Another Mess Of Dubs

I did some well-overdue organizing the other day, sorting a few hundred cards I've gotten over the past couple of months and putting them where they belong. In the process I turned up a fair amount of duplicates I was previously unaware of. Like before, I'm going to post them here so Backstop, Underdog, and whoever else can claim whichever ones they need... That Eichelberger card above is one of my favorite cards ever, period. That huge chopstache he has going on, along with that uni- everything about it just clicks.

Don is the least known of the three Reynolds brothers in baseball. Larry is a player agent and I'm pretty sure you know about Harold... I'm not a big fan of '88 Fleer; it just seems so, um, disposable I guess. But any card of Goose Gossage is a good card so it all evens out.

Here are a few worthless cards from sets I like. You can't go wrong with '93 Upper Deck or mid-80s Topps.

It's worth noting that Topps got Cory Luebke's first name right after calling him Corey on his Gold Futures card. As for '90 Donruss, I consider it the kudzu of collecting. It's everywhere and you can't get rid of it.

More kudzu but this time it's Bip so you know it's going somewhere. Cedric Hunter doesn't have quite as much of an underground following but he is still kicking, signing with Cleveland in November. To date he has one Major League hit, a single in four at bats spread out over six games for the 2011 Padres.

Yep, more of 'em. Moving along...

Okay, that Whitson is the last one of those. I swear.

And finally, a few more slabs of junk wax from twenty-some years ago. I hope somebody has a use for some of these. If you're one of those somebodys, just let me know.

Nick Strikes Again, Pt. I

There are few things as great as pulling a bubble mailer out of the mailbox, looking at the return address, and seeing that it's from Nick of Dime Boxes fame. He has repeatedly mailed me nothing but awesomeness. Odd thing is, we've never made a formal trade. I won his first contest and he sent me a slew of great Padres and some other assorted gems; I sent him back some cards I thought he'd like and a casual pattern emerged. This "non-trade" method of trading is definitely my favorite. The surprised joy of unexpected new cards is what I imagine Christmas must be like for kids whose mom isn't in some cult that thinks it's a pagan holiday so you get screwed out of presents and everyone in school thinks you're a weirdo. But anyway, as I was saying... envelopes from Nick are great and this one was no different.

Up top are two of the first I saw and two of my favorites. I have very few A&G cards and this one is nice. Topps managed to photoshop the new uniform on him correctly- unlike Carlos Quentin and Huston Street's Heritage issues- but he hasn't had the dreads since he shaved them of in May, 2011. Details. It's a good look, though. I wonder if he misses his dreads as much as I miss mine? ...That McCovey is a thing of beauty.

Next up are some oddballs. That Chase is my first Padre from the 2012 Triple Play set. I got a pack of them as an impulse buy this summer and I'm a fan. They're cheap and fun, which seems to fit the Triple Play mold. I looked up both of the players on the Old Judge cards; neither made the majors but Randy Curtis did get to AAA briefly for two organizations.

Everyone likes O-Pee-Chee, right? I love that split second right as you're about to put a card on the doubles stack and then you notice that it's not a Topps logo. I'm going to assume that everybody else stores OPC cards side-to-side with their Topps counterparts also.

I feel like '84 Topps are underrated. For as much as I like them, I didn't have very many before now. Of these, all but the Kennedy are new to me. I also enjoy the logo in place of an extra face shot on the manager card. My favorite of the bunch is Gwosdz, though. It's pronounced "Goosh"; his teammates called him "Eye Chart".

Camouflage! Of all the camo jerseys the Padres have worn, the original ones as shown here on Mark Kotsay his first time around are my favorites. The camo jersey on Yefri Carvajal is of the Fort Wayne Wizards, before they became the TinCaps.

Here are a few randoms I didn't have. I'm sure everybody reading this knows that Rick Wise had the greatest individual game ever so I'm not going to bother you with the details.

This hasn't even been half of what he sent. I'm going to make this a two-parter just in the interest of anyone who might happen to be reading this. I've been neglecting this blog for a while so this will help get me on a roll. Thanks, Nick; not only did you send me incredible cards, you got me blogging here again!

Another Trade With All The Way To The Backstop

I just got done putting together a return package for Marcus of All The Way To The Backstop so I thought it was about time to do a post about the cards I got from him last weekend. There were so many good cards. Above is what appears to be the entire '86 Fleer team set- minus the Tony, the Garvey and the Hoyt, which I already had and sent the doubles of to Sam. If it isn't the entire team set, it's close enough.
I can never have enough Joey Cora cards. Duplicates, I don't care; I want them all. Marcus knows the way to my heart and included four- one I didn't have a copy of.
Speaking of him being in the know about who I'm all about, he sent these two Jedd Gyorko cards. Jedd, for those of you who don't know, is batting .355 in AAA and making the concept of trading Chase Headley a distinct possibility. I've been a fan of his since before the Padres drafted him in 2010- he was born and raised in West Virginia and played for WVU.
Yes, another Dave Staton card! I've added a few to the collection since the Sisterhood project began. On a side note, I've always liked those BP pullovers Lolich and Dade are shown rocking.
As much as I dislike Boch and his current employer, I still collect his cards as a Padre and that's a nice one I didn't have. I've always liked that 'Dream Team' Robbie Alomar card; I'm glad to get a new copy.
Lastly, here are a couple of current Padres. It's always good to pick up newer cards through trades as I rarely buy new packs. Thanks again to Marcus for the new Friars cards; I hope he likes what he's getting back.

