Box Break: 2009-10 Upper Deck Basketball

I like the design used in the various 2009 Upper Deck sets and box breaks of basketball were looking pretty good so I ended up breaking my rule and purchased a box of Upper Deck before the price dropped.  I picked up this box at Kenmore Collectibles, my Local (to work) Card Shop.

First off, I’m not sure how Upper Deck put together the various checklists in this set.  I’m not going to go through the whole set, but a glaring omission to me is that of Glen Davis.  In his place, Upper Deck included Celtic Bill Walker.  Walker only played in 29 games, averaged 3 points and totaled 29 rebounds, 13 assists, 6 steals and 2 blocks.  Davis, on the other hand, stepped up when Kevin Garnett went down with an injury and finished the season averaging 7 points and 4 rebounds a game.  This move completely blows my mind.  Why would anyone want a Bill Walker card?  Davis does have an autographed card in the set though.  Why give him an autographed card, but no base card? He’s also got a couple of jersey cards.  This makes absolutely no sense to me.

Speaking of autographed cards, here’s my pull from the box.  Who?  Shannon Brown.  Who?  Well, let me check his stats and see how good he is…  Strange, there doesn’t seem to be a base card of Shannon Brown either.  Instead of dumping these sticker autographs into this product, Upper Deck should have dumped them into that same landfill where thousands of E.T. Atari 2600 cartridges are supposedly buried.  This is an utter and absolute waste of cardboard.  Suddenly, this purchase doesn’t look so good after all.

It doesn’t stop there though.  Upper Deck is dumping memorabilia as well.  Check out this Game Materials card that I pulled of Shawne Williams.  Who?  Another bum who is most likely going to miss this entire season.  Why did I open this stuff again?  I must be an idiot.

Here’s basketball’s equivalent to the Yankee Legacy and 20th Anniversary cards in baseball.  The only positive is that Jordan is pretty popular.  I think that I’ll most likely send these to CheckOutMyCards.com (COMC) and see how they do on there.  I’ve had some luck with the Yankee Legacy cards.

These cards are alright.  Some are better than others.  The idea of doing movie posters is original so I’ve got hand it to Upper Deck for that.  I’d rather have pulled 8 of these than the Jordans.

The 3D Stars cards are great.  They don’t really look three dimensional to me, but the players do pop and the cards look nice.  I used to be a huge fan of Sportflics and seeing them sort of return here is nice.  I’d love to see Sportflics make a comeback since lenticular technology has gotten better these days an you could have animation that’s a little smoother.

These cards here are the best thing about this set.  I should have just foregone the box and purchased a set of these inserts.  I’ve already grabbed a couple off of COMC including a great Larry Legend.  I’m pretty sure that there’s also a card in this set of KG with the championship trophy.

This card isn’t bad, but isn’t not a serial numbered card so there’s got to be a buttload of them out there.  I’m not really a fan of either of these guys so this card will most likely make its way to eBay or COMC.

This card is definitely headed to eBay.  Kobe has to be the one athlete that I despise the most.  This card is serial numbered and the Artest swatch is a nice gold one.  Lakers fans should eat this one up.  They can pretend that’s a golden Lakers swatch rather than a piece of a Rockets jersey.

That does it for this box.  I have all of the base cards, a good amount of the rookies and hardly any of the Immortals.  I got what I was promised which is a big deal for me when it comes to Upper Deck boxes since I got shorted on the last two boxes of their product that I opened.  My “hits” leave a lot to be desired.  Topps did a great job this year of showing just how much value can be put into a flagship set and Upper Deck just falls short especially when you compare to a Topps jumbo box.  This isn’t terrible, but it’ll be a much better buy when boxes drop $10 - $20 after a year or so.

To sum things up, there’s a nice design to the set.  The player selection leaves something to be desired.  For all of the junk autos in this set, there should have been two or three per box.  There is more value than usual for typical boxes of Upper Deck flagship since you get 4 “hits”, but if it is all junk auto and patches does it really matter?  The Masterpieces are awesome and the 3D Stars are fun, but I don’t think that they can save this set.  Combine that with the fact that it’s going to be a pain in the ass chasing down the rookies and immortals and I’ll give this box a C-.

Technorati Tags: 2009-10 Upper Deck Basketball,box break,Kobe Bryant,LeBron James,Dwayne Wade

Moving on up… to the East Side

No takers on that printing plate?  Guess I’ll have to take it with me to the new place.  Just a heads up to those of you out there who I’m in the middle of trades with, I’ll be at a new address as of this Tuesday so if you’re going to mail something please contact me for the new address.

