Baseball Card Tournament: Second Round - West Regional

First round's over, time for these cards to prove they belong in the Sweet Sixteen. Make sure you vote for the best cards, you will decide which ones make it to the Finals.

Note - I'm too wiped out to finish the post but I'm going to post it anyway so people can vote. I don't want this tourney lasting till May. Updates are in italics.

West Region

#1 1955 Harry Agganis

This is one of the first vintage cards in my collection. It's also one of the most egregiously abused.
I got this card when I was about 8 or 9. My mom used to go to an antiques place off I-85 in Norcross looking for furniture and she's bring me along sometimes. There were a couple of dealers there who sold cards and I'd get a couple when we went. One guy was selling this card and boy, did he sell it. I got the full life story of the great Harry Agganis, how he was a college marvel at Boston University, he signed to play baseball with his hometown team and was tragically taken in the prime of life... Long story short he sold me this beat to hell card for probably 3 times what it was worth in the condition it was in. I don't think I minded though because it was an old card with an amazing story and it was a rookie card, back when that was an exotic term. Not only is this a rookie card it's an only card, as Harry fell ill in the middle of his second season with the Sox and died of a pulmonary embolism. Thousands of Bostonians attended the Golden Greek's wake and Boston University's arena is named in his honor.
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#8 1988 Score Reggie Jackson Tribute
Reggie in an Orioles uniform? Can you imagine the conversations with Weaver?




#5 2007 Bowman Chrome Draft Yunel Escobar Refractor
Watching Yunel in Spring Training is giving me Rafael Furcal flashbacks. Oh yes, this is a good thing. A very, very good thing.
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#4 1995 Score Don Mattingly Platinum Team Set
This is my second-favorite Score set and it kills me that it's totally ignored. I got this redemption-only parallel card out of a dollar grab bag. No respect. No respect at all.
I really like the '95 Score set although it's not very well regarded nowadays. I think it's the most attractive design of all the Score sets, the beige and green just work for me. The set had a foil parallel that was typical of the time, but Score threw in a twist. the also inserted a coupon that would allow a collector to trade in a set of the foil cards for this Platinum team set. Now you could only redeem the set if you had the coupon and a complete team set. so who knows how many of these actually hit the streets. I've only actually seen a couple of these card and never a set, so I was really surprised to find this as a throw in to a grab bag. It's a star too, not some scrub. Ok, so it's kind of obnoxious looking. It's an obnoxiously rare Mattingly card, that's worth more than a throw in, right?





#11 2006 Upper Deck All Time Legends Jimmie Foxx

X is the first
Of two x's in Foxx
Who was right behind Ruth
With his powerful soxx. — Ogden Nash

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#14 1980-1981 Topps Rudy Tomjonovich, Eddie Johnson and Doug Collins
The other half of the triple card bracket features Eddie Johnson in a coach sandwich. I bought a vendor's box of this stuff for 7 bucks back in the 80's. I got a complete set out of it, too bad it's a separated complete set.





#10 1993 Upper Deck Robin Yount Glow Stars
What a beautiful, beautiful mess this card is. Back when companies actually put some effort into the cards they marketed towards kids.
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#2 2002 Fleer Greats of the Game Tony Oliva Autograph
Tony was one of the absolute best hitters of his time, but since he hasn't made the Hall yet no one knows who he is anymore. Thank goodness for ignorant collectors chasing rookie 'graphs looking for the 'next big thing' that allow me to pick up an auto like this for 5 bucks.

Baseball Card Tournament: Second Round - Midwest Regional

First round's over, time for these cards to prove they belong in the Sweet Sixteen. Make sure you vote for the best cards, you will decide which ones make it to the Finals.

Note - I'm too wiped to finish the post but I'm going to post it anyway so people can vote. I don't want this tourney lasting till May. Updates are in italics.

Midwest Region



#1 2006 Bowman Chrome Cory Rasmus Auto Refractor
This is one of the cards that I got in that big trade with Chris Harris that I haven't gotten around to writing about yet. Cory missed last year with shoulder problems, but he should be back this year and it's a freaking refractor auto. Even if he bombs it shore is purdy.
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#8 2007 Turkey Red Jimmy Rollins
A great looking painting, an amazing action scene, an all around wonderful card, and all I can see is the Turkey Hill ad on the wall. What, no love for Wawa?




#5 2003 Topps Fan Favorites Monte Irvin No Sig Variation
Monte Irvin is one of my favorites and this not-scarce variation card eluded me for years. (Thanks, Andy)
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#12 2006 Grandstand Southern League Joey Votto
Another neat card from a reader in Alabama. The set this came in is freakin' loaded, I chose Votto for the cool Chattanooga Lookouts logo.





