By the page: 2009 Topps Heritage

The past couple of weekends I've been able to find an hour or so of time to go through the giant box of Blue Jays.  Trying to find enough cards to put together pages of either players or sets can be very time consuming.   Maybe one day I'll be smart enough and just sort the entire damn box so my life will be easier!

The time was well spent, don't get me wrong.  I managed to put together another 15 pages of cards, meaning there's 135 cards that I don't have to continually sort through in the future.   While I was able to put together player pages of Halladay, Bautista, Overbay, Shannon Stewart, John Olerud along with a handful of early 80's Donruss and Fleer pages, the 2009 Topps Heritage page that I'm going to show off is the one that caught my eye.

I pondered for a moment how I would show off the set, since it's a completely horizontal release.   I didn't think too long before figuring out what to do...

Top row:  Tall isn't the only common thread

Looking these 3 up on baseball reference to see what their current status is was an eye opener, not because of where they are, but because of their size.  Rios is the shortest (6'3"), while the other two  stand 6'5".  By happy accident, it turns out that all 3 are first round picks of the Jays as well, Rios in '99, McGowan was the 33rd pick in 2000, and Purcey was a first rounder in 2004.

None of the three are with the Jays now...

Middle row:  No links here

2009 would be the final season of Millar's career, with the highlight being part of the 2004 world champion Red Sox team.  I also learned that Millar was never drafted, he was signed as a free agent by the Florida Marlins in 1993 and worked his way up through the Marlins system until he made the team full time in 1999. 

Scott Downs in my opinion, is going to be one of those lefty pitchers that pitches into his mid 40's, finding a new job on a new team each season.  He's on a tryout in 2015 with the Indians. 

Shaun Marcum is also with the Indians.  Marcum didn't throw a pitch for the Jays in 2009, due to arm troubles, which have plagued him throughout his career. 

Both Marcum and Downs were drafted in the third round (another happy accident).

Third row:  Sprinkle in a couple of rookies

Love the Brett Cecil pre-glasses picture.  2009 was his rookie season with the Jays, and it saw him struggle as a starter.  His ERA was quite bloated while the Jays kept him as a starter during his first 4 seasons.  The last two years he's been in the pen, and very effective.  Cecil looks so different here than on some of his more recent Topps issues, which show off some great tattoos along with his trademark glasses.

2009 was also Brad Mills rookie season, but he didn't fare anywhere near as well as Cecil.  Mills is in the A's system right now, but unless something improves it appears that he's going to end up as a AAA/fringe starter. 

I remembered reading about Jesse Litsch last summer, he had retired after having some very serious health problems over the previous 3 years.   The 2007 & 08 seasons were very good for Jesse, but Tommy John surgery in 2009 unfortunately started the arm problems that would eventually cost him his career.

Topps in my opinion did a nice job replicating the 1960 set with the 2009 Heritage release.   There are those out there who don't like it because it's completely horizontal, which does make it tough to look at cards in pages unless you turn the binder sideways.  I like the different colored backgrounds in the secondary photo on the front. 

I wondered while writing this post how far I was from completing the Jays team set for '09 Heritage.   Turns out I still need 9 cards, which include the SPs of Halladay, Rolen and Romero.  Maybe one day I'll hunt them down and knock another team set off the want list.

thanks for reading, Robert

Commonality

Not a word I would use too often, commonality.  A shared feature or attribute.  The more I think, the more I believe that I've heard a commentator use the word on a telecast.   No matter, this is an attempt to show off another dozen cards I bought for the Jim Thome collection on Sportlots. I decided to divide them into groups of 4 based on commonality (now I'm using the word a little too much).

Let me know what you think...

First group of four:

Give up?  How about four things that baseball players do every game.   Throw, hit, run the bases, and drink water in the dugout. 

OK, maybe that was a little bit of a stretch.   How about group #2?

Simple again, 4 cards featuring Jim in a Phillie's uniform.  From four different sets no less.  One of them is even a dreaded "pictured in one team's uniform while shown as a member of another team" card.  Do I include cards like that in my Jays collection?  No.  It just doesn't make sense, right?  The blue foil on the '05 Opening Day card in the upper left scanned really well, and looks just as good in hand.

OK, final group for today.

If you said "poorly scanned horizontal cards", you'd be correct.  I don't have a whole lot of Thome cards from his brief stay with the Dodgers, so the '09 Heritage high numbers card was a cool pickup.  The Turkey Red instantly becomes one of my favorite cards.  The infamous bat extended pose that is probably more famous on the 2008 A&G card (#87) is a classic. I still have to get that A&G card....(note to self).  How about another fun fact.   The two Heritage cards in this post list Thome at 6'3".  The rest of the cards list him at 6'4".  I wonder if he shrank towards the end of his career...

There's 12 more cards to add to the collection...I'll be at 200 before I know it.

thanks for reading, Robert

Serial Insanity cards 1031-1035

Believe it or not, this is the final post for the SNI set this week (try to hold the cheering down please).  After this post, I only have 2 cards on my desk that haven't been documented, so I guess you could say I'm caught up.

These 5 cards bring the set to 69% complete, and I'm quite happy that I have been able to proceed this far in the set.  With another trade proposed to me today, the goal of 1100 by the end of the year still has a small chance of being completed.

With all that being said, here's the last 5 cards of my mini "marathon".   Enjoy.

Card # 1031:  Richard Hidalgo

Serial Number:  251
45th card out of 50 for the Mets

There has been a lot of Mets cards on the SNI posts for the past week.  Remember the 2000 season of Richard Hidalgo?  44 HRs, 122 RBI, .314 average for the Astros.  This card shows him during his only season as a Met, one in which he hit homers in 5 consecutive games.  Hard to believe that he was out of the major leagues by age 30.

Card # 1032:  Grady Sizemore

Serial Number:  598
38th card out of 50 for the Indians

Injuries cut this very talented outfielder's time in Cleveland down, but I just read an article here that states the Phillies may be interested in signing Sizemore as an extra outfielder.  This guy is too talented to have his career end the way it did in Cleveland, so I'd really enjoy see him getting a chance to play somewhere with a fresh start.

Card # 1033:  Ryan Perry & Rick Porcello

Serial Number:  1438
27th card out of 50 for the Tigers

It's been a long time since I had a multi player card come into the set.  Porcello has been a mainstay of the Tigers rotation since his rookie year of '09, and '13 was his best season for K's (142) and WHIP (1.282).  Perry has had a bit of a rough time after his first two seasons, 2011 and 2012 were not good statistically, and 2013 was spent in the minors between AAA & AA.  At 26, he's got some time to get it back together and find his way back to the majors...

Card # 1034:  Chris Narveson

 
Serial Number:  610
29th card out of 50 for the Brewers

Narveson is the first card from the '13 Update set that I've shown off here, courtesy of Pat from the Hot Corner Cards blog.  Narveson pitched in only 2 games for the Brewers in 2013, before being sent to the minors where he spent the remainder of the season in AAA.  At only 31, and being a lefty, I'm sure he'll end up somewhere in 2014.

Card # 1035:  Kyle Lohse

Serial Number:  509
30th card out of 50 for the Brewers

Would love to know what he learned to turn his career around.  In his first 10 big league seasons, he only had only one season with an ERA below 4, and 4 other seasons his ERA was above 5.  The last 3 years, he's won 41 games, his combined ERA is 3.19 and WHIP is 1.140.  What changed?  You'd also think that with a turnaround like his, he wouldn't have had to wait until a week before the '13 season started before landing a contract.

Thanks for reading, Robert