Card of the Week 12/17

This week's Card of the Week post was scheduled to feature a rant titled "Why the hell isn't Ron Santo in the Hall of Fame already, dagnabbit". I had his 1974 Topps card picked out and everything. I hate to say it, but I'm just not in a ranty mood. Christmas is looming and all kinds of gift buying and decorating and family pressures are closing in on me. The pager was ringing off the hook this weekend so I'm a bit sleep deprived at the moment. A big fat bill just came in from my insurance company because they don't want to pay a doctor. Between the Mitchell Report and the Falcons' Three Mile Island quality core dump, sports haven't been much of a helpful distraction. I have the December Sucks Blues and I'm too angried out to give you the quality rant that you deserve. This week I need a happy card for Card of the Week.

This card makes me happy. I found this scrounging around for some stuff for my 12 Days of Cardmas post and it put a smile on my face. There are goofier cards than this one of John Smoltz being serenaded by his dad playing an accordion in a sea of empty seats, but this was silly enough for my needs. Smoltz is a master accordioner accordianado dude what plays the accordion himself so there's that extra little in joke that only us hard core Braves fans get. This card is from the 1997 Fleer Sports Illustrated set even though the Fleer logo says 1998. This was a pretty nice little set that was released late in '97 and marketed as a World Series Fever edition. Fleer managed to completely screw up the brand by releasing three different Sports Illustrated sets in 1998 and then turned it into an Auto per pack Greats of the Game set in 1999 before killing off the brand altogether. Since this set falls into that late '90's 'dead zone' of baseball cards where only the most hardcore fools like me collected, I thought it would be nice to give some pub to this happy little unappreciated card.