A Busy Week of Football

We are in the middle of the baseball playoffs, but that has not stopped me from spending a little quality time with football this week. It all started last Saturday when I attended the Duke-NC State game. This game was in Durham at Duke. Their stadium is small, but I really like attending games there. The majority of the seats have actual seats and not metal bleachers. The crowd is also typically calm compared to other college football venues. 

Dare I say far more sober than NC State, or at least the State Fairgrounds during an NC State game. 

This is a look at Wallace Wade Stadium from behind the student section.  

Wallace Wade is the only stadium to host a Rose Bowl game besides the Rose Bowl, which happened during World War II. 

As for the game, my Wolfpack played horrible on offense and lost 24-3 to the Blue Devils.  

I was disappointed for a day, but I actually had a group of NC State Football players show up at my school and read and talk about college life with my students on Monday morning, which more than made up for the loss. The students were excited to meet the players........

We got to spend the day with our friends at Brier Creek Elementary for Sports Day! #1Pack1Goal | #GoPack pic.twitter.com/TLiNJ2wAO0

— NC State Football (@PackFootball) October 17, 2023

While we are here, let's talk about baseball and baseball cards for two seconds. 

I had a pair of concerned well-wishers on social media ask about the Yankees pennant in the video. The players visited three different classrooms. I do not have a Yankees pennant, but my bulletin and board borders are all baseball cards.  I am also into science and math charts and diagrams and they are all over this video.  

Anyway, back to football. This post is not really about baseball cards.  

My week of football was topped off this afternoon by an exciting football card arriving at my house. That's not a typo and it has been several years since I have posted a football card. Got to be something special for me to buy it and post it. 

Front of the card........

This is a 1992 Pro Line Football Brian Jordan autograph. 

Where is the autograph asks the baseball collectors?  

Hold on a minute.  

One of my favorite Brian Jordan card is his 1998 Topps card, which shows him wearing his Cardinals uniform hitting a football. Here is the card:

This Pro Line card proceeds the Topps card by six years and I think it was likely the influence for baseball card with Jordan wearing his Atlanta Falcons uniform holding a baseball bat. I am a little curious about when the photo was taken. Jordan is clearly standing in the left-field corner of Shea Stadium, but during his 3 year NFL career never played a game against the Jets and Giants.  

Jordan only played 55 games for the Cardinals in 1992, but did play 3 in Shea against the Mets. Perhaps the photos were taken during baseball season. Also interesting that Jordan has cards in a 1992 football card product, considering the Cardinals ended up paying Jordan a few million dollars in the middle of the baseball season to give up football. 

Brian Jordan did not play a single down of football for Falcons that year, or ever again. 

Back of the card.  

The Pro Line cards had players sign the back of the cards. I own several Brian Jordan autographs and this is a little scrunched up for space. It's also hard to see on the scan, but there is some yellowing around the autograph, 

No bueno, but I also got this card for less than $10.  

I do really like the embossed Pro Line emblem on the bottom right corner of the card. I guess the basic design of the Pro Line Autographs is the same as the Pro Line base set, minus that embossed stamp. Nice touch in my opinion, especially for the early 1990s. I also really like the write-up with Jordan being mentioned in the same space as Deion Sanders and Bo Jackson.  

That rarely happens, but it should.  

Friday Five: Super Bowlish Edition

It's not Friday, but it's the effort that counts. I love a good countdown post, but I have never consistently made them. Sometimes my day job interferes with other aspects of my life. 

It's Super Bowl weekend, so I am thinking about something with football.  

There is a bit of a problem though. 

If I had to make a post out of football cards, it would be short and feature only a few former NC State players I enjoyed watching along with a few Rams from their time in St. Louis. I might have enough Mike Glennon and/or Jacoby Brissett cards to give them their own post. I know everyone loves a good Mike Glennon card, so I am going to post one and let you know I went a different direction.  

Honestly, the title was just a ruse to get people to read the post. This is actually going to be about baseball cards, but they are all of a player who was in the NFL at one point thirty years ago. 

There are videos of Brian Jordan playing football on the internet, but most are over five minutes and you're not going to watch that. I am not either. Instead, here is Brian Jordan running over Gary Bennett with Vin Scully on the call.  

