Bowl Pick 'Em Contest Winnings, Part XXXII

College football will be here again before we know it IS HERE IS OVER, 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 IV V VI VII VIII IX X
XI XII XIII XIV XV XVI XVII XVIII XIX XX
XXI XXII XXIII XXIV XXV XXVI XXVII XXVIII XXIX XXX XXXI

Like Homer Simpson once said...

So I intend to finish out this prize package!

1994 Pinnacle #425 Tripp Cromer
1994 Upper Deck #113 Tripp Cromer
1996 Pacific #215 Scott Cooper
1996 Score #448 Mark Petkovsek
1996 Topps Stadium Club #13 Tom Henke
1996 Upper Deck Collector's Choice #287 Tripp Cromer
1996 Upper Deck Collector's Choice #693 John Mabry
2015 Opening Day - Stadium Scenes #STA-RG Busch Stadium by Robert Grunbaum

We're getting deep into the weeds now, with some players who only played a handful of seasons or partial seasons, like Tripp Cromer. We seem to get a lot of guys with odd names, but maybe it's no more than our fair share. Tripp actually played in LA, though less than 40 games over 2 seasons, and Houston in 2000 and 3 final games in 2003 after 2 years out of the majors. Mark Petkovsek spent 5 years with the Cardinals, but bookended his 11-year career on each end with a year in Texas. Then there's Scott Cooper and Tom Henke, probably best known for playing on other teams, and John Mabry, who I have to keep reminding myself is still on the Cardinals coaching staff. He's kind of quiet.

Finally, there's the card from Opening Day's Stadium Scenes set, which features contest winning photos. I'm no artist of any sort, and especially not a photographer, but I think that's a pretty bland photo of Busch Stadium, so I don't know how it won. Maybe if I was the owner of the Millennium Hotel, which is that big round building in the center of this photo's focus, I'd be pleased. Or maybe I wouldn't be, since it closed in 2014. There's a sliver of the Arch, some opposing players (Dodgers), and a good clear view of the stadium's lesser dot-matrix style scoreboard, with a welcome message for a random group performing the national anthem that day. Maybe the photo started off better and was cropped oddly to fit on a vertical card, but the result just looks like something anyone could have taken from that seat.

That was a rather negative rant, but the card just hit me funny and it feels good to get out the poison pen now and then. Let's end with something happy.

Close enough.

Bowl Pick 'Em Contest Winnings, Part XXI

College football will be here again before we know it IS HERE, 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 IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII XIII XIV XV XVI XVII XVIII XIX XX

Today's post is all John Mabry, a guy who my dad always seemed to call John Mayberry. I was surprised to learn later in life that was the name of an actual player, too. But I don't think he was confusing them, he just got the name wrong.

1995 Fleer #502 John Mabry
1995 Fleer Ultra #432 John Mabry
1995 Pinnacle #151 John Mabry
1995 Upper Deck Collector's Choice #21 John Mabry
1996 Donruss #253 John Mabry
1996 Leaf #197 John Mabry
1996 Score #293 John Mabry
1996 Topps Stadium Club #46 John Mabry

I think every one of these Mabry cards was on my wantlist, so these were probably a purposeful inclusion rather than random collection of Cardinals duplicates. It's always nice to knock a few cards off my gigantic list.

1997 Metal Universe #233 John Mabry
1997 Topps #102 John Mabry
1997 Upper Deck #163 John Mabry

This is the first 1997 Metal Universe card I've ever posted, though I do have about 20 in my collection. It was certainly flashy compared to the Topps and Upper Deck of its era, though I think that Upper Deck design has aged pretty well and would still be a viable design in the current day.

Zistle Trade #26, Part I

In my neverending quest for more Cardinals, I made another Zistle trade that knocked some out from multiple sets. I'm still a long way from even finishing base cards from common sets, partially because I want cards like Will Clark on the Giants, Todd Worrell on the Dodgers, and John Mabry with the Rockies.

1990 Fleer #54 Will Clark
1998 Score #128 Todd Worrell
2007 Topps Opening Day #214 Fredbird
2007 Upper Deck #675 John Mabry
2008 Upper Deck First Edition #53 Troy Percival
2010 Topps - Turkey Red #TR34 David Wright
2010 Topps - Turkey Red #TR57 Jimmie Foxx

I also picked up two more 2010 Turkey Reds, and I still need 62 of 100 from Series 1 and 2, and 12 of 50 from Update.