#11 1961 Topps Danny Kravitz
Venkman: Nimble little minx, isn't she?
Spengler: We're gonna go full stream.
Stantz: Aim for the flattop!
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#3 1981 Donruss Yogi Berra
Yogi! Everybody loves Yogi. Plus this card has a special seecrit power.....




#7 1995 Gil Elvgren Prototype Fire Bell
I really really like this card, can ya tell? Anyone know where I can find a set of this stuff?
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#2 2008 Topps Heritage Eddie Mathews Relic
I didn't even know Eddie was in the set, let alone had a relic card. The fact that Don Newcombe gets a mention is an even more pleasant surprise.

Baseball Card Tournament: Second Round -East Regional

First round's over, time for these cards to prove they belong in the Sweet Sixteen. Make sure you vote for the best cards, you will decide which ones make it to the Finals.

East Regional

Raleigh

#16 1972 Topps Checklist
Whoever filled out this checklist was very similar to myself - meticulously filling in the squares completely, messing up on a couple and putting a little scribble next to the name to note the goof and having mostly lousy cards. The guy even had the Chris Chambliss rookie card.
Seriously guys, you're killing me. The reason this was a #16 seed was that I had nothing to say about it and I thought it would get beat by the Jeter card. Of course I'm the one who went on a rant condemning Moments and Milestones, so I guess I made this bed. I do know one thing from looking at this checklist, if you ever get a chance to open a 1972 Topps second series pack, don't bother. There's nothin' good on this checklist. Orlando Cepeda is the big star in the series, the rookies include Charlie Hough, Darrell Porter, Dave Kingman and the aforementioned Chambliss and the best card by far is a World Series subset card with Clemente. Trust me, I know we all love to rip wax, but stay away from '72 second series.
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#8 2002 Topps American Pie Statue of Liberty
This is one of the nicer non-sports cards in the now utterly forgotten American Pie sets.
I bought a bunch of American Pie when it came out and I really wish I could go back and trade every five packs I bought for one pack of Heritage. It's a nice set, good player selection, some interesting non-sports items and an odd but appealing design, but it doesn't do much for me today. I pulled one of the JFK Berlin Wall cards and the wall dust has now worked its way in between the two halves of the card and can't be seen. The whole thing is kind of a Baby Boomer love fest, I wonder in 10 years if us GenXers will get our own 80's themed retro/entertainment card set. Full of New Kids on the Block and Gordon Gecko and Ollie North... Oh my God, that sounds horrible. Forget I said anything.

Denver

#5 2007-2008 Topps Chrome Larry Bird
Larry Bird absolutely ruined my Hawks on many occasions, but for some reason the thing I most associate with him is an episode of Night Court where Judge Stone heaves a basketball at the end of the show and says "Thank God for Larry Bird!"
For some reason I fell in love with the 2007-2008 Topps Basketball set and got pretty close to a complete set. Unfortunately, Basketball cards are dead this year and no one seems to have commons. Blasters are 25% off at Target though, thankfully I haven't been tempted by them yet. As much as I love the main set, I completely ignored the Chrome. It doesn't look nearly as good to me as they used silver borders instead of black. I found this card in a dollar grab bag though and decided it was worth it. Larry Legend on a chrome '58 design (that wasn't in the base set) was too good to pass up. There was a Bob Cousy base card on the other side of the pack too which really sealed the deal. Gotta have my retro.
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#4 1978 Topps Carl Yastrzemski
Yaz? Yaz. Yaz?? Yaz... Yaz!
YAZ.
Battle for Boston right here... Who wins, Bird or Yaz? Bird has the rings, but baseball seems to be king around these parts. I really like the '78 set for a lot of reasons. The simple design, the game on the back, a pretty good player selection, it's a pretty kick-ass set. This card here was traded for a spare Bob Horner rookie card back when Bob was still slugging homers in Fulton County. Considering I can get Horner rookies for a song nowadays, I think I did pretty well.


