The Great Reorg #400: 1993 Upper Deck Jimmy Key

I loved watching this guy pitch.  His delivery was so smooth, there seemed to be no wasted effort at all.  His '94 Upper Deck card kind of gives you the gist of it.  Medium high leg kick and slight twist.  Nothing overpowering in his arsenal, but the ball always moved around. 

Things I didn't remember when looking at his career stats:

• He was exclusively a reliever his first full season in Toronto ('84) and saved 10 games.  
• Led the AL in ERA in '87 (2.76).  He also had 8 complete games that year and finished 2nd in Cy Young voting (Clemens)
• In the strike shortened season of '94, he was 17-4 (!) when play was halted in August.  He also finished 2nd in Cy Young voting that year as well (Cone)

This would be the last year for cards depicting Jimmy as a Blue Jay, as he moved on to New York in 1993 as a free agent.  The Jays would end up replacing him in the rotation with Dave Stewart and would win their 2nd straight World Series.  Jimmy would end up getting a 2nd ring 3 years later as part of the '96 Yankees World Series championship team. 

It's been fun so far going through the cards and getting them into a spreadsheet, seeing how many have doubles up to now (there's 19 players with 2 of the same card), and seeing the stack grow.  For those of you that have the Xfinity cable remote, a stack of 400 cards is as tall as the remote standing on its end. 

Maybe another couple hundred cards and I'll put them into a box and start dividing them up by year.  I still don't have a card from all 40 years of the team's existence recorded yet, but that should come soon.

Stay tuned...there's more

thanks for reading, Robert

A new trade partner hits quite a few want lists

I received an email from a blog reader about 10 days ago, requesting a trade.  Charles wished to have all the Cleveland Indians cards off of my trade list (a devoted fan, no doubt), and in return he had a specific list of cards to send my way.

I took one look at the list and quickly agreed, and a new trade partner emerged.

Charles became the first person to knock a card off my 30 most wanted list , and it was a great card for my Jim Thome PC.

It's good to finally get the Thome Bowman RC into my collection.  That was number one on the list.

Most of the cards that are on the 30 most wanted lists are just base cards, so I'm hoping that I can get through them rather swiftly and grow the PC's a little.

2014 Topps series 2 still sadly has a want list, but 4 more cards were removed via this trade.

Still 26 more to go.  Ugh.

Charles also put a dent in a few of the Blue Jays want lists.  He completed a couple team sets:

Pushed a trio of sets to the brink of completion:

How have I not finished Donruss 91 yet?

And knocked on the door of a few others...

The piece de resistance in this trade for me was 3 more '59 Topps cards

Great cards to add to the collection!  I'm already up to 155 so far, and even though I really didn't set a goal as to how much I wanted to have by the end of the year, the halfway point of 286 cards is a thought right now. 

This was definitely a great first trade Charles, thank you very much!   I hope to carry out some more trades in the future with you.

thanks for reading, Robert

By the page: Dave Stieb

I don't know why it took me as long as it did to find 9 cards of possibly the best pitcher in franchise history (it's between him and Roy Halladay, IMO), but I think I've got a good group of 9 for the owner of the best slider that Jays fans have ever seen.

Top row:  The early years

All 3 photos show the trademark Dave Stieb determined look, even the posed shot for his '83 Donruss card on the left.  I like the minimal writing on the front of the '85 Topps all star card on the right, no need to clutter up the card with fancy logos and such.  I wonder if that's Damaso Garcia or Tony Fernandez in the background photo bombing the card.

Middle row:  87 through 90

Had to include at least one Canadian issued card on the page, so the '87 OPC on the left does the trick.  I was never a big fan of the Classic releases, and misspelling his last name doesn't help matters any.  2 decades ago, you couldn't attach a pole vault pole to a javelin and still get me to touch a Donruss Studio card.  Over the years, the photography grew on me, and I appreciate them now a lot more than I ever thought I would.

Bottom row:  Later on in life

For a guy that was known for so many close calls when it comes to no-hitters, it was only fitting that the No-Hit Club card from Score '91 be on this page.  The Upper Deck checklist art has always been a favorite of mine, and the '92 UD that features Stieb in the Skydome with the CN Tower in the background is a classic for me.  The '93 Topps in the dark blues....you know how I feel about that particular jersey.

I managed to even make the page chronological.  Sometimes I surprise myself. 

I also find that it's easier to discuss cards from the mid 80's to mid 90's era.  I'm not sure why that is, but I just feel more comfortable discussing how I feel about each release.   Maybe it's because that was a time where I was really in tune with collecting, and the cards bring back a lot of memories for me.

thanks for reading, Robert

By the page: Roberto Alomar

Today is the final day of the regular season (scheduled anyhow), and I thought that I would do a page of one of the greatest Blue Jays, Roberto Alomar.

Robbie is going to be one of those players that will end up with multiple pages over time; playing for the Jays in the early 90's will do that for a lot of players.

With a lot to choose from, I decided on these 9 cards to start off the Alomar pages...

Top row:  Bunting

Alomar is probably the one Jays player that I could put an entire page of bunting photos together.  Robbie was a very skilled bunter and it shows, the Donruss card on the left shows him using the drag bunt for a base hit, while the Collectors Choice card in the middle appears to have captured Robbie in the middle of a sacrifice.

Middle row:  Shots you don't see every day.

Close up shots like the '93 Upper Deck #125 on the left are great.  Safe or out?  Hard to tell.  I don't have a lot of batting cage cards in my collection, but the '94 UD #455 in the center is a favorite of mine.  Not sure if the white portion on the sweet spot of the bat is tape, or if the bat is just sanded down....

The '94 SP #ER1 on the far right sent me off to check on baseball reference to see if Alomar had ever pitched in a ball game (he didn't).  It looked like a pitching pose to me, so I thought it kind of fit in this group of 3.

Bottom row:  Nothing but the blues

I've said it before and I'll say it again.   The Blue Jays dark blue jerseys are my favorite.  So much so that the Jays jersey that I own is of the dark blue variety (13  Lawrie, just in case you're wondering who is on the back). 

Not a bad effort for the first Alomar page.  I'll certainly have plenty of opportunities to create better pages for Mr. Alomar.   That brings the total # of cards out of the box to 220.   I'm going to have to start churning out a bunch of pages here very soon, due to the great number of cards that came in recently from my fellow Blue Jays bloggers.

thanks for reading, Robert

Common card of the day: Matt Nokes

When live pitching just will not do.....

thanks for looking, Robert