Actual Cardinals Content

Sifting through some Cardinals ephemera.

Longtime fellow blogger Adam from Thoughts and Sox contacted me this past spring about some Cardinals stuff he had accumulated over the years. Needless to say, I was intrigued. There have been a number of still-active (or reactivated) blogger types from the baseball card community that I haven't traded with since I moved a couple of years ago, so it's always great to hear from someone who is still around and doing this weird thing.

The package was full of a bunch of very interesting Cardinals items, none of which appears to be cataloged in online databases like TCDB. There always seems to be a bit of fuzzy logic to what can be considered acceptable for TCDB vs. things they won't handle, but in any case I will find some good spots in my binders for these intriguing items.

First up is a stack of cards from the premiere edition of the APBA Major League Baseball Stats & Strategy Game. This looks to be a fully licensed product, with both MLB and Players Association logos on the back. There are no player photos on these, which separates them from other TCG-style baseball card sets that have been produced over the years.

This won't be the first time I'm saying this with this trade package, but these remind me a little bit of the old Strat-o-Matic game I had in the late '80s.

I may not be able to translate those numbers into something meaningful without proper context, but at least I'm learning about player nicknames I had never heard of before, like Ricky "Face" Bottalico.

Based on the numbers, I'm guessing this game had a dice roll mechanism to its game play. I'm thinking two dice are rolled, with each die account for one of the two numbers in black? I see snake eyes at the top! (I could probably just look up the rules online somewhere.)

Each card back looks identical and has some weird fake image of a Texas Rangers player.

These also came with a team logo header card that is of a slightly larger size.

Continuing on with the stat-based board (?) game thing are these stat cards from the 1955 Cardinals. The printing looks far more modern than that, and reminds me even more of a Strat-o-Matic type thing.

Here's a look at the back of Willard Schmidt's card, which includes actual stats from his 1955 season.

1955 was Ken Boyer's rookie season.

There are some differences between the pitcher cards and the batter cards, as you would expect for a game like this.

The next bunch of cards comes from a game with a 1975 copyright from Replay Games Inc. These are also, interestingly enough, based around the Cardinals 1955 season. It was not a good season! They finished 7th in the NL that year out of 8 teams.

The batter cards are significantly shorter than the pitcher cards as they are closer to a standard playing card size.

The backs all seem to have this retro-looking design. I couldn't find much info about these games, but I did find an eBay auction for the 1961 Kansas City Athletics which comes in a paper sleeve similar to how I found these in.

But wait... there's more! One of the coolest thing about this package was the inclusion of a dozen signed postcards and photos. They're mostly of lesser known players, but are very cool nonetheless. The majority of these appear to be photo paper glued to a thicker cardboard backing, but I am just speculating.

The backs mainly look like this, like something a custom card maker might have come up with. I only scanned a few of these, but can show off more in the future if there's interest.

Marty Marion's signature appears on what appears to be regular photo paper.

Big thanks once again to Thoughts and Sox on this very fun and intriguing pack of Cardinals history!

Good Luck Ducks, Week 8: Grrrr

Oregon looks to bounce back on the east coast.

It was a rough one last week as the Ducks saw a number of winning streaks snapped as they fell to the Indiana Hoosiers. I'm probably going to sound like a jerk when I say this, although it's not me who has to worry about giving credit where it's due: I thought Oregon played pretty poorly last week. It's not that I don't think Indiana has a talented team, but I thought that game was more about the Ducks losing focus after a week off than it was about the Hoosiers beating them. Fortunately, we live in a new era where one loss doesn't have to tank your whole season.

Next up on the docket is an appointment with the Rutgers Scarlet Knights. This is just Oregon's second season of having to cross over several time zones to play some of the conference schedule, so it's probably not something they're fully used to yet. Do schools with ridiculously large football budgets fly on commercial jets? Do they fly coach? There's, like, one hundred guys on these rosters. How do they fit them all on the plane? I know that not every player travels to road games, especially those that weren't planning to suit up.

It's a homecoming (already?!) game for Rutgers, who are also planning a light show before kickoff. Spoooooky. The Scarlet Knights have not beaten a ranked team in almost sixteen years, but they'll be led by a ground attack by Antwan Raymond, who has racked up 560 yards at the midpoint of the regular season. The Ducks run the ball quite a bit as well, but they tend to spread the ball around to a lot of different players.