As a former Cardinals player, I have a healthy collection of Brian Jordan cards, so it took a few minutes to flip through them all and narrow the list down to five cards and a marble.  

Honorable Mention: 1997 Topps Pro Shooters Marble 

Ray Lankford is also in this set, which is why I ended up with the Brian Jordan marble. The guy who was selling these insisted that I needed to buy all his Cardinals marbles if I wanted the Lankford. Pretty interesting item and they have become rather difficult to find over the years. There are currently none for sale on Ebay or COMC. Although, someone is selling a wrapper on Ebay for $18.  

5. 2001 Fleer GameTime Patch Card 

There are not many Brian Jordan relic cards out there, let alone ones with patch pieces. Add in the fact that this is the only set that has a Ray Lankford relic, and its always been one of my favorites. If only it were a Cardinal card.  I own several copies of this card, all with different patch pieces. I need to scan them all and puzzle piece together how much of the Braves logo from his jersey I own.  

4. 1998 Fleer Ultra 

This is the best picture on a Brian Jordan card and it's not even close. Maybe it's silver medal to one of the cards on this list, but it is very, very good. This is one of those cards that is fifty cents on COMC and Ebay and there is no reason why you should not own it. I also own the fancy gold version, shown below, but not the ultra-fancy serial numbered version.  

3. 1996 Leaf Signature 

This was my first great Brian Jordan card, which fittingly came out in 1996. The 1996 Cardinals were a fun collection of young players from the post-Whiteyball rebuild (Jordan, Lankford), free agents (Ron Gant, Andy Benes), and Oakland A's retreads who came over with LaRussa (Stottlemyre, Eck). Also add in Ozzie Smith and Willie McGee to mix as bench players. Few remember the team coming within a win of the World Series. Lankford and Gant were better players than Jordan during the regular season, but Jordan was incredibly clutch for the team in the playoffs. 

The best of those clutch moments was his series clinching home run off of Trevor Hoffman in Game 4 of the NLDS.  

Jordan has also signed a bunch of cards for the Topps Archives Signature products, some of which are really nice. My favorite is this autograph on his 1997 Topps card. If I were going Top 10, this would have made it. I will add it as a mid-post Honorable Mention instead.  

2. 1998 Topps 

Easily one of the best Cardinals cards that Topps has ever produced for their flagship set. This is the best picture on a Jordan card, gold medal all the way. You know the Bo Jackson card where he is wearing shoulder pads with a bat across his shoulders? That's a great card, but I think this is its equal in many ways in the eyes of people who collect Cardinals cards. If nothing else, Jordan had a much better baseball career than Bo.  

It's true.  

1. 2000 Hologrfx Piece of the Series 

Brian Jordan's lone career World Series appearance came in 1999 as a member of the Braves. He played a very well in both the NLDS and NLCS, most notably hitting a home run off of Mike Hampton in Game 3 of the first round with the Braves trailing late in the game. Had the Braves lost, they would have been down 2-1 in the Series and facing elimination on the road.  

Upper Deck made a nice World Series themed insert for their 2000 Hologrfx product, which featured the stat players from the Braves and Yankees. Each player had a relic card that featured a "game-used" piece of base. Don't get me started and also an autographed parallel numbered to the players uniform number.  

Super rare Jordan autograph shown above. Base insert card with base shown below.  

Let's do this again next weekend.  Maybe even on Friday. 

Set Appreciation Post #11 - 1998 Topps Tek

The Topps Tek set with a grand total of 8,100 cards.  There are 90 cards, each with 90 different background patterns.  The idea is slightly absurd.  I know a lot of player collectors who love this set, not many set collectors though.  I collect Ray Lankford cards, he's in this set, but I do not own all 90 different variations of his cards.  It's not even really something I am working on anymore.  I tried, but it is not a very easy task.  

They don't really scan very well, but here are six of my seventy something Ray Lankford cards.  

This one is going to be quick.  

Base Card 

A little closer look at the patterns.  The cards are transparent and made out of an acetate material.  The action photo on the front of the cards is the same regardless of the pattern.  The pattern number is on the back of the card.  

The pattern number is on the bottom corner underneath the card number.  The card backs all have a portrait style color photo.  There are no stats on the back of the card, rather Topps put down the date they thought that the players should reach certain milestones.  Topps used a similar stats set up on an insert set in their Topps Laser product, but we will make fun of that set on a different day.  

