Starting the year off right

Last night went like every other New Year's Eve for the past 5 years. Everyone's excited, I pop the champagne, My wife has one glass, and somehow between 10:00 and 11:00 everyone in the house but me falls dead asleep and 2 minutes before midnight I try to shake everyone awake to see the ball drop at Times Square and I end up failing utterly. This year I finally accepted that this is our family's New Year Tradition and just started polishing off the bottle of champagne myself and surfing the interwebs.

In my random bubbly induced clicking I came upon Scott Crawford's last pack of 2010. A fine pack indeed, what with the Brian McCann gold card. Scott included a link to a caption contest that was ending at midnight in the post. I had missed this contest earlier, but I'll take advantage of any chance to put words into the mouth of the Ol' Perfessor. I only had about 20 minutes to come up with something but thankfully I work best under pressure. I posted my caption 2 minutes before the deadline. Well lookie here, I won!

I am fairly proud of this last minute bit of silliness so I'll reprint it here. I'm gonna steal the image of the card too, cause that's how I roll.

C - ...so Mickey brought this dame right back to the locker room. Gorgeous broad... platinum blonde, blue eyes that stare right through yuz, the reddest lips youse ever saw, legs that just kept on goin, and a body... looked like two blimps crashing into the State Capitol building. Anyways, the dame was three sheets to the wind and shes only drinkin the good stuff y'know? French bubbly. Mickey neva passes up a drinking buddy so he wuz drinkin it wid' her. Drank two or tree bottles of the stuff and was burpin' up a storm. Sos they walk right inta the clubhouse making a racket, the broad's clothes were half off already. Yogi's eyes about popped right out of his head, scared poor Turley half to death. I hadta shoo 'em both into my office before Weiss found 'em out. So these two drunk bastids are flopping around my office trying to get ta foist base but they're so blotto that they're running ta third instead. Then alluva sudden Mick bolts upright, lets out a huge belch and races for the can like a bat outta hell. The bubbly went right through him and the burps was now comin' out the wrong side. So now this broad is completely sloshed and bent over my desk. I tells her "Hey! Ya dumb broad! Get outta here! you're messin up my lineup cards!" She turns around, looks at me and flips me tha boid! She sez "Make me, ya old goat!" and flops back down on the desk laughin. So I sees that big ol' rump wavin' up in th' air and reach out and PINCH! that dizzy dame right in the derrier! She yelps like a stuck pig and hot foots it out of the clubhouse right past ol' George!

D - Ha ha! That's funny, Casey!

C - ..and that's how I know yer wife.

This looks legit

Just got this intriguing message in the ol' inbox:

Sir,

This message might meet you in utmost surprise,However,Its just my urgent need for a domestic, Atlanta, GA, USA-based partner that made me to contact you for this transaction of baseball collectables. I am a banker by profession from Burkina Faso currently holding the post of a director of collation and short prints of the shop.I havethe opportunity of transferring the chosen packs of cards(valued between $3.00 and $12.5 m USD) which bellongs to one of my  client who died along with his family in a plane crash

After further investigation it was discovered that the Milwaukee Brewers did not declare any next of kin in their official papers including the team checklist. And he also confided in me the last time he was at my office that no one except me knew of his substantial commons box. So, twelvemillion five hundred thousand united State Dollars (or the retail baseball card pack equivalent thereof) is still lying in my possession and no one will ever come forward to claim it. What bothers me is thataccording to the laws of my country at the expiration seven years six months the cards will revert to the ownership of the Burkina Government if nobody applies to claim the cards.My proposal, I am prepared to place you as the next of kin in a position to instruct Topps or upper Deck to release the deposit to you as the closest survivingrelation. Upon receipt of the deposit, I am prepared to share the base cards with you 60/30 while 10% will be mapped for expenses that may be incured in the preoccess of transfering these cards into your possession (including, but not limited to 9-pocket pages, penny sleeves, and top loaders). That is: I will simply nominate you as the next of kin and have them release the pack(s) to you. We share the procentange 60/30. I would have gone ahead to ask the cards be released to me, but that would have drawn a straight line in my involvement in claiming the game-used jersey, should one be found.I assure you that I could have the cards released to you within a few days. I will simply inform the bank of the final busting of the pack(s) relating to the deceased person I will then officially communicate with my Bank and instruct them to release the cards to you. With these: all is done. I am aware of the consequences of this proposal.

