It's Officially Ridiculous

Can we all agree that Kosuke Fukudome, for better or worse, is the premiere rookie card this year? Jay Bruce is nice, and Johnny Cueto was hot for about 15 minutes, but Kosuke is the closest thing we've gotten to a "hot" rookie, right? Evan Longoria is better, and will be better for a long time, but he's got a bunch of Bowman cards from 2006 out there. As far as a player whose first card is from 2008 (except for Japanese issues, but I'm not counting those), it's Kosuke.


So far this year, I have pulled exactly zero Kosuke cards from Topps products. From Upper Deck, I've pulled ten. Four from Upper Deck Series 2, Four from Goudey, One from UD Heroes and finally this mini card parallel from Goudey. Upper Deck 10, Topps 0. How is that even possible? I know I buy a lot of cards, but damn. And I don't even like Fukudome or the Cubs. Topps has printed up a bunch of Fukus of their own, they just short printed them all to hell and put most of them in WBC international uniforms. Great for generating buzz and getting people to spend lots of money on cards in the secondary market, but now they seem to have a distinct Fukudome gap. The only one that isn't short printed so far is Bowman Chrome, but at three cards per pack that product is kind of inherently short printed. I guess Topps is fully embracing the philosophy that the chase is more important than the cards themselves.

1996 Olympics Day 4

I'm going to speed through this issue so I can try to get the Day 5 magazine posted tonight and get caught up. This issue is dominated by swimming as is evident by Tom Dolan's cover photo. The cover story features the rivalry between Dolan and Eric Namesnik and their battle in the 400 individual medley. There's a couple of mentions of the Chinese swim team and the new anti-steroid rules that the writers seemed convinced were going to get the entire China contingent banned. The rules are detailed in the Scorecard section and they are pretty ridiculous. If four swimmers from a nation fail a drug test, all the swimmers from that country get a ban for four years. Even better, it's not the country where they are from that was important, but the nation where they trained. Sounds perfectly fair to me, I can't see how that could ever get abused by a nation sending a few scrub swimmers to train in a rival country only to purposefully get caught to wipe out their rival's entire program. Do the anti-doping nazis even think about the bass-ackward rules they make? Sheesh. Finally there is a great article on Janet Evans, which is completely ruined by an ad for toenail fungus medicine right in the middle of it. With graphic photo!

The other focus in the magazine is on the gymnastic team, with a one page article on the female squads and a photo essay on gymnasts' hands and feet. That is where the fungus ad should have gone. The United States takes the lead in the medal count with 2 golds and 10 overall. Poland has the most gold medals at 4 with some victories in judo and wrestling. Two days in, the United Kingdom is the nation that is most surprisingly not on the medal board, although Ireland has a gold medal.

Ben was right about Kosuke Fukudome playing in the 1996 Olympics. The third baseman (?!) is featured stretching for a line drive in the recap of Japan's 8-7 loss to powerhouse Cuba. Japan nearly knocked off the Cuban team for the first time in international competition since 1983, but the Cubans scored two runs in the bottom of the tenth. Legendary Cuban pitcher Pedro Luis Lazo faced off against Hitoshi Ono in the game which featured a mammoth home from from Cuban cleanup hitter Orestes Kindelan. The 521 foot homer was the longest in the history of Atlanta-Fulton County stadium. Think about that a minute. The women's softball team doesn't get a fancy write up but their victory over Puerto Rico is acknowledged with this photo of Dot Richardson celebrating after a homer.