Look Out Below!

File this one under "local boy makes good." Britton, MI native Duane Below will be making his Major League debut tonight, taking the place of the now-bullpen bound Charlie Furbush. Britton, MI is here, BTW, south of Ann Arbor between Tecumseh and Dundee, (Northeast of Adrian and northwest of Temprance for all of you former SEC high school athletes!)

I recommend the Detroit News' version of Below's life story, which is a nice human interest piece with small town charm and a mom named Phyllis that works at a senior center. Good stuff.

As for Below, he becomes the next in a line of potential rotation fillers, notable because 1) he is not Charlie Furbush, who was his predecessor in that role and 2) He is not über-prospect Justin Turner who should pleasepleaseplease stay in the minors. Below (which I have taken to pronouncing "Bell-O" and now "BE-low", but I guess I'll wait to hear Dan Dickerson or Mario and Rod to get my pronunciation right), has been pretty good at Toledo this year, sporting a 3.13 ERA with 83k and 37BB in 115 IP. His full minor league stats suggest that he's not quite that good, but hey, give me six innings and a couple runs and you're ok in my book this season.

Good luck Duane, we're pulling for you!

More Wantlist Whittling

It's been a good couple of week for me on the wantlist front. Today I get to chop three more off of my Big Ten list (although nothing quite as dramatic as last time)

Let's go in reverse order this time.

#11: Popeye Aah-guh-guh-guh-guh-guh

2010 Topps Gold #575 Ryan Perry (#/2010)

#10: The Gambler

2008 Topps - Gold Foil #634 Kenny Rogers

That card completes my 2008 Topps Gold Foil set!

...And, the leader in the clubhouse for Tigers card of the year, perhaps?
#4: Paws

2010 Topps Opening Day #M9 Paws

That's the last card I needed from 2010 Topps Opening Day too!

I'm hoping to spend a little time (and very little money) knocking out some more off of this list on my little winter break, and until I can do a proper inventory of my cards, these ones are going to be replaced by TBAs for now.

Sunrise...

Today is Al Kaline's birthday.



Happy Birthday to Mr. Tiger himself!

Chopping Down the Wantlist

I took advantage of the Thanksgiving deal over at COMC to knock a few cards off my wantlist. Actually, because shipping was so cheap (instead of the pretty expensive and quick to add up that it usually is) I filled out some other wants & needs as well, but that's for another time.

For now, 36.36% of my wantlist has been trimmed down including:

#3 on my list, part of the Home Run Derby contest inserts that Topps used to run

2008 Topps Gary Sheffield Home Run Derby Contest (#/999)

#5: A fantastic Heritage SP

2009 Topps Heritage #461 Tigers Coaches

#8: The last base card I need from 2010 Topps (which may just happen to be the worst card in the whole set. I mean seriously, look at that picture.)

2010 Topps Update US-24 Miguel Cabrera/Vlad Guerrero

#10: The last base card I needed from 2010 Topps T-206

2010 Topps T-206 #165 Ty Cobb

And with that, I have some serious thinking to do about how to replace these on my list. Fortunately, I've been inundated with cards lately (since when was being inundated with something good?), which means that more holes have been filled and I'm sitting on a bunch of sets where I'm just a couple cards from completion. My guess is those will be making the list--I'm looking at you 2010 Topps Gold Ryan Perry.

As always, I tend to put cards on here that are low-end, easy to find types. Just in case somebody out there happens to be flipping through their piles of cards, trips upon something on the list and feels like sending a little care package my way...

Update: And the new members of the wantlist (in the sidebar) are...
7. 2010 Topps #44 of 45 Hank Greenberg Red Back Mini (Target)
8. 2010 Topps Chrome #182 Brennan Boesch Refractor
9. 2009 Topps Heritage Chrome #CHR171 Rick Porcello
10. 2008 Topps #634 Kenny Rogers Gold Foil
11. 2010 Topps #575 Ryan Perry Gold

May the search begin!