To those of you who I owe stuff, I’m going to have to mail out what I have for you now and if I need to send you more, I’ll do so once I get things unpacked and set up in the new place.

I’m about to shut down the computer for the last time until I’m in the new place.  I’ll still be able to get online and check my e-mail though since there will still be one computer set up.

I plan on having a lot of fun here on the blog once I’m in the new house.  I’ve pretty much got a whole floor to devote to my collections and things like that and I’m thinking of documenting the whole process of getting it set up from the start to… well, the finish will probably be years away, but hopefully you’ll all get to follow me every step of the way.

Also, once I’m set up I want to put together my own little trade database.  I want to know who out there collects which players and which teams so that I can set those cards aside for trades.  All of this moving has shown me that I have way too many cards that don’t add anything to my collection and I’d much rather send off those cards to happier homes.  I need that space for things like my Kid ‘N’ Play, Beavis & Butthead and Ren & Stimpy comics.  (Yes, Marvel published series of all three of those duos.)

Wish me luck!

And there was much rejoicing… yay

Is it still exciting to pull a 1/1 card when that card is a yellow scrap metal “one-of-a-kind” collectible of Rob Mackowiak?  Anyone interested in trading for this?  Any of his family members reading this?  Thanks Pacific, or whoever first put printing plates into their product, for creating this ridiculous “collectible.”

Technorati Tags: Rob Mackowiak,printing plate,2008 Topps Update & Highlights

Mail Day: The pile was getting out of control

I haven’t posted one of these in forever.  For now, I’m sticking to mostly to cards that I’ve picked up through eBay.  I’ve also done a couple of trades and want to get those posted as well, but the upcoming move might throw a monkey wrench into those plans.  At the very least, I’ll make sure to get a post out there about who I traded with along with a summary of the trades.

This first card here isn’t an eBay purchase at all.  This is the card that Upper Deck sent me along with the damaged Timelines cards that they replaced.  They didn’t have a replacement for the Chris Smith card that I sent and the letter that came back with my cards stated that they sent a replacement of equal value in its place.  How this Albert Pujols card is of the same value as that card I don’t know, but I’m not complaining.  It’s a shame that Upper Deck Customer Service never came through on the 40 cards that I was shorted from my 2009 Baseball Series 1 box because they’re done well when they actually decide to follow through.  The company also has a bit of an attitude problem and has no qualms about deleting comments from both their blog and Facebook pages that don’t leave the poster with a brown nose.

Next up is another Pujols card.  This was thrown in as an extra card by an eBay seller.  I’m pretty sure that I posted the card that this came with already, but I never got around to posting this bonus card.

You can’t complain about a bonus Pujols card.  What he’s done at the plate so far in his career is ridiculous.  If he stays healthy, he should rewrite all kinds of records.  I don’t go out of my way to acquire new Pujols cards, but when I pull his cards they go right into my collection.

This card here was a redemption that I pulled out of the box of Bowman Sterling which I got when I sent in my damaged Dwayne Wade mini that I pulled out of a rip card from a 2008-09 Topps Basketball jumbo box.  This card is numbered to 218.  One of the cooler cards that I pulled out of the box just so happened to be another Dwayne Wade card.  It’s a mini in the style of 80-81 Topps that comes in a folder that seals magnetically.  Both the folder and the card are numbered to 999.  I’ll have to post pictures of that card on here because I’ve searched and searched ever since pulling the card and haven’t been able to find another one online.

Speaking of redemption cards, this card was a replacement for a Murad redemption that got the shaft once Topps knew that they weren’t going to have an NBA license in 2009-10.  I responded to the e-mail that they sent asking if I could get a Celtic in return and not another Spud Webb since it looks like those were held out of the packs specifically to send out in place of Murad redemptions.  This card is certainly of a Celtic, but they got the names reversed (and spelled slightly wrong).  This card will go into my collection unlike the card that I would have gotten if the redemption had been processed so I guess that’s a plus.  Another case of Topps Customer Service coming though.  At the very least they listen and try to make an effort unlike Upper Deck who sometimes don’t even reply to e-mails sent to customer service.

Gimme an H!


It’s funny how I couldn’t stand pulling these darn things in 2009 Topps and couldn’t wait to sell them off, but jumped at them on eBay once it was a player that I liked.  I’m not going after the entire player name and so far have only seen one “H” on eBay that went for some ridiculous amount of money.

