Mexico Comes To Huntington This Friday

There are so many things I could write about Fernando Valenzuela... but I'm not gonna say any of them here and now. I have another card of him as a Padre so I'll blather on about his illustrious career some other time. I'm just posting this one because it represents Mexico and I'm really stoked for our cerveza, not beer party that's going down Friday. Between a bunch of different kinds of Mexican beer, Scrabble, a pinche megaphone and the guarantee of my Brain Hero schooling me left and right, what's not to look forward to?

...and, yes, that's our gang sign (it's dos equis and a quesadilla- although I guess you could argue that it's a taco).

Ready, Aim, Wait To Get Fired.

Here's a double shoutout to the man responsible for our recent offensive explosion... or something like that. What's the over/ under on his firing? I'm putting my money on September 2010.

Until recently, my only memory of ol' Randy consisted of him being the other warm body ushered out of town with Krukkie. I was heartbroken- and it had nothing to do with Ready's departure.

"Rickey gets on"

I scanned and uploaded ths card back in January with plans of posting it the day he went in The Hall. Whoops! However, my pot-addled memory doesn't take a thing away from the FACT that Rickey was the greatest player to ever step foot on the diamond. Even if he were a surly cockass ala Bonds, his greatness would still be undeniable. Fortunately for all of us, Rickey was, and still is, a gracious man of the people. Many old white men have derided his flashiness and confidence but there are few athletes I'd consider acceptable role-models for my potential children... and Rickey's right up there.

Negra Modelo, Bleach & David Wells

This entry begins like so many others: I was making a late night Walmart run for mexican beer. This particular night I was already more effed up than anyone really has any business being. I chose six Negra Modelos as a change of pace and grabbed some job-enabling hair bleach before meandering up to the cards and picking out a discounted-to-$5 six pack box of '07 UD. The one Pad I pulled was the one guy I've seen start more games than anyone else. I've always been a fan of Boomer Wells, even when he was a Yankee- and if you know me, you know that's saying something. Nice card, nice memories. Worth $5? You be the judge.

Piazza

Seeing Alex Cora play the past few days has reminded me the only other person I was a fan of despite their Filthy Effin' Dodgerdom. From minor-league Little League through high school, I split time between second base and catcher because Joey Cora and Mikey P. kicked so much ass. When we snagged him up for the '06 season, I totally wound up with a PFOB; worlds had collided.

Koooooouz!!!

I thought that how SD fans supported Kouz through his slow start in his rookie season was classy and respectable. The backlash he's receiving now seems to negate that. Kevin established himself with a strong rookie campaign despite the aforementioned poor exit from the gate. His sophomore season was derailed by injury and nearly everybody I've heard utter his name as of recent is ready to write him off barely a month into this season. As for me, well, I'm not quite ready to lump him with Joe Charboneau just yet...

Continued

Note: the card has absolutely nothing to do with the story.

When somebody shoves a gun in your face, you tend to do what they say; I raised my hands and slowly lowered myself face first on the floor until I was handcuffed and dragged onto the porch with the rest of my friends as three misguided departments of law enforcement set upon destroying the house. During this time we were asked if anyone had any drugs or weapons and I volunteered my meager two grams, max bag of herbal... this turned out to be the only drugs on the premesis so they hauled me to regional on a ticketable offense, both to save face by having something to show for their full-scale failure and to try to pump me for information about things I know nothing about. Good times...

Okay, where was I?

My story picks up the next day. It was about half past midnight and I was sitting on my friends couch putting my shoes on to head to the bar. It had been what Ice Cube and everybody else would consider a good day; we had a cookout with lots of friends and every type of meat you can think of throwing on a grill. I took a little nap around ten, got up an hour later to five friends sitting in the living room, drank a couple of beers, reached into my pocket for my glass piece and my meager sack of kind when...

"BLAM!" The door flew open and instantly there was a gun in each of our faces.

(to be continued.)

Ian MacKaye would call this post "Filler"...

Sorry to put it off another night, but I'm pretty effed up and don't have it in me to tell a story. Reminisce about Q. Veras in the meantime...

Padres get Gaudin.

We now interrupt your previously scheduled story to present the newest Portland Beaver. Photographic evidence says he likes to rock a long chinpiece so eff yeah...

