Pujols Post - 2021 Stadium Club Chrome

I ran into my local card shop for a few boxes on Sunday afternoon and ended up sorting through a few stacks of cards. Found a couple new Pujols cards along with a few others that will get their own post.  I am going to make some non-Cardinal Pujols Posts this year. This is the first of them.  

I love the photo on the front of the card.  

The scan does not do this card justice, so I am also going to include a photo of the card.  

That's slightly better even if you have the shadow and reflection of my phone on the bottom of the card. 

Love this action shot of Albert swinging from the front. There are tons of pictures of him batting on baseball cards, but they are almost all from the side. This is a really unique vantage point. Great looking photography is why people buy Stadium Club cards and they certainly got this card right.  

I tried tracking the photograph to a specific game.  

Albert Pujols played three games against the Braves in Atlanta while he was on the Dodgers in 2021. The games took place June 4, 5, and 6.  

In the June 4 game, Albert pinch hit for Max Muncy and then stayed in the game. He walked and struck out in two plate appearances and it waas also a night game. Not it. 

In the June 5 game, Albert entered the game as a pinch hitter and had two plate appearances. He struck out in his first at-bat and flew out to center in his second at-bat. I would consider the second at-bat a possibility, but the game started at 7:00 and the fly out was at the end of the game.  I think the photograph is too light.  

June 6. The Braves started Max Fried (left-handed pitcher), so Albert started at 1B for the Dodgers. He had four at-bats and there are two possibilities, but I lean towards the second. First, he flew out to the left fielder in the sixth inning.  He also hit a solo home run in the ninth.

I think this photograph is from the home run.  

What do you think?  

Back of the card.  

Decent back design and write-up. I like looking at his career stat line. What a player. 

I Have Never Written A Post About Brendan Donovan

Brendan Donovan is one of my favorite current Cardinal players, but I have not written a post about him during the past two years he has been on the roster. Donovan is s a utility player. However, he shows up in the lineup regularly while he is playing everywhere in the field. What is it that Brendan Donovan does so well?  

Donovan's batting average is fine, slugging is decent, but his on-base percentage is excellent. 

He's also signed a lot of cards over the past two years, so it is about time that I picked up one of his cards for my collection. There were several choices that were appealing, but I went with his Stadium Club Chrome rookie card.  

These are sharp cards.  

Stadium Club always has great photography and this card is no different. I really like the green seats contrasted with the red on Donovan's uniform and the fans in the background who are also wearing red.  The seats around home plate in Busch Stadium have been green for almost decades, since the last years of Busch Stadium II, but I do not ever recall seeing them used as part of the background on a baseball card.  

Brendan Donovan should start somewhere, or maybe everywhere, this coming year and I am happy to finally post one of this baseball cards in this space.   

How's Baseball Season Going?

I am not here to talk about the Cardinals finishing last for the first time since 1990 or any of the horrible roster moves they made leading up to this season.

We could talk about the Durham Bulls?  

They're in first place again at the moment, because it's the end of the year and it's the Durham Bulls. If the past twenty-five years has taught us anything, the team will likely win a bunch of stuff during the next few weeks.  

The banner outside the stadium is about to be out of date.  

I have squeezed a handful of Durham Bulls games into my summer and have a few new players to collect, as well as a few old ones that I need to revisit. One of my highlights was getting to see a rehab start by Rays ace pitcher Tyler Glasnow.  

Really impressive player.  

I actually had seen Tyler Glasnow a few years back while he was with the Pirates Triple A team. He was good enough that I decided to add a Bowman Chrome autograph of him to my collection.  

Nice card.  

Most of Glasnow's autographs are under $20, many are under $10. While I still enjoy the Pirates autograph, I thought it would be nice to own an autograph of Glasnow in a Rays uniform and found one that was really cheap.  

This is the second Stadium Club Chrome autograph I have posted in the last two weeks, with the first coming in a Blake Snell post.  These are really nice cards with good stock, and nice finishing touches.  Glasnow's signature has been pretty consistent throughout the years. 

Great card, a few more Durham Bulls cards this week.  

2023 Blake Snell Autograph Count: 10

This 2020 Topps Stadium Chrome Autograph of Blake Snell is the 85th Blake Snell autograph in my collection. This was a card that I missed out on during my COVID writing slow down. I do not even remember previously trying to purchase this card. Not really a pricy card either, so I guess it just fell through the pandemic cracks.  

Good looking card.  

Stadium Club is really good at photography and the brand seems to excel at making landscape baseball cards with action shots of pitchers. Look through a set at the pictures of the modern pitchers. So, nice action shot of Snell's follow through in a game against the Red Sox. I like that the batter is looking back at the catcher and umpire, but clearly no ball or strike call has been made. Snell pitched one game in Boston in 2019, which was a 6-1 Rays win. He pitched 6 innings, struck out 7 batters, and the Rays hit 4 home runs.  

The design on the front is solid. The color boxes are a different look for Stadium Club, but they do not get in the way of the picture, which is why people buy Stadium Club cards. Well, it's why people used to buy Stadium Club cards. The little dots around the top and middle of the card are not from the scanner, they are really there. They do not have any texture. I am not sure why, but they seem unnecessary.  

Back of the card.  

Nice stat line and write-up about Blake Snell's 2019 season. It was not a great year for him, but Topps makes it sound nice. Although, the Rays did not help him out very much. Snell only won 6 games that year and his FIP (Fielding Independent ERA) was a run lower than his regular ERA. If you're not into the sabermetric stats, that happens your defense is horrible.  

Anyway, clean design with the picture at the top, stat line at the bottom with the write-up in the middle.  

Blake Snell weighs 215 pounds? A lot of people with that weight this week. 

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.