Group breaks, card drafts and PEDs oh my!!

While enjoying the spoils of a couple of card drafts and a group break this evening, I decided to look a little harder at the cards I received from Wes, Greg and Matt and see if there were any tidbits in there that I could share.

Sure enough.

I found a couple of cards of guys who all of a sudden have become trendsetters and they didn't even know it.

why guys with their ability felt they needed to.....nevermind

I also found a couple of guys who weren't allowed to root for each other during a baseball game.

Let's go 'Dre!!!

I found another guy who may have been one of the top 5 pitchers in the NL before the break, but now should have a missing persons report filed on him...

Come back James, the Buccos need you!

This card is of a man who left this Earth way too soon..and is of a set that would be the only one that I would collect if I got back into football.

How many times did you see this during his playing days??

Moving on to the sport of hockey, I was very happy that Matt was very generous and sent me a couple of extras to ease the sting of my poor luck in his group break.  This Dion Phaneuf is a great addition for me, but it also led me to ask 2 questions...

Matt, thank you for the extras!!!

1.  When did the Leafs have brown in their unis?
2.  Was it a sign when the person who designed this card actually cut out the groin area of the picture to insert the swatch?

The next time you wonder about the reasons why we are going to experience another lockout in the NHL this year, take a look at this guy's contract as one of the reasons. 

12 years, $64 million contract for a 31 year old goalie...and it's the players that have to bite the bullet...

Now that I've regaled you with a bunch of cards from the present and made a little light of the current state of sports, let's enjoy a little bit of the past....who doesn't like vintage??

All well loved, just like a lot of 60's cards

Wonder if these guys ever thought they would hear the terms collective bargaining agreement, performance enhancing drugs or albatross contracts.

Nah, they were just having fun playing the game they loved.

Thanks for reading, Robert

28 days

That's all there is before the NHL imposes a lockout on their players if a new CBA is not reached.

I can see the writing on the wall now.  It's going to happen.  We're going to lose significant time again this year.  (I'm praying that the two sides prove me wrong, but they just waited too damn long to start talks)

The problem now is what it was in the past, the owners.  The gulf between the haves and the have nots in the ranks of ownership is just way too wide.  Teams that can bury horrible contracts in the minors (Toronto and the Rangers to name two) have a big advantage over teams that are scrambling each season just to spend to the floor (Phoenix, Florida).  Sadly, the owners have to "band together" to figure a way to do it in order to save the poor clubs.

Who takes the hit?  The players....

I'm sure this guy wasn't going around to the owners with a gun to their heads and saying "give me a 13 year contract"...

 

The league has a real problem on their hands.  The divisive shift isn't within the players; if anything they seem to be more together on the issues than they ever have been.

The players are the driving force of the game, and there are a lot of great young players driving the skill level upwards at an alarming rate.

No sooner do I hear in talks that ownership wants to limit contracts to a 5 year term then I see not one but two players (Pacioretty and Simmonds) sign 6 year contracts.

The problem (at least how I see it) is the owners battling within themselves.  The rich doing their best to drive the poor ones out of business by forcing them to either put up or shut up.  Yes, I know it's the classic business model, but when you have a finite amount of teams in a sport you're trying to expand to the entire North American market, it just doesn't make sense.

Nearly $8 million (on average) per year for Shea Weber?  Come on folks, it's getting a little ridiculous.  Weber is a very good defenseman, but to pay him near what Crosby, Malkin and Ovechkin are making is ....nuts.

This type of spending has forced teams that are "middle of the pack" like Carolina to overpay for players (I'm sorry, $6 million/yr for Jordan Staal is a little much..again just my opinion).

It's obvious now that the lost season of 2004-05 hasn't shown the ownership group anything, because they've gone and created the same problem as they had 8 years ago.  Out of control spending.

I'm not paying good money to go and see Ryan Suter play hockey.   Ryan Suter is a very good hockey player, don't get me wrong, but to pay him the kind of money that he received (13 years, $98 million) is crazy. 


Gary Bettman...you need to get your ownership group together....offer the players 51% of the revenue, put in an impartial mediator to hear appeals on player suspensions...and for the love of all things good, contract this league by 4 teams. 

Do not put a 2nd team in Toronto, do not give a team back to Quebec City unless an owner chooses to move there, and put no more teams south of North Carolina.


