Insert Madness - Part 2

More of the insert cards I acquired from the card shop last week. I was searching mainly the Rangers, White Sox and Dodgers.


1995 Zenith All-Star Salute #17 Frank ThomasI mentioned in the last post that I have a pretty good memory for the insert cards I have and that of the 15 cards I bought, I only already had one of them. This is that one. I already had 4 cards from this set. The 18-card set was inserted at 1:6. Although I like Frank I really don't need this card. Steve G., if you're interested let me know and it's yours.

1998 Donruss Elite Aspirations #2 Frank Thomas
This set is parallel to Donruss Elite. The card features a foil background (that doesn't look too good in the scan) and die-cut sides and front. The cards were limited to 750 sets but they are not serial numbered.

2000 Fleer Tradition Hall's Well #6 Frank Thomas
These cards have rounded corners and are foil printed on clear acetate. The card didn't scan well and isn't really very attractive. Someday I may do an entire post on clear plastic cards. In addition to being unattractive, this set has a difficult name. Hall's Well? The 15-card set was inserted at a rate of 1:30.

2000 SP Authentic Midsummer Classics #10 Frank Thomas
What can I say? I like Frank Thomas and there were a lot of his cards in the box. This was a 10-card set, inserted at a rate of 1:12. The card features gold foil printing and a low-gloss refractive finish. The back features a sepia-toned photo of the player along with notes on the player's All-Star Game appearances.

2000 Ultra Swing Kings #3 Frank Thomas
Another clear plastic card. This was a 10-card set inserted in Ultra at a rate of 1:24. On the back it says, "What can a pitcher do with you, Frank? If it's an inch outside, you're disciplined enough not to swing. And we've all seen how you treat pitches in the strike zone. Ouch!"

2001 Donruss Stat Line Season #106 Eric Karros
These were a parallel to the regular Donruss cards but with a heavy refractive gloss, similar to a Topps Chrome Refractor card. On the back, some stat by the player from the previous year is featured and the card is serial numbered to that stat. Karros had 146 hits in 1999, so this card is serial numbered to 146.

Insert Madness - Part 1

Last week on the way home from work I stopped in at the card shop to buy some Topps Series 2 and some Bowman. No luck on the Bowman but I did score some Topps. I always look through his random insert box while I'm there. I have a pretty good memory for what inserts I already own and of the 15 cards I bought, I only already had one of them. The shop arranges the cards by team and I mainly searched the Rangers, Dodgers and White Sox.

1995 Ultra Hitting Machines #10This 10-card set was inserted in 1995 Ultra Series 2 at a rate of 1:288. The owner usually prices his inserts at near Beckett value and then sells them for half price. He missed on this one. This card books at $15, and he had it marked at $0.75. It's a nice looking card with gold foil printing.

1997 Leaf Dressed for Success #13 Juan Gonzalez
This set is serial numbered to 3500. It is textured on the front to feel like cloth. It features a large, full bleed photo on the back. There were 18 cards in the set.

1997 Pacific Card-Supials #19 Juan Gonzalez
Pacific had a lot of strange ideas in the late 1990's but I think this is one of the strangest. The card itself, in addition to the full bleed printing, has an impressive amount of gold foil. On the back (and this is the strange part), is a pouch into which a mini card of an entirely different player is inserted.
There are 39 full sized and 39 mini cards. The checklists for the large and mini cards are the same. Apparently the mini cards for each player feature the same photo as the player's large card. There was also a Card-Supial insert in the Pacific set issued in 2000.

1997 Pacific Fireworks Die-Cuts
This colorful 20-card set was inserted in Pacific at 1:7 packs. It features a textured colored foil background. The top and upper edges are die cut. The horizontal back features another full bleed photo plus some player information.

1997 Ultra Double Trouble #10 Juan Gonzalez/Will Clard
A 20-card set inserted in Ultra Series 1 at 1:4.

Book Club - The Kennedy Assassination 24 Hours After

I was 12 years old when John Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963. Like many of my generation, I remember exactly where I was when I heard the news. I've not read extensively about the event so when I saw this book in my local library I decided to give it a read. Especially since it seemed to offer a different slant, focusing more on Johnson than the actual event.I've become kind of a political junkie over the past 10 years or so, so what attracted me to this book was it's explanation of the politics involved immediately after the shooting. Johnson had been put on the Democratic ticket in order to balance the Eastern liberal John Kennedy. He was not well liked by the Kennedy people and was pretty much kept isolated during the Kennedy presidency. This, of course, is not that different from most vice-presidents (with the possible exception og Dick Chaney). Johnson, who had been Senate majority leader in the Senate, and therefore used to wielding political power, found himself with little to do as vice-president. He had no power at all. On the morning of November 22, 1963, he pretty much figured that his political career was over. It was not a sure bet that he'd be on the ticket come November 1964.

