An Unexpected End

Every year the Durham Bulls make the playoffs.  

Every year the Durham Bulls win in the playoffs.  

This year the Durham Bulls lost in the playoffs. 

It's the first time that has happened since 2019. It was an unexpected end. They were playing the Norfolk Tides in the International League Championship and were favored to defeat the Orioles Triple A squad, who reached the playoffs by having the best record during the first half of the season. I forgot that cruddy feeling you get when your favorite team is not the one celebrating at the end of the deciding game. 

Anyway, I have worked on finding cards of several players from this year's Durham Bulls team over the past several weeks. I probably should have been looking all year, but I procrastinated. The new editions  are all scanned and ready to share. Feel free to write down a few names, a few of these players are going to be in the Majors soon.  

First up, outfielder Niko Hulsizer.  

Niko reminds me of Tyler O'Neill, except he's not on the injured list every other week.  

Niko works out. 

Niko hits long home runs. 

Tyler O'Neill is from somewhere in Canada and Niko is from (checks notes) Pennsylvania. 

Anyway, I found a Bowman Chrome autograph of the Bulls left fielder. I like that he just signs his first name "Niko" on the cards. Like there is another player named Niko in the Majors. There is not at the moment.  

Second Niko autograph below.  

This is a sticker autograph, which appears to be slightly crooked. Still like the action photo on this card. Probably a home run, since he hit the ball. All his other at-bats are either walks or strike outs.  

You a White Sox fan?  

The next player actually got traded to the White Sox a few months back, but I am still collecting his cards. The Rays don't make many bad trades, but I feel like this is one of them. I have also posted other Luis Patino cards on here before, just adding a new one to the collection.  

The Rays got Luis Patino in the Blake Snell trade. They used him as a spot starter in 2021 and 2022, but he also got a lot of starts in Durham. He's slight, but throws really hard. Never really got much of a chance with the Rays before they traded him to the White Sox. The Sox have used him several times over the past month and Luis has looked decent.  

A rare miss for the Rays, but if you're a White Sox fan, enjoy.  

Next up, a fan favorite from this year. 

Imagine Jose Altuve with a really violent swing and a more likable personality.  

Sometimes pictures on cards are deceptive, or you can't quite tell what someone looks like based on the picture. Ronny Simon is listed at 5'7, but that feels like a made-up number.  I bet he's 5'7 if he's wearing shoes and standing on a phone book for a major U.S. city. Ronny is also listed at 150 pounds, which also feels a little high. Ronny also has a huge swing with 13 home runs, 25 doubles, and almost 150 strikeouts.

Guess who was on the injured list for the Durham Bulls the entire season?  

This guy. 

Brendan was a top prospect a few years back. Made it all the way to Durham and then things went sideways. I think he was overused while he was at Louisville (the junior college) and his shoulder is now completely shot. He's going to end up being a "what could have been" type player, but those guys are still fun to collect. Especially when you can find their autograph on a Topps Tek card. Love these cards, but I did not scan both sides of it. Know you can see the autograph on the back of the card.  

I am upset McKay's career is likely not going to work out, but also upset that someone let Louisville into the ACC. Their sports teams always showing up around here, like Friday night they played NC State in football. NC State lost, because of NC State. Louisville did not really do anything to win.  

I could have made that same type of throw.  

It was not a good weekend for sports.  

A few more cards.  

The Rays got Blake Hunt in the Blake Snell trade with the Padres. Up to this season, he's been a light hitting catcher, so I did not think much of him when he got called up to the Bulls to be their backup catcher in the middle of the season. I was expecting solid defense and a .220 batting average.......

His name is Blake, but this is the best I could find on a Sunday morning.  

Anyway, Blake Hunt ended up hitting .260 for the Durham Bulls this year and had 6 home runs. Several of those came in the first week he was in Triple A. Definitely a pleasant surprise.  

I found a Bowman Chrome autograph of Blake Hunt for less than $2 and also a Panini autograph below for around $1.  

Three dollars for two autographs of a Triple A backup catcher makes me feel better about my sports teams losing. Did I mention the Cardinals game on Friday night? It was like a Bengals-Rams game. Wait, the Rams moved. It was like a Clemson-NC State game where State got a safety as their only points.  

One more player, because he is local and his high school has an amazing mascot.  

