First, Karim Garcia was Baseball America’s seventh-overall prospect. Then, he played on at least 11 different teams in at least four different countries. Then he hit a single in the bottom of the eighth inning of his team (Obregon’s) Caribbean Series game against Puerto Rican club Mayaguez, and currently resides at first base on a baseball diamond in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
There will likely be no epic poems written about the encounter between right-handed submariner Ben Grezlovski (of Puerto Rican League club Mayaguez) and Mexican Pacific League club Obregon’s shortstop Jesus Lopez — an encounter which, if you don’t already know, ended with a double by Lopez — but there will be a blog post written about it. This one, actually. Because baseball in early February is notable, jerks.
Analysts will tell you that Glenn Braggs was a decent, if not particularly great, ballplayer, worth 7.7 WAR over 2609 major-league plate appearances. Scouts — like, if you went back to 1983 or whatever — scouts would tell you that they thought highly of Braggs’ tools and physique. The present author would speak highly of Braggs’ coiffure and note that, while one wouldn’t necessarily set one’s watch to such a haircut, one could certainly admire it as a product of design and industry.
All of us, however, would be forced to agree that, Glenn Braggs broke an effing bat across his own muscled back and then recounted the salient details of that episode for Mike Sola and Mike Sola’s mustache.
Literally zero people have ever asked me how they, too, might one day become a superstar of the baseball blogging community.
But for anyone who has ever even wondered it — like, just for second, while peeing in a disgusting men’s bathroom somewhere — the answer is this: make a Shepard Fairey-esque print inspired by the words from Boston Globe sportswriter Peter Abraham’s most recent tweet.
Yesterday, in these pages, I wrote about baseball’s rogue card set: 2010 Upper Deck. While interesting to me — and perhaps to, like, three readers — there are some decided gaps in my understanding of The Hobby. I asked Chris Harris of Stale Gum to help fill in said gaps, and he was nice enough to answer my dumb questions.
Q. Upper Deck released only Series 1, yes? Did they release ALL of Series 1? Baseball Card Pedia reports that Wave 2 wasn’t released. Is that different than Series 2?
Chris Harris: To answer your question: Yes and no. 2010 Upper Deck Series One Wave 2, was to have included all 600 cards of the regular Series One set PLUS an additional fifty cards (cards 601-650). It was then expected that UD would release Series Two later that year, but never did. The reasons why Wave 2 and Series Two were not released are explained in the BCP article. (I wrote it.)
Q. What sort of cards get distributed in Series 2 of a set usually? Is it the case that, if I buy a Series 2 pack, there will there be NO Series 1 cards?
CH: Generally, Series One is released before the season while Series Two around the All-Star break. 2012 Topps Series One, for example, is being issued this week. Series Two cards usually contain those players who changed teams in the off-season and rookies who made the opening day roster, as well as other players not included in Series One.
S1 packs will yield exclusively S1 cards, and S2 packs S2 cards.
Q. Are the 2010 UD cards likely to be more valuable than cards from other sets?
CH: Not necessarily.
Q. What’s the difference between a Retail and a Hobby box? How do I know which is which?
CH: Retail packs are sold at mass-market outlets (i.e. Target, Wal-Mart, and the like) and Hobby packs at baseball card shops. The base cards are the same, but the inserts are different and/or seeded at different rates. Usually the pack/box will have in small type either “HOBBY” or “RETAIL.”
It’s been the custom in the last half-century or so for critics to ask expressly — and artists, obliquely, through their work — to ask, “What is art?”
I think we can all agree that this photo portrait of relief pitcher Craig Kimbrel, courtesy the Atlanta Braves official Twitter feed, answers the question decisively.
My greatest acquisition from this past weekend’s trip (alongside the internet’s Common Man) to TwinsFest in Minneapolis was not, if you can believe it, the baseball which now bears the authographs of (both!) Chris Herrmann and Alex Wimmers, nor the memory of a brief, but spirited, exchange with the very bad J.R. Richard. Rather, it was an introduction to the oddity that is the 2010 edition of Upper Deck baseball cards.
Apart from the autograph stations, the main attraction of TwinsFest is the copious amounts of baseball-related memorabilia being sold by the only slightly less copious number of baseball-memorabilia vendors. The Common Man has already documented his inability to restrain himself wherein the coveting of baseball cards is concerned. For the present author, however, the event represented the first time I’d thought of baseball cards at any length since probably 1992.
As I was unafraid to note at the main site today, Detroit Tiger Andy Dirks and all the other Leones of Escogido will represent the Dominican in the upcoming Caribbean Series in Santo Domingo.
The abovely embedded is the aforementioned gringo Dirks ganador-ing the hell out of the game on behalf of Escogido. Because my Spanish is poor, I can’t relate precisely what the commentator is saying — although, I’m pretty sure it includes five Our Fathers and a Hail Mary.
Skip to the 3:07 mark or thereabouts for a replay of Dirks’ heroics and reaction to same. The tingle in your loins means it’s working.
Among the things that are always funny — along with taking your pants off at an area H&R Block location and then, later that same day, taking your pants off again at an area Jackson Hewitt location — is when somebody asks the Atlanta Journal Constitution’s David O’Brien about the Braves bench but misspells the word shot and then David O’Brien answers the question anyway and then a blogger notices it and takes a screen cap of it and writes a post all about it and then cries because his life is just a husk of a life.
These are they — i.e. the eight people you meet at TwinsFest.
Just keeping everyone informed.
