Last Call for Fantasy Baseball Draft!

The draft is tonight at 9PM EST. We have five right now, with three more promises to join before the draft. Trying to get to ten.

$15 Buy-in.

First prize is $100 gift certificate to Dave and Adam's Card World.

Other prizes awarded too, but everybody will get some kind of prize from my stash just for playing.

Calvin Schiraldi

It's been a while since I posted one of these. Mostly because I'm still mad at myself for losing my template on these. But I do have a couple more autographed in the draft folder that I have yet to post.

Calvin Schiraldi joined the Cubs following the 1987 season when he came over from the Boston Red Sox along with Al Nipper in exchange for Lee Smith. While he worked out of the bullpen in Boston, the Cubs converted Schiraldi to the starting rotation in 1988 where he went 9-13 with a 4.38 ERA. He moved back to the bullpen for the 1989 season where he earned 4 Saves despite finishing 29 games. In August of that year, he was traded to the Padres with Darrin Jackson for Luis Salazar and Marvell Wynne.

I'm not thrilled with the photo I used for the card but options were limited and there was a time crunch to get this card made, printed and out in the mail for a private signing. In person, its also not as bright/light as it appears in the scan.

Close but No Cigar (2014 Donruss)

The title is not a reflection on the product itself, but rather, my attempt to ID the original source photos like I did for Cubs cards last season and am doing for the entire 2014 Topps set on my other blog. I guess I should have said "spoiler alert" or something to that effect.

First up, we have Anthony Rizzo.

One of the stars of the team, Rizzo has over 1200 photos in Getty Images from 2013. Because he's wearing the home ponstripes, I can throw “Wrigley” into the search and we cut that number in half. But after sifting through those, no such luck.

I decided to try another trusty photo site, AP Images. They had just under 500 images of Rizzo from 2013 and an even more manageable 132 when I added “Wrigley” to the search.

Below are two photos from that group that have the same background fans as those on the card. So I’m pretty sure I nailed the game, and maybe even the same at bat. Because we all know over the course of a game, fans get up and move around.

We've got the fan in the floppy hat behind Rizzo that is obscured by the AP watermarks on the photos. The guy directly above him with the sunglasses. And the female fan in the red shirt right at Rizzo's eyeline among others.

As the title says, close, but no cigar. My guess is that the photo on the card was the third in a sequence of quick shots. Now that I had the game date, I went back to Getty and redid my search. However, all of the Rizzo photos from that day were taken from the third base side.

With less commentary on the process, I experienced similar results with Travis Wood.

Here’s a pretty close one. But unless they added some bushiness to Wood's beard while Photoshopping out the logos, this is not a match.

Here's the right amount of beard, but not the right pose.

While it’s a little hard to tell because the background is much blurrier than the Rizzo, I think this is probably a game day match based on this fan:

Hardly conclusive, but I think I'm right.

And finally we have Starlin Castro.

As best I can tell, this one is a match. Success!

Had I found the original source photos for all of them, they would have gotten their own posts. But now, this post has gotten long enough so I won't be breaking any of them down. Maybe I'll do the Castro another day since I did find a match.

Until I got to the Castro, I was starting to wonder if maybe Donruss paid for exclusivity and the original source photos were pulled from the site. Now I don't know what to think. I also wonder if Topps has the same "rights" to Getty images as they do MLB logos or if Donruss wanted to reduce the likelihood of using the same photo and went with another photo agency.

All of these AP photos (and I'm assuming the photos for the cards I did not find) were taken by the same guy, David Durochik, a Chicago based photographer. I’m sure like any other job it has its tough times, but aside from playing for the Cubs, being a game day photographer ranks right up there for me as a dream job. And to have some of your work end up on a baseball card? Awesome.

Fantasy Baseball League

Just a quick post today, but I wanted to remind everyone that while they're filling out their March Madness brackets, the baseball season is right around the corner (who knew?). Last year, I ran a pretty fun league through Yahoo with a bunch of guys that were mostly bloggers, with the prizes being various blasters.

