Rod Carew FTW

Probably can't tell from the amount of blog posts coming forth, but still alive here in the land of Junk Wax.

In fact, still receiving cards from the generous blogosphere.  T.J., the Junior Junkie, recently sent me this stack of cardboard goodness:

I was thinking wow, what did I do to deserve that??  Then I saw this:

Wait. What contest??  If you're like me, you read alot of blogs. And comment on a lot of blogs.  And forget about your comments.  Sure enough, I entered a contest on Junkie's blog.  When I guess random numbers in a situation like that, I usually try to go with some number that has meaning to me.  This time I went with Rod Carew's jersey number.  So thank you Rodney Cline.  Sad thing is, I somehow totally missed the results post.  I'll blame the new job/schedule.

I can't possibly do the package justice and post all the goodness in that stack, but I'll try to highlight a portion of it.

I'm still trying to complete 1979 Topps, and these cards are definite needs there.  Ironic that Welch arrived not too long after his early passing.  I just realized that's 2 Dodgers.  Oh well, I want them anyway!

T.J. was paying attention to my little attempt at a rainbow.  This Mike Trout brings me up to 8 of the parallels:

Trout is also on the first card of the base set, but the only variations I have of that card are the base and OD cards.  This is a much cheaper rainbow Trout.

The rest of the package were cards of my beloved Angels.

Both of those regular sized cards go in my Topps Angels binder.  I'd like to get all the Topps base cards 1961-present in there, and these are both needs for that binder.  I didn't appreciate the minis when they came out in the 80's, but I like the Angel versions now.

2006 Bartolo and 2007 Kelvim both go in the same binder.  2007 Bartolo was already in the Topps binder, but he goes into slot 516 in my Angels frankenset.  The frankenset hasn't gotten alot of love lately, but I'm still putting cards in there.

Upper Deck from my time away for the hobby.  I particularly like the Hudler card.  I pretended to be a second baseman when I played baseball.  And those first 5 feature my favorite Angel logo.  Gary DiSarcina there is wearing my least favorite of the Angel logo/color scheme/uniforms.  I may have to start a DiSarcina PC someday.  He's back with the Angels, this year as 3rd base coach.

Bowman and the prospects.  I had never heard of Josh Shaffer.  He never made it above A ball in the Angels' chain and was in the White Sox organization in 2002.  Alfredo Amezaga is still playing today.  He's with the Mexican League's Tigres de Quintana Roo.

These are (I think) the gold parallels of 2005 Bowman Draft Picks & Prospects.  So why do some cards have 2004 stat lines on the back, while others have 2005 stat lines?  Anyway, these things are super thick, which is kinda cool.  But kinda odd too.

And these would be the Chromy versions of the same cards.  They're much brighter in person.

And a little oddballness to finish off the post.  The Polonia on the left is much harder to see in person than in the scan.  And it highlights a Grand Slam he hit.  Polonia and power??   I bought a couple packs of the Triple play at the Dollar Store, but I hadn't gotten Trumbo in any of them.  There's Dallas McPherson again.  He led the minors in homers a couple of times, but never really stuck at 3rd for the Halos.  Jeff DaVanon's dad played in the majors.  Their career were exactly 30 years apart.  1969-1977 for dad, 1999-2007 for son.

And that doesn't cover half of the package.  Thanks again T.J.

I think I'm one of the few people that can say I have Junior cards that the Junkie doesn't.  I'll have to remedy that here soon.