Where There's a Will, There's a Chuck: A Trade Post

I came home yesterday to a bubble mailer and a PWE which resulted in a great many "woo-hoos" around the Junior Junkie household.  Each contained cards of Louisiana natives Will Clark and Chuck Finley, both among my very few player collections.

First, Dustin over at Coot Veal and the Vealtones found time out of his busy new-daddy schedule (congrats, y'all!) to send me a sweet stack of down home loosiana goodness.



Triple exposure Chuck




Dustin sent lots of Chuck Finleys - this is just a few of my favorites.  That '88 Topps card single-handedly gave us the word "Chuckstachioed"



Also a few of the many Will Clarks he sent.  I make fun of Score caricatures, but these two aren't bad.  I think it's because we NOLA boys are so good-lookin'.



He also threw in some great silly names and goofy facial expressions.  This one took the goofiness cake.



Just a Jay Buhner card - just a regular old Jay Buhner card.  Nothing to see here.

This reminds me - I'm going to have to put together a post of Jay Buhner cards that have Griffey in them.  There are more than you might think....

And finally, a very personal card:

 

Panini's struggle to not show team logos has played right into my hands....and my heart.


Will is wearing the uniform of my high school baseball team, the Jesuit Blue Jays, our shared Alma Mater.  When I saw this card on Coot's blog I knew it had to be mine.  Super appreciative to him for trading this with me.  Cannot express how much I love it!


Next up, Marcus from All the Way to the Backstop single-stamped me some unexpected cardboard coolness:
 

I have to wonder if Chuck and Griffey ever faced each other (is there a way to look that up?).  Hopefully not on this day as Chuck looks hella-focused.

Holy crap, Google, are you kidding me?  I love the Internet!  From Chad over at The Hardball Times, here's this scary-appropriate chunk of information I didn't know existed when I typed the above caption:


#34. Ken Griffey Jr. vs. Chuck Finley (10.2 RC, 78 PAs, 1990-2002)   View match-up

Actual:    4.2 RC | 12-73 | .164/.218/.301 | 0.519 OPS | 18 K, 5 BB, 0 HBP
Expected: 14.3 RC | 20-67 | .298/.384/.565 | 0.949 OPS | 11 K 9 BB, 1 HBP

After an extremely slow start to this match-up, Ken Griffey Jr. went on a tear to nearly bring his actual RC in line with his expected in 1993. Ultimately, Finley got the better of Griffey, who closed out this match-up with a less-than-stellar 1-for-29.



Ken Griffey Jr. also struggled against Kevin Appier (6.9 RC) and Mike Mussina (6.6 RC).
Chuck Finley also dominated NONE.

Yikes.  Looks like Finley frickin' pwned the Kid.  They were division rivals, after all.  I don't understand most of the terminology or abbreviations used in the above segment, but I did understand "1-for-29."

And have I mentioned I love funny names?  How I have never seen Haverbush I'll never know, but he is going into my "porn names" binder tonight.

I'm not showing all the goofiness cards at once because I plan on doing another blog featuring only those cards that achieve optimal laughability.  Wheels are in motion....

Thanks a bunch, guys!  It's a pleasure to come home to new cardboard, especially on days when I get home in time to intercept the mail.

Trade with Dime Box Nick

I have a ton of cards to mail out on Saturday.  This is part of the reason why:

When my wife and I got home from Vegas, two things were waiting for us in the mail: a credit card offer from Citi and a package from Nick over at Dime Boxes. 

I had e-mailed Nick a few weeks ago, notifying him of the stack of cards I plan on sending him (which is still growing).  He told me it would take a while to ship me anything back, so I figured I had some time to root through the many many boxes I have for only the Nick-worthiest of cards.  Lo and behold he beat me to it. 

I think the 80's and early 90's may have had the funniest baseball card pictures.  There are some good ones from the 50's and 60s, and quite a few from the 70s, but everything that came out after those Iranian hostages were released is pure gold.

Case in point: Jim Palmer.  It's 3 years later and his hair is still extremely happy....

Nick loves '95 Fleer, and he catches Hell for it.  Well you know what?  I like it too - I'll admit it.  I think it's the predator-vision.  I can look at that all day like Geordi Laforge.

Whoa....save it for the rally there, Rolf.  There's a cameraman in jorts around here somewh.....oh, crap.

Some excellent silly names here.  Plus I've always wanted a non-Big Unit Randy Johnson!

We need to bring Pozo into the gangsta lexicon.  As in "Damn, you just got Pozo'd, son!" or "Check yaself before you Pozo yaself." or "I'ma bust a Pozo all up in yo Pozo fo sho-sho.  Pozo!"


Thrilling!

Ladies and gentlemen, New Orleans native and all-around awesome guy, Will "The Thrill" Clark!  Out of the six WC cards Nick sent me I only had one, so this was a great treat!  That shot of him with Bonds and Matt Williams is excellent, and those fleer cards have a great matte-glossy hybrid front that exudes class.

Chuck is also a great player and a great guy from down the bayou, Louisiana.  I'd like to see him in the Hall of Fame someday.

Big Unit rookie - it seems he always looked pissed off in his rookie days, probably because he was stuck in Montreal.  Those Ultra Stars cards are cool, and that Fun Stuff I'd never seen before.  That is how a caricature is supposed to look (are you paying attention, Score?).

