A Hair Off Square   custom cards

I’m not going to do a lot of these. I have dubbed this “subset” simply “Heroes.” I am working on variations for my set now to try to keep it fresh for me and the readers. I don’t have a ton of heroes but Cal Ripken is probably at the top of the list no matter how long it is.

The “Heroes” subset is will be numbered along with the original set but as I said, there won’t be many of them. I’m thinking maybe 3-5 cards will be it. This means I likely won’t have a Micky Mantle or anything like that in this set. This is something Topps is doing now, inserting several retired players into their sets. This is a great idea but is a little overused.

He has always been my favorite player. I have literally hundreds of cards of him and countless magazines, figures and other collectibles like that. I got his autograph during his last season and it is one of the highlights of my life. It just hit me all at once, “I have my own card set, Cal Ripken has to be in it.”

A request! Jim at The Phillies Room, who I have posted about before, asked me if I could do a Pete Orr custom card for him. I was more than happy to do it. A big part of my fuel to do custom cards comes from the other people on the web doing custom cards, namely Goose Joak, CSD and The Phillies Room among others.

The request was Pete Orr. So who the heck is Pete Orr? He is a utility infielder for the Philadelphia Phillies. He is not a young guy, a Canadian who first played with the Braves in 2005 and is in his first season with the Phillies. He is getting more field time thanks to an injury to superstar Chase Utley. This is the exact reason teams love guys like Pete Orr. The most interesting thing about Pete Orr? He has hit exactly .253 in 3 of 5 Major League seasons.

This is also why I really like custom cards. I can spotlight a guy like Pete Orr, normally he wouldn’t even get a card unless it is in a very large set. I don’t know if Topps will even have a Pete Orr card this year. It looks like he had card in 2006, 2007 and 2008 but apparently has missed the honor the last two seasons. We will just have to see about 2011.

Here are a couple overpaid NL guys. Both can be good but it seems they are both often disappointing. Garza signed a huge free agent contract with the Cubs and gives them a solid arm but he got ace money in my opinion even though he is a 2 to 3 starter in a rotation, once again just my opinion. I hear how great Jose Reyes is all the time but all I ever see is him on the DL or making outs in key situations.

This completes my big cluster of 2011 Just Fair cards. I set my goal to do 10 new cards and I have now posted 11 if you count my correction of the Zack Greinke card originally posted yesterday. I would like to do this more often, it is time consuming though. My Just Fair checklist has just expanded to a balmy 60 cards. 60 is far short of where I would like to see it end up but it is an impressive number for this point in the season. I am thinking up parallel cards to start slipping in so keep an eye out for those.

Paul Konerko kills the Royals every year, I get tired of it. Michael Pineda faced the Royals a few games ago in KC. He was throwing gas and looked really hard to hit. I don’t really look forward to seeing either of these guys against the Royals.

The NL West is always competitive. Here in the Midwest we don’t see these teams much on TV. I would say it is because they play late games but we all know it is because no teams get national televised exposure except the Yankees, Red Sox, and Phillies.

Here are some enemies from the AL Central. Miguel Cabrara looks bigger every time I see him and not in a Frank Thomas way, more of a Pablo Sandoval way. Brandon Inge is one of consistent guys that just always seems to be around, it seems like he has been with Detroit forever now. Carlos Santana is in my mind the best young catcher in the game. I am not forgetting about Buster Posey, Santana is real good, he is a switch hitting catcher with power. He really reminds me of Victor Martinez in many ways.