A friend snapped these few (I’m the one with the hat) at an after party where we were rewarded with brains and booze. 
Speaking of zombies, here is my zombie bride 
after a very looong night of dining on brains… On an unrelated note, I am a Troll, and although I don’t live under a bridge exactly, there is a large creek in my backyard and a big bridge, too. I don’t make you pay a toll, though. Living on a creek is pretty awesome; there are all kinds of aquatic life in the brackish water. Turtles, otters, dozens of variety of fish, plus eels, crabs, the occasional gator and yesterday I saw, for the very first time, a big manatee in my backyard!!! 
This isn’t the actual manatee and I didn’t take this picture, but I intend on seeing him again. I bought three heads of lettuce and intend on carrying my camera each and every time I take the (zombie) dog for a walk. 
Yeah, the giant sea cow in my backyard made my day, it totally made Brad Lidge’s embarrassing save a little easier to deal with. If I could get a manatee to swim up to me everyday during the season in 2010, I will be a happy Troll! Speaking of happy Troll’s, The Pittsburgh Pirates are attempting to purchase the Reds A level Florida State League team this year and they would have the team play their home games at McKechnie Field in Bradenton, Florida, home of the Troll. 
The stadium is about 2.5 miles from my house, an easy walk even during the summer. They would be in the same league as the Charlotte Stone Crabs who are currently an hour’s drive away. It would be the first time that Bradenton would have a team in the FSL since the Bradenton Growers disbanded in the 1920’s. The local paper is holding a contest to name the team-I think the Bradenton Trolls or perhaps the Bradenton (pack) Rippers would be pretty cool.So, I have been putting a little bit more time and effort into my other blog-http://1978topps.blogspot.com/ the one about the 1978 Topps set, it has a new name now, it will now be known as The Nitty Gritty and Doug DeCinces is the card of the day. It would be awesome if you would add it to your blog rolls!
So, since I am writing anyway, I should post a trade, right? I am still backed up, but not nearly as bad as I was. That happens when you go all week long without getting a package, but that is okay, the trade winds have slowed considerably and I have given up hope on getting any more TTMs back. If anyone has any addresses for any retired players, especially Ex-Rays, but not limited to that, please send them my way! I think I will make tonight a Master Mike Monday. I have like 3 trades from Mike of JD Wild Cardz fame that I need to post. Two of them are spectacular, but I am gonna post the other one for now… Mike ripped a bunch of 2008 Sweet Spot, the cool cards that come in a tin and have a hit in every one. He didn’t send any hits (not in this post anyway) but did send a base card Carlos Pena.
The cards have embossed ball stitching on them, but are otherwise really plain, but I don’t think people rip these for the base cards…The other cards I am going to show are all from this year’s product, the 2009 Topps Ticket to Stardumb… Now the blog-o-sphere has already done a sufficient job of tearing this product apart and I would hope that the good folks at Topps really regret stamping their name on this one. I keep on going to Target hoping that they have some 2009 Topps Updates, but the shelves are full of this instead. Other than Mike, I don’t think anyone has bought this. The few sales they got probably came out of boredom and lack of selection. I seriously doubt that they would have moved any of this had it come out during the season, but its postseason arrival coupled with a lack of other choices got it the few sales that it saw. It reminded me of something, but I didn’t put my finger on it until today when I was reading the Roll out the Barrel blog and I saw this Geoff Jenkins
card and I realized what it reminded me of; it is a TOTAL RIP-OFF of Fleer Authentix! I don’t Fleer had too much success with their version a few years ago, so I really don’t understand why Topps would steal their crappy design, but they did… Anyway, put a Rays player on the front of a card and I want it, so I was pretty happy to get these in the mail. I searched my collection and couldn’t find any other examples of the Fleer version, other than this Chipper, 
but it looks like a pretty good “tribute”… So, onto what I got! There is one thing that I like about these, on the back of the card is the title “Star For a Day” and they list the date of listed player’s top performance (in their opinion) and a little synopsis of the game. I think that a box score would have been a nice touch, but what do I know. 
The first card is of Matt Garza and his SFaD is from last year’s ALCS against Boston when he beat them 3-1 on the way to the World Series! Next is his teammate Akinori Iwamura. 
His SFaD was back in April 2008, on the 26th. I remember this game, he took Clay Bucholz deep in the 8th inning to ruin the shutout and seal the win for the Rays! 
Now its Evan Longoria time… I don’t know how you limit him to just one day of being a star, but Topps picked May 9th when he broke up a shutout against the Angels with a game winning homerun. Now its time for Pat Burrell to be a star for a day. 
He’s in a Rays uniform in this one and has a big ol grin on his face (perhaps he came from the bank) but his SFaD came from his time with the Phillies when he actually was a star and hit two homers against the Brewers in the NLDS. Back to a legitimate star and AL homerun king Carlos Pena. 
His Star For a Day came on August 6th with a walk off homer to seal a come from behind victory against the Orioles. With that homer he became the only active player to have a walk-off homerun with four different teams. The last card in this stack of Stardom is dark and chromey looking, a parallel of sorts I would suppose. It features young lefty phenom David Price. Actually, it’s an insert and not a parallel, it is numbered TTS-1 and instead of a Star for a Day, it lists a mini bio on the back, mentioning his postseason prowess against the Red Sox in the ALCS last year. 
Target would have to mark these down a lot for me to consider buying a blaster, but they really aren’t bad looking cards, they just aren’t very original. All sarcasm and kidding aside, I do love these cards and I really appreciate you sending them my way Master Mike! With my new policy of organization, these cards are going directly into the Rays binder, along with the Andy Sonnanstine TTS that Ortega sent me. If you have the Crawford card, or any others from this set, there is plenty of space in the binder for them! Now some more begging... Please check my other blog - http://1978topps.blogspot.com/ and consider following it on your way out… I smell a Phillies victory in the near future… If there is anyone who lives in the Sarasota/Bradenton, Florida area, on November 14th the Orioles have a fan fest planned at Ed Smith Stadium on 12th and Tuttle in Sarasota. It’s free and Jim Palmer, Nolan Reimold and Adam Jones will be there signing autographs along with some other Orioles stars of the past and present. It’s on the same day as Yakuza Girls (Bombers skater) wedding and there is also an Aids Walk on that day, so there will be no Troll’s in attendance, but it should be a great event! Coming soon will Topps Highlights cards from Master Mike and a James Shields Tribute Goodwins Champions style! Plus some more super shiny Shields and Aki cards! Thanks Mike! If you are not already a regular reader of his fine blog, I suggest that you check it out immediately!!! http://jdswildcardz.blogspot.com/ Thanks again and happy collecting to all! Go Rays! Sign Aki! Troll out.
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I DO like Ticket To Stardom... I'm just not sure there's great value for the price. It's no more a rip off of 'something else' as something like Goodwin Champions is of Allen & Ginter.
ReplyDeleteBUT - to each their own! At $5 per pack (hobby) the base cards arent much to write home about, but there ARE three hits per box (about 1:7 odds), which seems about right.