You might wonder how a kid in the 80s who spent his entire life in Massachusetts ended up a fan of Kent Hrbek.  One day, I decided that I wanted to collect a player who wasn’t on the Red Sox.  I went through the cards that I had and I had a few of Hrbek and decided to start collecting him.  It was a good choice because he was good enough to be included in a lot of the oddball sets that I loved in the 80s.  Now that card companies are including Hrbek in sets again, I’ve resumed collecting him.

Back then I collected Dwight Evans and Kent Hrbek.  There are a lot of similarities between the two players.  They were never amongst the biggest stars in the game, but they were faces of their franchises for long times.  Both players have very devout fan followings and played the game the way it was meant to be played.

Gimme a ?!

Hopefully this will someday spell out “Hug it out,” but I’ve kind of stalled out at the moment.  When Icons came out, I picked up a couple of these right away for a price that I was comfortable paying.  Since then, the price has steadily increased as more people have started chasing them.  That’s good news if I wanted to sell these, but bad news for ever collecting the whole phrase.  If you ever want a good laugh, check out one of these that Piven has autographed.  He printed his name vertically down the letter and it looks like something his niece "Pearl the Landlord" would have written.  Huge fan of Piven, but I wouldn’t even be excited if I pulled one of those out of a pack.

Speaking of lame autographs, here’s exhibit B.  RR?  Are the 10 letters in Rajon Rondo really too much to write out?  I stumbled into this card as an additional bid from the same seller.  I missed out on the first card, but I got this one cheaply and now have Rondo’s initials in my collection.

I’ve yet to buy a pack of 2009-10 Topps because I’m waiting until I can afford a jumbo box.  I’ve had great luck with them in the past two years and want to see what I can pull this year.  I have picked up some singles though; most of them for less than what you’d pay for a pack.  Here’s a gold version of Big Baby tossing Brad Miller to the floor.  Most likely this is Miller flopping like he did all through last year’s playoffs.

I love that I can still pick up unnumbered Big Baby autographs for about a buck a piece.  I’m excited that he’ll be back with the Celtics this season.  He was supposedly going to get an offer from another team that the Celtics couldn’t match, but the outrageous offer sheet to Gortat which the Magic matched ended those plans.  Davis will now be a part of the best bench in the NBA and since they just might be backing up the best starting 5 in the league, the Celtics are a good bet to bring another NBA Championship to the rafters of The TD Bank (fake) Garden.  Davis showed that he can play at a high level when Kevin Garnett was injured last season.  He and Rasheed Wallace will let Doc Rivers give plenty of rest to Kevin Garnett and Kendrick Perkins to save them for the playoffs.

What can I say, I’ve got a problem.  It’s tough to pass up any Davis autos when they are this cheap.  I think he signed this one with his foot.  This one has Kevin McHale’s number on it so if Davis wins the Sixth Man Award I can sell it on eBay as a 1/1 Super Mojo Hit.

Whenever I scan a card with a piece of Celtics jersey in it, I wonder if a brown jersey swatch will show up green.  Hmmmmmmm.

Here’s another card from 2009-10 Topps.  While the basketball die cut gives the card an interesting look, I wish that they had just cut out the whole circle for the swatch to show through.  These things are small enough to begin with and now you barely see any of it.

It looks even worse when there’s a patch involved.  I just want to tear off that piece of cardboard going over the middle of the patch.

This card is numbered to 50 and super thick.  I’m surprised there isn’t a sticker auto on it.  If they had put autos along the bottom and put the name elsewhere, they could have had a nice looking set.  On card would have been beautiful.

I really like that Topps put Chrome cards into the base Topps set since they weren’t going to have time to do a stand alone set.  This here is a shiny refractor of Paul Pierce.

The refractors from this set are numbered to 500 which could make for a challenging set to put together.

Here’s a different type of relic card from 2009-10 Topps.  Although the set is called Championship Materials, it doesn’t say anything about this swatch being from a jersey worn in the NBA Championships.  In fact, it’s probably from a jersey worn years ago.

Topps kept the die cut basketball thing in this set as well.  According to some clueless eBay sellers, the die cuts would make this a dual swatch card.  Heck, I’ve seen some cards labeled as quad cards from the manufacturer that have four windows showing the same swatch.