...and now for something completely different:

I've resisted the urge to post cards of Pads featured as members of other teams and then I pulled this. Well, not this one per se but one that once looked just like it- if you're confused, don't worry; I'm in the process of explaining it...
Well, my wife and I have been on the outs yet again so I temporarily relocated to my friends' house in my life long hometown. My second day there, I went to my childhood cardstore for the first time in ten years and bought, amongst other things, a box of 1991 Classic. Along with Big Gillie, I pulled a Rondell White and several other eventual Padres. My prize pull, even more awesome than a Single-A Giles, was a Single-A card of Paul Fletcher. I already had that card, signed, from when he did an appearance at that very cardstore as he's one of two guys from Ravenswood to make the Majors- the other being my across-the-street-neighbor Larry Carter but it was still cool to pull him from a pack...

(story continued tomorrow)

This Site Still Exists.

Hey, everybody. Sorry I've been away so long- I have a good excuse-I'll clear that up tomorrow. In the meantime, enjoy this shot of an alleged doer of several bad things. In related news, while I was going through old stuff at my mother's house this Easter while trying to avoid my jerkoff brother-in-law, I found a scorecard from a game I handscored at age 11 in 1994 featuring the hometown Rochester Red Wings beating the Charlotte Knights. Starting in LF for Charlotte? Yep.

Hey, Paul!

What some call a throwaway oddball, I call the perfect opportunity to sneak my brother's favorite player onto my stupid Padres blog...

Give This Guy One, Too.

This card is almost as much of a flop as Jim Ed's tenure at PETCO. First off, lousy photo: warming up being framed as action- very weak. Secondly- and this is much, much worse- THIS IS THE TEAM CHECKLIST!!! I just called Amy Poehler to tell her about this and she said "REALLY?!?!?" I could hear her husband Will Arnett in the background yelling "COME ON!!!" Seriously, Upper Deck; has your staff even watched baseball the last few years? It's like one of their guys took a nap in 2002 and woke up to this photo. "Whoa! The Padres scored the best centerfielder in baseball! Better just automatically throw him on their checklist." That's where his secretary should have entered to say "Um, excuse me sir, but Edmonds is far beyond his prime; that aside, they had the Cy Young winner last year. Their firstbaseman is kind of a badass too..."

Somebody Give This Guy A Job!

I wasn't as surprised when Shakespeare got released today as I was when the Red Sox signed him this offseason. It's common knowledge that we got him and Cla for Mirabelli because he was thoroughly incapable of catching Wakefield's knuckler. What the hell would have changed, Theo? It's not like he had a whole lot of any opportunities to hone his knuckler-corralling skills since he left. The only theory that makes any sense to me is that they snagged him up to be their starter in case they couldn't bring Varitek back. I doubt Bardo will be unemployed for long; no other teams have the same set of all-or-nothing circumstances that forced him out of the Boston organization twice in three years.

'92 Leaf vs. The San Diego Padres

Since I called myself out in my last entry for failing to do so, now seems like a good time to feature some cardboard from way back when. As I was flipping through a stack trying to settle on eight to scan, each of these two jumped out at me as a perfectly poetic summary of forty years of Friar futility.










Ironically, these poignant portraits of hopelessness in action were snapped during a rare stretch of mild success. During my research process for this particular project (Doesn't that sound so much more credible than "While I was googling shit for my stupid blog that nobody reads..."?), I was somewhat stunned to find that the Padres of my youth weren't as bad as I 'misremembered'. I really had no idea that in the eleven seasons of 1982 (best year ever) through 1992 we had only three losing seasons:
'86, '87 and '90. The one thing that I found fascinating about 1990 is that Trader Jack McKeon and Greg Riddoch each managed half of the season and ended with identical .463 records. This is the point where I'm practically obligated to say "But I digress..."
Nonetheless, what the hell, Leaf? What possessed your people to believe that kids want to rip a pack of primos just to see their heroes looking like total asses?

See Why

First off, I'd like to apologize to my readers (both of you) for my week-long absence. Yeah, I know I threw that Antonelli up on Monday but I'll be the first to admit that was total BS. Things have been hectic abut I should have been prepared- that's why I'm churning out a few tonight to keep in the queue for days I'm swamped or just lazy. Anyway, on to the card...

It's crazy; I have exponentially more late 80s to mid/ late 90s cards (Pads and otherwise) than anything else but for some reason I'm constantly featuring and blathering about current ones. Maybe it's because they're still novel to me as opposed to the stacks of Padres past which I've perused repeatedly to the point that they're only slightly less weathered than my first copy of Ball Four (if, for some strange reason, you haven't read the greatest book ever written by anybody about anything, come back later to see what I've written about CY- right now it's much more imperative that you go straight to amazon.com or your friendly local bookstore) or possibly it could be that these players are fresher in my mind therefore easier to come up with cohesive thoughts about. I mean, seriously, what the hell am I gonna say about Roberto Friggin Petagine?