The design on the front of the card is decent enough.  The design on the back is not great.  I feel like the second player photo on the back looks busy.  I also wish there the stats were a little different.  Again, Speculative stats are never great.  

No Inserts

Yep.  There are no insert sets in the 1998 Topps Tek set.  Makes collecting the set a little easier.  However, there Diffractor parallels, same idea as the refractor cards in every other Topps product.  Nobody knows how many Diffractor cards of each patterned card there are, but it is a small quantity.  

I have a few Lankfords.  If you have a favorite 1990s player in this set, they do pop up from time to time.  I didn't own any Lankford diffractors, but then managed to find three of them in roughly a year.  

I kind of like the idea of not having any inserts.  The Topps TEK set is geared towards player collectors, it's actually nice to just have the base cards with nothing else to find.  

Best Former Durham Bulls Player In The Set 

I like that there are some different players in this set.  Always nice to see new faces, especially in a set that was only 90 cards.  I decided to go with a player who did not get into many of the small sets from the late 1990s/early 2000s, but also a former player with a current connection to the Durham Bulls.  He's actually connected to the area in general.  

I decided to go with Quinton McCracken who was the Durham Bulls first base coach in 2019.  He also played for the Durham Bulls as a player in 2000.  Beyond his two appearances with the Bulls, McCracken is actually from Wilmington, North Carolina and played football and baseball at Duke.  Did Chipper Jones ever return a punt for a touchdown against Clemson?  How about Andruw Jones or David Justice?  No?  Quinton McCracken did.  

Best Cardinals Card 

Again, whoever made the checklist for Topps TEK did a great job.  There are three Cardinals players in this set.  The standard Cardinals who appeared in these late 1990s small sets were Mark McGwire, Ray Lankford, and then some combination of Ron Gant, Dennis Eckerlsey, or Andy Benes.  Every once in awhile, you got a Brian Jordan, like you get in this set.  

Obviously not on the same level as McGwire, not quite as good as Lankford, but he was a pretty big contributor for the 1990s Cardinals.  In his last three full seasons as a Cardinal (95, 96, and 98), he led the team twice in WAR and finished second the other time.  His career numbers are also better than both Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders.  

Best Non-Cardinals/Durham Bulls Card 

Topps TEK is a pretty unique set, so I am trying to pick a card here for a different reason.  

There were no update sets in the late 1990s, but you could usually find players in new uniforms as the season went along.  Topps TEK was a late fall release, so there were several players who were traded within the season.  

Gary Sheffield is a Dodger, but started the year as a Marlin.  

Mike Piazza is a Met, but started the year as a Dodger.  Also a stop off with the Marlins.  

Randy Johnson is an Astro, but started the year as a Mariner.  

There is one long-time Major Leaguer in this set who is in a rather odd looking uniform.  I love cards like the 1984 Fleer Update Pete Rose Expos card, or Rickey Henderson Mariner cards, etc, etc.    According to COMC, this is the only card this player had with this team during the 1998 calendar year, and only one of two dozen cards this player had with this team in all.  They have over 1,500 cards in stock of this player.  

Here is the card. 

Konerko played 2,200 games as a member of the White Sox and 28 games as a Red.  His lone 1998 card as a member of the Reds with this Topps TEK.  He had several Reds cards at the beginning of the 1999 card calendar, but was traded to the White Sox weeks after the end of the 1998 season. Most of his 1999 cards are with the White Sox.  I know he was also on the Dodgers for part of a season and had tons of cards made while he was in their Minor League system. 

How Does It Compare?  

On paper, this is a really great concept for a set.  My main criticism is the fact that it is actually pretty difficult to assemble the full run of 90 cards for a player.  Should it really take more than 20 years to assemble a set?  No.

The design is decent, but nothing spectacular.  The back is weird with the speculative stats too.  Give me some good old home runs or strikeouts.  If we are just strictly comparing it to other acetate card sets from this era, it's definitely behind the Skybox EX products.  

The two biggest positives are the checklist and the fact that the set is focused on collecting base cards and not not bogged down with inserts.  I love that Topps squeezed in some different players, star players in new uniforms during an era with no update sets, etc.  

