Turked By the Night Owl!

Re-reading it, that title sounds kinda weird, but trust me; there is nothing weird going on with me and the world renowned super blogger, the Night Owl. In fact, in this instance, Turk-ed is a good thing. I needed just one more card to finish off the World’s Biggest Hoaxes, Hoodwinks and Bamboozles subset from this year’s Allen and Ginter set and that card is “The Turk” and it is now in my possession, thanks to the aforementioned Night Owl. I am not going to show it here on this post however, I am going to post each and every card from this subset here tomorrow. I will show the filler cards that he sent along. There were 5 cards, all Devil Rays from the 1999 and 2000 and all of them are new to me. It is funny (to me at least) but last night, while I was sorting cards and making lists (as promised) for my player collections, I was discussing said collection with the wife and while she pretended to listen (or care) I told her my newest direction for my player collections. I had a whole bunch of names listed on the side bar (33 of them) of my blog for player collections and that lends to several thousand cards which can get somewhat pricy that I am seeking. I slimmed the list down a tiny bit because most everyone that I collect falls under the banner of current (or ex) Tampa Bay Rays or Negro League Alumni. All of the former Negro Leaguers will go into one book, with the exception of Buck O’Neill (who has very few cards) and Larry Doby who will have their own personal display case, too. The same will hold true for the Rays cards. I eliminated a few names from the list and a few people from the display case. I didn’t really intend on collecting BJ Upton specifically, but as I was sorting, I realized that I have more cards of him than anyone, so he gets his own collection by default-this was the same way that Scott Kazmir and Delmon Young earned their own slots, too. Other than them, Carl Crawford, Carlos Pena, Jason Bartlett, Jeff Niemann, Evan Longoria and Akinori Iwamura will be at the top of my list. Jonny Gomes, Brian Roberts and Pat Neshek now have their own personal (and pretty empty) binders and Danny Tartabull’s binder is alive and well and getting pretty full. I may upgrade the Bull’s home soon. The new player that I have decided to obsessively collect is original Devil Ray, Quinton McCracken. He was my favorite D-Ray back then and still stands as one of my favorites ever. His career was short-lived, but he really represented the hope of success for an expansion team. He was a leader in the outfield, the lead-off hitter, the spark plug of the team. He never really ignited the D-Rays into much, but the idea that he could gave fans hope. Anyway, I plan on chasing every single McCracken card, base cards and inserts, in a Devil Rays uniform. This is funny (to me) because the first card I saw in the envelope from the Night Owl was a Quinton McCracken card that I didn’t own. A 1999 Upper Deck Ovation, card #11 with the cool embossed baseball stitches in the background. I spent some time last night making a list of all of the Carl Crawford cards that I own last night and I am making a web page to track them. The page can be found here, for future reference, as it won't be done today, but soon... http://collectivetroll.webs.com/crawford.htm. When that is done, I will move onto the other guys, including Q. Night Owl sent another card from that set, of soon to be Hall of Famer, Fred McGriff. The other 3 cards came from the 2000 Upper Deck Gold Reserve set. These look pretty neat on the front, nice bright photos of Canseco, Hernandez and Vinny Castilla. The back of the cards, with these guys impressive career numbers are against a solid gold background. Wow, that is a little more gold than a Troll can handle… Thanks Night Owl for the SWEET ex-Rays and for sending along the final card in my quest for the Hoaxes set. I will get all of these scanned up and post the set tomorrow. By the way, I just resist starting this post with a scan of the super awesome card that the Night Owl sent me in his last trade package. I was drooling over it again last night and I noticed that it celebrates his Major League debut on July 20th and the serial number is 07/20, another reason why that card rocks! I should warn you all, I will probably post this one about 13 more times this year! Go Rays! Troll out.