2010 Allen & Ginter Box Break Part 4: Packs 9-12

World Cup's over man, back to the daily grind.

Pack 9:
68 Betelgeuse (+1)
57 Jacoby Ellsbury
184 Jake Peavy
249 Alfonso Soriano
214 Cap'n Cheesburger (-1)
27 Brad Hawpe
282 Tyson Ross RC A&G mini (+2)
TDH9 Pablo Sandoval TDIH (+1)

Ok, the Betelgeuse card looks like the love child of Goatse and the Eye of Sauron. The hell, Topps. Jake Peavy is injured again. Every move Frank Wren got absolute hell for not making is the 2008-2009 free agent period has turned out to be the absolute right move. A couple of moves he did make didn't turn out all that well, but he's batting 1.000 for the ones that fell through. Here's yet another A&G back mini. Does he make the set?

NO

A 2008 Jeanette Lee keeps the rookie I've never heard of out of the FrankenSet.

Number of packs without a standard base mini: 9

Pack 10:

10 Gary Stewart
161 Luis Durango RC
173 Jimmy Rollins
230 Brian Roberts
82 Justin Upton
114 Milton Bradley
183 Tommy Manzella RC mini
TDH31 Mark Tei$eira TDIH (+1 -1 = 0)

TEN packs before pulling my first base mini. I don't have much to say about the rest of this zero point pack. I can't even think of a coherent joke about the pogo stick champion. Oh, Jimmy Rollins' card sucks compared to last year's.  That's all I got. Does Manzella mini have what it takes?

SADLY, YES

Manzella fills an empty spot in the binder which was about the only way he was going to make it in there.

Number of base minis pulled from the box: 1 out of 10 packs
Percentage chance of pulling a Strasburg with that number of minis: 00.3%

Pack 11:
140 Brandon Allen RC
99 Anthony Gallo
46 Chad Billingley
208 Evan Longoria (+2)
76 Joakim Soria (+2)
284 Dustin Richardson RC
LO9 Artemis Lords of Olympus (+3)
TDH19 Robinson Cano (+1 -1 = 0)

Two straight This Date in history cards negated by stinkin' Yankees. I got a couple of other people's favorite players at least. I like the Olympus set, but I'm miffed that Topps didn't put Eris in there. Of course that reaction is actually highly appropriate. I'll probably collect it anyway, its too spiffy looking not to collect. I'm also falling behind on short prints, the packs slid around a bit in the box, hopefully I'll make it up in the second half of the break.

Number of base minis pulled from the box: 1 out of 11 packs
Percentage chance of pulling a Strasburg with that number of minis: 00.3%

Pack 12:
172 Ian Desmond RC
22 Lucy
222 Craig Gentry RC
238 Michael Brantley RC
228 Chase Utley (+2)
328  Jered Weaver SP (+2)
NA19 Alpaca - Peru (+2)
TDH25 Ryan zimmerman TDIH (+1)
Crack the Code ad card

Has Lucy been on a trading card before? If that that's 4 straight RCs to open the pack. I got off the SP schnide with Weaver's card. One thing that annoys me is all the consternation about who get left off the All Star Roster. It's become a meaningless excersise for sports writers and pundits who need an easy topic to whine about and fill some time/pages. Like Weaver here. I've seen at least a half a dozen articles or segments on how Weaver got jobbed out of a spot in the All Star Game. Now after all that he'll end up being an injury replacement BUT won't even pitch in the game because of his scheduled Sunday start! It's an exhibition game people, calm down. The Alpaca card amuses me. Remember those commercials that would come on late at night with the old hippie couple promoting raising alpacas as an investment? I would regularly ignore them until one day my wife looked at me and said "how the hell can you make money from raising alpacas?" I - I don't know... I just don't know. Probably made whoever created that commercial a lot of money though.

Number of base minis pulled from the box: 1 out of 12 packs
Percentage chance of pulling a Strasburg with that number of minis: 00.3%

Most interesting non-scoring card:

Probably Lucy, but you've seen that already. This was a boring group of packs.

Coolest This Date In History:
 
Babe Ruth's 500th Home Run

The man who redefined the home run becomes the inaugural member of the 500 Club. Look what the ball went for back in 1929Twenty bucks and a couple of signed baseballs seems like a good deal to me...


Gint-A-Cuffs total:
Box Topper: 8 points
Pack 1: ???
Pack 2: 3 points
Pack 3: 15 points
Pack 4: 8 points
Pack 5: 3 points
Pack 6: 7 points
Pack 7: 4 points
Pack 8: 10 points
Pack 9: 3 points
Pack 10: bupkis
Pack 11: 7 points
Pack 12: 7 points
TOTAL: 75 points + Pack 1's points

The way this break is going I may not have to count up pack #1's points. Hooray for laziness!