It's The Little Things

Baseball is all about the little things. A Saturday afternoon game on Network TV so that I can watch my team halfway across the country. A 5'9 rookie turning a slow roller into a gorgeous double play with skill unlike anyone in Detroit has seen since the days of Tram & Lou. A short left field with a huge wall that turns a routine fly ball into a leaping catch at the wall. The cumulative effect of bad pitches and bad decisions and bad luck leaving Tigers fans dejected and angry, and Red Sox fan euphoric, even though they know in their heart of hearts that David Ortiz's bat speed has slowed to the point where he needs to be sitting on a pitch to drive it. Baseball's greatness is contained within the little things.

So too with collecting, although I mean it much more literally. I've received a lot of good mail recently, but nothing quite makes me smile like the little things. I'll start things off with a bang:

2008 Allen & Ginter #373 Justin Verlander Mini

2008 Allen & Ginter #387 Miguel Cabrera Mini

It took being shipped from Taiwan, but they're here. Two of the three Tigers "extended minis" from 2008 Allen & Ginter. As I find myself more and more drawn towards mini cards, the extended set was something that I just couldn't ignore. It makes me kind of wish that all cards were mini cards...

Like, what if all those cards you had from the 80s, looked like this:

1989 Topps Mini Leaders #53 Gary Pettis

1987 Topps Mini Leaders #53 Kirk Gibson

Seriously, how much better would that have been. Or the early 90s, when Upper Deck blew us all out of the water with holograms and such? Why weren't we captivated by these:

1991 Topps Cracker Jack #26 Alan Trammell

I had totally forgotten that there used to be cards in Cracker Jacks. They are so small. You can fit 4 to one regular sized card. In fact, I'm a little disappointed that nobody has come up with a 36-sleeve card holding page. I would totally get one. Unfortunately, because the scale is still basically the same as a regular card, it's hard to tell just how small it is. Here's some help:



That's the cracker jack on the far right with an 80s era Topps mini next to it. A full size card is the Gibson in the middle, next to what I can only describe as the Biggest Donruss Card I've ever seen. Of Sparky Anderson. Probably explaining how important the little things are in baseball.

The A&G minis come courtesy of my diligent eBay bargain hunting. The Pettis comes from Rhubarb Runner and the rest come from Cards on Cards, who provided me with a package rich with 80s and 90s goodness including minis galore and a bunch of other cards that I didn't have. Thanks so much to both of you!

Or not.

I figured that yesterday would be an opportune time to post this card:

2008 Bowman #BP108 Will Rhymes

It's a 2008 Bowman rookie card of new Tiger Will Rhymes, who was called up to the team on Sunday to make his major league debut. As my luck would have it, a package of cards from Play at the Plate arrived yesterday, and this card was fortuitously included in the package. A good omen, I told myself. I thought that I would post it up to celebrate Rhymes' first major league hit, which had a reasonable chance of happening on Monday.

Or not.

This Tigers were no-hit for the 13th time in franchise history Monday, although the first time since Randy Johnson did it to them way back in 1990. You might hear a number of Tigers folks playing down what Garza did yesterday. The Tigers threw a glorified AAA roster out there and were rewarded in infamy. One: that's not Garza's fault. Two: it's really not less impressive considering that he still had 4/9 of a legitimate major league lineup to contend with. Granted, it is made much easier.

I think that this will be my last woah-is-me Tigers fan post for a while. There are a lot of cards on my desk waiting to be catalogued and written about. The National begins tomorrow right here in Baltimore. The temperatures are back into the 80s. The sun is shining.

I'm not conceding the season. I'm not giving up. I love watching the Tigers, root for them ardently, and feel pained when they lose. But it is defense mechanism time for me. The last few sports seasons have been consecutive marathons of pain, and I'm only in shape for a 10k (this is a truer statement than you know). I'll keep tuning in though, for these two reason if nothing else:

Miguel Cabrera makes baseball worth watching. He will fight and scratch for the Triple Crown even with a decimated supporting cast. He should win the Tigers' first MVP since Guillermo Hernandez, and, barring the improbable, the time that a Tiger has won the MVP in a non-World Series year since 1937 (Charlie Gehringer).

