Good Enough For Me

Cookie has entered the building....



After much bitching about transmogrifier card shipping fees, I must say that Topps ultimately ended up doing this very well. The cards arrived in decent shape (most of them at least), every last one of them was in a top loader and they used priority mail all for just under 15 bucks. Depending on how much they had to pay vintage dealers for the cards they may have even taken a bath on this promotion. I'm sure it helped move a ton of product though, well, other than the poor neglected value blister packs and Best of Chrome boxes that still sit on the shelves with their expired codes languishing away.

Finally, after all those posts, here is mah Cookie.

OM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM

(how the heck did I end up getting obsessed with Cookie Rojas cards??)

2500 hits

I better crow about this milestone because Chippah ain't never getting #3000.

(Mantle only got 2415 so PHBBBBBTTTTT)

Baseball Card Detectivery

So yesterday I posted this card of Mac:

I wondered aloud who was in the background behind Brian (probably Chipper) and Laurens actually found the actual photo used from Getty Images. According to the description, this photo was taken during the August 4, 2010 game against the Mets at Turner Field and that McCann was throwing out a runner on the play. I dug up the box score of that game and looked to see if there were any plays where Mac thre out a runner. In the 4th inning Mike Pelfrey bunted Luis Castillo over to second base and was thrown out by McCann. I don't think that starting pitcher Kris Medlen would run toward the line on a bunt in front of the plate so most likely that's Chipper back there coming up to defend the bunt. Mystery solved! 

Speaking of Medlen, according to the box score he was replaced by Mike Dunn after this batter so this means the photo on this card is the last play made before he blew out his elbow and was shut down for Tommy John surgery. Aaaaaaaand now I'm sad. Meds is progressing in in rehab though so I'll just have to wait until August or so to enjoy this card. 

(and yes detectivery is a real word)

2011 Braves Team set - Mac

One more of these and then I promise I'll do something productive with my life.  Check out Big Mac in the tools of ignorance:

Whodat behind Mac? Izzat Chippah? No really, someone tell me who that is behind McCann. It kinda looks like Chipper but it out of focus and I scanned it in jpg format so it's even more blurry and my eyes suck anyway so I got no clue. Aw heck with it. LOOKIT MAC IN THE CATCHER'S GEAR!!!

Time to get mah Cookie

Your Cart

• Card
• Qty

• Tom Brewer 1958
• 1

• Don Dillard 1960
• 1

• Don Mossi 1961
• 1

• Marv Breeding 1963
• 1

• Curt Flood 1966
• 1

• Dick Kelley 1967
• 1

• Clay Carroll 1967
• 1

• Felipe Alou 1968
• 1

• Dick Bosman 1969
• 1

• George Culver 1969
• 1

• Cookie Rojas 1971
• 1

• Ted Uhlaender 1972
• 1

• Jim Breazeale 1973
• 1

• Rowland Office 1975
• 1

• Maximo Leon 1976
• 1

• Joe Kerrigan 1977
• 1

• Joe Ferguson 1978
• 1

• Barry Bonnell 1978
• 1

• Dave Campbell 1978
• 1

• John Scott 1978
• 1

• Joe Nolan 1980
• 1

• Rusty Staub 1980
• 1

• Phil Niekro 1983
• 1

• Jim Acker 1988
• 1

• Mark Lemke 1989
• 1

• Mark Lemke 1990
• 1

• Mark Lemke 1991
• 1

• Tommy Gregg 1992
• 1

• Mark Lemke 1992
• 1

• Mark Lemke 1993
• 1

• Mark Lemke 1994
• 1

• Mark Lemke 1995
• 1

• Mark Lemke 1996
• 1

• Mark Lemke 1997
• 1

• Mark Lemke 1998
• 1

• Brian Jordan 2005
• 1

• Total Number of Cards
• 36

• Shipping & Handling
• $14.84

• Delivery confirmation
• $0.00

• Insurance
• $0.00

• Total
• $14.84

Transaction ID : 000115758







(There's no way this post will format right)