Got this Pierce Bowman Sterling jersey card for a buck plus shipping.  I like the designs used in some of the Bowman Sterling sets, but it’s a shame that the value that you get out of the packs usually doesn’t come anywhere near what you paid.  It’s worse in basketball due to all of the top names being exclusive to Upper Deck.

The one exception to the value that I’ve seen is 2007 Bowman Best baseball.  The value has even gotten better as more and more names from that set have emerged.

It’s no secret that I absolutely loved the Murad basketball set.  It took a while, but I finally tracked down a Pierce auto from this set at a reasonable price.  It’s not one of the numbered versions, but that’s fine by me.

The sticker detracts from the look of the card a little, but it is still a beautiful card.  This is right up there with UD Glass as my favorite Pierce autographed cards.

More Murad Madness.  I also had to track down the Pierce silk card from the set.  When I first saw this auction, I expected some ridiculous selling price because it was #1, but that wasn’t the case at all.  It’s a good thing too because if that had been the case then this card wouldn’t be in my collection.

I’m going to end with some of the blue parallel Celtics that I pulled out of Bowman ‘48 basketball.  The rest of the cards will be another post.

Technorati Tags: Mail Day,Paul Pierce,Glen Davis,Big Baby,Rajon Rondo,Albert Pujols,Kent Hrbek,Jeremy Piven

Real bowling

There’s many things to love about living in Massachusetts.  Even with the early exit of the Red Sox in this year’s playoffs, we’re still got 3 Super Bowl trophies, 2 World Series trophies and 1 NBA Championship Trophy this decade (and are the early favorite for the 2009-10 Championship if everyone stays healthy).  I’m going to stray from the more mainstream sports in this post on focus on a regional sport that most of you probably have never seen before and that is Candlepin bowling.

Candlepin bowling is a variation of bowling that is played primarily in the Canadian Maritime provinces, Maine, Massachusetts and in New Hampshire.  As you can see from the picture to the left, the ball is a lot smaller to the one used in ten pin bowling.  Candlepin balls have a diameter of 4½” and don’t need holes since you can easily hold one in your hand.  A frame in candlepin bowling consists of three balls instead of the two that are used in ten pin.  Another big difference is that downed pins (referred to as “wood”) are not cleared off of the alley between shots as they are in ten pin.  This can be both a good and bad thing.  Sometimes a piece of wood can assist you in making a difficult shot or can make an easy shot even easier by increasing your target, but they can also act as a road block shooting off in one direction while the ball flies off in other leaving the pin still standing.

Candlepin bowling is a lot more challenging than ten pin bowling.  While perfect games in ten pin bowling are frequent it has never been done in candlepin bowling.  The highest sanctioned score in a candlepin string is 245.  Throw a ball right down the middle of the lane in candlepin bowling and you’re very likely only going to take out the middle two pins.  Throw that same ball so that it hits between the head pins and a neighboring pin and you’re likely to get a good pinfall.  It can be frustrating, but the added challenge brings added fun.

I’ve been bowling since I was a kid and in bowling leagues almost as long.  Now that I’ve been doing it all of my life, I wouldn’t ever want to live somewhere that doesn’t have candlepin bowling.  If this has caught your attention and you’d like to find out a little more about candlepin bowling you can check out this link to the International Candlepin Bowling Association or check out this YouTube video of one of the best televised performances ever.  There are a ton of YouTube video out there of candlepin bowling from nearly impossible shots to breaking pins.

Technorati Tags: candlepin bowling

Moving sale! Everything must go!

The main reason that this blog has become so neglected over the past 4 months or so was due to me moving.  It was just a temporary move and due to that the majority of my collection is currently in storage.  I also have a longer commute and less time to devote to things such as writing about sports cards.  The good news is that we’ll be moving again at the end of the month so the collection will be coming out of storage and my commute will be shortening.  I’m not the only one that will benefit from this.  All of you reading this can potentially benefit from this as well.  I’ve got a few piles of things that don’t necessarily have to be in my collection.  Instead of packing them up again and taking them with me, I’d rather find them better homes.

In the grand tradition of multiple blogs who have done similarly, I’m looking to trade the following cards for stuff that will have a home in my collection.  What might that be?  Well, it could be cards that I need for sets.  You can find my want lists on Google Docs by clicking on the link right under the site header.  I’m also looking for cards to add to my player collection.  Have any baseball cards of Mike Piazza, Dwight Evans, Kent Hrbek, Clay Buchholz or David Ortiz floating around that you no longer want?  What about basketball cards of Paul Pierce and Glen “Big Baby” Davis?  Drop me a line at michaeltravers@gmail.com and we’ll work out a deal.  The pictures here should link to larger images in case you aren’t able to make the players out.  If you know of any collectors out there who may not read this blog, but may be interested in any of these cards send them on over.  I’ve got plans for the cards if they don’t get traded, but I wanted to offer them up here first.  Without further ado, here’s the cards:

Technorati Tags: Trading Block

Which would you rather have?

