Trade Me Your Hanleys

Sunday, July 12, 2009

...and yet I need more time

So much to write about: my box of Allen & Ginter, the great trades that netted me some more Hanleys, and my first in-person auto, but I've got to go be a good husband. Until then, just a shout out of thanks to Beardy for the Hanleys and to SCF trade partners for the various cards that have come in the mail. Also, if anyone knows what 09 A&G Kristin Armstrong red auto #d 2/10 is worth, please let me know.

Thanks!

Thursday, July 2, 2009

All-SCUM Team 2 - Al Lerner

Sure, this could go as a dual player card with Ted Lerner and Peter Angelos, or a group card denoting the "Lerner Family," but I'm just going to pinpoint the thumbs-up a-hole that is nickel and diming the Nationals to insignificance. The worst thing is that the Nationals (or Nubbinals, as christened by local radio legends "the Junkies") are fielding a team composed of Austin Kearns, Christian Guzman, and a horrible pitching staff (off-season signee Adam Dunn was the rare good move) are still making.
According to Thomas Boswell, writer for the Washington Post, the Nationals make money with a terrible team, a low payroll, and terrible average attendance numbers by marketing to the neighboring teams' fans. That's right, the Nationals market to Phillies, Mets, Yankees, and Red Sox fans to come to games. While there, the Nationals concessions stands actually sell the opposing fans jersey and memorabilia. They transformed Nationals Park into a pseudo Fenway Park South during the recent three game series in D.C.. That's shameful. They collect money from the opposing team, as well as through media contracts and revenue sharing, and was ranked the second most profitable team in the MLB last year. That's sick. Add this to the Nationals failure to sign their last two first round picks (I'll go ahead and predict that they'll failed to get Strausburg to sign), a failure to attract in-their-prime free agents, a population of potential fans who are completely jaded, and the Lerners bungling of the Jose Rijo/Jim Bowden fiasco, and you've got the worst ownership in baseball...Al Davis-style.

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

All-SCUM Team 1 - Sidney Ponson

I was inspired by the blog-created cards that are found at Badwax and the amazing Lebowski cards at Achiever Card Blog (and many others), so since I had a few moments, I dashed off a card to write about my most hated players . There are many little personal gripes and grudges I have against players (including an insignificant slight by Patrick Chewing that makes me hate him to this day) but I'm going to try to focus on players who I hate not just for their terrible attitudes and general personality terribleness, but also for their ineptitude on the field. Introducing the 2009 TMYH All-SCUM team.

A bit about the SCUMs. At first, I thought I'd try to be all clever by making it an acronym (you know, something like So Can't Use in the Majors), but scum is a good word to describe these guys. They're the guys who are unsightly on a roster, terrible space fillers who's every action irritates a fan. They're also hard to get rid of and end up staying with a team or in the bigs FOREVER.

So who better to inaugurate the SCUMs than my own personal Oriole scum-bucket, Sir Sidney Ponson (stats here). At first, he was an underachieving, potential star pitcher with a plus-four ERA. Then the tubby schmuck had a pretty good 2003 where he was dealt to the Giants at the trade deadline, for the awesome load of Kurt Ainsworth, Damian Moss, and Ryan Hannaman (nobodies), and then, like a true cancer, returned to give two years of terrible pitching and controversy. Knocked around on the ball field (6.21 ERA in his final season with the O's, 7-15 in the years since he's left the O's and sticking inconceivably with four different teams), he also knocked a judge in Aruba, DUI'd in Florida and in Baltimore, and was banned from international play for testing positive to a banned substance. He's fat, he's always had a terrible work ethic, he's a douche... Sidney Ponson is our first All-SCUM.

Manufactured Patches / By The Letter

So, I've got a few of the manufactured patches at home, both of the letter w/ auto variety and the commemorative patches made by

Topps for this year's Series 1 and 2, and I'm pretty sure I hate them. Yes, everyone has their well documented reasons to like or dislike manufactured patches, but my principle reason for disliking them is that there is an arbitrary connection between the item and the player represented on the card. The main attraction to game-used jersey and patches is that the item included in the card was actually used in the game we love and collect, with the added knowledge that the item was worn by the player. A small swatch of fabric is nothing without the certified knowledge that the fabric had been worn by our favorite players and used in during a game. This limits the product to a specific usage and to a specific time period...thus, making it somehow rare or special.

You can extend that a manufactured patch that was on-patch autographed is also special because it was physically touched by said player. These cards tap into our hero worship/iconography, thus the patch is simply just another vehicle to get an autograph/personal connection from our heroes.

However, what about those silly patches that are just patches that were sewn by someone somewhere and has absolutely no connection to the event or person that it commemorates? I really think these are offensive. What is the value of a patch commemorating an All-Star game from 50 years ago? I understand that there are collectors who like the design or like the commemoration of those events, much like there are fans who love re-issues and buybacks. I, however, think these are bogus products made by cynical profiteers looking for another way to sell their blasters of junkwax. Where's the actual tie-in to the game? I think that we're doing a disservice by collecting these manufactured patches...thereby rewarding the card companies for being lazy. They just embroider away these worthless patches and collectors think of them as additional hits. They're terrible, but then again, they're here to stay, so I'm just shouting into the wind.

Saw this on eBay...I have a few of these auto/manu patches of Hanley...do you think it's worth the price to collect all the letters?