Cards from Larry, Part II

To the left are the cards sent to me by Larry of ECDG. I'm going to focus on the smaller stack in this post and get to the others at some point later in the week. These cards were doubs so I went ahead and sent them to Sam.
That Perkins card is one of my all time favorite cards. The Eichleberger is a classic too- and you can never go wrong with RJ.
Of course there were some '79 Topps cards included. There were two each of the '85 DeLeon and Hawkins so everyone won.
These are classics as well; I've always been a fan of the '84 Donruss design. It's hard to tell in this shot but Glenn Beckert is pictured in a Cubs uniform on that card... I'll take pictures of the other cards and try to write something up for them before too long.

Cool Stuff Keeps Happening

My favorite thing about having this blog is the guest posts. As much as I love reliving the history of the only team that matters to me, it's even more enjoyable to read what writers whom I respect have to say about the things we both appreciate; be it baseball cards, the Padres, a particular player or any combination of the aforementioned. Today I noticed a tweet by my favorite non-fiction author* that noted how underrated Garry Templeton was. After instantly retweeting it, I @replied- half jokingly, half "Hey, it's worth a shot"- asking if there was any way I could twist his arm into writing a guest spot about Tempy. To my amazement, he replied back proposing a trade: he'd write about Garry here if I'd write about my favorite Padre for his blog. Wait, what? Let me get this right. You'll write about Templeton for my humble little nerdblog and I get to share with the world my love of Joey Cora? That's an even more lopsided trade than when the Astros got 15 years of Jeff Bagwell for 15 games of Larry Andersen... So, that's something that will be happening. I would try to write a cleaner conclusion to this but my mind is elsewhere; there's a certain little second baseman who I'm already mentally pre-writing about.

*I specified "non-fiction" for the specific purpose of giving a shout-out to Jeff Shelby. Go buy his books.

Every 1 Ever

Bob Barton was the first to wear #1 for the Friars in 1970 through early '72. Mike Fiore and Johnny Grubb also wore it that season, with Grubb keeping it through the '74 season. He was still with the Padres in '75, switching his number to 2 while no one wore 1. Weird. Ozzie Smith took it over in '78 until he got traded for current Yuma Panthers manager Garry Templeton, who in turn kept it until he was traded in 1991. Tony Fernandez wore #1 in '92 and Luis Lopez had it in '93 and '94 and again in '96; nobody wore it in his absence in '95. Two Carloses shared it in 1999; Baerga and Garcia. Santiago Perez wore it for 43 games in 2001 and Ramon Vazquez had it from '02 through '04. Drew Macias and Luke Carlin rocked it in '07 and '08, respectively. More recently, the legendary and lovable Everth Cabrera held it down for two seasons until some mouth-running, decline-phase, apathetic jerk with a bad sense of entitlement showed up and took it away from him.

21 Cards From '91 (Happy Birthday!)

Today is TMBGOTFOTE's 21st birthday, so I thought it'd make sense to post 21 cards from 1991. Not that she cares about the Padres or baseball at all but, hey, it's what's happening. Most of the pictures and scans are from when I was going to do this last year but forgot about it while doing actual birthday stuff that matters. On a side note, I think she's the only other person I've known who couldn't care less about their 21st birthday being their 21st. It doesn't matter to her because she doesn't drink; it didn't matter to me when I turned 21 because I'd had a fake I.D. for about three years...

Mustache Monday: Three Guys With Flip-Shades

I was looking for a card to post for Mustache Monday and came across a Thomas Howard card featuring him wearing flip-shades. This made me think of Avenging Jack Murphy's recent post about Tony The Gwynn- but really it was about flip-shades. I then flipped through some cards to try to find some other examples in action. Handcuffed by the guidelines of both the month and the day, I think I fared fairly well in finding three black guys with mustaches wearing flip-shades- and on three consecutive years of Upper Deck, no less. You know, for a baseball card blog, I make very little mention of the cards themselves. In a departure from that, I have to say I liked what UD was doing their first few years. They had a signature look and they stuck with the same theme year to year, making minor tweaks just to let you know this was the new one. Then the mid-nineties rolled around and everything we knew and loved about baseball cards up until that point got shot straight to hell...

Oddly, all the flip-shade shots are on the backs.
Here are the fronts just for reference:

Haiku Time: Garry Templeton

Garry Templeton
Yuma Panthers manager
That was too easy

Bring Back The Brown

www.
Bring
Back
The
Brown
.com

7 Random Facts About Garry Templeton

And The Winner Is... Garry Templeton!
In honor of the longtime Friar shortstop's victory by decision over Steve Finley in yesterday's poll, here are seven random facts about Ol' "Jumpsteady":

1. He was the official team captain from '87 'til he departed two months into '91.
2. #1 led the league in intentional walks in '84 and '85 with 23 and 24, respectively.
3. Garry managed current Padre David Eckstein in the minors.
4. After leading the league in triples with 19 in '79, he never broke double digits again.
5. On January 13th, Templeton was named manager of the Chico Outlaws of the Golden Baseball League.
6. Garry stole 27 bases in '82, his first year with the Padres- the highest total he would have with the team. In his last six seasons in San Diego, he stole exactly 27 bases.
7. When Avenger-in-Chief was a kid, Templeton would let him hit in his backyard batting cage.
   

Why seven? Because I was going to do ten but I'm starting to get tired. Yep, it's that level of commitment that makes this blog the beacon of mediocrity that it is.

The cards pictured are '91 Donruss #252 and '90 Topps #481