Card of the Day: 2007 Topps ‘52 Rookies Troy Cate

Yes, I got an autograph card out of a $1.59 pack at Target. Not only that, I hadn’t intended to buy this pack in the first place but I forgot to take it out of the cart when I checked out. I bought it anyway.

The name sounded familiar. As it turns out, he was playing in the Brewers organization this year. I guess this is a card I keep, although I can’t recall if he was still with the Sounds when I actually saw them play in Iowa in July. (It may help me in my quest to find out exactly what bullpen pitchers I was photographing.)

Card of the Day: 2007 Upper Deck Goudey Troy Tulowitzki

I don’t really have too much to say about this card, other than I like the picture effect on the 2007 Goudeys more than I do the 2008s, which is why I’ve only bought one pack of the ’08s.

the hole at Rockies' SS

Tulowitzki reminds me of a knight from a Pre-Raphaelite painting in that card. No, I’m not talking about lead glove.

Card of the Day: 1991 Score Dana Kiecker

Let’s take a break from all the ‘93 UD and move just a bit back a few years to another sort of card with pictures on the back. Yes, I’m talking about 1991 Score. Score was my favorite brand of cards because a) it had nice portraits of players on the back; b) it was cheaper than Upper Deck, which was my actual favorite brand but one I couldn’t really afford.

Here’s a card of the guy you can partially blame my Red Sox fandom on (one of my teachers was a buddy of his or something along those lines–it was 18 years ago, I’ve forgotten the exact nature of the relationship.)

Kiecker was one of those career minor leaguers with Surprise Contending Action! that magically activated upon his callup. Unfortunately, he blew out his elbow and missed a lot of 1991, and in 1992 his major-league career was over. He’s currently one of the TV guys for the independent league St. Paul Saints.

Card of the Day: 1993 Upper Deck Todd Stottlemyre

Here’s another one out of my endless supply of ‘93 UD, back from the days of quality and quirky card photography.

are his ears pointed?

Apparently, back in the ’80s, Toronto was attempting to sign Elves as international free agents. They ran into a snag when they discovered this particular Elf was actually born in Washington, but they decided to blow their first round draft pick on him anyway. He then proceeded to have a 14-season MLB career mostly consisting of being a league-average starter.

Card of the Day: 1993 Upper Deck Curt Schilling

Why, yes, I do have a 1993 UD factory set. I had scanned these for general amusement purposes before my scanner died on me. (I went to Best Buy today…and bought a toaster oven. Next paycheck, maybe?)

Here’s the back of a card. The front is your standard Pitcher Throwing a Ball In-Game shot. The back….

warning: bunts

Relief pitchers bunting! It’s the greatest! OK, so Schilling was a starter for half the year, but you know relief pitchers never usually take BP (only wacky dudes like Seth McClung do that) and AL relief pitchers take BP even less so, and that’s what he was until 1991. Even after 17 seasons in the NL and 3 of AL interleague games, Curt Schilling was still dead useless at batting, with a lifetime batting average of .151 and OPS of .349. (He drew a lot of walks in 1999 for no discernable reason, and also hit a triple. How?)

Card of the Day: 1993 Upper Deck Alan Embree

And welcome to the filler portion of this blog! I was actually planning on making my first Card of the Day a non-sport release, but I need to do some research first (which is mostly consisting of “waiting for my Japanese-fluent friends to get on gtalk”–and they haven’t) so you get this instead.

1993 Upper Deck Alan Embree

Embree certainly was a rookie in 1992, but he was about 80 kinds of awful. He got better, somewhat.

I have no idea what on earth the poor young man is wearing in this picture, but it has his name on it just in case the garment would have been picked up by another Indian with unfortunate fashion sense.