Jumbo World Series Hero

It seems like every Postseason there is some sort of player who unexpectedly comes out of nowhere and has a huge impact on the outcome of the World Series.  Last season Cubs fans watched Kyle Schwarber come back from what was supposed to be a season ending knee injury to bat .412 in the World Series.  His presence in the line-up seemed to give the Cubs a little extra.

Pretty good hitting there for a guy who was supposed to not even appear in the Series.  

As a Cardinals fan I have seen players make similar contributions to the team's postseason runs in recent years.  Matt Adams hitting a three run home run off of Clayton Kershaw, Matt Carpenter battling through long at at-bats, Michael Wacha pitching shut outs, the entire line-up in the 2012 NLDS against the Nationals including light hitting Pete Kozma getting the series clinching hit....

and every Cardinals fans favorite hometown hero from the 2011 World Championship winning team, third baseman, David Freese.  He actually had an incredible playoff run throughout that postseason including the series against the Phillies and the Brewers.  Everyone just remembers the 9th inning on in Game 6....

and what of the Cardinals playoff run in 2006?  Many remember the Tigers throwing the ball all over the field littering the box scores with tons of errors and cold bats after clinching the AL Pennant and sitting around for a week.  Many also remember the final out of the series being recorded by long-time Cardinals ace Adam Wainwright when the normal closer Jason Isringhausen went down with an injury.....

I often feel like the player from that 2006 squad who often flies under the radar is pitcher Jeff Weaver, who was picked up by the Cardinals in a trade with the Angels after he lost his job to his brother Jared.  Weaver's regular season with the Cardinals was not much to write home about, but he excelled on the postseason stage that fall for the Redbirds.  He saved his best performance for the World Series clincher in Game 5 when he pitched 8 innings with one run, 4 hits, and 9 strikeouts.  

One of the better single season turn arounds in the history of the franchise.  There aren't many baseball cards to remember Weaver's brief stint with the Cardinals by, but a few of them are really sweet cards.  My favorite up to this point has been his 2007 Topps World Series Relic card.  

This Weaver card was put out at a time when Topps did not make a Postseason relic card for every single team that made the playoffs.  They have done that the last few years and they have made them pretty common cards.  The older versions, starting with the White Sox in 2005, are really tough finds.  

Which brings me to my latest Jeff Weaver card.  I still like the World Series better, but this is a nice card too.....

This card is from the 2009 Topps Unique set, which had a terrible base set, but a great set of relic cards.  I picked up a Anthony Reyes jumbo relic card from this set early this year, but I did not have a Weaver card.  A very nice patch piece too which is the top of the L......

the top of the s and the tail feathers of the Cardinal sitting on the bat.  I am sure there are probably better patch pieces out there, but I am also sure that most of those have made there way into collections and they are not coming back out.  

One Great Pitching Performance, One Great Card

The Cardinals have been a perennial playoff team for most of the 2000s.  There have been very few years were the team has not at least been in the playoffs.  Four of those trips to the playoffs ended with a World Series appearance with two of those resulting in World Series wins.  There have been plenty of great moments along the way that stand out.

The Pujols home run against Brad Lidge in the 2005 NLCS, Rolen's Game 7 home run against Roger Clemens in 2004, Molina's home run against the Mets in 2006, Matt Adams off of Clayton Kershaw, David Freese against the Rangers.....on and on and on.  I am going to focus tonight on one Cardinals playoff game that sort of flies under the radar.  

After the Cardinals beat the Mets in Game 7 on the 2006 National League Championship Series the team had used up their starting pitching staff.  Meaning they had to start Anthony Reyes in Game 1 of the World Series.  At some point Anthony Reyes was a highly regarded prospect.  He had broken a lot of Mark Prior's pitching records at USC, but was not so great at the Major League level.  

Yet, for one night.......

he was untouchable.  

Were the Tigers rusty?  Was Reyes that good?  It doesn't really matter because a few days after this game happened the Cardinals won the World Series and Anthony Reyes is now walking around with a shiny ring.  

After the Series ended I start collecting cards of players on the 2006 Cardinals team and I have done pretty well over the years with it.  For me the 2006 Cardinals was not only about the fact that my favorite Major League team won the World Series, but it was also the first summer that I spent watching baseball with my wife.  I feel like many times I mark the important events in my life with baseball cards.  

Former and current jobs have baseball cards.  Children have baseball cards.  My wife is more of a collection of many baseball cards.  The Anthony Reyes section of the 2006 Cardinals collection started off with a few simple autographs, a relic or two, and a few other serial numbered cards.  

Eventually I added a really cool card from the 2009 Topps Unique set of Reyes that featured a giant patch of the Cardinals pitcher.  The timing of the card was odd since Reyes had bombed with the Cardinals and was hanging out in the Indians Minor League system.  Someone offered me a nice trade package for the card, so I ended up trading it away.  Regretted a few months later.  I have been looking for one ever since.  

There are only 20 copies of the Reyes patch card, I know a Cardinals collector who owns 8 of the 20, so at most there are 12 of them floating around.  Last week I found one.....

It has been a long time looking, but I was really excited to find this card.  The day it showed up in the mail I was literally hopping up and down in my kitchen.  My wife usually ignores whatever baseball cards come into our house through the mail, but she asked me about this one since I was a little bit more excited than normal.  The second I told her the name Anthony Reyes she knew why I was excited.  