Wishing you many good "hits."

Sincerely,
-Dr. Nicholas B. Okoye

That sounds like a reasonable offer. Hopefully Dr. Okoye sends me a pack instead of all that money. Who needs those tax hassles.

In other news, Thorzul and I made a friendly wager this weekend. Last year we bet on the winner of the Braves-Brewers series at the end of May and Thorzul ended up winning this pack. I wanted a rematch this year, but forgot that the Bravos were in Milwaukee until about 3 hours before first pitch on Friday. My opponent was already at the game but yesterday morning we agreed on terms. Brewers win two, Thorzul gets a pack. Braves win two, I get a pack. If they split, compare the run totals to find the winner. If that ends up in a tie, then Someone Up There just is not in favor of gambling.

Apparently God loves a good wager then, because after Yovanni pwned our lineup yesterday 4-0, the Braves busted out today with a 10-2 stompfest.

I love the smell of cardboard in the morning. It smells like... Victory.

Spot the Sig Runner Up Prize

Phungo ran a contest where he would post a signature and readers could guess who it was for fabulous prizes. I spotted Jeff Francoeur and Casey Kotchman oddly enough. For my spottiness, I won a runner up prize package, kind of like the case of Turtle Wax and a copy of the home game, just with baseball cards. 12 cards filled out the package, I've scanned my top 5.

2006 Upper Deck Fake Chrome Chipper Jones

Ah, it scans just as lousy as Chrome. I don't care because Chipper is a BRAVE FOR LIFE.

2007 Topps Heritage Albert Pujols

I love the '58 design and Prince Albert has eluded me for two long years.

2009 Phungo Burres vs. Garko black border insert

w00t! Another Phungo card! I will probably have to trade this to Kevin or one of the legion of Indians fans out there though.

2007-2008 Topps basketball Tim Duncan retro

I love this set and I am one card closer to completing it now.

2005 Fleer Russ Ortiz (back)

Many of you never experienced 2005 Fleer Tradition, the baseball card equivalent of a B-grade horror flick. So incredibly awful that it's awesome. Here's the green and orange nightmare of a back. It's even worse looking on the gray border parallel cards. Russ Ortiz pwned the Bravos in a recent Grapefruit league game, so I figured he deserved a little love.

Honorable mentions:
1985 Topps Jeff Dedmon
2002 Bowman Chrome Winson Betamit
2007 Topps Chrome Andruw Jones Gold Glove
1981 Fleer Bob Horner
2005 Fleer Platinum Soxy Smoltz
2006 Fleer Ultra Jeff Francoeur Gold Medallion
2005 Fleer Tradition Rafael Furcal

Thanks again to Phungo for the cards!

A Whole Lotta Packs from zman40

Zman40 from Autographed Cards held a contest a little while ago and I ended up winning one of the prizes. I came closest to correctly guessing the number of autographs he collected in 2008. How'd I do it? Math. He gave a range of numbers to choose from and I picked a number that was exactly halfway between the highest number already chosen and the highest number possible. All that xkcd I've been reading has paid off! So, what did I win? A box very similar to this one that 30-Year Old Cardboard won. A couple more packs, a few less cards, but more or less the same.

Since this is basically just a giant repack box (and probably MUCH better than those TriStar "Find the '52" boxes) I'm going to treat it like a box and rip some of the contents for all you happy people out there. This will give me something to post wile waiting for the poll up there on the top right hand corner that you need to vote in to finish. It's actually tied with three days to go, so clear your cookies and vote a few more times. I'll rip these packs, then rip your choice, and by the time I'm finished with all that, it will probably be time for the '09 stuff to hit the shelves. Then I'll have to choose between Upper Deck, Heritage and Topps Attax. I'm not opening all the packs though. I've picked out a lucky 13 packs, and I'm saving the rest. I'm only going to open one pack of each type (with one exception), the dupes are going into the pile of stuff I give away as bonuses in trades and such.