Birmingham

#6 2005 Upper Deck Origins Travis Hafner Old Judge
It amazes me how Pronk always manages to look Pronky on his cards. One of these days I am going to find a cheap set of UD Origins on eBay, pull out a sharp pair of scissors, and cut off all those ugly green borders so the set can be enjoyed the way it was supposed to be.
This set was the catalyst for my anti-Upper Deck feelings a couple of years ago. I've never been a huge fan of the company, the cards were too expensive and we now know in retrospect horribly overproduced. I still collected 'em though but in the mid-nineties, my card buying habits had to change. There were more and more super premium products out (more products period, actually) and it was getting harder and harder to keep up with it all. I started focusing in the stuff I really liked, which was mostly base brands and retro crap. I went nuts over the first Play Ball set, even though it was a bit pricey. The art cards looked great, the mini reprints were cool and I liked the DiMaggio and Williams hero worship cards. The next years set was a nightmare and the less said about it the better. I heard about Origins in 2005 and really looked forward to it. Playball (actual Play Ball, not that psychedelic junk from 2004) and Old Judge designs in the same set? Sign me up! Then the tins came out. $90 a pop. Yeah, I was a little pissed about that.
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#14 2001 Upper Deck Rafael Soriano
I found this card out of nowhere looking for Steve's St. Patty's day contest prize. I still can't believe we got him for Horacio Ramirez.
It's funny, I bought Topps Traded and Bowman packs like they were going out of style in 2001 and the dang Pujols card still eluded me. I couldn't pull that sucker at all. The Upper Deck packs I ripped out of habit? Bang - got both of them almost immediately. I even pulled a second Ichiro out of a pack in the bargain bin from Target a few years back. Can you imagine 2001 Series Two Upper Deck in the dollar bin nowadays? Rafael's Star Rookie card was mixed in among the two heavyweights in that series two set. I'm hoping he has a good enough year to maybe make it into Beckett by this time next year. Assuming that this is his actual rookie of course...




#7 1976 Topps Marvel Howard The Duck sticker
Ok, ok. HEAR ME OUT. I know what you're thinking, but Howard the Duck is GOOD. No, seriously. It's that idiot Lucas who screwed him up so badly. The moron should have stuck to Star Wars. The actual comic from the 70's is pure genius. Here's a cool interview from his creator, Steve Gerber, who recently passed away. Somebody please back me up on this... Thorzul? Anyone?
I'm so glad Howard made it. I picked up this card at the Braves Fan Fest this winter. There was a couple rows of memorabilia dealers there including this one guy who specialized in non-sports cards. I'm not sure how much he sold during the fan fest, he didn't seem to thrilled when I talked to him though. He had a bunch of neat old stuff from the 30's to the 80's including a bunch of Beatles and Elvis cards. I looked through his binders hoping for a stray Allen and Ginter card, but no luck. There was a card from the 30's that swiped the A&G Quadruped art (Peccary too, the one I was looking for) but I ended up passing on it. There were a few cards that sorely tempted me, but I didn't want to drop all my cash of oddball non-sports stuff and I only bought this one card. I saw Howard in the middle of a page full of second-tier Marvel superheroes and rescued him from the page of comic mediocrity. He has a good home now among my handful of original issues and my Essential reprint paperback now. I do wish now that I had bought the 1972 Topps Presidential Candidate Shirley Chisholm card now though.
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#2 2005 Donruss Studio Portraits Mark Teixeira #22/30
I love love love these old retro inserts from Donruss, even though the byzantine serial numbering system that depends on the border color, color or sepia photo, ad back, phase of the moon and player's I Ching reading make the Moments and Milestones checklist look positively obvious. The design is ripped off from the Honest Cabinet series from Duke cigarettes, ACC designation N142. I probably shouldn't have told you that since you guys are killing my Nineteenth century cards.
These oddball serial numbered cards Donruss thieved from old obscure card designs are the one thing I really, really miss about Donruss. The whole serial numbering thing is a hokey gimmick, I know, but the designs themselves that they chose are fantastic. The cheesy 70's Sportscaster cards were a brilliant idea for a set. The 1914 Polo Grounds game design is another insanely obscure set to base a short numbered insert set on. A set of Exhibit style insert cards using every single oddball variety save the four-in-one design was just inspired. Donruss also ganked the T205 Ramly set for a Diamond Kings insert and the 1895 Mayo Cut Plug design for a football set. I don't even care that all these cards were weirdly serial numbered, I just love the designs. I do wish that these Duke Cabinet cards would have been made in cabinet size as well though, they are the best looking of them all and would look fantastic in the original 6" by 9" size.

Final Scores:

Checklist 5, Statue Of Liberty 0
Larry Bird 2, Carl Yastrzemski 3
Pronk 4, BMF 1
Howard the Duck 3, Mark Teixiera 2

Baseball Card Tournament: Second Round -South Regional

First round's over, time for these cards to prove they belong in the Sweet Sixteen. Make sure you vote for the best cards, you will decide which cards make it to the Finals.