And finally, Kenny Lofton, scourge of parachutes everywhere.  Kenny was a solid hitter who could run like a beast, much like Willy Mays Hays in the Charlie Sheen/Tom Berenger classic Major League.


Don't steal home without it.....

Kenny was not only a really fast runner, he was also an amazing bunter.  Those two combined for an exciting player with solid numbers.  He played for 11 different teams before retiring in 2007.

Thanks a bunch, DBN!  I'm shipping you (and lots of other people) a bunch of stuff on Saturday - hope you like it!

Old Cards Found in Old Boxes...

Sorry I haven't posted a new Griffey in a couple of days, but I have been putting together trade packages for a few fellow bloggers.  In doing so I am consolidating all the cards I have no intention of keeping into team piles.  They're getting kind of big and heavy, and I'm not sure what the best way to ship them is.... do baseball cards count as media mail?

Anyway, I have come across numerous cards I didn't even know I had.  Most of them I just chunked into the appropriate team pile or blogger trade stack ("chunked" may sound bad - let's say "gingerly placed"), but a few I kept for my own binders.  Here's just a handful from last night:

Guy's a legend.....

I already have so many Nolan Ryan's I don't know what to do with myself.  Then I came across these 9 in a row (actually a few more of those were dups, so it was more like 12 in a row).  Some cool older ones, but the guy played for so long, none of these approach what you would call an "early" card.

No words........they should have sent a poet.

YES!  I cannot tell you how long I've been on the hunt for a Rollie showcasing the Rollie-stache.  It's so iconic you can't even make fun of it.

But you know why I really wanted one?  Hipster friends.  The fancy mustache is back, and I know a bunch of people rocking them.  I always reference Rollie Fingers and they're like "Whaaaa?"  Drives me nuts.

I'm putting this one in a top loader and keeping it in my glove compartment so I can whip it out at parties and get all in their face with "Rollie did it first!  Boom.  Try getting your ERA under 3.00 and we'll talk.  Now get me a beer, doofus."

What do you do with a Doc with 3 balls?

This Doc stopped me because of that bottom left corner.  Don't get excited - I flipped it and the back is solid cardboard brown.  This was the back of a box.

Sweet twin Gwynn's.

I think Tony was born in that Padres uniform.  One of the bloggers I'm trading with loves the Padres and Tony Gwynn, so I'm sending him a bunch, but these and a handful of other Gwynn's from my childhood are for the binders.  Those Topps All-star cards with the bright primary colors always did it for me.....

Lou Brock and Rickey Henderson.

Show me a bad picture of Rickey.  I double-dog-dare you.  He's the "Really Photogenic Base-runner."

Two excellent examples of a nice baseball card.

A 4th-year Ryno and a rookie Straw.  I recently bought a Ryno RC in the 'bay for my uncle for Christmas.  This one is not nearly as cool.  Look at that amazing picture, though.  And check out how fresh-faced the Straw is.  Makes me wanna call him Darryl....

ROOKIES!

I love rookies.  I found 5 of that Belle and 3 of the Sosa and Greenwell, plus dups for Jim Abbot and Sheffield.  I bindered that Sele because he got that one HOF vote, and I'm proud of him....

Louisiana boys.

Local boys all.  That Tulane card is sponsored by Maison Blanche (if you know about that, then God bless you), Big Ben ended up pitching for the Orioles, and Chuck went to high school with my Aunt.

Vida was also born in Louisiana.

I was thinking the other day how I had no Vida Blue cards.  Turned out I had two.  Better keep these for posterity.

K-mart sucks.

Let's face it, K-mart makes Walmart look like Target, but these are super glossy and I love strange-branded cards.

You know the K-mart nearest my house has a sports card section made up of a little more than 50% hockey cards?  Hockey.  Stacks and stacks.  In New Orleans.  I don't think you could give those away here.  Geniuses running that place....

Fernando looks like Hervé Villechaize.  There, I said it.  Been holding that in for years.  Also, Tino.

I come across so many Fernanado Valenzuela cards, and I keep very few.  The guy had a long, distinguished career, though, and deserves a page in the binders.  Also a sweet 2nd-year Tino in the Mariners' heyday.

Jose plays infield.....along with 6 other guys.....

These appear to be signed - I don't know how or why.  There's no proof or COA (not that a COA is proof these days), but I can't imagine someone trying to fake this guy's autograph.  So, I kept them.

Somewhere there is a Giants fan who loves this guy and has a cute nickname for him and everything, and he is going to go nuts for these cards.

"Whoa!  Two signed '87 Donruss Uribalicious?  They must be mine.  Trade me trade me trade me....!"

And this is where I'll get my signed Griffey.

Ahem.

[Note: that "trade me trade me trade me" thing is the same thing I do in my brain whenever another blogger posts a pack opening and pulls a Griffey.  Sometimes there's squealing too.]

Finally, Night Owl mentioned Fred Lynn in a recent post.  Having read that, I later came across all these cards of his I had no idea were in boxes in my house.  The "rookie" (there's two seasons of pro stats on it, thanks for misleading me with the trophy, Topps.) was the first one I came across, so I put it aside and the rest followed.  I figured an instant Fred Lynn collection deserves a page in the binder.  Plus that rookie is a great-looking card, and I have almost no cards from that particular Topps set.  These six cards show every team he played for in his 15-year career.

Catch you on the flippy-flip.