Notes and miscellany: 

• Rutgers joined the Big Ten a little over a decade ago, but if I had to name all eighteen teams in the conference now, I'd probably struggle to fill out the complete list and could see them being left off. Well... maybe not if you asked me today!
• Opponent fun fact: The Scarlet Knights did inspire the naming of a robotic submersible that once crossed the Atlantic Ocean.
• Opponent history: This is the first ever football meeting between these schools. Oregon did beat Rutgers on the basketball court earlier this year in their first matchup in nearly 40 years.
• Game time is 3:30 PM PDT on the B1G Network in Piscataway. Go Ducks!

Free Stuff Friday: Unlicensed Bootleg Realm

More free stuff for you, if you dare!

On offer today are some truly bizarre cards that come from the realm of unlicensed card manufacturers that sell on Amazon/overseas. I honestly couldn't tell you much about these cards other than that they were purchased on the big stupid site and they appear to be Japanese in origin (or at least the "manufacturer" seems to be.) I wrote a little bit about these cards in a previous PWE recap. These will be sent out along with anything else claimed in last month's Free Stuff in the next week or so.

The cards are all trading card shaped (standard sized, rounded borders and very thin) and have various background patterns. The primary theme is gold, GOLD, G-O-L-D.

All of the backs look like this, although I've seen a few listings on eBay with different background patterns but similar player selection.

There are a bunch of bizarre player/team identification issues in the set. I'm offering up the leftovers of stuff I didn't already sneakily insert into trade envelopes over the past year or two. I also recently purchased a similar NBA set which disappointingly only had a couple of egregious errors. If there's any interest there, I could also put some of those up grabs on a future Friday.

CLAIMED: Harper, Arraez, Kluber, Swanson, Glasnow

As always, click to embiggen. Dansby Swanson gets the full name treatment here.

CLAIMED: Stargell, Melky, Bryant, Kiermaier

Here's a good example of some of the strange player selection. Stars, HOFers and journeyman relievers.

CLAIMED: Acuña, Horner, Chisholm

Here's the first two two Acuña cards along with a reverse Bob Horner.

CLAIMED: Swanson

Dansby reappears without his legal first name and in a different uniform. We also get everyone's favorite "Alexander Emmanuel" and Acuña #2.

Good Luck Ducks, Week 7: Indy Vibes

Oregon is back on their home turf in another Top Ten battle.

The Ducks are coming off of a much needed bye week today, but the goal ahead of them isn't much different from the huge Penn State obstacle that they overcame a couple of weeks ago. Yes, it's another meeting of Top Ten Teams (TTT!) The Big Ten schedule does not offer much in the way of a reprieve, but at least Oregon will be on their familiar home turf in the Willamette Valley today. We're already nearing the midpoint of the college football schedule and yet it still feels like we're in the learning process of what this year's Ducks squad is all about.

The Fighting Ducks acquitted themselves well against Penn State, despite losing their lead and having to squeak out an epic win in overtime. I think it was an excellent experience for Dante Moore, who had never been elevated to that kind of stage in his career previously. The big win was somewhat tempered by last week's debacle where Penn State ended up losing again to UCLA in shocking fashion. (These days, it's shocking when UCLA beats anyone!) However, nothing can really take away from a big road win against a top tier program.

So what's up with Indiana? They're... really good? Are they a football school now? After rolling through the B1G gauntlet with an 11-2 record and a College Football Playoff berth (wow!) last year, they've mostly steamrolled their way through their early schedule this season, aside from squeaking by Iowa on the road a couple of weeks back. They're also coming off of a bye week themselves, neutralizing the advantage Oregon might have had. It's shaping up to be another huge challenge, but fortunately it'll be on friendly turf.

