A One Card Post-More Awesomeness from Wicked Ortega!

It isn’t typical for your friend the Troll to devote an entire post to just one card, but I think I am going to start doing this more often. I have so, so many trades to catch up on and part of the problem is that I am so wordy that a twenty card trade post might take me several hours to type up. This card came from my friend to the south of me, “Wicked” Don Alfredo Ortega. He has been spoiling me with all kinds of awesomeness for several months now. There is something about this particular card that I absolutely love and felt the need to post it by itself. Wicked had put up some trade bait cards and even though I still owed him, I saw a few Carl Crawfords that I needed, so I laid a claim on them. Wicked obliged and had them in the mail the next day. Well, I saw the CC cards and decided that I wanted them, but I missed something really awesome in the photo, something shiny, something great. This card came before the Aki trade. I have written about it a few times, here and here so my feelings on that have already been stated and I won’t rehash them. He was a leader on the team and I don’t think that they will recover quickly from the loss of his glove in that infield. I also don’t think he is going to be in Pittsburgh too long either. What I do think is that this is one of the coolest Aki cards I have ever seen! Aside from my autographed rookie card of Aki, which came from GCRL and is posted here .This is my favorite Akinori Iwamura card ever! I have said this over and over again, but even though I have never even seen a pack of Bowman Sterling before, everything I have from this product is amazing! This may be the nicest example so far… Folks looking to get a group break together might consider a little Bowman Sterling-maybe? Anyway, the card is a rookie from the 2007 Sterling set, it is card #BS-AI and most importantly it is a REFRACTOR!!!! I love me some shiny, I really, really do! It is serial numbered 116/199 and is wondrously shiny. I love everything about this card, starting with the shiny, but also the silver, grey and black color and the way that Aki’s crocodile mitt stands out being the only red on the card. The back of the card is plain and boring looking in contrast to the front, but holds a fun fact called a “Bowman Sterling Rookie Revelation”. It says: It was a successful debut for Iwamura who came from Japan as advertised-a smooth infielder and professional hitter. It took him only until his 3rd game to put up a 4 for 4 performance in the books, as the third baseman singled three times and homered in a win over the Toronto Blue Jays. The back also lists his 2006 stats, from the Central League in Japan where he starred for the Yakult Swallows-he batted .311 with 32 homers and 77 RBI. Not too shabby Aki! Did I mention that I love this card? Did I mention that the Rays suck for trading this guy away? Did I mention that Alfredo is the coolest trader in the blog-o-sphere? I should… You can find Alfredo’s high quality blog right here, go check it out right now! Thanks again Wicked! Go Rays! Go Aki! Go Bucs! Troll out.