1997 Pinnacle X Press Pack Number 5

I liked the ’94 Pinnacle set a lot, but then again I think I like all 3 products we are working on. Since there are 36 packs to go through on the X Press, I am gonna jump back to it… Here we go!
#135 Shannon Stewart 1997 Rookie Toronto Blue Jays
#29 Todd Hundley New York Mets
#69 Wade Boggs New York Yankees (Hall of Famer in the pack!!! One thing I don’t like about this brand is that it doesn’t show career totals for stats on the back. It does break them down month by month, which is cool, but I wanted to know where Boggs was at in terms of hits and I don’t feel like looking it up. He did bat .311 for the Yanks in ’96)
#24 Rey Ordonez New York Mets MEN OF SUMMER Insert (this is the first insert we’ve pulled out of this one. This is a 150 card insert set and the odds are 1:7. I bet this was a bear to finish back in the day. Theoretically you would have to rip 1,050 packs and not get a double. Remember there were no card blogs back in ’97!)
#137 Hideki Irabu 1997 Rookie New York Yankees (I’m not sure if the Yanks paid him by the win or by the pound, but he made a lot of US dollars during his short big league career-over parts of 6 seasons he posted a 34-35 record with a 5.15 ERA)
#36 Jay Buhner Seattle Mariners (I wasn’t sure if I had shown what the back of the card looks like. This one shows Jay’s signature pants stain and shows that he hit 12 homers in May and 44 for the season in ’96. His final line in ’96 was .271 BA/44 HR/ 138 RBI. Damn.)
#123 Vladimir Guerrero 1997 Rookie Montreal Expos (Some people thought that Waxaholic was crazy when he chose the Expos-he knew what he was doing… Vlad the Impaler on played in 90 games in 1997 but he started to show what he could do with the bat, hitting .302 with 11 homers and 40 RBI. In his first full season with the Expos the guy batted .324 with 38 homers and 109 RBI. Since then he has been to 8 All Star games, won the AL MVP in 2004 and he just hit his 400th career homer last year. AND he is only 34 years old and still has a whole lot of pop in his bat left. Oh, and he still doesn’t have that ring-you can’t hang up the spikes till you win the ring Vlad!)
#??? Swing for the Fences Game Card -3
#16 Mike Piazza LA Dodgers (Speaking of rings… Piazza never won his. He never won the MVP award either. He was in the top-10 in voting 8 times and finished second in ’96 and ’97, but he never took it home. His stats in ’96 were awesome for anyone, especially a catcher-.336/36/105. Nice. He brought things to another level in 1997 when he hit .362 with 40 homers and 124 RBI, but he finished behind Larry Walker in every offensive category and also in the MVP voting.)
Okay, 5 down, 31 more to go. That was a pretty good pack. 1 HoFer, 2 future HoFers, an insert and I think that every team has been pulled at this point. I started stacking everything up and the Braves are the most frequent pull, followed by the Rockies, Marlins and Red Sox. We still have a LOT more to rip. Until the next pack, troll out.