The Things I Remember

This is my post for Round 1 of the contest being run at the Nachos Grande blog.  The contest is a bracket style post runoff that has readers vote on their favorite posts pertaining to a specific baseball card assigned by Chris at Nachos Grande.

My assigned card is a '97 Collector's Choice Ken Caminiti.  The Collector's Choice sets always add some superb photography.  The sets were cheaply priced and I used to pick up packs of those sets at a local CVS in a great little town named Richboro,PA.  The Caminiti card above depicts the uniqueness and wackiness that a Collector's Choice set included.

Back in the 90s, when I was a boy in age and in mind, I wasn't as into baseball numbers as I am now.  Now I am a man in age with a boyish mindset and baseball statistics matter a lot more to me.  The internet wasn't at the height of greatness as it is in 2013.  I wasn't online for hours a week looking up stats on ballplayers to better understand the game that I love.  I judged baseball players by the old fashioned "eyeball test" which I find somewhat outdated nowadays.

I remember some things about Caminiti as a baseball player.  These notions may be completely false right now, but I believed them to be true at the time.  Some of my remembrance of him may have been proven wrong through statistical analysis as baseball fans evolved into intelligent beings.

I will list out some of the things that I remember about the former slugger.  No more paragraphs for you to skim through and now for an easy to read list format for the folks with short attention spans.

Here are the things that I remember about Ken Caminiti:

• He was scary.  The boy version of Spiegel was frightened by the sight of this bearded, ripped and mean looking monster.
• Caminiti may have been an actor on the old HBO dark comedy, OZ.  I still believe this to be true.
• Caminiti was a beastly defender at third base.  He had a rocket of an arm and was always covered in dirt from the old Jack Murphy Stadium.  He was also always covered in Jack Murphy dirt when playing on the road because the San Diego Padres were too cheap to afford a washer.
• The above point about Caminiti being a great defensive player may be untrue with modern saber metrics.  He won some Gold Gloves but, we all know now that the Gold Glove award is kind of a sham.
• Caminiti was the NL MVP in 1996.  I remember that.  The award was probably tough to hand out back in '96 because every major league ballplayer hit over .300 with over 30 jacks.  
• I even remember Wilton Guerrero hitting 31 homers in 1996.

Those are a handful of things that I remember about Ken Caminiti and a little tidbit about Wilton Guerrero thrown in just for fun.

What do you guys remember about Caminiti the ballplayer?  Do you remember the era when all baseball players looked like freakish body builders?

Also, please don't leave any comments about his life off the field.  Those incidents were just sad and should only be spoken about after several beers in a dark dive bar when being a jerk is acceptable.

Friendly Contest Made With Nachos

The Nachos Grande is hosting a bracket style contest among sports card bloggers.  Each participant gets to write about a certain card that is posted on Nachos Grande and readers get to vote on whose post is the best for that round.  This should be a fun, friendly competition in the blog world.  Many bloggers have signed up and it will be a blast reading all the posts written by my peers of competition.

Over on this link is the page to Round 0, which is what this post is about.  You can click on that link to also get a better idea about this bracket contest.

Now that I got the little summary typed out, I can get into the meat of this post.  I can reach the point where I can type words about a baseball card.  One of the main perks of this contest is being given assignments on writing topics.  Sometimes it is difficult to come up with a blog post idea and actually feel enough motivation to write about a topic.  Nachos Grande is going to be my idea machine.  I see a card on that blog and now it is time to write.  Gather my thoughts and try to find some golden paragraphs while staring at a Topps Attax card of Franklin Gutierrez.

Another motivation for me to write for a contest like this is to get a pat on the back from my peers.  I am not going to lie.  We all need a pat on the back from people in our circle that share similar interests.  Only another baseball card blogger can know what it is truly like to crack a joke on a cheesy game such as Topps Attax.  The people that read the Platter and those that will recognize a Franklin Gutierrez baseball card are my peers.  Praise or even criticism from those folks holds a lot more weight than if it came from a non-collector who has hobbies that are dull and bland.

Gutierrez is a ballplayer that I hardly know.  The faintest memory that I have of his existence is that he was a former Dodger prospect.  He was once a highly touted Dodger farmhand that was dumped to Cleveland for the infamous Milton Bradley.  I also say dumped to Cleveland because anyone who ends up in that town is dropped there against their will.

Gutierrez has been a solid defensive outfielder in Cleveland and then to the Seattle Mariners.  Gutierrez even got into some games for Seattle in 2013.  He played in 41 games to be exact.  I wonder if Mariners fans even knew that.

The main contribution that Franklin Gutierrez has made during his baseball career is being the key component to the Milton Bradley trade to the Dodgers.  Bradley was a nutcase with a violent temper.  Having Bradley don the Dodger uniform has left me with millions of jokes about him that involve violence, yelling at cops, throwing bottles at fans, threatening his wife after she asked him to not smoke weed in front of their kids, spending time in jail, injuring himself severely while arguing with an umpire and berating reporters and teammates publicly.

All of these incidents would have been over my head if Bradley had stayed in Cleveland.  His career would have meant nothing to me.  Instead Milton Bradley has given me a wealth of entertainment at his expense.  Some of this credit must go to Franklin Gutierrez for being the chip that enticed Cleveland to send Milton Bradley into my world.