Bowl Pick 'Em Contest Winnings, Part IV

College football will be here again before we know it, so I've got to get my prize from last season's Bowl Pick 'Em contest at Cards on Cards posted! My prize for a second place tie was a very generously sized box of cards, so I felt a bit overwhelmed even sorting through them. I finally sorted them out by player, and, as usual, I'll plan to post them all eventually, but I might quit halfway through, we'll see.

Part I II III

1992 Fleer Ultra - All-Rookies #10 Donovan Osborne
1992 Studio #95 Donovan Osborne
1992 Upper Deck - Scouting Report #SR19 Donovan Osborne
1993 Fleer - Rookie Sensations #10 Donovan Osborne
1994 Fleer Ultra #269 Donovan Osborne
1994 Fleer Ultra #563 Brian Barber
1994 Fleer Ultra #265 Rich Batchelor
1996 Upper Deck Collector's Choice #24 Brian Barber
1996 Pinnacle #167 Brian Barber

Once again I'm always surprised how many Cardinals I'm missing from relatively common sets. These were all new to my collection, even the Donovan Osbornes that I was sure I've seen before.

1992 Upper Deck #702 Brian Jordan / Donovan Osborne / Mark Clark

Horizontal cards are always a pain when trying to put like cards together because there's no nice way to scan them together. So this one stands here alone, staring you down like these three menacing Cardinals rookies. The 1992 team wasn't really that good, though.

July Card Show Autograph

I was supposed to get 3 autographs at the July Card show, but one player missed his plane, and the other rescheduled for an unpublicized reason. But Donovan Osborne showed up, and here's what I got.

Donovan Osborne
                   -31-

Of the three Cardinals scheduled that day, he was the longest-tenured, playing 7 seasons for St. Louis, so the crowd wasn't as disappointed as they might otherwise have been. Bill Madlock was also there signing, but he doesn't fit into my collection. I've shared this story on my blog before, but why not, I'll do it again, because it's my most vivid memory of Donovan Osborne. I was at a game with my dad when Donovan came to bat with the bases loaded. They put season stats up on the board at that time, and I saw he had 0 home runs that year. I figured he probably also had 0 for his career, which to that point was 3+ seasons, but I had no way of knowing that for sure. I told my dad he should hit a grand slam...and then he did. That turned out to be his only career home run, and made me awfully superstitious for awhile.

Turkey For Me, Turkey For You

Here it is, nearly Easter, and I've got Adam Sandler's Thanksgiving Song stuck in my head. No, my family doesn't have some weird holiday-swapping tradition; I traded some Turkey Red cards with a fellow fan of the set, JediJeff of 2x3 Heroes.

2010 Topps - Turkey Red
#TR2 Miguel Tejada
#TR15 Hank Greenberg
#TR19 Cal Ripken, Jr.
#TR21 Johnny Bench
#TR25 Ernie Banks
#TR31 Mel Ott
#TR51 Torii Hunter
#TR66 Nelson Cruz
#TR69 Brooks Robinson

I bought a lot of 2010 Update, but not much of Series 1 and 2, so I'm still rather far from completing the 100 cards from those series. After these are added into my collection, I believe I will still need 74 more. However, for the 50 from Update, numbered 101-150, I only need 17 more.

2010 Topps - Turkey Red
#TR73 Chad Billingsley
#TR75 B.J. Upton
#TR79 Raul Ibanez
#TR86 Billy Butler
#TR88 Eddie Mathews
#TR95 Ty Cobb
#TR135 Orlando Cepeda
#TR144 Cy Young
2009 Topps - Turkey Red
#TR6 Ian Kinsler

Jeff threw in a few extras for me, including the 2009 Turkey Red card. I was surprised to find I didn't actually have any of those yet. Maybe that'll spur me on to collect that year's set too.

1992 Fleer Ultra #570 Donovan Osbourne
1992 Triple Play #118 Jose Oquendo
1993 Pinnacle #174 Geronimo Pena
2009 Topps Updates and Highlights #UH327 Julio Lugo

Speaking of extras, here are some Cardinals Jeff was nice enough to add into the package. And, I've still got a few more of these to scan and post for next time.

March Radness Win, Part IV

[Part I]
[Part II]
[Part III]

I "won" a prize, in that I managed to have the worst bracket of all in Cards on Cards March Radness contest. I legitimately tried to win, in fact I didn't even realize there was this consolation prize until the contest was over, because I stopped scoreboard watching about 2 rounds into the tournament because I did so poorly to start off. The good thing about winning cards from a fellow Cardinals fan is that he can't resist dumping a whole bunch of his Cardinal duplicates on me, which I'm more than happy to take.

That's right, there's still more cards to go in this series. Kerry outdid himself on this prize.

1994 Fleer Extra Bases
#356 Rene Arocha
#359 Gregg Jefferies
#362 Mike Perez
#364 Bob Tewksbury
#366 Todd Zeile

This is a cool set, but if you've ever seen them, you know these aren't minis, these are larger than usual cards. Without doing any research or measuring at all, I'd say they're 1 inch taller than a regular card, so 2.5" by 4.5". Does anybody have any good ideas for how to store these? The best idea I have off the top of my head is storing them in a 500 count box front to back instead of side to side, but I only own 5 of them now. Surely I can't get ambitious again and put another set on my wantlist when I only have 5, can I?

1991 Score #677 Donovan Osborne

My favorite Donovan Osborne memory was at a game when he came to bat with the bases loaded. I told my Dad it'd be cool if he hit a Grand Slam. My Dad laughed, and Donovan delivered. Thanks to baseball-reference.com, I just learned I witnessed his only career Home Run. That's kinda cool.

1992 Score #516 Geronimo Pena

I don't remember as much about Geronimo Pena, except he was a solid platoon second basemen for a few years.

1992 Baseball Enquirer - Unopened Pack

Here's another unopened pack. I don't know anything about this set, but it looks to be unlicensed, a gag they explain away by calling them "Mystery Interview" cards. That's obviously a certain famous gambler on the back betting his card will be worth a fortune. I haven't opened this pack yet, so maybe I'll save it for the same day I open the 1988 Donruss pack.