After talking it over with some of the participants from last year who want to come back this year, it was agreed that we liked having cards as a prize and it differentiated it from other leagues. However, last year's prize pool was made up of blasters that had kind of lost its luster by the time payouts arrived in October.

So we decided to let the winner choose their own cards with a $100 gift certificate to Dave and Adam's Card World. They ship for free on Thursdays with a $99 order so the winner can maximize their winnings without paying shipping. No sponsorship deal, although maybe I should send an email...

And we as a community get to benefit when they post about them. 

Consolation prizes are still up in the air as it will depend on whether this will be a 10 or twelve player league. We're about half way there, either way, so we're looking for a few more guys to fill in the league.

Buy-in is $15, due by the end of the month. Draft will be live, through Yahoo with a date and time to be decided soon.

Here's a link from a couple of weeks ago where I brought the idea up and in this post, there are a couple of more links posts about last season's league.

I wouldn't call it super competitive, but there are lots of knowledgeable guys out there. If baseball card knowledge translates to on field performance...

Less than the price of a blaster!

I'll be setting up the league tonight and sending out invites to those already committed.

For the rest of you, just leave a comment letting me know you're in. C'mon, you know you want to...

Scratching the Itch (A Repack Box)

I'm trying to be good and save my money, both for a fairly big card show next month and to recover my bad hard drive. But that's tough when everybody is busting new releases with either Donruss or Heritage. And posting about them. I'm not particularly interested in any of them aside from the Cubs cards so I've been avoiding them. 

That said, while I'm a team collector, I still love to open packs. Last year, I satisfied that itch with some repacks and even had a reoccurring series of posts called Repack Sundays for a while. While out doing some errands, I snuck into my trusty Five Below store but aside from some 2014 Topps Series One, the only other cards they had were football repacks and non-sports stuff. Oh well.

More errands took me near the local red big box store. Their card selection is much better than the local blue one and more likely to have the off-brands like Donruss. One pack couldn't hurt, right?

Fate was having none of it as they didn't have any 2014 baseball product at all. No blasters or rack packs of even Series One, although there was an empty box of retail packs. And nothing from Donruss.

So a repack it was. As the wrapper says, there were 250 plus 2 packs for $9.99 plus tax. And a 50/50 chance* for an autograph or relic.                      *on average

Of the 5-6 they had on the shelf, I liked the one that had a pack of Leaf's Pete Rose Living Legend and 2012 Topps Chrome. The rest were regular Topps from various years. Plus, I thought I remembered the Pete Rose packs had a pretty high autograph rate. Weren't they one per blaster?

The Chrome pack had only four cards and for non-Cubs, I don't think I could have done much better. Two rookies and two (my first two!) horizontal cards. Not a bad start. I didn't even try to scan these, hence the photo.

I didn't pull a Pete Rose autograph, but for no logos, this is a pretty neat set. Especially considering its just one player. If anybody did a set like this of Ryne Sandberg or just about any other Cub, I'd be all over it. Again, not a bad start at all.

As for the rest of the cards, here are some of the highlights presented with minimal comments. I didn't take much time to crop these properly. Sorry if that offends thee. And I will add, this repack box was much more interesting to open after finding out about everybody's niche collections the other day. A lot of stuff I wouldn't have noticed on non-Cubs cards I would have glossed over before.

Pair of Diamond Kings. Both Cardinals? Ugh

Double Dose of Dallas. Even he hates being a Yankee.

The other managers I pulled

Some miscellaneous minor league stuff

Interesting only for the fact that #13's (Ozzie Guillen?) hat says You Can't Touch This, with a picture of hands with a red circle and a line through it.

I've seen this card a hundred times but for the first time I noticed the bat. Seriously, how long is that thing!?

Pardon the scanner dust. Or is that snow? Because I'm pretty sure Joe Carter (former Cub) is wearing a scarf...

