So, the HOF Ballot Came Out.....

     Yes, it did. I'm keeping this really low-key for now. I always make a post about this on my other blog, but times have changed, and Don Cardwell is entering the limelight. Anyway, here's what we got on the BBWAA ballot, starting with the squatters -- er, guys who have already been on it. Yeah, them. The guys I'd vote for will be in bold. (Sorry for the lack of cards. I was feeling way too lazy to take any pics, so instead we're going with good old internet pictures)

Billy Wagner 
Andruw Jones 
Carlos Beltran
Alex Rodriguez
Manny Ramirez
Chase Utley
Omar Visquel
Bobby Abreu
Jimmy Rollins
Andy Pettitte
Mark Buehlre
Francisco Rodriguez
Torii Hunter
David Wright

    As you can see, my ballot's a little bit all over the place. 

    

    Wagner is an obvious choice, and he's getting gypped in that he's not in already. Billy Wagner was one of the most dominant closers....ever (I hold that he's better than Trevor Hoffman, but that's just me). A career 422 saves and 2.31 ERA. What are we doing BBWAA? I feel that they always miss at least one or two guys on the ballots every time.

    A premier fielder and power hitter, Andruw Jones won 10 Gold Gloves (in a row, might I add), and hit 434 homers. This included that one insane 51 home run campaign he had back in '05. I usualy wouldn't vote for a sub-.260 batting average, but he deserves it.

    This picture may be a bit blurry, but it's too cool to leave out. Chase Utley was another great fielder, but at second base rather than the outfield. He was a very good hitter (.275 batting average, 259 home runs). Utley won four Silver Sluggers in his 16-year career. He also prompted a rule change; although being the guy who slid into Ruben Tejada probably doesn't help his case. Hopefully it doesn't hurt it.

    Alright, alright, this one may be a little bit biased. In my defense, David Wright was a pretty great player. The third baseman hit .296 with 242 home runs in 1,585 big-league games. He also won two Gold Glove awards. The only problem is that injuries ruined him at the end of his career. In his last three seasons Wright played in a combined 77 games. His career was just too short. While he seemed like a Hall-of-Famer on the field, he didn't spend enough time on it to land him a spot in Cooperstown.

    This leaves me with six votes left going into the newbies. Let's see who we got:

Ichiro Suzuki
CC Sabathia
Dustin Pedroia
Ian Kinsler
Felix Hernandez
Troy Tulowitzki
Ben Zobrist
Curtis Granderson
Hanley Ramirez
Russell Martin
Adam Jones
Brian McCann
Carlos Gonzalez
Fernando Rodney

    Okay, spoiler alert: I would only actually go for two of these guys.

    I think Ichiro will make it on the first ballot, and that he is probably the best player on the ballot. Okay, not probably. Ichiro has the most professional hits, including over 3,000 in the Bigs. He holds a .311 batting average, 1,420 runs, and 509 steals in 2,653 major-league games. He was also a very good fielder. This should be an easy choice.

    CC Sabathia got 3,000 strikeouts. Case closed. However, his ERA was slightly high at a 3.74 mark, so I kind of doubt that he'll get in first ballot, but I'm confident he'll make it.

    Alright, so Tulo shouldn't actually get in. But he's one of my favorite players, so I figured, 'why not?' Troy Tulowitzki had an outstanding 13-year career in which he batted .290 and hit 225 home runs. He was also a very good fielder, acquiring two Gold Gloves in his career. However, aside from playing at Coors for so long, the shortstop's problem is lack of games, and injury seems to be the culprit. Tulo only played in 1,291 games. And though those were 1,291 really good games, you can't really expect to make the Hall with so little.

    Alright, so I guess for guys who I think should get in, it goes as Billy Wagner, Andruw Jones, Chase Utley, David Wright, Ichiro, and CC Sabathia. And then of course I added in Tulo with the courtesy vote, but he'll probably get booted off after his first time. There's a reason I don't get to vote 😂

    Other guys who I may have voted for include Carlos Beltran and Bobby Abreu. I actually probably would vote for Bobby Abreu (I decided to add him in while writing this paragraph), and I bet Beltran will make his way in. I love Ben Zobrist and Ian Kinsler, but wouldn't vote for them.