Within a day he found himself to be the most powerful man in the country, if not the world. Much of this book concerns Johnson's realization of that and how concerned he was that he both show the country that he was in charge, that the government would continue and trying to avoid the image (fostered apparently by Kennedy's staff) that he was a power-mad usurper. Robert Kennedy in particular disliked and distrusted Johnson.

Johnson went on to enact much of Kennedy's liberal social agenda, even going beyond Kennedy in some areas. He also was the president who got us mired in Vietnam, who had to drop out of the 1968 presidential campaign because he was so unpopular. The author shows how these two sides of Johnson's presidency were present, in embryonic form, even on that first day.

Song of the Week - Sign of Love by Neil Young

My wife and I went to see Neil Young on his Twisted Road tour at Jones Hall in Houston on Friday night. It was a solo, but not all acoustic show. Bert Jansch, of long ago Pentangle fame was the opening act.The play list:

1. "My, My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)" from 1979's Rust Never Sleeps. He did this with acoustic guitar. It was a good performance although a little tentative to start. His voice sounded fine.

2. "Tell Me Why" from 1970's After The Gold Rush. A great song, also done acoustic.

3. "Helpless" from the 1970 CSNY album Deja Vu. Also acoustic. So far just really old stuff but the crowd was loving it.

4. "You Never Call". This is a new released piece done on the electric guitar. Kind of a playful song and I liked it.

4. "Peaceful Valley". Another new song on electric. Very good, with an ecological theme.

6. "Love and War". Another new song, this time on acoustic. I really liked this one. These three new songs are all available on YouTube from earlier dates in the tour. The quality isn't real great as they were probably filmed by somebody's cell phone.

7. "Down By The River" from 1969's Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. This as a rocking electric version that brought the house down. You may notice that I have this album in my blog banner. This is probably my first favorite Neil Young song.

8. "Hitchhiker", a new song done electric. I didn't care so much for this one.

9. "Ohio". A 1970 single. A classic CSNY song done electric. While this is still a powerful song to me, I wonder what the younger people (while there were a lot of old guys like me, a sizable portion of the audiance was probably not even born when the Kent State Massacre occurred) think of it.

10. "Sign of Love". Also new. Listen for yourself.



11. "Leia". A new song done on an upright piano. A nice little song about a baby delighting her parents.

12. "After the Gold Rush". Another from 1970's After the Gold Rush. He did this on a keyboard which may have been a calliope. Very haunting.

13. "I Believe in You", also from After the Gold Rush. Done on a grand piano.

14. "Rumblin'" Another electrified new song. It was hard to understand the lyrics on this one but the tune was good.

15. "Cortez The Killer", from 1975's Zuma. High energy electric and well done. It was different than other live versions I've heard. He is a master of the electric guitar and really showed it here.

16. "Cinnamon Girl" from Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. Another high powered electric number and another of my early favorites by him.

This was the last number of his regular set. He came back and did a 2-song encore.

17 "Old Man" from 1972's Harvest. He did this on the acoustic guitar. Another song I've always loved. It's ironic hearing him singing this now as, of course, he's pretty much an old man himself now.

18. "Walk With Me". Another electric new song. I would have preferred some I knew for the last song. I didn't like this all that much. I was hoping for "Like a Hurricane".

All in all, I really enjoyed the show. This is the third time I've seen him in concert. The last time was in 1988, an age ago. He has so much material, it must be difficult for him to pick a set. 8 of the songs were brand new, not released. I was pretty happy with 6 of them and hope to hear them on a record soon. Of the 10 old songs, all were prior to 1980. He did nothing from the vast middle of his career.

2003 Stadium Club Born in the USA

The last time I wrote about this set was May 2008. At that time I needed 7 cards to complete the set. I've been using eBay to do automatic searches for me. Finally, the last 3 cards I needed came up on auction. Not only that, the same seller had all three so I saved $4 0n shipping. I paid $4.15 (including shipping) for each. I've often said on the blog that I'm not generally a set collector but after I complete a set like this I can understand why many people are. It is not the first insert set I've completed but it is by far the largest insert set I've gone after. And it's the first relic set I've completed.