Notes and miscellany:

• At one point, I could have sworn that Oregon played Indiana last season, but it appears that I confused my I-states when I realized that they actually played Illinois. At some point I'm going to get a handle on this Big Ten thing, but with eighteen teams in the conference, it's going to take awhile to breed familiarity. (You know, familiarity breeds contempt, but... well, anyway.)
• Opponent fun fact: The most familiar Hoosier football alum names to me are Antwaan Randle El and Trent Green. The former was a big deal during a pocket of time where I was paying a lot of attention to the NFL (the early Andy Reid Eagles years) and the latter was a bit of a journeyman QB who was famously tossed aside in St. Louis for a former Arena League and NFL Europe vet named Kurt Warner after going down with an ACL tear in the preseason.
• Opponent history: Oregon is 2-1 all-time against Indiana, but they haven't faced each other since 2004 when the Hoosiers topped the Ducks to start a rough season for the green and yellow.
• Game time is 12:30 PM PDT on CBS in Eugene. Go Ducks!

Good Luck Ducks, Week 5: White on White

Oregon faces their biggest road test in years.

It's back to conference play for the rest of the season as the Ducks head to Beaver Stadium to take on the Penn State Nittany Lions. Oregon played very well in the B1G Championship Game last season when they took down Penn State at a neutral site that was pretty tilted towards the team in white. That was last year's Ducks, however. I'm not sure that any of the games they have played so far this season have done much to prepare them for tonight's battle, as Oregon State served no purpose other than as a punching bag after their opening touchdown. The Northwestern crowd was certainly hostile, but small. Very small, in fact. There will something like nine times the number of people in attendance tonight.

Oregon may be getting their starting running back Noah Whittington back tonight after he missed the past two games with an injury. The Ducks have had carries from 7 different running backs (and a number of non-running backs, of course), but I'd expect them to pair their rotation down to just a few key players in such a huge game. Dante Moore has been excellent, throwing darts all over the field, but we'll see how he reacts to a wild "white out" megacrowd tonight. The odd thing about the whole "white out" concept is that it's generally the opponent that is wearing white.

Penn State has an experienced senior quarterback in Drew Allar, who threw 3 TDs (and two picks) against the Ducks last December. I imagine Allar has had this game circled on his calendar for quite awhile now. (To be fair, do any college students have paper calendars on their walls? Maybe he set a calendar reminder on his phone: "Beat the Ducks today.") While the current college football playoff format affords strong teams a loss or two against another strong team without completely removing said team from consideration, I doubt anyone on either side is thinking about anything other than winning this big game tonight. Well, and maybe the party tonight. Oh, the college parties.

Notes and miscellany:

• There's a good chance I'll be missing a large chunk of the second half of the game as I'm heading down to Providence Park later to watch the Portland Timbers play FC Dallas. I'll try to keep up with things on my phone, but you know how that goes.
• Opponent fun fact: A "nittany lion" isn't a real thing. Penn State's mascot was named after nearby Mount Nittany and the idea that mountain lions once roamed the area, supposedly. Of course, "seahawks" also aren't really a thing. Ducks, though? VERY REAL (and ferocious.)
• Opponent history: Penn State holds a 3-2 edge after their loss in the conference championship last season. The only other meeting in my lifetime happened in the Rose Bowl in 1995, where Gang Green was stymied by Ki-Jana Carter.
• Game time is 4:30 PM PDT on NBC in University Park. Go Ducks!

Free Stuff Friday: Damaged Goods 2025

It's giveaway time!

I have a bunch of cards sitting on my desk that I don't know what to do with. That's where you come in. These cards for the most part all have a flaw, but none are really what I would consider "trashed". A good chunk of these were dime box pickups at card shows over the past year where upon closer examination at home, I saw something that gave me pause about listing it for trade on TCDB. Others came out of the package in the state they're in. Most of these just have a small corner issue, but if you'd like more info about any specific card, let me know. Click an image to embiggen and all that.

[CLAIMED: Palmer, Batista, Fisk, Sutter]

These are free to anyone who is interested. I'm not looking for anything in return. I do love getting cards in the mail, but it's up to you if you'd like to send me something I might be interested in. You can always "pay it forward", as they say. (Do they still say that?) There's no limit to number of cards you can claim. Comment here, or send me an email, or reach out to me on Discord or Bluesky to claim something and I'll take into consideration timestamps and all that. I know that commenting on Blogger platforms can be a bit of a pain these days (seems to only work on Chrome browsers for most folks), so anonymous comments are also fine as long as you identify yourself in a way that allows me to get in touch with you somehow.