At any rate, here's my favorite of five Pads I scored the other day from a half-off ten pack box of 08 Topps. This particular quadrilateral commemorates the five shutouts occurring around the league on May 30, 2007. I'm equal parts amazed and pleased that CY got front billing amidst a cast including Zito, Lowe, Bedard and Sergio Mitre. None of the starters pitched an actual shutout, all bowing out to their respective bullpens.

On a side note, I went to the game the day before this one and it was definitely not the sort of affair worth printing a card about. Boomer Wells started, Li'l Giles got tossed early and, yeah, we lost.

Another '86 Oddball

Commenter "Anonymous" (sweet user name, dude! It sounds all mysterious and shit) thought the oddball Rollie card was "a nice looking card", adding that "good design and the sweet 'stache gives it an old timey feel" and I wholeheartedly concur. While this promo (also from '86) features another sweet 'stache, it falls short in all other areas. I don't know which is more apparent- the two corporate logos or the logoless hat?

'86 Fingers

(not to be confused with 88 Fingers)

Kevin over at Card "O" The Day posted an oddball card today which, in turn, triggered me to dig up and dust off this bad mofo. I don't have a cool story or any old photos taken by a relative to go along with it but I'm sure we can all agree that it's still one pretty sweet card. I've never seen another card like this- it was printed in 1986 by TCMA and numbered "11 - PAD" which makes me curious who the other ten or so guys were...

'08 UD Adrian

Speaking of Team Mexico and guys named Gonzalez, here's a card I've had sitting around for awhile of the Gold Glover himself. I know that a lot of people don't like the camo but I dig it. I think it's kinda weak that other teams who do not hail from America's Official Military City have taken it upon themselves to bite our style. We did it first; eff you Cincy and eff you White Sox. Also, I find it interesting that they went all out with green helmets, belts and socks but he's rockin' the standard blue sleeves. Paging Dr. Paul Lukas!

Edgar!

Here's the other one I pulled a few days ago and without a doubt the one I was most stoked about. How can you not love this guy? I mean, even if he wasn't a 30 year old rookie playing alongside his superstar younger brother on their hometown team they grew up dreaming of playing for, he's still got that unsung, not all that great, utility guy quality that I look for in a favorite player. I really hope he doesn't get squeezed out this year with the glut of infielders we brought to camp.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot... Go Team Mexico!

First Win of Spring!

The Pads picked up their first win today, thanks in part to the offensive acumen of The Savior. In four at bats, Chase picked up two hits and a run in addition to driving a guy in. Yay, future! Now, if only we could do something about him being a Steelers fan...

'09 Topps Pepe Negro

I really do not like this guy. Wait, I take that back. I don't know him as a person and from what I've heard he sounds like a nice guy. With that said, I really do not like him managing my favorite team.

I really, really hope that the White Sox suck enough this year for Ozzie Guillen and his whole staff to get fired so Joey can come here and have the job that we should have given him two years ago.

'09 Toppstown Jake Peavy

I was out and about today doing what I do when the little lady called asking me to stop by Wal-Mart to pick her up some Sleepytime tea. Naturally, the first thing I did once I got there was check and see if they had any '09s in yet. Heck yeah they did! I got a couple jumbo packs or whatever they're called and pulled this along with what are sure to be my next two posts. I don't really get the whole "virtual card" thing and certainly don't get the tagline on the front. Bring it to life? Huh? How is a "virtual card" more real than this tangible slab of cardboard?

'08 Heritage Checklist

It's an '08 card, but appears to be the '07 team- I'm pretty sure I spotted Mike Cameron and Broke in there. It's hard to tell since all of the faces are so effin' tiny. One thing I do know for sure is that the guy in the middle of the top row is totally CY.

The Krukker

When I mentioned Krukkie at the end of my last entry I realized that I had yet to post one of his cards. Improbable, I know, as he is the sole purpose I became a baseball fan in the first place, nevermind a Padres fan. How does a white trash five year old who's never been west of the Ohio River become a San Diego fan? It's pretty simple, actually- I just showed up to kindergarten and the only kid in my class related to a professional athlete was Andrew Kruk. It didn't take long for me to become as fully immersed in Friardom as a kid in West Virginia could be in 1988- which is to say I read their box score in the paper every day and studied their baseball cards like a pederast studies a playground. Within a year he was sent off to Philadelphia but it was too late for me; I was already sucked in. I still followed Kruk's career but couldn't shake the soul sickness that is being a Padres fan.