It feels like it fits best in the middle of my list.  It obviously needs to be below the 2001 Fleer EX set.  I will also put it below the Mini League Leaders set, but above the burlap sack cards in the 2017 Heritage Minors.  

11. 2000 Pacific Paramount Update 

10. 2010 Topps USA Baseball  

9. 2000 UD Ionix  

8. 1995 Emotion XL 

7. 2017 Topps Heritage Minor League

6. 1998 Topps TEK 

5. 1986 Topps Mini League Leaders 

4. 2001 Fleer EX 

3. 1979 Kellogg's 

2. 2002 Topps Super Teams

1. 1983 Topps 

One Simple 1990s Card

For the past year and a half Monday has been my day to pick out some cards of a Cardinals player from the 1990s.  I am going to skip my 1990s Cardinals post about a player this week.  I am not a person who keeps a schedule, so much as I keep a routine.  Certain things happen on certain days, and everything works out fine.  At the moment, my routine has been skewed.

Next week I will bounce back. 

For this week, I am just going to show off a really nice 1990s Cardinals that found its way into my mailbox this past weekend.  One of my favorite Cardinals players from that era.....

I know, the scan is not great. 

This is from the 2018 Topps Archives Signature Series, which is a set of cards that Topps recollected and then had players sign them.  This is from the Postseason edition.  I have been looking for a Brian Jordan card out of this set for awhile, but I was looking for the right card. A card from either 1996 or 1997 was preferred over the other options. 

Jordan only appeared in the Postseason with the Cardinals during the 1996 season, hence the reason why I was looking for cards from those two seasons.  I ended up with a 1997 Topps, which has a picture of Jordan from 1996.  Kudos to Topps for remembering his Postseason performance that year, or is he in here because of his years with the Braves? 

Let's pretend someone knew what they were doing. 

During that Postseason, Jordan hit a series clinching home run against the Padres in the National League Division Series off of Trevor Hoffman. 

Later in the Postseason hit a game winning home run against the Braves in Game 5 of the National League Championship Series.....

The Cardinals were up 3-1 in the NLCS after that game, but then lost three straight games to Tom Glavine, Greg Maddux, and John Smoltz.  

Back of the card.  

Again, a little fuzzy on the scan.  I am tired.  Hope your Monday has been good. 

Cardinals From COMC Part 2

A few more random Cardinals cards from my latest COMC run.  I made my first post about this batch of cards last week, which were all filling various holes in my collection, whether they be apart of a complete set, team set, or just cool card of a favorite Cardinals player.  A few more cards in this post, which is more heavy with veteran players.

The cards in this post span a decade, from 1997 through 2007, so I am going to post them in sequential order by year.  First up.....

Three Cardinals cards out of the Pinnacle Totally Certified set.  The set ran off of colored parallels, with each color having a different print run.  This is still a really popular set, a sure fire favorite of collectors from the late 1990s.  I already have the complete run of Lankford's out of this set, along with one or two different colors from the three players shown above.  I should probably try to assemble a complete set of these cards, but for the moment I am sticking with putting together the Cardinals cards.  These are three sharp looking cards.  

Next up, a card from a set that I am trying to put together.  I have a ton of 1997 Topps and Topps Chrome cards.  The base sets are both complete and I am deep on several of the insert sets.  Working on finishing out those missing cards, I actually got some non-Cardinals cards in this lot, but Andy Benes was the only Cardinals insert that I was missing.

This Eckersley is here for the same reasons as the Andy Benes card, but it's from the 1998 Topps set.  This scan really mangled his hat for some reason.  Looks like one of those old man baseball hats with the rope looking piece going between the bill and body of the hat.  Eck is old on this card, but not that old.  Plus, nobody with hair like Eckersley would ever wear a hat like that, way too cool.  

This Cliff Politte card is a spillover from the first post.  I had several of the Cardinals from the 1998 Leaf Stars & Rookie set in that post, but somehow I missed this card.  My bad.  

This is a set that I own,  Always liked the Black Diamond sets.  I have several of the parallels from the Cardinals players, just trying to finish out the team set of parallel cards.  I will have to double check my accounting, but I believe this is the last card I was missing.  