Greg Jones was the Rays first round selection in 2019 out of UNC-Wilmington. He actually went to high school in Cary, North Carolina, which is one of the large suburbs of Raleigh. There are many high schools in Cary, but Greg went to THE Cary High School.

Cary High School is noted for four things:

1. The Cary Water Tower 

2. Their annual band contest 

3. Overcrowding all the local fast food restaurants in Cary, because their campus has open lunch every day

and........

Card break. 

This is Greg's 2020 Topps Pro Debut autograph. 

Back to the story.

4. Their mascot.  

Cary High School's mascot is an Imp.  

Imps appear in German and English folklore where they are they devious and mischievous henchman of the devil.  Here is the Imp.......

The Imp was voted Sports Illustrated Best High School Mascot earlier this year.  

Sorry, there are no quality photos of Greg playing baseball in a Cary High School uniform on the internet.  

Last card.  

This is another 2020 autograph of Greg Jones. This one is from Bowman's Best and features a nice on-card signature. Greg is a toolsy player. He's fast, has some pop in his bat, and also is versitile.  The Bulls played him around the infield and also in centerfield. Buy his cards, put them in a box, and thank me in two or three years when you run across them.  

Only $9.99, Part 2

 The second half of the 2023 Durham Bulls. 

This first group is soild. All of these players are 25 or younger and all of them will end up in the Majors at some point in the near future. Although, LaSorsa got traded to the Nationals. Manzardo and Mead will likely be starters with the Rays, Misner is a great defensive outfielder. McKendry is a middle of the rotation starter.  Lopez is a good left-handed reliever.  

Mead is the best prospect in this group and should be the Rays third baseman by the beginning of next year. He is consensus Top 100 prospect across the board. The Rays actually got Mead from the Phillies in a trade for a Minor League relief pitcher. Pretty good deal.  

In this group, I like Rene Pinto and Luis Patino. The Rays got Patino from the Padres for Blake Snell. Rene Pinto is a catcher who seems fairly talented, but he's on his third season in a row with the Bulls.  As good as the Rays are at making their own players, they are not good with catchers. Pinto is honestly one of the better homegrown catchers I have seen over the past decade.  

Card backs, a little crooked.  

Last few players along with the manager, pitching coach, hitting coach, and strength and conditioning coach. Brian Reith is the only coach on the Bulls who played in the Majors. He was a middle reliever and spot starter for the Reds in the early 2000s and ended his career with an ERA of almost 6.  

The bios of the coaching staff.  

Trainer, trainer, bench coach, mascot. 

 I like Wool E. Bull's giant Championship Ring. I have never seen him with that ring.  

That's all for the official 2023 Durham Bulls team set. Funny thing, I basically ran into a second Durham Bulls team set this week. I will have to post it in the next few days.  

The Retail Card Aisles of Northern Michigan - Part 2

On the previous post, I shared a few of the cards that I picked up while visiting my in-laws in northern Michigan. The card aisles of the two large box stores in town, Meijer and Wal-Mart, both had more packs of cards than I have seen living outside of Raleigh during the past year and a half to two years.  

A quick refresher. 

 

The Meijer card aisle is on the left, Wally World on the right.  

For this post, I am just breaking the cards into brand rather than by location purchased.

First up is another pack of the Panini Chronicles cards. Again, I am still confused as to whether or not these cards all come from a single set or they are different sets packaged together. I don't care enough about Panini to research the answer and I fear it's a rip off of the 1998 Donruss Collections product.  

If you don't know that one, the card manufacturer Pinnacle re-released all of their Donruss and Leaf products at the end of that year, but they put some foil finish on the cards. In my opinion......

I have three highlights from this pack of cards. 

On the left is Akil Baddoo. I saw him with the Tigers this summer and enjoyed his style of play. I am looking forward to picking up some more of his cards this year. More Akil later in the post. 

In the middle is Clayton Kershaw. This is the same style card as AJ Puk and Gregory Polanco cards from the previous post. Again, the card has a nice finish on the surface and the thick card stock is always a plus. The Pete Alonso is another acetate card, but it's different from the three in the previous post. Are the acetate cards supposed to have variations like the Topps Tek cards?  I love acetate baseball cards, but the line pattern on this one is boring.  

