Jedd Gyorko And A Bevy Of Other Bowmans

Yesterday I received 200 Padres cards in the mail, the majority of which I actually didn't already have. I won two separate Listia auctions of 100 Padres cards each by the same user. Each listing showed only one picture of a binder page's worth of cards, which I assumed were the best of the bunches. Although there were a couple Gwynns and an autographed Lee Orr card showing, the other 182 were a crapshoot. I figured it'd be a bunch of '90 Donruss and a dozen Mike Pagliarulo cards but there were a lot of hidden gems, including a couple fistfuls of snazzy Bowmans. I'm not this biggest fan of Bowman as I find their design clunky and overboard the majority of the time, but I do like their inclusion of players on their first card and other players who may never be on another card.

Of course my favorite card of the whole batch was Jedd Gyorko's 2011 "1st Bowman Card", #83. Amazingly, this card wasn't pictured or included in the description; I have a feeling the winning bid would have been driven much higher if it had been. I have never been one to get caught up in prospects or to buy someone's cards before he's even made the majors, but Gyorko is the exception to that rule. I have a handful of Jedd's cards now; the only West Virginian I have more cards of is John Kruk.

Today would have been Mike Darr's 37th birthday. I wrote a little piece about that over at Gaslamp Ball earlier today. It's rather succinct, so if you want to take a minute to go read that, I'll be doing my best Richard Marx impression, right here waiting.

As with Darr, I got the base and Chrome versions of this Gary Matthews, Jr. card. I feel like I've already said everything I have to say about Matthews already: He was lousy for the Padres, went elsewhere and sucked there too, came back to San Diego and sucked a little bit more, did some HGH, put together a decent season capped by one amazing catch, got a ridiculous payday, and went back to sucking.

 A little over a month ago I got my first Juan Melo card and said "I'm betting there aren't a lot of cards of him out there". I still don't know exactly how many there are but now I'm up to a grand total of three including this one and a minor league card that was also included. For now, I'm going to say the same thing about Omar Ortiz, who is a newcomer to my collection, and maybe a couple more issues of him will show up in my mailbox this April or May. As for Ben Davis, this is far from my first card of him but this one is a welcome addition. Something I didn't know about him until I was doing a little light research earlier is that he was good friends with Mike Darr and likely would have been in the vehicle with him if he didn't happen to be tired from traveling when Darr invited him.

 Matt Clement was the last Padre to wear 31 for the Padres before they retired it in honor of Dave Winfield. He was traded to Florida for Mark Kotsay and went on to be on the short end of an 18-pitch at bat culminating in a home run by Joey Cora's little brother Alex.

That's a very fascinating jersey being sported by Sean Burroughs. It's just like the BP/ ST jerseys of the era but it's gray instead of navy. I've seen it once or twice before, also on shots of minor leaguers so maybe they had an excess of gray jerseys and/ or a shortage of navy ones and just sewed the chest insignia on the grays, gave them to some kids, and hoped nobody would notice. If anyone has any more information on this, please let me know.

Nate Freiman, called Nathan here, had a solid season for AA San Antonio last season and was picked up by the Astros in the Rule 5 draft. Ruben Rivera recently resurfaced in the WBC and has been playing in Mexico for the past six seasons. The Dustin Hermanson card didn't photograph well but I can live with that.

There were a lot of other good cards out of the 200 in addition to these Bowmans; I got a couple Gwynns, Hoffys, and Kruks that I didn't have before that I'll feature here in the next day or two. A smattering of current players showed up too, along with a bunch of old minor league cards. I know I said I was trying to get away from doing acquisitions posts but this recent batch really lends itself to being milked for about a week. I promise I won't drag it out that long, though.

Part II: Return Of The Nick

Picking up where I left off with Part I, here are the other twenty-some cards sent by Nick from Dime Boxes. Of the ones above I'm especially fond of, uh, well, they're all pretty cool in their own right. Ruben Rivera cards always make me smile because I think of "the worst baserunning in the history of the game". Seriously, stop reading this and take 1:15 to watch that.
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Okay, you're back. That Perry card is pretty great, too. It's the only Ted Williams Card Co. card I have now; I had a bunch back when they came out but you know how that goes. Another company whose cards I was always a fan of is Pacific. This design is a pretty good representation of the sort of thing they brought to the table every year back then. I have the Joey and a couple of others from this set but that great sliding shot makes this one bonus-nice. I probably should have taken a better picture of that Interleague Showdown card but if making you squint is the worst thing I do today I'm going to call it a success. Sorry I'm lazy.

Ed Whitson and Bruce Hurst are two guys I don't go out of my way to collect but manage to have about a trillion cards apiece anyway. I actually didn't have either of these though so... nice! As for the Ausmus, that is some quality photography. Timing. It's everything. Also, it's weird seeing Joey Hamilton naked-faced. I always remember him with a big, round, David Wells-ish goatee on his big, round, David Wells-ish face.

In addition to the eight '84s I showed in Part I, Nick also sent along ten '83s. I'm pretty sure these are my first cards of Juan Bonilla and John "The Count" Montefusco. The Bonilla is my favorite of the batch because, well, you know how I feel about unsung second basemen.

Here are the other four of the aforementioned ten. I got really excited when I saw the Swisher. I have a card of him as a Cub but this is my first of him as a Friar. Not only is he Nick's dad, he is one of only four (hopefully soon to be five) West Virginia-born Padres. Can anybody name the other three? One's pretty obvious.

As luck would have it, very few of the cards he sent were ones I already had. In addition to one of the two Montefuscos above, only six cards are going on my ever-expanding doubles stack. I need to do an updated doubles post; it seems like the easiest way for Backstop and Underdog to let me know which ones I need to send their way. In addition to that OPC of Adrian Gonzalez, I have a bunch of non-double cards of him that I want rid of just because I don't collect people who say they "bleed Dodger blue".

These are the other three that will bring joy to another collector as I already have copies of them. And, yes, I still collect Mat Latos even though I assume he bleeds Reds red.

Wow, that was a lot of incredible cards! A huge thanks once again to Nick; I'm definitely going to have to package up my "Nick stack" and head to the post office in the very near future.

...Part IV

(This is the third in a series of post about a slew of cards I recently got from Marcus from all the way to the backstop...)

 Here are a 1970 and '72 Topps he sent along. Leron Lee, if I recall correctly is Derrek Lee's uncle and did well in Japan. I already had a couple of '72s but this one was new to me as was the '70 Dick Kelley card. It was my oldest Padres card for a day until my '69 Dick Selma arrived the next day. Life's weird.

 You can never go wrong with '75 Topps or Mother's Cookies cards. These were actually issued by Keebler in 2000; I'm assuming they bought Mother's because the design, front and back, is the same.

 Also in the mix were numerous recent Topps Chrome cards- more than just the ones pictured- in various parallels. Ryan Ludwick may not have had the greatest year in San Diego but I never hated him like most seemed to- plus, that's one snazzy card. Yes, I just said 'snazzy'. Apparently I'm 60 now. The Zawadzki cards are a nice add, too. He's one of the handful of Aztec alumni who went on to play for the Padres. In fact, as noted on the backs of these cards, he had Petco Park's first hit back in his SDSU days... but you already knew that.

Here's a nice little add-on he threw in. I'm a big fan of destroying cards of Dodgers. I passed these along in another package I recently mailed out.

Coming up later today or tomorrow or sometime eventually: Part V