Austin Jackson and Brennan Boesch will continue to battle head to head for Rookie of the Year. One of them should win it. Their success portends the success of the Tigers in 2011 and subsequent seasons. It's easy to forget how young the team is. Cabrera is 27. Verlander too. Scherzer just turned 26 today (!--thanks wikipedia, note to self, create happy birthday post this afternoon). Jackson, Porcello and Boesch are all under 25. There are a half dozen other rookies getting some big league reps. One or more may pan out. It's like all the benefits of a rebuilding year without suffering the absolutely horrid performance that those years usually require (I'm looking at you, Orioles). Sure, it's bad, but it's not all bad.

Baseball can still be fun to watch, I promise.

Sure, Perfect Was Good...

A tip of the cap to Dallas Braden, who threw a highly improbable, and therefore even more impressive, perfect game. But you know what's better than one perfect game?

How about three no-hitters:

2008 Allen & Ginter #BH5 "Three No-No's" Cabinet Card

This came in the mail on Saturday which got me thinking about no-hitters and the like. What I decided was this: I love historical footnotes and milestones and so forth. Most players aren't going to be immortalized in the Hall of Fame. Many very good players will never make an All Star Game. But there are others who will be part of extraordinary feats that they will be able to talk about for the rest of their lives. No hitters are one. Batting for the cycle. Perhaps a good hitting streak, or a 20-20-20-20 season. These are the types of things that end up on wikipedia lists or as AFLAC Trivia Questions, but, by and large, are forgotten by the majority of fans.

Isn't that what cards are for? To me, a good milestone card or the remembrance of a major feat or season highlight means alot to me. I have an old Score "Cecil Fielder hits 51 Home Runs" that is still one of my favorites. So yeah, I think that this card is pretty great.

What's better is that I didn't even know it existed until last week. I've been going through trying to backfill my collection of mini Allen & Ginters when I thought to myself "Hey, while I'm going after minis, I wonder if there are any Tigers on those really big cards from a few years back." Turns out, yes. There is this one (and two from 2007). This is the first A&G Cabinet card that I've ever seen and I am now on the hunt for more. They are big, well composed and generally fantastic. Here's hoping there's a Tiger worth putting on one in 2010.

Turning Country Time into Minute Maid

aka Turning Lemonade into...Better Lemonade. You come up with a better phrase for turning a good situation into a better situation.

Anyway, that is what I am dubbing the latest development with my collection. As you might recall, I recently initiated the break-up of my Granderson collection through the sale of two cards. One of these was an autographed 1/1 printing plate that I had always kind of liked but would have spent its days in a box never to be looked at or admired. Also, it was ugly. So, I traded it.

Sure, I sold it, but it basically amounted to a trade and my return card came in the mail yesterday.

This:


For This:

2008 Topps Heritage High Numbers #ROA-AK Al Kaline Autograph

I'd say I got a pretty good deal.

I also think that that card will fit nicely alongside these in my new Heritage Auto/Relic collection:






Yessss. The Plan, she is progressing nicely.

Flashing Some Green

For no reason whatsoever, I felt compelled to show off all the Green cards that I have in my still-intact Granderson collection:

2008 Triple Threads #187a Curtis Granderson Emerald (#/50)

2008 Triple Threads #187b Curtis Granderson Emerald (#/50)

2008 UD Heroes #60 Curtis Granderson Emerald (#/499)

2008 UD Heroes #60 Curtis Granderson Emerald Relic (#/25)

2008 UD Spectrum #SS-GR Curtis Granderson Green Relic (#/50)

2008 UD First Edition #SQ-39 Curtis Granderson Starquest

2008 Goudey #69 Curtis Granderson Green Mini (#/88)

2007 Triple Threads #129a Curtis Granderson Emerald (#/50)n

2008 Topps Co-Signers #33a Curtis Granderson Green (#/200)

2009 Topps Finest #102 Curtis Granderson Green (#/99)

2009 Topps #CBQR-CG Curtis Granderson Career Best Quad (#/20)

Now please continue to enjoy your otherwise nondescript Wednesday.

Shiny Happy Cardboard People

Blogging is an outlet, which means that I can project shiny happiness despite having just spent all of yesterday at airports, being delayed by multiple hours to get down to my final destination of the not-New Orleans or Baton Rouge parts of Louisiana. Where it is raining. Consider prolonged blog absence explained.

Anyway, this is a good early morning post, as I set myself up for some positive thinking. All of these cards came in over the last few weeks.

I love Refractors on cards. They are awesome. In fact, I've found that I have grown tired of regular chrome cards, to the point where they don't capture my attention at all, but give me some rainbow-reflecting parallels and I'll just lap them up. Like this one:

2009 Bowman Chrome #26 Curtis Granderson Refractor

I already liked Curtis' regular Bowman card this year, and the chrome refractor--especially when you can capture it with the right ratio of colored streaks--is outstanding. Truly outstanding are things like the blue-border refractors and the lower numbered parallels, but those are harder to come by, and therefore not yet in my collection.

With the technology the same, it is no surprise that the Topps Chrome version looks just as good.

2009 Topps Chrome #120 Curtis Granderson Refractor

Seriously. I might consider abandoning my entire collection just to go after all of Granderson's chrome refractors of things, in their multi-paralleled glory. Just look how much better it is than the regular card:

2009 Topps Chrome #120 Curtis Granderson

Not even close.

One exception to this can be found in Topps Finest, where this years cards were uniformly outstanding. The base cards were nothing to sneeze at--they had more dimension than your typical shiny cards--but again, the refractors really pop:

2009 Topps Finest #102 Curtis Granderson Refractor

Of course, Topps hasn't always hit the nail on the head. I was thoroughly unimpressed with what they offered in Topps Co-Signers. To quote myself:

It is fine, I guess, but for me it is way too shiny. That shine is not classy and visually stimulating like Topps Chrome, it is disorienting and bothersome, like a mirror to a cat. Notice my hands and camera sharply reflecting off the card.

2008 Topps Co-Signers #33 Curtis Granderson Green Parallel (#180/200)

See? Way too shiny. Co-Signers was card fail, even in the rarer parallel versions. Kind of. It was fail until I got the "hyper-plaid" parallel versions. I will use my pictures here in place of 3000 words:

2008 Topps Co-Signers #33 Curtis Granderson HyperPlaid Blue (#18/50)

2009 Topps Co-Signers #33 Curtis Granderson HyperPlaid Red (#024/100)

2008 Topps Co-Signers #33 Curtis Granderson HyperPlaid Bronze (#12/75)

Those are awesome. It just goes to show that there are good cards in bad products. Topps may never make these again, and the pictures may not even do them proper justice, so I recommend running out and picking up a "hyper-plaid" card for yourself. They are like Xfractors on acid.

So, that's it for today. Shiny cards abound to brighten up my dreary day on the Bayou. Regular posting should continue in the future as soon as I'm back surrounded by the comforts of home (and can take more pictures of new cards).

On The Destruction of Wantlists

I've never been a big fan of creating wantlists. I much prefer creating enormous checklists and seeing the spots slowly checking off until I have a whole page of entries with a big "x" next to all of them. But I may be coming around. I am not about to preach about destroying your wantlists. Oh, no. I'm here to sing the praises of DESTROYING your wantlist.

That's right. I've got a "Big Ten" wantlist on the sidebar with the 11 cards that I want the most for my collection. In two quick packages, my list was chopped into little bits.

First, reader Barry, who goes by Los Gatos on the Detroit Sports Collectors Forum decided to play the role of generous benefactor and sent me this:

2008 Topps Updates & Highlights #UH318 Kyle Farnsworth

It's a sad day when you look at your wantlist and see "Kyle Farnsworth" staring back at you. How did I not have this card? Well I do now, thanks to Barry, thereby completing my 2008 team set (Finally!). I now longer have to face the humiliation of a wantlist that includes Kyle Farnsworth as a member

One package in and one card off the Big Ten down. But wait! A trade with Dean-- another friendly reader--for some extra Granderson Moments & Milestone cards yielded the motherload. Not 1, Not 2 but 3 cards off the wantlist! And these were no shlubs either, but cards in the top half! Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Card #8:

2007 Topps #GN285 Justin Verlander "Generation Now"

That's right, this is the last of Verlander's Generation Now cards that I needed for my set. I now have all 17 of his rookie year wins, and a near-2 pages full of these shockingly forgettable cards. Burden: lifted.

But it only gets better with Card #5:

2009 Topps #CBR-MO Magglio Ordonez

Not only was Ordonez blazing hot to end the season, but this is the last of the regular "Career Best" relics that I needed from the 2009 set. I now have the regular and "silver" versions of all three players. Outstanding!

Of course, as is the way with these things, I'll save the best for last. Number 2 (!)

2007 Topps Updates & Highlights #TRC40 Cameron Maybin Refractor (#279/415)

"Ooh, great Dan. You have a Topps Chrome card. This was #2 on your wantlist? Your wantlist is lame."

Did that cross your mind at all? Maybe a little? Well, you stink. This is not just a regular Topps Chrome card (no, not because it is a refractor, wise guy), this is a Chrome Box Topper found in boxes of 2007 Topps Updates & Highlights. This fella, Cameron Maybin, happened to be the hottest rookie from that release and this card has been SO HARD to find, even though Maybin is still stuck in the minors. This card has been on my wantlist for a long, long time and I am thrilled to be able to check off that box. Thanks Dean!

So there we have it, 2 packages, 4 cards and 4 new open spots on the wantlist. I couldn't be any happier.

Curtis Granderson Into The Record Books

The Tigers are scratching and clawing their way towards a playoff spot, and over the last two days Curtis Granderson has come out of hiding to help out in whatever way he can. I'm not sure that anyone would say that he's had an Illustrious career...

2007 UD Black #IL-GC Curtis Granderson/Coco Crisp Illustrious Dual Auto (#17/50)

...Uh, ok I guess some people were willing to make this claim in 2007, but the rest of us realize that we're watching a player who is still coming into his own.

Yesterday that meant going 3-6 with a triple, three RBIs (one on each of his three hits) and 2 Runs. The Triple the other way was this close to being a Home Run, but couldn't quite make it, meaning we were treated to a sight that has been so prevalent the last few years:

2008 Topps Finest #95 Curtis Granderson Gold Xfractor (#08/25)

By the end of the night the Tigers had pulled together a huge comeback and stayed two games ahead of the white-hot Twins. Enter Sunday's series finale in Chicago. Granderson was in the game in his customary leadoff spot when Crack

2009 Detroit News Inserts Curtis Granderson

A leadoff homerun. Sound familiar? Maybe you've heard me talk Granderson the leadoff home run machine before. Sure enough, unless I'm mistaken (we're mid-game so none of the post game stories have been written yet) Granderson now rests atop the ALL TIME list for leadoff home runs by a Detroit Tiger, with his 24th (his 28th HR of the season).

Oh, but that's not all. In case that fine moment isn't enough, his record setting home run just happened to be his 100th of his career.

2008 Topps Finest #FM-CG Curtis Granderson Finest Moments Gold Xfractor (#08/25)

I know Curtis is modest guy, but that seems like two good reasons to raise your arms up and celebrate. With his bat seemingly getting hot at the right time, we may be treated to some spectacular fall colors in Detroit, and I think that slowly but surely (and despite a lot of the negativity surrounding him this year) people will realize that Granderson is a one-of-a-kind anchor for this franchise.

2008 Topps Stadium Club Curtis Granderson Sketch Card (1 of 1)

This bounty of cards was the culmination of me getting behind schedule on scanning and posting (shocker), with these packages having trickled in over the last few months.