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| 2009 Bowman #26 Curtis Granderson |
This is not the reason that people buy Bowman cards, but shouldn't it be? When this set was released, I heard a groan in the blogging community. Personally, I've never cared much for Bowman. It has just never done much for me, even when I was a little kid seeking out Travis Fryman rookie cards. Granderson's 2007 and 2008 offerings were nothing special, and my expectations were 2009 were unspectacular--I wasn't even sure that Granderson was going to be in the set.
Well he is, and how.
In fairness, Mario's later review of Bowman says that this release is saved by the Dark Veteran cards. I couldn't agree more. This card is really nice and not at all what I expected. Here we have a pretty nice photo, sharply framed, with enough design variation to keep the card interesting while still drawing the eye towards the center of the card. Position and Player Number baseballs are included on the front--I love the player number, which is something that too many baseball cards ignore, even on the backs. All in all, I think that this card is exactly what somebody would want out of a base card. Parallels be damned, just give me this one and I'm happy.
Reader Zach Mills sent this one in my direction. He had originally claimed some of the WBC cards that I was giving away, forgot to send me his address by the deadline and negotiated a trade instead. I turned out to be the happy beneficiary of this fine Granderson number, but also a handful of other cards that I was on the lookout for:
Thanks for the trade Zach, and thanks for leaving me with my first Bowman card of 2009!