I also want to watch Nashville Predators games on the off chance that the cameras will pan and show me the visage of this very lucky hockey player's wife....

Mr. Underwood?  Nah.....

I'm sorry that you've been forced to read a very long winded and choppy rant, but when I see my favorite sport 28 days away from another lockout, well it really just fucking pisses me off.

28 days....you think I'm upset now, wait until the lockout happens....then I might go spinning out of control on the NHL....

lol....I love blogging...

Thanks for reading, Robert

Now I know why they call him the Spaceman

Come on folks, look at this card of the "Spaceman" Bill Lee, and tell me that he isn't looking for an UFO, or the mother ship to come and pick him up.

is the phrase "beam me up Scotty" a little too over the top here?

This was one of the cards I scored in a card draft on Wes' blog Jaybarkerfan's Junk. I figured it would be an easy and fun way to ease into a couple of posts about some of the card drafts/group breaks I've been involved with lately.

One card not enough?  OK, here's two more...

The Jays back in the 70's didn't have prospects at any other positions than P & C

The '79 Topps card of the trio of upcoming Blue Jays prospects is interesting, because it appears that photo day in Toronto was taken with a roll of black and white film.  The Roy Halladay card appears to have the stitches of a baseball drawn on it, and if that's the case, that may be the dirtiest looking baseball I've ever seen.  Sorry Donruss, that's a miss...

Just a tease for now...more to come

Thanks for reading, Robert

One guy who quietly has returned to his normal self

For all the folderol that surrounded this guy's season in 2011, you would have thought that Adam Dunn was a God. 

Yes, he struggled...mightily.

His final batting average was my weight when I was a freshman in high school (159).

But you know what, I could say that I shouldn't have been surprised about it.  Adam spent 10 years in the National League, and comes to the White Sox last year full of expectations after signing a 4 yr/$56 million deal.  The manager in Chicago, well let's just say that Ozzie is a character.  The 10 years in the NL were with Cincinnati, Arizona (44 games) and 2 years with Washington.  No real pressure cookers there.

Now he's in Chicago.  One of the 'big 3' in terms of US cities as far as population, and pressure on sports athletes.

No doubt he beat on himself last year, and tried way too hard.   The numbers don't lie.  11 HR, .569 OPS, 177 K in 415 ABs.  In my lifetime, I can't think of anyone else who struggled more during a season.  Not even the mighty Dave Kingman had an average so low, or power numbers so meager during a full season.

But now, quietly, Adam Dunn is back.  Well, to his normal self anyhow.  In his first 34 games this year, he has already matched last season's total of 11 HR.  He's hitting .248 (4 points above his career average).  If he keeps up his pace for the rest of the year, his current OPS of .997 will be his career high.

All for a guy who many said was finished last year.

I'm going to go out on a limb here, and say that if he stays healthy, he will hit career HR #400 this year (he needs 24 more this year to hit that number).

Why the focus on Adam Dunn?  Well, during the card draft at JABOs blog a few weeks back, I snagged this Adam Dunn relic..

I'm kind of glad that Dunn has gone out and quietly gone back to the numbers that made him such a sought after free agent during the 10-11 winter free agency period.  Yes, he did have a really bad year in 2011, but he really didn't deserve the beat down that he received from writers and fans alike.

Welcome back, Adam

Thanks for reading, Robert

Numerology, JABO style

I'm not sure what it is, but I'm into card drafts lately.  I'm actually in the middle of two more that are in the process of gaining drafters, you can see them here and here.

I was into box breaks for a while, but I had one where my luck was really poor and that kind of soured me on box breaks for the foreseeable future (it was no fault of the blogger, that's just the way the balls roll sometimes...).

As I had mentioned the other day, I participated in Kyle's card draft a couple of weeks ago. I'm following up on the promise to post what I obtained.

Needless to say, part of the allure for me was a string of numbered cards from '08 Heritage and other places.  I was fortunate enough that nobody else really keyed in on these particular cards, and I scooped up a good portion of them.  First, the handful that will actually fit into the insanity set...

4 more towards 1500!

I also scored some others that I can use as trade bait in the future...

All the Heritage Chromes that I grabbed turned out to be refractors #'d/559, an added bonus!  The Barajas will stay here as part of the Jays collection (of course), and if anyone is interested in the Miles, Beato or Morrow cards, just let me know.

