The Holiday Spirit

The month of December is a very festive time of year in every neighborhood across America.  The blog world itself is also a bit more cheery and generous.  Generosity is a strong trait that all baseball bloggers share towards one another and the kindness takes an uptick during the holiday season.  The baseball card blogs host some fun contests while giving away a sweet treat of cardboard and this spreads some joy throughout the community.

There also seems to be a Secret Santa among the blogging world around this time of year.  Names get paired up and bubble mailers get randomly dispersed throughout the globe.  Fantastic Catch organized a Secret Santa this year and I received a nice gift from a participant named Roger.  I had a good time reading some of the blog posts about the cardboard gifts that people received on Christmas.  Some cool looking cards were obtained and shown off during Christmas week.

I was glad to get this bubble mailer so I can have a nice baseball card Christmas gift to dive into.

This card really stood out from the rest of the grand bunch that Roger sent my way.  A mid-90s card of Hideo Nomo batting will almost always be the big winner for "Best Card of a Bubble Mailer."  Nomo is surely cranking out a homer in this photo.  I was also probably at the game and the ball landed about five feet over my head.

My Hall of Fame collection gets a boast!  Hip, hip hooray!  I have been really focusing my collecting habit on getting cards of the legends enshrined in Cooperstown.  This is my first Ozzie Smith relic.  I have explained in the past how I feel Ozzie is a cardboard superstar.  He is one of my favorite Cooperstown inductees to collect because so many of his cards are action packed.

I know it seems weird to bring up the high energy impact that Ozzie had on baseball cards while staring at a card of him posing the same way Little League kids pose.  Just keep in mind that this piece of jersey may have been involved in an epic defensive play or worn during a head first dive at third after legging out a triple. It is possible that this jersey was game worn.  Please just let me hope.

This is a very nice manupatch featuring two Brooklyn icons, Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella.  I would actually wear this logo on a shirt or a hat.  I would even wear a shirt with this striped pattern.  I hope I have a reader that is a fashion designer and can make this happen.  You wouldn't even need and MLB licence since the patch is of a trolley and the name Brooklyn in the classic Dodger cursive.

Thanks for the cards, Roger.  It was a very kind gift with many great cards.  

Skimming Through The Stack

Before I get into the meat of this post, I would like to inform the blog world that binders are pretty cheap at Costco.  Some of my readers may have already been privy to this information.  The sight of seeing four sturdy, two inch ring binders for 11 bucks total was a joy to me.  I recommend shopping at Costco because they treat their employees better than some other retail stores and they also have some sweet deals.  Oh yeah, and the pizza and hot dogs at the snack bar are grand treats as well.

Costco didn't pay me to write that and I am not an employee of the company.  I just wanted to give the blog world a heads up on a bargain for collectors and to give props to a big company that deserves some praise from the buying public.

In my last post, I mentioned that I picked up a bag full of dime box goodies from my local card shop called Luxury Box Sports Cards.  I picked out some more of my favorite cards that I pulled from my stack of cardboard.

The '89 Topps set was one of the first that I remember buying packs of as a child.  Heck, I think '89 Topps was the first packs I ever purchased.  These cards still stand the test of time with a beautiful swirling design, some iconic images and a splendor color scheme.

I probably already have this Bo Jackson card.  I most likely do and I don't even have to check.  This was just a card that I remember as a kid while being enamored with Jackson's athletic prowess.  It also helps that I am an Oakland Raider fan and Bo Jackson is still a beast in the minds of the Raider faithful.  Jackson played for the LA Raiders which was sweet because they were the local pro football time in '89.  Now the only pro football in LA is the overpaid USC Trojan football squad.

Jackson had a Saturday morning cartoon around this time as well which appealed to me.  Sports and cartoons were top notch to the 1989 version of me.  Jackson also had a legendary Nike ad campaign which became embedded in my mind even though I don't wear Nike shoes.  Other than Jackson's baseball and football exploits, he is also well known to the Nintendo playing generation that spent hours playing Tecmo Bowl.  The Raiders were my team and Jackson was an unstoppable force in that game.  Nobody could tackle Bo Jackson.

 
The '89 Topps set also delivers my favorite All-Star design for a baseball card.  The colors pop and the card was probably considered flashy at the time.  All-Star cards deserve to stand out because it is a honor for ballplayers to showcase their skills among their peers.

Jose Canseco was another athletic marvel in 1989.  He could mash a 450 foot home run, steal a base and flex for the crowd with his body builder physique all in the same game.  Canseco was one of my favorite players while growing up.  I still enjoy his buffoonery to this very day.  I have read his book "Juiced" where he rats on all his former teammates and friends.  I watched him on "The Surreal Life" on VH1 where a seminal episode at Canseco dressing in drag.  It is good to see athletic prowess gets you to such great heights in this society.

More importantly, I still collect Jose Canseco baseball cards.  I have probably been placing his cards in binders since 1989.  There have been some years when I didn't collect but, since I started back up again a few years ago, Canseco cards have been hoarded by me.

Don't be shy and send me some Canseco cards.  I know some of you despise the muscular fellow.