When They Were Young - Ryan Zimmerman

My inspiration...

Inspiration image lifted from the Night Owl Cards blog.

Contest Winnings - bigD Custom Card

bigD hosted a contest some time back. For some reason or another I was chosen. Karma, fate, payola, whatever. I had seen his work on other sites and was jealous. I wanted one.

Now I've got one. I asked for an Orel Hershiser. If I had won all four slots (it was possible, but improbable) I asked for four OH's, one for each of the Major League teams that he played for.

I'm not sure when this photo was taken. It was a standard shot of one of the dominant pitchers of the late 1980s. Big stretch and zing. Good placement. Try to score off of that one. Hah.

I am a Winner!

In eighth grade art class, Mr. Moran told us that we shouldn't mix fonts. Forget him. This works. Wonderfully.

Thanks a lot, bigD. This will fit in nicely with my collection.

Milestone Contest Winners announced

So, after eight entries and a weekend full of fun, I've decided to select the winner and toss the others into the randomizer to see who wins.

The rules were rather simple. Comment on one of my posts that made you smile. I would choose which one I liked the best.

Let's review...

• Night Owl liked four of my posts. Suck up. Beethoven, Debus, Dynamite, and Knoxville card show dealers.
• FanOfReds liked my post where I declared him the Gint-A-Cuffs winner.
• Core Contrarian liked my post where I climbed up on a soapbox.
• thesewingmachineguy liked the post where I talked about Jethro Tull.
• Baseball Dad liked the posts where I linked back to old card info. He didn't give a specific entry, but I'll point toward this one. Probably not the one he was thinking of, but too bad.
• BA Benny liked the post about Buck O'Neill and the happiest moment of his life.
• Play at the Plate liked two posts. One about Pimping Myself and the other was about Luke Sommer.
• McCann Can Triple liked my post about The Portraits of Derek Sanderson.

After reviewing the choices submitted, I decided to toss out Greg's entry. You don't get to be honored and have a chance to win. Besides, I've already got a small stack of cards waiting to go out to him.

That leaves seven entries. Out of these seven, I'll have to go with the Core Contrarian for picking the post that I liked the best. The Soapbox post, to me, stands up even though it was a year ago that I posted it. I like that one a lot.

When I made the rules, I said that the winner would get a Strat-O-Matic computer game for Windows. I have no clue what type of computer Mr. Contrarian uses. If he'd like a board game version of that, I can accommodate him. Being the winner, if he'd like to opt for the books or the cards, I will also allow that.

Now, on to the remaining six entries...

1. FanOfReds
2. thesewingmachineguy
3. Baseball Dad
4. BA Benny
5. Play at the Plate
6. McCann Can Triple

I'll pop the numbers into the Randomizer.org's Research Randomizer and tell it to shuffle them three times. The second and third place winners will be the first two numbers in the third set (p13 and p14).

And our consolation winners are:

McCann Can Triple and FanOfReds. I'll be emailing the winners to verify their addresses and prize selection.

Thanks all for playing. Next up will be my five favorite blog entries.

No, I don't think that I get to win anything.

Dale Alexander - As a Buff

A few months ago I wrote about some players that attended Milligan College. One of them was Dale Alexander. I purchased a 1933 Goudey Dale Alexander card on ebay, then had some doubts about the authenticity of the card.

Thanks to the help that I got I have decided that the card that I purchased is authentic.

I finally got around to making a card for Dale from his playing days at Milligan. Milligan College's mascot is the Buffalo. They are affectionately called "The Buffs."

Credits:

Dale Alexander Photo: Milligan College Buffalo, 1924. Archives and Special Collections, P. H. Welshimer Memorial Library, Milligan College. (Thanks to Meredith Sommers - Information Resources Librarian/College Archivist for the scanned images.)

Border: FromOldBooks.org

Buffalo Clipart: fotosearch.com

Contest Ends Today

Yep, the contest ends today. Don't forget to enter.

I Play With Dolls - Part Deux

Several months ago I sought guidance from the blogosphere. I finally got around to freeing my Orel Hershiser Starting Lineup figure. And the cards that were encased.

There aren't really any numbers for these cards. The stock is thin and flimsy. 20 years of being trapped in plastic didn't protect them well. They are curled and a bit worn.





Just for kicks, here's the back of the packaging. Big old checklist.

My work here is done.

1993 Upper Deck Virtual cards

Every so often you hear people say, "My mom threw out my cards." Topps even has an insert set devoted to the topic this year. I'm different. My mom saved my cards. I didn't have that many, but she didn't toss them. In fact, she's been known to add to my collection. She knows that I, like my father, will try and hold on to every scrap of everything that we can. Newspapers. Books. Articles clipped from newspapers. Postcards. Programs. Photos. I think that it is genetic.

A few years back she gave to me a CD that came from a box of cereal. Post brand. I finally got around to opening it. It was a 1993 Upper Deck virtual set of trading cards. I got the NL Central disc.

Pop it in the laptop and it wants to install the RealOne player. I don't think so.

I also had the option to install AOL and get over a thousand hours for free. Again, I'll pass.


Hovering the mouse over a section of the screen opened it up.


Voila. It is disc 5. With the NL Central having 6 teams, I got a bonus card. If I got all 31 virtual trading cards I could receive the actual card set from Upper Deck. I would have had to fork over $4.99 though.


I selected Prince Albert to view.


He is larger. For clarity, I've snapped and snipped just the card images for all six players. Enjoy.









You can still find these on ebay. For now, I think that I'll just stick to the FIFA Panini virtual sticker album.

Thanks, Mom.