my Bad(Wax) Luck

in honor of a quarter million hits, BadWax held a rather random contest a few weeks back. Anyone could leave a comment and had to indicate the exact hit number we were at the time of our comment and share our most favorite post. In shear luck and randomness I won.

My luck and a most generous award was sent to me; the entire base set of the 2008 Allen & Ginter's includng SP's (350 cards) as well as the 50 state cards. Naturally I was and still am shocked yet very pleased.
This first picture showcases 11 inches of A & G (I was going to title this post "the 11 inch gift" but opted not to). These cards for those who are not familiar are an extra thick off-white card stock depicting artwork of every player.

A few of my favorite horizontal cards are the "Babe Ruth HR point" of Jim Thome, "leading off" of Ryan Braun, the "bat behind the back stretch" of Justin Morneau and the "airborne catch" of Eric Byrnes.

Most of the cards are actually the vertical style like "why are my eyes glancing to the left" from Greg Maddux, "in full gear" Jason Varitek and a nice "look over my shoulder" Edwin Encarnacion.

This set is extra special for a number of reasons and one of those are the non-baseball cards within the set. Such as top row of: Pablo Picaso, Jeff King (of Iditarod fame), Benjamin Franklin
and the bottom row of Billy Mitchell (Pac-Man champion), Joey Chestnut (hot dog eating champ) and Frank Morris (Rubik Cube fame).

A & G also had several sub-sets and one of the most popular are the state cards of which BadWax included. These cards are of even a heavier card stock than the base set and boast of a player from each state.
Three of special note are: Illinois - Curtis Granderson (I lived in Illinois for 42 years); Florida - Lastings Milledge (currently live in Florida) and Alaska - Curt Shilling (I never knew Alaska even had baseball).

This set is now going into a special binder, centered in my binder shelf and will be forever treasured as a most special set from a most generous "quarter million" blogger. Thank you BadWax !

Kudos to Longoria

It was announced today that Evan Longoria of the Tampa Bay Rays won the AL player of the week award for this past week. Longoria went 7 for 19 with two round trippers including that grand slam in the season opener against Boston on Thursday.

Longoria is the first repeat winner this year and needless to say, Longoria is becoming the heart and soul of the young Rays and just might make a run for AL MVP (if the Rays can put together few more wins and make 2009 a repeat performance of last years AL Championship team).

Early in the week, Longoria collected his 100th RBI of his career, in only his 135th game. That ranks him third behind Ryan Braun (118 games) and Albert Pujols (131 games) as the fastest to reach that plateau amongst active players.

As an aside, being a Cubs fan living in Sarasota, the Tampa Bay Rays are the AL team I root for. I actually attended the game this past Saturday against the BoSox - being the only game the Rays lost as they took three out of four over the weekend. I probably will stay away from now on, maybe.

I still have a hard time grasping indoor/domed baseball, although Tropicana is very family friendly, being indoors is just not "right" (that is just the traditionalist coming out in me). I did have a great time though . . . (sorry no pictures).

Congratualtions to Longoria . . . Lets Go Rays !