Non-Cardinal card of a former Cardinals player, Preston Wilson was on the 2006 World Series winning team.  Not specifically collecting Preston Wilson, never minded him as a player and I like him on television, but I actually really liked the Fleer Mystique set back when it came out.  I have the base set assembled, but I am missing a few of the short printed rookie cards which are all serial numbered.  

I am actually a little disappointed by the printing around the serial numbers on this card.  They looked scratched, or something happened to them.  I looked at a few other cards that I have from this set, none of them.  I am going to overlook the scratching for the moment, maybe I will go back later and get a different copy.  

I am not a big fan of the Donruss Fan Club set.  It was a pretty cheap box back in 2002 and the cards seemed somewhat repetitive from the Donruss base set.  If you cut off the words Fan Club, this feels like the runner up design for the Donruss base set.  I do like So Taguchi however, so this was sort of a necessary evil.  2002 had a lot of serial numbered rookie cards, at the time I skipped a ton of them. Slight case of fatigue from chasing down Pujols rookie cards from the previous year combined with the fact that Taguchi spent his first year with the Cardinals in Triple A.  

So turned it around and eventually became a pretty useful player for the Cardinals in the mid 2000s.  He hit an important playoff home run off of Billy Wagner in the 2006 NLCS and also was always brutally honest about the mosquito problems at Busch Stadium.  

It's a serial numbered Ray Lankford, and it's not a difficult one to find.  This is not already in my collection?  Well, it was, but child #2 somehow get her hands on this card.  I still have it, but it's in pretty poor condition at this point.  

Two more.  

I did work on the 2005 Upper Deck Reflections set back in the day, but did not touch the 2004 product.  Both were generally the standard mid 2000s Upper Deck product, but the 2005 set had some really distinctive dual signature cards.  The 2004 set was rather boring autograph wise, mainly just a few rookies, not sure any of them are really highly sought after, or worth much.  

Back to the card.  I liked Renteria a lot in the mid 2000s, but I really slowed down on collecting his cards once he left the Cardinals for the Red Sox at the end of the 2004 season.  There are quite a few serial numbered cards from his later years in St. Louis that I just never took the time to find, they are all very affordable now.  

I really like the looks of this card.  An obvious Upper Deck card.  

Last one.  I did not touch the 2007 Topps Rookie 52 set.  Seemed repetitive.  I think I have an Edward Muijica autograph, since he was on the Cardinals, but that's about it.  Did you know that it has a Jim Edmonds card in it?  I didn't either, now I own one.  

I Wish You Were A Cardinal...Part 3

More Archives.  I have really spent a lot of time trying to pick up the Cardinals autographs out of this year's set, but many of the former Redbirds in the set are actually wearing some other uniform on their card besides the birds on the bat.  A quick review.


There was Joe McEwing, pictured as a Met, but started out his career as a Cardinal.

and there was also an Edgar Renteria card.  Edgar started out with the Marlins, but spent some of his better years in St. Louis.  One of the really good postseason performers of the past twenty years with essentially two World Series clinching hits.

While he wasn't on the Marlins for long, I get that he had a World Series walk off for them.  That seems pretty important.

On to another Archives card of a former Cardinals player, not pictured as a Cardinals player on their baseball card.  Although it was really awesome to see Topps put a card of this guy into a new product.  He was one of my favorite Cardinals players from the 1990s.  Here's a glance at one of his most important hits as a Cardinal....

Bo Jackson's best years as a baseball player were better than Jordan's best years, but Jordan had a better overall career than both Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders.  I really enjoyed Jordan as a Cardinals even though he played on some bad teams during the 1990s and ended up being overshadowed by Mark McGwire during his prime years as a Cardinal.  

Here's a look at the Archives card of BJ as a member of the Atlanta Braves.  

Jordan was still a pretty solid player as a Brave and he had played in Atlanta as a member of the Falcons during his football career.  He also ended up playing with the Braves in four different Postseasons.  His best moments playing in Atlanta probably came in 1999 when he hit 3 home runs and drove in 12 runs in 10 postseason games against the Astros and Mets.  

Back of the card. 

That's a pretty nice career right there.  I am happy that Jordan was a signer in this year's Archives set. He has not really done a lot of certified autographs with the last one coming in the 1999 UD Hologrfx World Series Relics which were limited to just 33 copies.