[CLAIMED: Alomar/Thomas, Magic, McGwire]

I actually bought an entire blaster of cheesy unlicensed college football cards that had corner damage. Fun.

[CLAIMED: Kaat, Williams, Simms, Komminsk]

[CLAIMED: LaForest, Olajuwon, Here's Bo (x2), Ripken]

The McGwire PowerDeck CD thing is cracked, so don't bother trying to watch it on your 1990's PC.

[CLAIMED: ALL but Holliday]

The Collect-A-Books are all fine if you ask me. I just don't know what a "mint" one actually would look like.

[CLAIMED: Bregman, Stanton, Piazza, Verlander, Castro, Castro, Kluber]

[CLAIMED: Freeman, Jackson, Tudor, Templeton]

[CLAIMED: Ott]

[CLAIMED: Doval, Herr, Delhanty, Rolen]

Who among us doesn't need some Cardinals fingernail stickers?

This is one of those "Super Box" box topper things that are almost impossible to keep in pristine shape because they just chuck them into the box unprotected.

This is a 1985 Topps Super card.

I actually have a bunch more of these that are in great shape if you're looking for a certain one from this 1985 Donruss Action All-Stars set.

Good Luck Ducks, Week 4: No Joy

Ducks and Beavers and point spreads, oh my!

I take no joy in the demise of the Oregon State football program, and while the Big Ten has looked like a good fit for the Ducks, it's kind of ridiculous that this latest round of conference switch-a-roos was all kicked off by the LA schools of the (old) Pac-12. UCLA finds themselves in a similar situation as the Beavers, sputtering and leaking everywhere, while USC is competent but hasn't really been a contender in 20 years. As the saying goes, you can't really put the toothpaste back in the tube here. I always keep an eye on Oregon State games, at least when my team isn't playing, and the rivalry isn't much of a rivalry when the two programs aren't really even competing at the same level. The series, now relegated to the September nonconference window, will take a pause next season for the first time in my lifetime, but there are plans to resume in 2027 for at least six more years.

Oregon was without their starting running back (Noah Whittington) against Northwestern but still dominated the game before a messy final quarter played mostly by the deep bench. Dante Moore threw some more really impressive balls as the excitement continues to grow for the young QB. It was a weird game all in all, played in front of a capacity crowd only about a fifth the size of their home stadium (and a mere drop in the bucket compared to what they'll face next week.) The Ducks committed zero penalties, the first time that has occurred in one of their games in decades -- no one can seem to even agree in exactly how long ago it last happened. The goal today in what should be their final "tune-up" game is to respect their opponent and not look past them to a lingering Penn State brawl just seven days away.

Oregon State has their work cut out for them, of course, but they've already been facing calls for the head coach's... well... head. Transfer QB Maalik Murphy has struggled along with nearly every other cog in the Beaver machine. And without the (horrible) chainsaw sounds buzzing through the PA in Corvallis that always seem to get under Oregon's skin (or at least mine) when they meet on Beaver turf, it could be a challenge just to stay within striking distance at halftime. On the other hand, well, goofy things sometimes happen in college football.

Notes and miscellany: 

• People are talking about the Platypus Trophy again, which is awarded to the winner of the Civil War (though we're not supposed to call it that anymore.) While it's supposed to resemble the places in animal kingdom(?) where Beaver and Duck, uh, meet, it kind of looks like one of those horrors people discover in the deep sea rather than an actual duck-billed platypus.
• Opponent fun fact: OSU was at one time known as Oregon Agricultural College (and later Oregon State Agricultural College to be technical), when the Aggies would commonly clash with those pesky Webfoots in games year after year that no one could watch unless they actually attended them. Is a duck a natural enemy to someone, I don't know... plowing the fields? Want another fun fact? Autzen Stadium is host to Rich Brooks Field, named as such in 1995 when the former Oregon head coach made the jump to the NFL. Brooks is famously a Beaver alum, though. Awkward...
• Opponent history: Oregon holds a decisive 69-49-10 lead in the all-time series and has won the last two meetings.
• Game time is 12:00 PM PDT on the B1G Network in Eugene. Go Ducks!