Here are the ones I'm not opening:

1989 Topps Jumbo pack
I have a 1988 Jumo pack that I've saved for several years for a rainy day, this one will join it for 200 cards plus two glossy rookies of future goodness.

One third of a 1987 Topps rack pack
If you knew how much damn '87 Topps I have, you'd know why I am not opening any more packs from that set. One day I might open a full wax box or a vending box, but no more random loose packs for me.

Two 2007 Topps Series 2 six card packs
I got a junkload of this stuff too and I don't feel like chasing the Dice-K Japanese no sig version any more.

1990 Fleer pack and 1/3rd of a pack
I'm not opening more that one pack from any single set, so these get put aside. The rack pack has Curt Young on the front and a Giants sticker on the back for a nice Bay Area connection.

Three packs of Donruss: one from 1988, two from 1990.
I'll take the risk that there isn't a puzzle piece I need hiding in one of these packs.

There was also some extra nifty stuff in there too....

Zman got this card of Braves flopped prospect Kyle Davies signed in person at a game last year. I'm too chicken to pester people for autographs, so it's appreciated. Kyle is one in a long line of overhyped Braves pitching prospects that didn't pan out in the ATL. It's people like Kyle that makes the Braves message board commentors go apoplectic because he wouldn't give up Tommy Hanson in the Peavy deal. (But Hanson's different, I swear!)


Here's the Upper Deck Rip-Off version of those 1980-81 Topps Basketball cards I quit writing about when I realized that each post required 30-36 scans uploaded to Blogger. Zman sent a bunch of them, and I really dig these stupid things. UD isn't the only ones to rip this set off, Fleer has done it at least twice and Topps revisits it every so often as well.

Finally there was a signed index card of former Falcon punter Scott Fulhage. Falcon punters have traditionally been overworked so it's nice to see he had the strengh to sign. This was signed for some girl named Brandi. According to zman Scott signed this at an appearance at her school a while back, probably to explain how staying in school and saying no to drugs improves your hang time. Cool stuff, that is.

I'll start posting packs here and there when I get some time. Pick a number between 1 and 12 and I'll count down from the top of the pile of packs sitting on my desk and rip that one first.

You Too Can Be A Winner!

I've told you all before about the numerous contests at 88 Topps Blog. Andy gives away so much stuff, he's like Santa Claus without the elves. I recently won another contest there (and helped someone else win too) and I thought I should give his fantastic blog another shout out while showing off my swag.

First of all, I got two packs: One I posted here, and another I'll be posting on A Pack A Day later tonight. I got two cool inserts in the packs but you'll have to check out the rips to see them.

Andy sent three Braves out of 2008 A Piece of History or Artifacts or whatever it's called this year. Glavine (hurt) Smoltz (really hurt) and Frenchy (sucks this year). I don't think I have any of them yet plus Jeff is one of those subtle parallel cards so three more Braves for the collection!

Three Goudey cards including CHIPPER!!! Kelly and a beer coaster. Chipper's going into the Chipper box as soon as I find a spare toploader and the other two will join my Goudey cards unless someone out there needs them for a set.

And finally Matt Diaz. Matt's on the 60 day DL and probably won't be seen in a Braves uniform again this season, if ever. Good lord, it's depressing writing about the Braves right now.

Ah, this is the reason I entered that contest in the first place. I've been wanting to read this since it first came out, but I'm too cheap to pay for a hardback, too lazy to go to the library and never found it used. Now I get to read all about John's triumphs, victories and triumphs, with a few triumphant anecdotes thrown in for good measure. Yeah, so John's a bit full of himself, but who cares. He may be an arrogant jerk, but he's OUR arrogant jerk and the mickeyfickey knows how to win. He also knows when to get the hell out of dodge at the right time. Stupid Frank Wren's team keeps losing! BRING BACK SCHUERHOLZ!

Also check out Auto-Matic for some 88 Topps autographs I won from Andy as well. They will be up as soon as I scan them, upload the photos, write the post and then publish. That should happen soon, maybe.