I was originally attracted to this set because of what I thought was the concept. There are 50 cards in the set so I thought there would be one player from each state. Wrong. But it was fun going after them all. In the end, 22 states were represented, with California far and away leading the pack. In case you're interested, here is the state breakdown:

CA (Klesko, Bret Boone, Edmonds, Jeromy Burnitz, Eric Chavez, Randy Johnson, Ventura, Travis Lee, Matt Williams, Fullmer, Garciaparra)
FL (Sheffield, Chipper Jones, Luis Gonzalez, Tino Martinez)
GA (Frank Thomas, Corey Patterson, Sean Burroughs, JD Drew)
IL (Thome, Floyd, Shawn Green, Rickey Henderson)
NY (Biggio, Aurilia, Alex Rodriguez
TX (Greg Maddux, Wood, Dunn)
AR (Burrell, AJ Burnett)
WA (Olerud, Toby Hall)
NC (Grace, Josh Hamilton)
PA (Eric Milton, Piazza)
KS (Damon, Tony Clark)
AL (Terrence Long, Willie Mays)
MA (Bagwell)
SC (Preston Wilson)
OH (Larkin)
CT (Mo Vaughn)
MI (Smoltz)
TN (Helton)
RI (Konerko)
IN (Rolen)
OR (Sexson)

Thursday Night at the Movies - Prince of Persia The Sands of Time

We've been seeing the trailers for this seemingly forever. It looked pretty incomprehensible but fun so we went to see it. As is the case for most summer blockbuster movies, this movie is pretty much review proof. You either like this sort of movie or you don't and even a review titled "The Prince of Pointless" as our local paper had it, isn't going to stop you. In case you're wondering, Thursday actually occurred on Tuesday this week.Besides, the movie has that dreamy Jake Gyllenhaal and the lovely Gemma Arterton. I've never heard of Arterton although apparently she was in Clash of the Titans which I wanted to see but couldn't convince anyone else in my family to see ("Release the kracken" is my favorite movie trailer quote of all time).

Prince was pretty entertaining even if much of it didn't make any sense. There is a lot of lovely photography, although I suspect most of it was actually CG. Certainly, no place like the Holy City actually exists.

The plot in a nutshell is this: boy attacks and conquers girl's city, boy get girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl, ostrich race, big snakes, boy loses girl, boy gets girl but then she dies. Boy, with the help of his evil uncle, unleashes the sands of time, bringing girl back to life (and incidentally undoing the entire movie) but girl doesn't remember boy, boy gets girl.

Here is my problem with the movie, and maybe this is actually a problem with any movie that is based on some other media (if you don't know you probably don't care, but this movie is based on a video game). There is no suspense in this movie, where you might expect there to be at least some. Anyone who knows the video game, knows (SPOILER ALERT) the king's brother (boy's uncle) is the bad guy. I never played the video game and I suspect there are a few people who haven't. The fact that the uncle is the bad guy is revealed in the trailer, however. Maybe I'm just cranky but I think this leads to bad film making. As the film progresses, there is absolutely no indication that the attack on the holy city was orchestrated by the uncle so he can get control of the magic dagger so he could turn back time and make himself king (instead of his wise brother). The uncle is revealed as the bad guy by a stunning leap of logic by Dustan (Gyllenhaal's character), a leap as stunning as the many leaps he makes over buildings, camels, and crumbling temples. Sorry, that's just lazy film making.

Next week we're going to see Killers even though it has Ashton Kutcher in it. It also has Katherine Heigl.

Triple Play Baseball Cards

Does anybody remember the Donruss produced sets in the mid-1990s called Triple Play? At this time there was some tentative attempts by the card companies to get kids more interested in collecting baseball cards. Adults (like me) had muscled into the hobby. The card companies, like tobacco companies, figured, if you got the kids early you had a customer for life. Topps had Topps Kids in 1992 and Upper Deck had Fun Pack in 1994. Donruss had 1992 Triple Play.The cards were pretty cheap to buy and featured graphics and other features that Donruss thought would appeal to kids. Late 1980s Donruss were known for their wacky backgrounds and 1992 Triple Play probably owes to that lineage. The red fading to sun bright yellow was certainly eye catching. Some of the photography was pretty good as well.
The set featured team mascots.
And cards with stars as kids. Do you recognize Cal Ripken, Jr.?
There was one insert set, the Gallery of Stars which was similar to the Diamond Kings inserts in the Donruss base set. Triple Play lasted for three years, but Donruss gave up on the outrageous graphics to produce this somber black bordered set in 1993.
They still had the mascots, the Little Hotshots and the Action Packed subsets but the thrill was gone. By 1994, Triple Play looked like any other full-bleed mid-1990s set. The subsets were gone and the set had 5-6 insert sets.
Did any of these kid-friendly cards turn any kids into life-long collectors? I doubt it. Kids that were in the target age at this time (lets say 8-12 year-olds), would be approaching their 30's today. Considering the state of the hobby today, I'd guess not many people of that age are collecting cards.

I'd be interested to know if anybody out there got turned onto collecting by Triple Play or Topps Kids or Upper Deck Fun Pack.