The Shark Goes Green

There's been a lot of talk about the Cubs/Athletics trade that pretty much shocked everybody. It wasn't necessarily the moving parts that were surprising, but where they ended up and how. On paper, it looks like it'll work out for everybody involved, but only time will tell. I'll probably root for Jeff Samardzija (and maybe a little for Jason Hammel, though I hardly knew ye) in the postseason just as I rooted for Mark Grace and the Diamondbacks back in 2001. What else will I do as a Cubs fan in the post season?

It's been a long time since I posted any kind of custom card. There was a brief flirtation with a season long set (that lasted all of of about three games) but I think I only posted the first one. The Cubs themselves have been uninspiring most of the season, though the game I attended at Wrigley Field the other day has had me doodling some designs again.

Not feeling real original, I recreated some of my lost templates to give Samardijza a proper sendoff. I never got my laptop hard drive recovered so these are from scratch and therefore slightly different from the originals.

I started my blog back in 2012 and this design was what I used for my custom team set that year. It's still one of my favorites to make. For the Cubs version, the number was white like the name (see the Anthony Rizzo is my blog header). But I tried to tweak this one to match the way the A's show the number on their jerseys, green number with yellow border. What do you think?

This was another one of my favorites and I even ran a poll/contest to come up with a name for it. The winner was PASS (Please Autograph Sweet Spot) because the signature area resembles the sweet spot of a baseball. One of the runner ups was FiPS or something like that because many of the cards I made showed some kind of fist pumping celebration similar to Samardzija here. For the record, the originals of these were made before Topps did their Fired Up insert set this year!

I don't think I have any Samardzija autographs in my collection yet, and I definitely don't have any of my customs signed by him, so these are just for fun for now. Maybe someday. Although, I should probably get him to at least sign my ATCRCS card before he goes and wins a World Series and gets expensive!