South Regional

Little Rock

#1 1959 Topps Hank Aaron
David from Indians Baseball Cards. Always. found this for me, and I'm still a little weirded out that I actually have it. I could actually complete the team set now if it weren't for those dang high series cards.
The 1959 high series cards aren't the toughest ones to find, the 1963 high series is tougher, the 1961 high numbers are nasty and the '52s are impossible. They are unique in that they can be distinguished the easiest by the now familiar black ink on the back. The Braves for some reason don't have a single base card in that high series. However, there are no less than five Braves in the high series All-Star Subset, making the team set a real pain to collect. There's Manager Fred Haney, pitcher Warren Spahn, catcher Del Crandall, outfielder Wes Covington and of course, Hank Aaron.
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#9 1993 Ted Williams Gene Benson
In 1945 Gene hit .370 and was Jackie Robinson's teammate on a touring team, but he just missed being able to play in the Major Leagues. Info is scarce on Gene, but there's a good bio here.
1993 Ted Williams is one of those sets I never quite got around to collecting for some reason. The packs were outrageously priced when they first hit the shelves at my local shops, then dropped off the face of the earth shortly after. You'd think I would have picked up a box once it had hit the bargain shelf at K-Mart, but there was just too much other stuff out at the time and I never did. I regret it now, for some reason I see 1994 Ted Williams packs all over the place, but no 1993. Maybe a run on POGs caused the boxes to dry up.


Denver

#12 1974 Topps Rich Hand
This card reminds me of the Bugs Bunny cartoons where Bugs runs completely off the film and you see the sprocket holes on the side of the screen.
Since Fast Times at Ridgemont High got this card to the second round, I guess I better give the people what they want.


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#13 1977-1978 Topps Dan Bouchard
Dan was my absolute favorite player on the Flames when I was a kid. I think it was because the goalies looked so cool with the big-ass stick, huge pads and Jason masks. To this day though, I don't know how to pronounce his name. BOW-chard? Booo-SHARRd? No clue.
I went to a bunch of Flames games as a kid and they were a blast. It was interesting to see a bunch of southerners going nuts at a hockey game. I remember some fool waving a giant Confederate flag at the games in the middle of a bunch of New York transplants there to see the Rangers play. The games sold out, the team had a few nice players, they went to the playoffs every year, then...... Gone. Sold by a short sighted owner off to Calgary.


Anaheim

#11 1973 Topps Jim Breazeale

What inhuman monster told poor Jim that those glasses looked good???
This was one of the first older Braves cards I owned and a big reason why to this day I don't like plastic frames on glasses. I really hope he lost a bet or it was some rookie hazing or something and he didn't actually wear those things in public. They don't fit right either, notice the lopsided nostrils from where they squash his nose. Other than the companion O-Pee-Chee card and 3 minor league issues, this is Jim's only major issue trading card. I kind of want to track down one of those minor league cards just to see what he looks like without those specs.
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#3 1968 Topps Roberto Clemente All Star

That's Roberto, not Bob. This would be a #1 seed if it's weren't a subset card, but then again I probably wouldn't have it at all if it weren't a subset card.
You gotta love vintage All-Star and highlight and league leader cards just for the ability to get legends that would normally be out your price range cheap. The only vintage Mantle card I've managed to scrape up is one of the checklist cards with Mick's disembodied head floating up in the corner. I got Bob's card for only a couple of bucks, and the '68 set has a pretty nice looking horizontal All-Star design. The back isn't that great though as it is the bottom left corner of a puzzle, and just shows someone's hand. Orlando Cepeda or Pete Rose, I think.

Little Rock

#7 1981 Topps Rickey Henderson
If you were Rickey, you'd talk about Rickey in the third person too.
Man, oh man I wish the Braves had taken a flyer on Rickey Henderson a few years ago when he was bouncing around the league to prolong his career. Just one game and I could have claimed him as a Brave forever. Hell, they picked up Julio Franco out of nowhere and we could have used an outfielder who could lead off at the time but it just wasn't meant to be. Someone like Rickey Henderson is like kryptonite to the Jon Schuerholz/Bobby Cox system. Bobby doesn't like to steal and Schuerholz hates players who make waves. That match probably would have been a disaster, although to this day I still believe Rickey would have helped the team.
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#15 1985 Topps Boardwalk Baseball Owen Wilson
No, not that Owen Wilson, I'm talking 'bout Chief. You know, the guy who is the all time single season leader in triples.

Forget about Brady Anderson hitting 50 home runs, how the heck did a tall, lumbering Texan triple the number of triples he hit in 1912 to set a record that may be as hard to beat as Cy Young's 511 wins? Granted, it was the Dead Ball era and triples were more common, but no one has even come close. Curtis Granderson had the most ridiculous triple hitting season in 80 years or so last season, and he still came up thirteen triples short of tying the Chief. So how did he do it? Two words: Forbes Field. Four hundred and sixty two feet to center field. A cavernous ballbark and a little luck goes a long way when creating untouchable records.

Final Scores:

Hank Aaron 7, Gene Benson 0
Rich Hand 4, Dan Bouchard 3
Jim Breazeale 3, Bob Clemente 4 (ot)
Rickey Henderson 4, Chief Wilson 2