Archive for June 2011
1983 Topps is a great design. The card on the left represents the actual colors for the Chicago White Sox cards of that year. I think it looks pretty bad. I know they were trying to create more color on the cards but it made it look ugly. So on the right is the card I picked the colors for. I think it is better, it may be bland but it at least matches the White Sox colors a little bit.
Adam Dunn in a way replaced my favorite active player. This season the Chicago White Sox signed Dunn as a free agent this off-season to pretty much fill a designated hitter roll. This role was vacated by Jim Thome before last season. Ozzie Guillen made a bad decision last year by thinking he could use several players in that role. I don’t think it worked well and the White Sox signed Dunn for this year. Thome is now a Minnesota Twin and is similar to the type of player Dunn is. Adam Dunn has yet to create the impact that Thome did for that team. I think Dunn will get hot sometime this year, likely when he plays the Royals a lot.
This is a White Sox card and you should visit CSD’s custom cards if you like the White Sox cards. There is also a lot of draft cards going up over there right now so be sure to go check out CSD’s.
Alright, this is my favorite card from my 1983 Topps tribute Royals set. I think it is a great shot of the hot young rookie for the Royals. Hosmer had his first career walk-off hit today so I figured it was only fitting to post this card. Hopefully this win will slingshot the Royals back into playing decent baseball again. Oh yeah, don’t look now but this was a 3rd consecutive really good outing for Joakim Soria. Please don’t rush to get him back to the closers role though, make sure he is comfortable before that happens.
So Saturday was Willie Wilson bobblehead day at Kauffman Stadium. It was the 20th bobblehead give-away(I think.) Willie is a no-brainer for a list of the greatest Royals of all-time. If I were to make a ranked list I think he would likely fall 3rd only behind George Brett and Frank White. Wilson’s bobblhead was long deserving and I am glad that it is now out there.
I really don’t think there is much to say about Wilson’s credentials to be on this list. He was a Royals outfielder for a long time, he was really fast and a really good player. He played 15 seasons in Kansas City and 19 in his career. He was a .285 career hitter that included a 1982 American League batting title at .332. He had a staggering 668 stolen bases, 2 all-star game appearances and a gold glove. He was a big part of the Royals 2 World Series appearances as well.
Here are a couple more 1983 Topps cards. Kanekoa Texeira did pitch for the Royals this year but has since been sent to Omaha the claimed off waivers by the Yankees. I wish him the best of luck even though he is in the Yankees organization. It seems like months since Bruce Chen has pitched. He has been on the disabled list for a while now and the Royals are all of the sudden very thin in the rotation. Putting 3 of 5 of your starters on the disabled list will do that. Starting rotation was: Hochevar, Francis, Davies, Chen, O’Sullivan and now is Hochevar, Francis, Paulino, Duffy, Adcock/Mazzaro? The Royals had really good luck with injuries but now all of this has gone down and even worse than all of this shining prospect John Lamb has to have Tommy John surgery.
This is the premier of my 2011 original design for the St. Joseph Mustangs cards. Originally I had planned to wait until further in the season to start posting these cards but I had one card made and it just happens that that one player I had a card for had a huge day. Apparently Mustangs starting pitcher Cody Cunningham threw a no-hitter tonight against the Omaha Diamond Spirit in Omaha. I would have killed to see a Mustangs no-hitter at Phil Welch Stadium. It was the first official game of the Mustangs season and it is hard to believe it could have started any better. A big congratulations goes out to Cody Cunningham.
Cunningham threw 124 pitches with 80 strikes, 4 walks and 2 strikeouts. Thanks to Andrew DeWitt on twitter for the info.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, now, 1983 is a really good looking set. With the inset mugshots they are difficult to re-create but they are well worth it. They just look so good when they are all put together. I posted a “History of Joakim Soria” version of 1983 Topps and promised more would be coming. Until now there hadn’t been any. After Alcides Escobar’s and Billy Butler’s heroics yesterday I decided it was time.
I chose Matt Treanor and Luke Hochevar to start the posting of the set pretty much randomly. I think Treanor’s card is my second favorite from the set. I completed the whole set all in one sitting last night. I made all 30 players to appear in a Kansas City Royals uniform so far in 2011. I couldn’t complete #31 Felipe Paulino because of a lack of pictures but was able to do everybody else. I am going to start posting these often to get the set out there. I really like them and will be posting a couple times a day with them probably. Look out for Eric Hosmer’s card it is absolutely badass, it is the best of the set. I’ll probably post cards according to who performs well during the game to make it interesting. If Hosmer knocks one out, look for his card to be up within about 15 minutes.
If you are a Royals fan you have probably heard somebody complain about Alcides Escobar’s .212 average. They are legitimate, .212 is not a good average. If you have watched many Royals games this year however, you know that Escobar’s defense makes him well worth the outs at the plate.
Specifically if you watched today’s game. For future reference “today” is the day Billy Butler hit a walk-off 2-run home run. In the top of the 8th inning Escobar made an absolutely amazing play. He has made several great plays this year but this play came with 2 outs and the bases loaded in a 0-0 game. That is being clutch with the glove. Escobar stopped a grounder through the hole off the bat of Alberto Callaspo and launched a throw that first baseman Eric Hosmer picked out of the dirt.
Now the subject at hand, Alcides Escobar deserves a gold glove this year. period. His .212 average might be held against him though. If this happens it would be a crime. The gold glove award was made for guys like Escobar. We all remember Rafael Palmeiro winning the gold glove while only playing 28 games at first base all year. He did hit 47 home runs with 148 RBI’s and that is likely why he won the gold glove. What a sham!
Alcides Escobar needs to win this award, he deserves it. If you are complaining about a .212 hitter you have no idea what it was like having Yuniesky Betancourt playing defense every game. If Escobar hits .212 and plays in 155 games and continues to play defense as he has done thus far, it is a well worth him being in the starting lineup.
So Goose Joak mentioned this set on one of my posts a few days ago so I decided to bring the design back for a custom card of the day. I decided to chose the second trending player on Yahoo’s MLB site to be the subject of the card. It was Matt Joyce of the Tampa Bay Rays. Matt Joyce was leading the league in hitting coming into Wednesday. Did you know that? I didn’t. Joyce is having a great year for the Rays and has been a big reason they are only a couple games out of first place in the toughest division in baseball.
I remember this card set, 1993 Triple Play being a big hit with me. Triple Play was a cheap alternative when cards were still cheap to buy. It was a nice looking set and it came out right around the time I started to get serious about collecting baseball cards. It is another black border which is starting to become a trend on my site, oh well, you like what you like I guess. I don’t think I had even thought about this set before Dave from Goose Joak mentioned it to me the other day. I’m glad he did, some cards seem to act as a time machine of sorts, this one did it for me.
A Hair Off Square 