1995 Fleer - All-Stars #2 Frank Thomas / Gregg Jefferies
2008 Upper Deck First Edition #54 Albert Pujols

I ran out of space to tag all the cards in one post, so the rest are in part 2, but luckily for ease of scanning I stuck both horizontal cards in the same post. I still remember when Gregg Jefferies came to the Cardinals. I was skeptical, but he made it to the All-Star game. It seems like his career peaked around that time though, and he never really turned into a superstar. Albert Pujols was a pretty good first baseman for the Cardinals, too.

Superbowl Winnings, Part 1

Remember that awful, lopsided game back in February? It won a contest for me at Collector's Crack, properly know as Almost the Easiest Superbowl Contest on the Web IV. Going into the game, I knew I had a decent chance of winning since I had chosen Seattle to win and Denver as their opponent, which no one else did. However, even if it had come to the 2nd and 3rd tiebreaker, I'd have done alright. I forecasted 50 total points in the game - which wound up 43-8 if you don't remember - missing the total by just 1. Or, as I prefer to think of it, I predicted everything except the fact that Denver would go for 2 on their TD when down by 30. I also went with 4 turnovers as the final tiebreaker, and hit that dead on.

It sounds a little like I'm bragging, so to be completely clear, I did use my projections to pick the the teams, but the points and turnovers were pretty much just guesses, and I got lucky. Better lucky than good, some say.

Let's see the prizes!

1998 Finest - Refractors
#127 John Mabry

Look at that shimmering Refractor, still protected - and blurred - by Topps Finest protective coating. I've said it before, one day I'm going on a peeling rampage, and freeing most of my Topps Finest cards for the first time.

2004 Donruss Classics
National Trading Card Day
#DP-1 Albert Pujols

Here's the second card in a row I thought was a base card at first, but turned out to be a parallel. The Donruss Classics set included a parallel with the National Trading Card Day logo.

2011 Topps Chrome
#32 Yadier Molina
#141 Lance Berkman
#150 Albert Pujols

Shiny shiny Chrome. I'm surprised I didn't have any Cardinals from the set yet. I'll be adding the others to my want list now.

2008 Allen & Ginter - Mini A&G Backs
#44 Adam Wainwright
#88 Troy Glaus
2010 Allen & Ginter - Mini Black Border
#51 Matt Holliday

And I'll close it with some Allen and Ginter minis. That's a lot of white space on the horizontal Adam Wainwright card. He's in a very vertical pose for a horizontal card, so I kind of wonder why Topps did that. Also, both of the 2008s are Allen and Ginter backs.


I'd keep going, but I like to tag my posts with all the sets and Cardinal players pictured, and I'm at the limit. There's more good stuff left for tomorrow, though.

All-Star Winnings, Part 8

Way back in July 2012, I won a contest at Cards On Cards. The premise was to pick the Cardinals player who would have the biggest impact on the game, determined Sabermetrically. I picked the right player, and got a pile of Cardinals for my trouble. They've been sitting in that same pile, haunting me, for quite some time, so now is the time to show them to you.
Part [ I | II | III | IV | V | VI | VII ]

1989 Fleer #652 Ken Hill/Dennis Cook

1989 Score Rookie/Traded #98T Ken Hill
1995 SP #100 Ozzie Smith
1995 SP #102 Ken Hill

Ken Hill was traded for Andres Galarraga before I started paying attention to baseball, but he returned for a bit in 1995, before being traded again for David Bell among others. And since I had 2 cards from the 1995 SP set, there's a certain All-Star shortstop in the middle of that scan.

1994 Post #28 Gregg Jefferies
1994 Stadium Club #531 Gregg Jefferies
1995 Collector's Choice Special Edition #80 Gregg Jefferies

Gregg Jefferies was the player I most associated with #25 before Mark McGwire arrived, although, David Bell and 2 others each wore it for a bit in 1995.

2005 Fleer Tradition #62 John Mabry

Speaking of 1995, this card is from Mabry's third stint with the Cardinals, but the first started way back in 1995, under Joe Torre. John always seemed like a solid and reliable player, although he didn't excel in any one area. Now, he's the Cardinals' hitting coach, after a year as Mark McGwire's assistant.