Here ya go, Timmy!

I thought it might be kinda nice to say thanks to the one guy who follows FoC by featuring a card of his favorite Pad. I was hoping it wasn't Ruben Rivera or some other guy who was around when I wasn't buying baseball cards; after poking around his blogs, I was relieved to discover that he's a Tony guy. I've got a whole slew of Gwynn cards but this is one of my favorites. This eighteen card insert set commemorated the eighteen (of course) guys active in '95 with a .300 avg. over 1000 or more career at bats. Number 18? John Martin Kruk himself, signing out at precisely .300.

Seven Years

It's hard to believe that it's been seven years since Mike Darr died. Admittedly, I wasn't as affected by his death as other fans were since it (and his entire career, for that matter) happened during the time in my life when I wasn't following baseball closely. I just remember reading about it in the newspaper; I didn't feel a personal sadness, just the general sadness one feels when somebody dies at a young age leaving behind a wife and children... I had no idea until I saw pictures of him years later that he was all sleeved up- quite the rarity for baseball players back then- so I have to imagine that if I were paying attention to baseball back then he would have been my favorite Padre since I've been known to be superficial like that...

Opening Day '06

Here's a little something I call filler. I'd write something relevant to it but... yeah, I don't even have it in me to come up with an excuse.

Thankfully, only Briles, Adrian and Peavy remain from that year's starting lineup.

One For Corey

The sole purpose of today's post is to appease to a very specific subset of FoC reader--- the Bip fan/ greatest bro-in-law ever/ occasional beard farmer/ all-around-good-guy best known as C-Rob demographic. Behold:



I'm really excited that it's already almost that time of year where we spend half of our time texting back and forth about the Padres. I think my thumbs might need an extended Spring Training to prepare for six arduous months of bemusement, frustration, and dismay...

Ben Sheets? What?

Thanks to reader 'tec4 for contributing the following misprint:

Twenty Packs, One Effin' Padre

I went to the store earlier to pick up some delicious Dos Equis (Ambar) and figured I might as well piss away some money on 3 1/2 by 2 1/2" slabs of cardboard along with fellow impulse buys of beef jerky and Season 5 of The Simpsons. I got a box of 2008 Upper Deck Timeline and one of those ten pack repacks with the hopes of pulling some memories of Padres past. Out of those ten shitty packs, I got CY with the Rangers and one of the Pads and Giants lined up before Opening Day '06. Yay. The one Padre I got from the new box was this abomination:

Top Prospect?!?!? Really?!?!?

I guess Upper Deck and I have different definitions of "Prospect", nevermind "Top Prospect". Seriously, have you people seen this guy pitch? At all? Ever? He spent seven unimpressive seasons in the minors and came into the season with 27 ML games over 3 seasons under his belt. Huh. The fact that these were printed at the end of the '08 season makes it even less sensical. I can't say I'm gonna be too disappointed when CSB becomes some other team's top prospect.

Simple Math

+

=

Reverse Reggie Cleveland

I remember the first time I saw Chip Ambres- it was last year's Spring Training. I'd heard his name in the offseason and always imagined him looking like Richie Cunningham. Maybe because Dave Chappelle's white friend is named Chip. At any rate, he's Pawtucket's problem now; I noticed the other day that he signed a minor league deal or got a non-roster invite or something like that from the Red Sox- I'd look it up if I really cared... besides, it's not like anybody's reading this.

Here it is...

Recently, I got my old baseball cards back from my mother's house and simultaneously picked the habit back up. Most of the cards I have are from the late eighties through the mid nineties with a few seventies and last-few-years entries scattered in. Good friend, brother-in-law and brand new beard farmer imissbip will be submitting his and I'll put yours up too if you scan and send 'em... My first choice for the name of this blog was "Padres Cards" but I thought that might conjure up negative memories... Blah, blah, blah; enough with the introduction- let's get on with business, shall we?

Where better to start than our lone bright spot of '08:

The first of many All-Star appearances. I love Aid and Ed for the same reason I loved Briles- no matter what, they'd rather be a Padre than anything else.

From the same pack I also pulled another 2 1/2" by 3 1/2" commemorating Aid's Yankee Stadium vacation, albeit with '07 wrecker Matt Holliday in tow:

Doesn't Holliday look straight out of Ray Kinsella's cornfield?