Got my confirmation e-mail today that Cookie, et. al. have shipped. Apparently Topps used these guys for Transmogrifier fulfillment. I didn't recognize the address from the e-mail at all so I did some investigatorin'. Thanks to the UPS shipping option I ended up having far more cards shipped than I initially planned. Basically, all Braves and all cards from 1980 and earlier that I needed were saved. Less than 30 cards went down with the ship once the Transmogrifier was scuttled. I assure you that only junkwax perished in the tragedy. The initial order was on 2/28, and it shipped on 4/06. USPS, oddly enough. After a couple of weeks I tried to check my order on the old site but everything was gone by then. Even though the new site uses the same login, orders from the old site could not be seen on the new one. Of course I was a cheap bastid and refused to pay for delivery confirmation. I had written off the cards at that point, but then the e-mail popped up today.  I guess it just took a while for JJ to find all those Lemmers.......

2011 Braves Team set - Uggla

Friggin' Brewers...

Here's Dan Uggla's card from the Braves team set. Not gonna lie, it's a boring photo and an obvious airbrush photochop. I can tell by the pixels. That and the odd-looking logo on the joisey. Gotta respect the two cans of Copenhagen Uggs is packing in that right cheek. I wonder when the first picture of Dan actually wearing an Atlanta jersey will show up on a card. It makes me nostalgic for the cheesy press conference photos where the player is wearing his new team's jersey over top of an Armani suit.

2011 Braves Team set - J-Hey

Here's Jason Heyward from the 2011 Topps team set. I found mine at Target, they should also be readily available at Wally World or online if you are fortunate enough not to live in Atlanta.Whoops, did I just misplace an un? No matter.

I'm thinking this shot has to be posed. Jason just looks too lackadaisical out there. Maybe it's a shot taken during warm-ups. I like seeing a real Rookie cup on the card. I was disappointed that Tommy Hanson didn't even get a fake tin cup on last year's card.

The Fox Sports South ad on the scoreboard in the background causes me some heartburn. Late last year, we cut out everything but the basic channels from our cable package. This was not a problem in November because I rarely watch anything on TV anyway. If it wasn't on Netflix or online, I didn't really need it. Now, thanks to our local TBS station being utterly fucked all to hell by several massive corporations who don't give a shit about the Braves or Braves fans, I find myself in the awkward situation of living in Atlanta and not being able to watch the Braves on TV except for a small handful that are being shown on Peachtree TV, AKA the zombie corpse of TBS. If I moved to a different state I could give MLB.TV my money and watch it online, but the Braves games are blacked out in Atlanta. If I want to watch my Bravos on TV in Atlanta, I either have to go over to a friend or family member's house to mooch their cable or shell out more money to Comcast just so I can watch one thing. Ugh.

One other thing about this card. This is the top card in the package so it came out with two dinged corners and a scratch on the front. On any other card it would suck but on J-Hey's that's called CHARACTER, baby.

About Damn Time

Thanks to the 2011 Topps Atlanta Braves Team set, Eric Hinske finally has a card where he is in a Braves uniform.

Here's the checklist if you're interested:

I'll post a few of the other cards that weren't in Series One throughout the week.

April Fail

Capitol Avenue Club's April Fool joke was "Braves re-sign Scott Proctor"

This popped up on the ajcbraves Twitter feed earlier today:

LOLWUT

Welcome back to Gwinnett, Scott. Better luck next year, Capitol Avenue Club.

It's go time

The season starts right about now. Assuming it doesn't rain. Why isn't the opening series held in a southern city again? I actually got a taste of big league action a couple of days ago. Took a ton of pictures. Then lost my phone and all of said pictures. I am a schlemiel.

Oh well. Play ball!