    Well, thanks for bearing with me to the end. There will be cards for my next post, that's a promise. Thank you for reading, and let me know in the comments what you think of my ballot and who you think should get in. Y'all have an amazing weekend, and happy collecting!

    Also, Don Cardwell hit 10,000 views yesterday, so thanks for that.

Snow on the Field and a Childish Third Baseman

    Sometimes when you're bored and tired, and just can't sleep, you go and look at your baseball cards. It was on one such day when I came across some cards that made the wheels in my head turn (hence the stupid name for the post). After all, I don't typically post with valuable cards or anything, so I've gotta make it interesting somehow, or you lose business. That's just how it works these days.

    Anyway, some of these cards indeed were interesting, and worth (at least I hope) showing on the blog. Maybe it's just because I was tired and so my brain wasn't working correctly. After all, it was a long day. I had just finished coaching the championship game of my little brother's team (GGs boys!), and boy, that game was 'lit,' so to speak. In the end, we won 6-5. After this, we went out to eat. Then I tried in vain to crash, so here we are.

    Shall we start with Trevor Story? This 2017 Topps gold card is numbered 1530/2017. Not gonna lie, even without the numbering, I still love this card. The action shot is perfect. In Story's rookie campaign, he smashed 27 home runs in only 97 games, one shy of Colorado's record. Again, where did it all go???

    While looking at this card, two things to mind; what is he pointing at? And, it's slightly eerie that the fielder's arm goes through the boundary of the card. I thought that the border was there to mark the end of the photo, but whatever. Anyway, nice photo for a nice card.

    If I didn't have multiple cards of Realmuto on the Marlins, I would probably forget that he ever played with them. It's amazing to think that at the same time the Marlins had Realmuto (who they traded to the Phillies after a stellar age 27 season), Christian Yelich (who was traded in 2018 after two solid seasons) and Giancarlo Stanton (who they gave away right after he hit 59 homers). I wonder what they would've been had they kept them all.

    I'll always appreciate some good old Topps Holiday cards. Evan Longoria appears to be throwing right into the midst of a blizzard. Hope everything turns out alright for the Gold Glover. Longoria retired after the 2023 season, and probably for the better. He had been fighting off injuries and bad seasons for a while. I wonder how he'll fare on the HOF ballot. What do y'all think?

    I could've sworn I saw Dansby Swanson before on this post. I'm not really sure why know why, but as soon as I laid eyes on this card, I had to have it. That'll happen with me sometimes. I probably acquired it in a trade with fellow blogger GTT one of those days not too far into the past. 
    It appears that Swanson is staring into the depths of the soul of his baseball bat. Bet it wasn't doing so good for him that day. I went ahead and did my research on this, and Dansby didn't have a good day on 2018 Opening Day, going 0-for-4 with a strikeout.

    At the all-star break in 2016, Paul Goldschmidt was batting .297/.417/.513 with 15 homers. In the actual all-star game he went 0-for-3 as a PH/1B as the NL fell (like usual) 4-2 to the AL.

    Straight from his days as a Dodger, Kenley Jansen pitched to a 2.76 ERA in 2014, collecting 44 saves for the team at age 26. He is currently second in active MLB players in saves with 429 across his 15 years of service time. Craig Kimbrel, who has also been around for 15 seasons, has the lead with 430.

    I'm not sure if it's the batter or the first baseman that David Wright has the beef with, but he should be more mature than to stick his tongue out at him. I mean, come on.

    This 2010 Bowman card is one of my favorites, not because it's valuable, but because it's a great-looking card from a great-looking set. David Wright is one of my favorite players, and according to the back of the card, he was one of three players to hit .300 with 500 RBIs since 2005. The other two were Albert Pujols and Chase Utley.