Next up is a few cards from Topps Archives. I have really become torn on this product in recent years. Topps has gone completely overboard with reusing former designs in current products. At some point they are going to completely ruin the Topps Heritage product. However, for the moment I still really enjoy the autographs and a few of the inserts in this product. Topps does come up with some nice cards here.  

Topps did a really good job of picking out photos for the 1970s players. Not a Nolan Ryan fan, but good job putting him in an Angels uniform. Dick Allen and Mike Schmidt have great 1970s hair. The uniforms in the picture are an added bonus. The red version of the White Sox uniforms is underrated. I felt like the 1970s players had the best looking cards in this year's set.  

Next up is a pair of Movie Poster inserts. These are really neat.  

Most of the cards are team themed, like the A's card on the left. However, I do really like the Black Aces poster card.  The black and white photo with the red background really pops. The term "Black Aces" was coined by long-time Indians and Twins pitcher, Mudcat Grant. There are players who fit Grant's description left off of the card. One of those players was Grant himself.  Give credit where credit is due.  This would be a better card if Grant had been included.

Just my two cents.  

I did not land many Cardinals cards in my packs of Archives. My only two options were Lou Brock and Paul DeJong. I am sorry, but Paul DeJong is a no at the moment.  

Lou is an easy choice.  

My favorite Durham Bulls card....

I am going with this Evan Longoria insert, but let's talk about this card for a minute. This is card is the direction that Topps should take the Archives set.  This is a modernized version of a 1989 Topps Big card. They were a kid-friendly oddball set released that ran for several years. 

This is the original design.  

Topps always uses past oddball designs for insert sets in Archives. They should just make them the base set design for the entire product. Small change, but it would help to preserve the former flagship brand designs for future Topps Heritage sets. Again, just my opinion.  

Onto the last group of cards. These are out of the Update Series. I got two of these box toppers.  

I like the Satchel Paige card.  Big Papi.  Meh.  

I also ended up with two more Akil Baddoo rookie cards. Did I mention I hate when Topps overuses former designs?  I am going to ignore that for the 1986 Topps card on the left. That is a good looking baseball card.  

I also picked up a pair of Luis Patino rookie cards. He has been my go-to Durham Bulls player of sorts during the past year. However, the card on the right is a little ridiculous.  

Topps made Rookie Debut cards for a handful of players in the 2021 Update set. Read the small print there and you can see that Luis Patino actually made his Major League Debut in August of 2020. He was traded to the Rays in December of 2020, started the year in the Minors, and was called up by the Rays. I get the card on the left since Patino was both traded and called up to the Majors in the past year. I do not understand why he is getting a Debut card from a previous season.  

Favorite Cardinals cards.  

Ignore the previous comments about Topps reusing old designs here too.  The Molina has a Chrome finish, Arenado and Carlson are the regular card stock. I love the 1992 Topps cards. 

Favorite former Durham Bulls players in this set....

I am going with Blake Snell and Jake Cronenworth.  Easy choice.  

That's it for the card aisle. 

Sunday Night Procrastination

There are plenty of other things I could be doing at the moment. Most would be a better use of my time, but here I am writing about baseball cards and the whatnot. I have to work three days this week. I am not sure I am ready to teach tomorrow, but I am not going to worry about it at the moment.  

I spent the majority of my day doing chores around the house. I swept and mopped the floors, cleaned all three bathrooms in the house.  Cleaning is a good thing, most of the time.  That's a lot of productivity for a single day.  

I also took in the women's basketball game between NC State and Virginia. State is currently ranked second in the country.  

The Wolfpack ended up winning by 27 points.  Virginia is not very good.  

On to baseball card stuff.  

I have a huge stack of cards on my desk at the moment. There are so many cards that I could write about for this post, but I am going to stick with just one of them.  Mainly because it's already scanned and I have been procrastinating on the other cards.  Beyond scanning and school work, I have also been procrastinating on sorting too, which my wife files under baseball card cleaning. I am getting some side-eye about the amount of desk space my cards are taking up at the moment. 

I am going to put this card away after I write about it.  That's some productivity.  

Luis Patino spent a portion of the season in Durham, but eventually got called up by the Rays. He's signed a ton of autographs this year. I have not collected too many of them. The Rays got Patino in the Blake Snell trade with the Padres. His cards were fairly pricy at the beginning of the year, but they have gotten cheaper as the year has gone along. Nothing like a 21 year-old having an ERA of 4 to cool down the prices of his cards. I am sure you won't regret selling his cards cheap in four years. Keep sending them my way.  