2011 Opening Day Roster

Assuming a trade or waiver wire pickup doesn't go down in the next couple of days, here's the opening day lineup for the Bravos:

Leadoff - LF Martin Prado

Batting 2nd - CF Nate McLouth

Batting 3rd - 3B Chipper Jones

Cleanup - C Brian McCann

Batting 5th - 2B Dan Uggla

Batting 6th - RF Jason Heyward

Batting 7th - SS Alex Gonzalez

Batting 8th - 1B Freddie Freeman

Starting pitcher - Derek Lowe

Starting pitcher - Tommy Hanson

Starting pitcher - Tim Hudson

Starting pitcher - Jair Jurrjens

Starting pitcher - Brandon Beachy

Bench - C - David Ross

Bench - IF/OF - Eric Hinske

Bench - PH - Brooks Conrad

Bench - IF - Brandon Hicks

Bench - OF - Matt Young

Bullpen - RH Closer - Craig Kimbrel

Bullpen - LH Closer - Johnny Venters

Bullpen - RH- Peter Moylan

Bullpen - LH - Eric O'Flaherty

Bullpen - RH - Scott Linebrink

Bullpen - LH - George Sherrill

Bullpen - RH - Cristhian Martinez

All righty then, let's play ball.

I am a terrible person

I just realized this and I learned about it from here. Didn't even figure it out by myself.

I have brought shame upon my family.

The little details make all the difference

One of the weird quirks about the 1962 Topps set is the card numbering. Check out this number on the '62 Minnie Minoso card.

A simple white number inside a small black baseball. Pretty basic stuff. Not too hard to read and it's in the upper left corner so it's easy to sort. (At least for me it is, do lefties prefer the number on the right side?)

2011 Heritage is copying the 1962 design so it's important for them to get all the details right. Like the card number. Here's MVP Hambone's card:

Nailed it. If anything the number is even more clear and easy to read than the original. Clear is good when it comes to card numbers, especially when many of the collectors are old geezers with bad eyes like me.

But wait! In 1962 Topps switched things up somewhere around series two and used a different design for the card number:

Well lookie there. Larger baseball, larger number and the number is in bold for easy reading! They even replaced the top row of stitching with the original Topps logo. Nice choice by the '62 design team. But wait! Did Topps muck up the details in a retro set yet again?

No, they didn't! Huddy's got the good number on the back of the card. The designers were paying attention this time. The entire back is pretty spot on actually. The stats are right (No WHIP or OPS here), there's a significant chunk of biography text on the back and the cartoons are in the original style. I haven't figured out if Topps recycled the toons from the original cards or not. I haven't seen any I recognized from my small stash of '62s yet. The only real differences in the two are the much increased trademark and legalese usage on the modern card.

Ah, but I was focusing on the card number for this particular post. The '62 crew were tinkerers to a fault and came out with this slightly different number for series 3:

For some unknown reason, the nice bold font on the card number was reduced to a skinny squinty shell of its former self. Ok, so the numbers are actually the same size as the first series numbers. It just looks smaller due to being in a bigger baseball. Thankfully Topps decided it was more important to save our eyeballs from the squinty numbers than to be completely historically accurate and there are no squinty numbers in 2011 Topps Heritage. Whoever decided that made the right call. It's not healthy to be too obsessed with the minute details in these retro sets. Although the Topps logo on the card number is clearly the wrong font. And the card backs are flipped when you compare them to the originals! What the hell Topps!?

Something Green For St. Patty's Day

No, I am not buying a box this year. I'll pick up some packs and a few blasters. No Hobby box.

Why?

At my main card shop today I saw two things of interest:

A 2011 Hobby Box of Heritage: $90.
A 1955 Bowman card of Hank Aaron: $62.50.

Yep. Not buying a Hobby box this year.

I do not like this meme

Some dude (supposedly a Braves blogger) just called Jason Heyward "Jason Heywood" SIX times in an article on the Braves over at The Hardball Times. There's absolutely no way I can take this article seriously after that, not even with its fancy PITCH/fx graphs. Here's a screenshot for if/when someone bothers to correct it.

This has ruined my whole morning...

UPDATE: They fixed the Heyward section but left the sixth Heywood intact.

lol