Yes, we really didn't study any numbers here, but at least the cards shown involved numbers...I tried!!

thanks for reading, Robert

This post is not X-rated

Sorry guys, have to try and keep it as clean as possible.   I've noticed that there has been the odd curse word thrown into my posts lately, and I am almost beginning to wonder if I should be setting up a swear jar for each 4 or 5 letter word I mistakenly post (lol..mistakenly, yeah right).

Well, I'm hoping that this post will help me along to a weeks worth of posts describing the loot I received from Kyle over at the JABOs blog.  Kyle's card draft went quickly and without a hitch and was a great value from where this guy sits.

(Speaking of card drafts....Greg over at Plaschke, thy Sweater is Argyle is getting one together and needs 4 more peeps....let's go!)

OK...enough pimpage...let's get on to the cards.  This post is not X-rated, but it is about cards from the Upper Deck X sets.  I had never seen one of these cards before I had joined a couple of box breaks at other blog locales, and the sets quite intrigued me.

This card draft netted me just one X card, from the 2009 set, but it's a good one for me...

Roy Halladay from the 2009 X set.  Compare/contrast this one from the 2008's that I have in my collection:

Reminds me of a beer I used to drink when I was younger.

I would say that the 2008's look a lot more like an X than the 2009 die cut does.  These cards became kind of a curiosity for me, because I thought that the X die cuts were kind of cool, so I decided to look them up in the magazine.

100 cards?  That's it?  Disappointing that is for sure.  If the set had have been 200 cards, I probably may have put that on the list to collect it.  100 cards is a time waster for sure, I wonder if Upper Deck was just looking for a place holder set later in the season and came up with this.  The '08s are for trade if anyone is looking to add to their respective team collections.

Sorry if you were expecting something else when I mentioned in the title that the post isn't X-rated.  Maybe you were expecting some Benchwarmers photos?

 All right then, but just a couple....

Hopefully they weren't too provocative for you!!

Thanks for reading, Robert

Card Draft swag from west coast Greg

Well, a few weeks back I had the opportunity to get in a card draft over at Plaschke, thy Sweater is Argyle. 

Greg offered up a great selection of cards at a decent price, and I saw a couple of cards that were right up my alley, so I decided to jump in. 

First, some of the base/inserts that I grabbed...

The top row features a couple of cards that interested me because they are inserts that I like, but am only dabbling in here and there.   I haven't caught the Gypsy Queen fever, but the cards do look nice, and anytime you can add a HOFer to your collection, why not?  The Rafael Furcal is the die cut from '08 Upper Deck X (duh).  Again, another set that I never collected, but the X die cut cards are kind of intriguing to me, so I grabbed it.  On the bottom, as you can plainly see is an '84 Topps Tom Seaver.  The 80's for me were an absolute dark period for collecting, as I can honestly say I didn't purchase one pack of baseball cards during the entire decade, so again on a lark I grabbed this up as well.

I also picked up a couple of A&G national pride inserts....Manny Ramirez and Adrian Gonzalez.  Much like the state inserts in A&G, this is another insert set that interests me as well, and may be collected down the line. 

Of course, there were other cards available...I tried to get a hold of some '59s, but was too late on those.
Naturally, the first few rounds of any card draft are when the relics/autos get snapped up, and this was no exception.  I figured I'd have my pick of the hockey that was available, and I was on the money...

First up is the current captain of Les Canadiens, Brian Gionta.  Would have preferred the team logo on the upper right match the sweater, but hey what can you do, right?  Still an excellent auto...

UD Trilogy relics are always pretty cool, and I snapped up future Hall of Famer Doug Weight with this one.  Again the only drawback is the Islanders logo with him pictured as a Duck.  Still two different colored swatches is pretty cool. 

Finally, this one is of a guy who may be top 5 in goal scoring by the time his career is done...

Ilya Kovalchuk just picked up his 400th career goal, and at age 28 he has lots of career left.  The top 20 is only 173 goals away, and another 100 goals on top of that gets him to the top 5.  Barring any major injuries, I think he's got a great shot at being right up there with the best of all time.

Greg, thanks for the draft, I had a lot of fun!!

thanks for reading, Robert