She knows Anthony Reyes as the flat brimmed guy from the World Series.......

and she immediately knew why I was so happy.  

My wife is by no means a huge baseball fan, and while she sometimes can't keep the current Cardinals straight outside of Yadi, she seems to have a really good memory of all the players on the 2006 team.  I think the last time I was jumping up and down over the 2006 Cardinals before last week it was watching Adam Wainwright whiff Brandon Inge to wrap up the series......

While Anthony Reyes did not have much of a baseball career, he did have the best night of his career on the perfect night.  I had honestly resigned myself to never finding another copy of this card.  Finding it rounds out my 2006 Cardinals collection and gives me some really nice card, of every member of that World Series team.  

A Blogger Walks Into A Card Store....

I am prepping for school to start back up in the next two weeks which is always a little bit stressful, but I found a little bit of down town this week to stop by Big D's Card Shop in Raleigh.  I will have another post about my favorite local card shop again at some point tomorrow.  My post this evening is going to focus a bunch of cards that the owner of Big D's, Jimmy, has found and set aside for me over the past month or so.  

Three of the cards I picked up today are really nice autographs from one of my favorite former Durham Bulls Evan Longoria.  Each card is a pretty low print run and not the easiest of finds.  Let's start with a Topps Unique autograph.  

I do not recall ever seeing this card before Jimmy showed it to me and I am a pretty big Longoria fan.    I also really like the Topps Unique set.  It's numbered to just 25 copies and there has not been a copy of this card sold on Ebay recently.  In fact, there is not one of COMC, Collector Revolution, or Amazon.  Nowhere.  I had to pick up this card.  With none around and a print run of just 25, it's likely not around because the other copies of this card are in collections and they are not going anywhere.  

Next up is a nice copy of a Tribute Longoria autograph which is just serial numbered to 20.  I have seen plenty of Longoria autographs from the Tribute sets, but I have never seen this gold card.  I love the gold color, the two bat pieces, and the Longo autograph.  Next...

The highest numbered card here, but still just 99 copies and a rookie card to boot.  This is the blue edition of the Rays third baseman's rookie card.  The scan is a little blurry and scratchy because it's in a screw down holder.  This might be my favorite card out of the lot.  Yes, I know Longoria is wearing the old style Rays uniform, but I used to love these old Bowman's Best set.  This is a great card.  I might have to take it out of the screw down and rescan it.  

While I was at Big D's I also picked up a few other items.  I had two other cards that Jimmy had set aside for me at the store.  The first was a Matt Adams Jumbo Bat/Autograph card from the 2012 Topps Finest Set.  

I have a copy of this card, but it has a jersey relic instead of a bat relic.  I think I bought the jersey relic version of this card the first week the set was out and gave up on even looking for the bat relic or just did not look for it at all.  Either way, this card has found a happy home in my collection.  

Lastly, I picked up this nice in-person autograph of Cardinals prospect Stephen Piscotty.  He played here this week during the Triple A All-Star game.  The Durham Bulls had an autograph meet and greet on Tuesday, but I did not get to attend.  This Piscotty was in the shop and too hard for me to pass on.  Really cool picture and a nice autograph.  

Bonus items?  Yes.  

I picked up a card from a customer in the store.  Sent over a little bit of Paypal and landed this cool looking Longoria autograph.  You can't have too many.....

Jimmy also had a cool Jeremy Hellickson Durham Bulls program he had in the back of his shop.  Pretty sweet item.  

Unique Upton

I have so many directions that I could go on cards this morning.  It's my second day off after a long school year and I am going to need a good week to get caught up on all the cards that are sitting on my desk ready to be typed up, scanned, and shared.  This morning I am going with an old favorite player.

I know BJ is an outfielder with the Braves, but my best memories of him will always be as an infielder with the Durham Bulls.  My best memory of Upton will always be him hitting a walk off grand slam to lead the Bulls to a win on Opening Day in 2006, but I cannot find a video of the hit anywhere online.  BJ only lasted part of that summer in Durham posting a .269/.374/.394 line with 8 home runs and 18 doubles in 106 games before he was called up to Tampa.  That's right, BJ Upton could take a pitch or two in Triple A, just not the Majors.

I still check in on BJ, but I know enough Braves fans who are pained by his presence on the teams roster, that if I do not check I still kind of know that he's not doing well.  And besides, Rays fans all know that when players come up for free agency there is a really good chance that they are going to walk.  It was good to see BJ get his pay day.  It was cool that he landed in the same outfield as his brother.  Not cool that he's hitting .200 with almost 100 strikeouts already.

I like to remember BJ like this:

Everyone see John Jaso in that video?  Sweet.  

Anyway, I also still check in on some BJ Upton cards.  Honestly, I have a bunch and will look on occasion.  There are still some people who believe that BJ has some star power and price his accordingly, but there are also some really cool pieces that come up and every once in awhile I snap into action.  One came up last week.

I have done a few things on the Topps Unique set on my blog since I have started writing here, but should probably do a little bit more.  Like patch cards?  This is the set.  It does have some nice autographs, but there are some incredible relics in this set.  This BJ Upton card is serial numbered to just 15 copies and features the top of the R from the RAYS script on the front of the Tampa jerseys.  A really cool piece for $20 considering that the only other copy on the internet is currently listed for the ridiculous price of $320.