A Hair Off Square   custom cards

I found out Jim from The Phillies Room has been peeking in on my site so I thought I would throw up a couple Phillies for him. If I think somebody wants to see something on my site I try to put it up in thanks for them visiting the site.

Instead of talking about my cards I would like to tell you about The Phillies Room a little bit and what I like about it. There are “Chachi” sets of the Phillies for the last about five years on the site. The Chachi sets are old Topps designs as you have seen me use on this site from the late ’70s and early ’80s. These are my favorite years of cards. The Chachi sets are complete Phillies sets for a certain year. I have done that too but the Chachi sets also have a great line of subsets that are incredibly well done. These subsets include team leader cards, season highlights and playoff highlights and more, all done to fit the particular year of Topps chosen.

All Phillies but really good stuff being done over at The Phillies Room.

Here are a couple more AL shortstops; one from the AL West and one from the AL Central. Elvis Andrus and Alexi Casilla’s cards seen here might be my favorite two from the set so far. They are two fantastic pictures. I love the closeup of Andrus sliding into base with the dirt flying up in his face. The picture was originally much wider but I decided to crop it tight and try to really show the dirt and intensity of the photo. Casilla’s picture is nice as well. It appears Casilla is going airbourne to try to prevent a catcher’s throw from sailing into center field against the Yankees.

Elvis Andrus is one of my favorite players that doesn’t play for Kansas City I think. I watched him in the playoffs last year and he was great. There was a runner at second early in the game with no outs and Andrus grounded out softly to the second baseman to move the runner up. Not something that shows up in the boxscore the next day but a great play if you ask any manager. The impressive part was Andrus’ demenor in the dugout afterward, you would’ve thought he hit a long ball by the smile on the guy’s face. This showed me that he is a great team player and a very valuable part of the club that represented the AL in the World Series last year.

The Royals got Alcides Escobar in the Greinke deal this winter and I really hope he develops into the kind of player Andrus is. I think Escobar is already better defensively that Andrus but if he can model the rest of his game after the young Ranger, he could be a major part of the Royals future.

Here are a couple AL East shortstops. Yunel Escobar is red hot for the Blue Jays and Reid Brignac is not for the Rays. Neither one of these guys are likely to be in the All-Star game anytime soon but you never know. The Blue Jays may need a representative if a couple of their stars get hurt or really drop off. Either way Derek Jeter will make another undeserving All-Star start and a backup is more likely to be someone like Elvis Andrus of the Rangers or Alexi Ramirez of the White Sox. I will still hold out hope that is Alcides Escobar of the Royals picks up his hitting he might make it but it is extremely unlikely.

This morning I read about Adrian Gonzalez’s new monster contract in Boston and I wanted to post a White Sox card for csd’s custom cards.  So today I will post two sox of a different color.

Adrian Gonzalez’s contract was inevitable I felt, I was just shocked it didn’t get signed as soon as the deal to send him to Boston was done. I read the article on Yahoo! about the contract and saw it as an omen to add him to my Just Fair set today. Gonzalez is a monster, he is a left handed hitter with tons of pop that is a pretty good fielder as well. Boston knows that the first base situation is taken care of for a few years now. I think this is a good signing and the Red Sox won’t regret it. I can’t wait to see Adrian take Mariano deep in a September game this year. I know I’ll see it because every damn Red Sox-Yankees game is nationally televised.

Brent Lillibridge is a young second baseman for the White Sox. I think he plays some outfield as well. He is a guy who scares me when he strolls up against the Royals, he gives me the same feeling Joe Creede always gave me when he batted in KC. CSD does a lot of custom cards of his own and goes the extra miles by both using his own pictures and creating backs for his cards. Both of these things are very tough and admirable tasks. I am a fan of his site even though I believe he is a White Sox fan. This card is posted for CSD, go visit his website.