets, and he was another ballplayer that the compa and I really enjoyed watching back in Durham. He's got a degree from Columbia and has even published in Poetry. A renaissance man, he's a great actor (seriously, check this out), maintains an active Twitter feed, and always has craziness up on Tumblr. A cool guy and a cool card. Compa is still devastated that we let him go!

Thanks again, GCRL!

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

Miggida miggida miggida Mack: With apologies to Connie

Matt over at the Number 5 Type Collection had an awesome contest where if you guessed the cards, you won them. From the rubbings Matt posted I got that they were from the 1963 Bazooka All-Time Greats, but I still had to know who they were.

I guessed a Connie Mack was at stake and put my head on figuring out who the other guy was. In short, I won and landed these cards:

I'm a HUGE fan of the Connie Mack A's and am stoked to add this to my collection. Believe it or not, Mack is in the HOF despite losing more games than he won, a distinction he shares with Buck Harris. Hopefully one day Gene Mauch will join that club, but I digress. The really cool thing (actually about all three of them!) is that they were OK-but-not-great ballplayers who, despite their not-so-greatness, learned enough about the game they went on to become All-Time-Great managers.

The other HOFer here is Harry Heilmann, nicknamed "Slug" (for his hitting prowess or blinding speed, who knows?). The awesome thing about this card is that I had no appreciation for Slug until looking up his stats: he hit .400 once and flirted with it several times, had a lifetime OBP of .411, and 183 HRs in the dead ball era which is even more impressive in the context of his OPS+ of 148. 

After today's Lions game I may have to send Harry over to a certain Detroit fan I know to cheer him up!

Thanks again for the contest, Matt!

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

Headhunting Part II: Coming Soon?

I'm now rolling with some guys over FCB with regard to some EJs. Being a Rays collector, I don't have a ton of quality non-Rays to offer in trade. So... if things work out the second edition of headhunters will be coming up shortly.

First we had this Jackie Robinson relic claimed by GCRL (who'll have a post coming soon, and to whom I definitely owe more Dodgers for the additional Rays he threw in!). 

What'll be next? It'll be something from the pc, and something good. Hint: Get your Phillies ready.

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

Double Duty: Bender and Oldring 1911 T201 Mecca Double Folder

I picked this card up about a year ago. It's an awesome twofer of HOFer and CCC favorite Charles Bender and the less known Rube Oldring.

First the whole card with Bender:

Overall it's a pretty classy shot of Bender at, I'm guessing, an early version of Shibe Park. Being a guy who digs on some vintage, I'm often disappointed by how current brands (ahem, Topps) will take something like this and go waaay crazy with it (T206, I'm looking at you!). Cards from the actual era were pretty straightforward and not all all self-conscious like the C. Kershaw in The Shining-type cards you pull nowadays.

Anyway, Oldring and the stats are on the back.

Sure enough, if you fold Oldring over he lines up nicely with Bender's legs in kind of a fielding pose. 

The coolest thing is that, according to a Bender bio I read, the two were roomies back in the day. When was the last time two baseball roomies were on the same card? Anyone else know of any cases?

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

The Best of Topps Photoshop: Carlos Peña

So I'm sitting there the other day going through the compa's Peña collection. Who knows why, but the following two card jumped out at me.

As everyone knows, card companies recycling photos is nothing new. I'm guessing I never noticed these two before because a) the cropping makes for a radically different card and b) because someone photoshopped the bejeesus out of one of them (my vote is for the second). 

Unlike other (well, most) airbrush/photoshop jobs you see Topps take on, this one is well done 

enough. You don't get the feeling that Los just emerged from a nuclear reactor, that his jersey is melting off, or that part of him is floating in the aether. Like I said, I never noticed the photoshop until I noticed these cards were identical.

So, Topps, well done here!

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