If/when Jim Thome makes the Hall of Fame, or even if he doesn't, this will fall into the Unfamiliar Uniform category. Thome played a grand total of 17 games with the Dodgers.

The oldest cards in the box, 1981 Donruss and 1982 Topps

I purposely left these older cards uncropped any further because I wanted to show off how centered the borders and sharp the corners were. I would have called these reprints is I didn't know any better. And if I thought somebody would actually reprint a Bruce Bochte Mariners card.

The newest cards in the box consisted of this quad of 2013 Topps cards. A rookie, a Yankee and a throwback, the epitome of collectible niches. Wait, did I say quad? Oh yes, there was also this pretty sweet (and horiztonal) Mariano Rivera card.

But wait, there's more. The Kuroda and Rivera are both from the factory team set, not the regular flagship version. That's cool. Something I didn't notice until I went to scan them.

I was pretty much a Topps guy growing up. My dad was, so that's what he bought my brothers and me. By the time I started spending my own allowance on cards, Score and Upper Deck had joined the picture and it was a free for all. But early Donruss and Fleer are a gap in my baseball card knowledge. This Orel "Bulldog" Hershiser card is something I've never seen before. I just pictured every Dodgers collector rolling their eyes at me right now, but hey, it's no Kirk Gibson fist pump.

On to the Cubs portion of this post, past present and future.

Pat Perry, Felix Pie, Dave Lopes

Jamie Moyer, Frank Castillo, Mike Mason

I was going to make an old fogey reference about Jamie Moyer and how this had to be the oldest card in the box, a Jamie Moyer rookie. But I forgot to crop it out separately, so that's the best you get.

Scott Sanderson, Mike Morgan, Rick Wrona

Jody Davis, Mitch Webster, Don Zimmer

The Jody Davis card says he is "Now with Braves" but has the Cubs logo and is wearing Cubs gear, so I'm counting him as a Cub here. The team checklist on the back of Zimmer's card agrees with me.

And last but not least, a Topps Finest Rod Beck. Did anybody ever take this protective coating off of any of these cards?

On to the former and future Cubs:

Matt Garza, Doug Bird, Jose Vizcaino

Dave Magadan, Emilio Bonifacio, Troy O'Leary

The Bonifacio is the only card I pulled of any potential 2014 Cub from the whole box.

Jeff Blauser, Bruce Sutter, Joe Carter (scarfless)

George Frazier, Luis Gonzalez, George Bell

Rafael Palmerio, Dave Martinez

I was thinking this was a lot more players with Cubs ties than usual, but then I remembered this was a $10, 250 card repack box and not a $5, 100 card repack box. Makes more sense now.

Most nichable card goes to this Tony Fernandez card. Play at the plate on the front, double play on the back. Eye black on the front, flip shades on the back. Say whaaaat? Crazy talk.

And speaking of niches, here are six more horizontal cards to go with the three above to round out the first binder page of my new collection.

A dual rookie card

One of 16 Major Leaguers with 4 HRs in a single game...bunting.

Close play at third. Get that tag down, Joe!

Former Rookie of the Year and Cub

Third base coach cameo and just an odd looking shot in general

Stolen base? Double play? Maybe I should break down the 2010 set, too.

And before I forget, look I beat the odds!

Not only did I get an autograph, but its numbered out 50. Cory Sullivan played five seasons between the Rockies, Mets and Astros and as recently as 2011 for a Phillies minor league affiliate. Even if I can barely recover the tax I paid on the repack if I sold it, its still pretty cool to pull an autograph.

But again, wait! There's still more!

This was mixed in with the rest of the cards:

This one isn't certified at all, but looks pretty good compared to other examples I saw of Sid Bream. I think this one just slipped through the cracks of those pulling cards for the repack. Bream is a much bigger name than Sullivan, specifically to Braves and Pirates fans.

That definitely scratched my pack busting itch. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon.