Remembering Memorial Day

Today is a day to remember those who lost their lives while serving our country in the military.

The Pirates have honored the military with military camo jerseys over the years and I am fortunate to own a few cards of Cutch featuring swatches of these camo jerseys.

Panini has used many of these jersey swatches over the years, but they look best in the brand National Treasures.

Growing up I never understood the meaning of Memorial Day.  I always viewed it as a way to welcome the summer, have a BBQ with friends and family, and if chose to work to get double time and half.  

It's not that I didn't know what the actual holiday's intended purpose was, it was just that it had escaped "hitting home" with me.  A few years ago I stated Happy Memorial Day and someone from the blogging community reached out to me reminding me that the holiday should never be viewed as Happy and that it is a day of somber to remember the fallen.

Since that email, I have always viewed the holiday differently and have never said have a happy Memorial Day again.  I have completely changed my viewpoint on the holiday and try to use my new found understanding of the holiday to share with others.  

So for those of you who are celebrating the holiday in the traditional BBQ and family party mindset, please take a few moments to remember those who lost their lives serving this country to allow us the freedom for such events. 

Winning WARriors

The SaveSecondBase event takes a lot of research and planning.  In addition I normally work extra overtime the first few weeks of November (63 hours worked last week!!!).  It's because of these factors that I tend to not ship out prizes until things slow down a bit. I completely forgot to do the randomizer last Friday for the Lou Brock card so I did it today.  

If you remember, I asked everyone to name their favorite War movie to try and win the pink card with the late great Lou Brock.  I was surprised to find out that Lou Brock's WAR stat is basically the same as Andrew McCutchen's current level.

Before I get to show off the winner of the Lou Brock card, I want to show unique card 3,020 in the Cutch supercollection.

Topps has been putting these camo parallels in their sets since 2014.  Some Look better than others, but I have to say that the 2019 camo looks amazing in hand.  No pun intended, but many other years have the camo get hidden so they don't pop so much.  In 2019, the camo is featured all over the card, not just the right and bottom true borders of the card.

The cards were numbered to only 25 copies in 2019, making these one of the rarer parallels to chase from flagship.

All contest winnings will ship this Wednesday so please email me bstryker81 AT gmail.com with your address so I can get the cards to you.

Now to the Lou Brock autograph.

There were 21 valid contestants.

Cardinalsfan16 was on top after the first random

Diamond King was atop after the 2nd

Peter was on top after random 3

Night Owl flew to the top for the 4th random

Swinging in to the top spot on random 5 was Spyda-Man

But in the final random, number six, Jeff Laws rose to the top.

Jeff, please email me your address so I can get this to you.

Thank you to everyone who participated last month.

Can You See Where This Is Going?

With October only a few weeks away, I thought I could use some imagery to get everyone excited for a month of pink baseball cards.

Today though as you can tell from the (fabric bursting) Army t-shirt worn by Caroline Vreeland I will show off a camo card.

Caroline will appear for the month of October as well.

National High Five Day

Did you know there was a day dedicated to the art of high fiving?

Me neither.

While it doesn't get the Hallmark treatment of other nationally celebrated days, it is a tradition baseball fans should all celebrate.

During the summer of 1977 Dodgers slugger Dusty Baker celebrated with his teammate Glenn Burke after crushing a homerun.

Today many players have done away with the traditional high five for more show worthy celebrations.

Bryce Harper actually has a different celebration for each of his Phillies teammates.  Harper's celebration with Cutch is much different than this high five he gave him at the 2015 All-Star Game.

Hopefully Topps can release a high end card of Cutch and Harper celebrating post Home run.

I need something to take the place of this 2011 Diamond 1/1 celebration of Cutch, Ryan Doumit, and Garrett Jones.

The card is awesome, but man 2010 was terrible year for the Pirates.  Need proof? Look at the back.

105 losses!!!!
The pitcher with the most strikeouts was Paul Maholm with 102 punchouts.
I'm surprised there was anything worthy of celebration that year.

Cutch is the MLB version of John Cena

Topps has released two sets of product thus far into the 2019 season.

It's not uncommon for some stars to be saved for Series 2.  Cutch normally makes the Series 1 cut though , but has shown up in 2017 (following his rough 2016 season) as a Series 2 star.  Cutch missed Series 1 this year and it is likely because he was a free agent and would sign on with a new team and finished the 2018 season as a one month rental for the Yankees.

More disappointing, but not surprising is that he didn't make the Heritage lineup for any team.  With the amount of Yankees that appeared in Heritage and Cutch not having any Spring Training posed pictures for the Yankees I am not surprised he didn't make the cut.  Since he didn't sign on with the Phillies until just a few days before Christmas, I am also not surprised he didn't make the deadline to be included as a Phillie in Heritage.

So Cutch is 0 for 2 in making it into base sets for Topps.  He does have 1 insert in Series 1, a Topps Stars of the Game card that features him in a Yankees uniform.  There were no additional parallels of the card to chase.

Yeaterday, I saw that Panini released their 2019 Donruss checklist.  Cutch again doesn't make the cut for any base cards in the traditional set.  While this is disappointing cause I would have liked to see him appear in more New York or Philadelphia cards, I am ok with the delay in printing out more cards for me to chase early in the 2019 season.  Andrew is included in a relic set called 1985 Donruss Materials and much to my delight he is to appear as a member of the Pirates Pittsburgh Baseball Club.  There are 3 color parallels I will need to chase for this.

With ONLY 4 cards of Cutch released in the 2019 season so far, that has given me time to get caught up on scanning, updating spreadsheets, and best of all ENJOYING MY COLLECTION as it stands.

Below is a camo card of Cutch from 2013 that I have had for a few months that I never got to enjoy by showing off on here.  Topps started doing various versions of camo parallels beginning in 2013.  The 2017 and 2018 camo parallels are EXTREMELY difficult to notice when going through a stack of cards.  The 2015 Snow Camo version is a unique looking parallel to chase, but quite honestly Topps got it right the first time they tried.  2013 Camo reigns Supreme still.

The Camo parallels were numbered to 99 copies back in 2013 compared to some more recent numberings of only 25 copies.

It is rather interesting to see some of the batting leaders of the 2012 season. Allen Craig with 506 career hits over 6 seasons? Jordan Pacheco and his 293 career hits? A 36 year old Marco Scutaro? Any of these guys come to mind for being the best contact hitters in the National League in 2012?  Probably not...

We Got Archer!

We have heard the Chris Archer to Team X for the past few trade deadlines and offseasons.

The cost for acquiring the 2015 All Star and Cy Young candidate was steep as the Pirates traded away one of their top prospects, Austin Meadows, right handed pitcher Tyler Glasnow, and a PTBNL.  Meadows and Glasnow both have All-Star potential, but have had struggles early in their youmg careers.

Most of the early reports say the price for Archer was too much to give up.  While I wish that only one of Glasnow or Meadows was required to get Archer, the Pirates got a cost controlled pitcher for the next 4 post season runs.  The best part of the acquisition is that they were able to keep Archer away from Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Louis.

If Archer can return to his 2015 All-Star season, the Pirates have a feature ace for a Wild Card game.

In other trade news, Andrew McCutchen wasn't traded by the Giants today.

Cutch hit a HR off Archer in the 2015 ASG.  It was Cutch's last plate appearance in an All-Star Game.

I feel like the Pirates got the golden ticket and a true difference maker in this year's trading deadline.

I still need a few more parallels from the 2015 Update Series where Cutch is coming home after his laser shot to left field.

The most notable need is the pink parallel which I would love to get for my October Pink month.

So far I have the base, sabremetric back, foilboard, gold, snow camo, and the black.

What do you think about the moves your teams made yesterday?

Do you think the Pirates gave up too much for Chris Archer?

Favorite cereal?

We all love those Kellogg's 3D cards and all them oddball cards from the 90s, 80s, 70s, and before.

Today there aren't as many cardboard incentives in cereal now.
Gone are the days of influencing us to buy boxes of Post and Kellogg's cereal for a baseball card.

What are some of your favorite cereals that you actually look forward to buying not because of any novelty toys or gimmicks inserted?

I know I look forward to the Monster cereals every Halloween (Count Chocula, Boo Berry, FrankenBerry).  The sugary goodness is too much to resist.

Andrew McCutchen was known for his love of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and this 2013 Topps Chrome proves it.

Oh, you can't see it?

That's because it's the camo version of Topps Chrome numbered to only 15 copies.

Turn it over and you'll see that I'm not crazy.

On a related note, here's a funny article about Ralph Kiner and Wheaties.

Dated Material 5-7-15

Something about being able to determine what game a particular relic is used in always makes me believe the authenticity more.

Years ago Donruss used to picture the relic they cut up on the back, but today we are often stuck with the phrase "This relic is not from any particular game, season, or event"

Panini had a subset in their National Treasures release where they tell you exactly when the material is from.  It was called Dated Material.

This is my Cutch card numbered 10/25

How did Cutch do for the day?

Looks like he did pretty well.

The rarest card numbered to 2013 you'll find

I wrote about this card on my old blog last January.  It's believed that only about 100 of these made it into packs after it was discovered so many were off center.

I currently have 8 different variations of US213

They include base, emerald,Wal Mart Blue, Target Red
Photo Variant, Camo, Gold, Hope.

I'm still looking for any of the 1/1s and the black.