Why this card?  I liked the appearance of this Stadium Club Chrome card. The finish did not show very well on the scan, but it's one of those shiny cards. The action shot on the front is just the sort of photography you'd expect on a Stadium Club card. I would also like to mention that Luis Patino has a great autograph. He's consistent too.  

Beyond the Luis Patino autograph, I also picked up an autographed baseball this week at work.  

One of the students in my class is Mackenzie Gore's cousin. She got him to autograph a baseball for me. 

It was fun writing this post. This was 10 minutes well spent.  

Wander-Ful Cards

It's been a while.  

I really wanted to make a post last weekend when Wander Franco got called up to the Rays, but I was sitting here typing up my report cards for the end of the school.  The last day of school was Monday.  Throw in a couple of workdays and a few more days to rest and recover, and I have a full month of vacation. 

Better late than never.  

I actually had a chance to see Wander a few weeks back while he was still with the Bulls. 

Not the most competitive game.  

Always fun to see a really good prospect though, regardless of the score.  

In the last few weeks, I have picked up two new Wander Franco cards.  

This is a Bowman Scouts Top 100 insert showing Franco's top prospect rating.  Sort of wish he was in a Bulls uniform, but I understand they don't put those types of cards in Bowman sets.  A really nice-looking card that didn't cost me an arm and a leg.  

The reflective surface did not do great in the scanner, but this is a knock-off of the 1991 Bowman set.  

Beyond the Wander cards, I have also been working a little more on finding cards of Luis Patino.  He was on the prospects that the Rays got back from the Padres in exchange for Blake Snell.  He pitched at the Bulls game that I attend a few weeks back.  Really nice pitcher, I think I will continue collecting his cards.  

Both of these are from 2020 products.  

Not sure about the Sod Poodles name, but I like the looks of the card.  Love the dark border on the 1971 Topps design.  Great looking set.  

I also found a Bowman Chrome autograph of Patino.  I am surprised that any of these are affordable these days with all of the "prospecting" that goes on, especially since Patino is a top 100 prospect.  Nice first year autograph, love that he signed his Spring Training uniform number.  

One last Durham Bulls card for the week.....

I also picked up a card of Ripken The Bat Dog.  Ripken was supposed to start working for the Bulls last year, but did not with the season canceled.  I still have not seen Ripken this year.  

Exactly Zero Packs.

Whatever day Topps released their Series 1 cards, I ran by Target before work at 7 A.M. when the store opened.  There were no baseball cards.  I went back later in the afternoon.  There were a few display boxes, but the cards were all gone.  I have been to Target since, but I have spent zero minutes looking for baseball cards while I was in the store.  

I am feeling completely done with packs.  

I opened my first pack of cards in 1983 when I was in 1st Grade.  I have been collecting for 38 years and feel like I have better things to do in life than to chase down packs of cards at retail stores. A wife, two kids, a Betta fish, and a teaching job for starters. While we are here, I am definitely not buying any from the people who are cleaning out Target and Wally World, marking the packs of cards, and reselling them online.  

I am going to buy zero packs of cards this year.  

There are still some nice looking 2021 Topps cards that are worth owning, so during the three weeks since my last blog post I managed to track down a few.  All the players have some sort of connection to the Cardinals or Durham Bulls.  

Non-autographs are up first.  

I like that there are still Blake Snell cards in a Rays uniform.  He does not have any autographs in Series 1, but he has plenty of other cards in there.  Probably work on adding those in the coming weeks.  Not sure how I will feel about his Padres cards.  I will cross that bridge when they start rolling out.  

Next up is Dylan Carlson.  I am still not sure how good of a player he is going to be, but he's at least going to be a starter for the Cardinals this season.  People were crazy about his cards while he was in the Minors.  Settled down a bit last year, but seems like they are picking up in popularity again.  

Patino seems like a good bet for the Durham Bulls this year.  He was part of the Blake Snell trade with the Padres.  Maybe he will start in the Majors, but that would be surprising given the Rays can probably save money in the long run by keeping him in the Minors for a short time.  

I like his signature too, which brings me to my final card.  

Why isn't this a Cardinals card?  

I still like it.  

Until next time.