    I've got nothing to say about this card other than that it's nice to see a young Jean Segura. In 2016 Segura had a stellar season in which he hit .319 and led the league in hits with 203. He had 20 homers, 102 runs, 41 doubles and 33 steals, finishing 13th in MVP voting. 

    2012 Topps Archives is a sharp-looking set. Buster was just coming off the season in which his leg was devastated by Scott Cousins. He would come back in 2012 to win both the batting title and the MVP award (not to mention Comeback Player of the Year) en route to a Hall-of-Fame worthy career.

    That'll about do it for this post. I hope you enjoyed reading my analysis of every card posted today. Man, I need to get more sleep. Anyway, have a great Monday, and Happy Collecting!

We Have A Winner!

     Now that the five clues have been seen and all the guesses are in, it's time to announce that we have a winner. I'm really glad I didn't need to give out any extra clues on this. 

    After clue 4 it was pretty obvious who my selected player was. Nonetheless, I got a lot of positive feedback from the contest, which is great because I was unsure how good of an idea it was. I guess the guessing game added a nice and entertaining touch. I am most definitely going to have more contests in the future.

    Before I tell you who the winner is, let me first run off all the clues that you needed to figure out:

1: the particular player I'm thinking of was a 7-time All-Star.
2: This player played for only one team across his entire career.
3: The player I'm thinking of has been shown (on cards, of course) on this blog before
4: The selected player has won two Gold Glove Awards and has been a two-time Silver Slugger
5: This Player hit a home run in his first-ever All-Star Game at-bat.

    The three cards the winner will receive are the following:
                    -2011 Topps Diamond Anniversary Evan Longoria (HTA-4) 
                    -2011 Topps Diamond Anniversary Josh Hamilton (HTA-5) 
                    -2004 Donruss Team Heroes #166 Carl Pavano

    

    The person who correctly guessed the player completed a pretty impressive feat; he correctly named the player in only two clues! I have to say, I was quite surprised that he was able to guess my player so quickly, and I ran the rest of the contest with a winner, which made me feel kinda bad for the guessers who had no idea. Oh well.

    

        And the winner is.....
        

        Michael Dillard! 🏆

    It seems fitting that my first follower wins my first contest. It was his first guess too. The selected player (as you all know) was....

    David Wright! Wright is one of my all-time favorite players, and was on the Hall-of-Fame ballot for the first time last season, managing to stay on it, which made me very happy.

    Wright was an all-star in the 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2012, and 2013 seasons.

    He played for the Mets his entire (technically) 14 seasons in the Big Leagues
    David Wright was featured on the post My Temp's 104!
    Wright won Gold Gloves in 2007 and 2008
    And he took Kenny Rogers deep in his first at-bat of the 2006 all-game, tying it at one. The NL would go on to lose 3-2.

    Sorry to those who guessed Wright after our winner Michael. It was pretty impressive that he guessed the player correctly after only two clues, but he did. It was after about the third and fourth clues that it became obvious who the chosen player was. Maybe slightly too easy? 

    So Michael, please send me your address so I can get the cards out to you, and congratulations on winning my first-ever contest! And for promoting my blog, I will also send you the Larry Walker 2004 Fleer Platinum card. A big thanks to everybody who took part in my contest, and hopefully I'll have more for each birthday of the blog. Happy Collecting!

My Temp's 104!

     'Cause I've got Spring Fever!

For some reason or other, I actually really like these Spring Fever cards. Topps introduced them in 2015, and they're pretty unique. On the back of the cards are some nice cacti and palm trees, and also some fun facts.

    

    I probably got all these cards in trades with my friend John. I hold these in high regard because I don't have many, and I don't ever see them anymore.

    Bautista was on the Hall of Fame Ballot for the first time this year, but was kicked quickly, receiving an itty-bitty 1.6% of the vote. But I'm not mad, because I personally wouldn't agree with a .247 hitter in Cooperstown unless he has 500 homers. A very good player, nonetheless.

Oh yeah. And David Wright cloned himself. 

If you want to see the back...