I’m sure that many of you reading this also follow the Upper Deck Blog.  One of the things that they love to do on that blog is post pictures of stuff that they are going to cut up and insert into their various products.  Today, they posted an entry about a Michael Jackson photo that they can’t wait to cut up and put into 2009 Prominent Cuts.  They’re going to take an autographed picture from the coolest music video ever and chop it up so that they can put the signature in an upcoming set and capitalize on the death of a celebrity.

Once they’re done with it, the Frankenstein card will probably look something like this.  I’m sure that the design will be a little fancier, but you get the gist.  You get the autograph, Jackson’s shoulder and a zombie’s mouth.  Would you rather own that or the complete picture?  Imagine if the Upper Deck redemption got you a nice, framed Upper Deck Authenticated piece that this were to be put into.  It could still be a 1/1 and say Upper Deck on it, but it wouldn’t require the destruction of a nice piece of memorabilia in order for it to be made.

I decided to share my thoughts on the Upper Deck blog comments, but I guess that they didn’t care for them since I wasn’t singing their praises.  I didn’t see anything about comments not showing up until they are approved so I can only guess that they decided to delete my comment:

This is the reason why I think cut signature cards are the worst idea to come into the hobby in a long time. It’s fine when the documents that are being destroyed are things like cancelled checks. Cutting those up betters the way that they look, but when it comes to stuff like this autographed picture or historical documents it’s a shame to have those destroyed for a silly trading card.

Have you ever thought about doing redemption cards in products where the person is sent an autographed picture or historical document intact? I know that it won’t say “UPPER DECK” all over it, but maybe you can transform it into an UDA piece and then send that off to the person.

I really can’t believe you’re bragging about cutting this up. It’s really not anything to be proud of.

I guess my criticism wasn’t welcome.  There goes my shot at ever writing a guest column in the Upper Deck blog.  IS it just me thinking this way?  Which item would you rather have?  Does hacking up this card and slapping a 1/1 on it make it more desirable?

Technorati Tags: Michael Jackson,2009 Prominent Cuts,Upper Deck,Thriller

Jennie Rox

We made a family trip this past Saturday out to Brockton to see the Brockton Rox play.  It’s one of the teams partially owned by Bill Murray and is a fun time if you love baseball.  You can’t beat $5 tickets and $2 hot dogs.  We didn’t go for just the baseball though.  On Deck Sports was there that night for the announcement of their new partnership with softball legend Jennie Finch.

Prior to the game, Jennie spoke to a large group of girls about softball.  She spoke about her training regimen and history with the game since she first started playing at 5 years old.  She told some great stories and made a lot of young girls very happy.  My daughter is only 3 years old at the moment, but so far she’s taken a liking to sports and hopefully she’ll have fun playing either baseball or softball once she gets older.

After the talk, Jennie was doing an autograph signing at the stadium.  That’s the reason that I was there.  I’ve been a fan of Jennie since she first burst upon the scene.  She was a phenomenon in sports and by her senior year of college, every single one of her games were broadcast on ESPN.  That was a huge deal back then.

They brought Finch out to the Pepsi All-Star Challenge one year.  It’s a yearly charity event where Major Leaguers come out and play softball for charity.  I went to the game one year and its a lot of fun.  Well, they had everyone come out and have an at-bat against Jennie Finch the year that she was there and one player made contact and that was only a weak foul tip.  Sure, she doesn’t throw 90 MPH, but with a shorter distance and that rising motion, it wasn’t anything that some of the best hitters in baseball could hit.

I just randomly happened to walk past the line as it was starting to form because we were taking my daughter to have her face painted.  I jumped into the autograph line and 5 feet away my wife and daughter jumped into the face painting line.  The only bad thing about this is that the line was starting to form while the talk was still going on and a lot of the girls who were huge fans got stuck at the end.  I just hope that they were all able to get autographs.  The front of the line had your typical autograph hounds.  They had their bats and other memorabilia ready to be signed.  Finch appeared at the big Shriner’s Card Show that I went to over the summer and the fee to get her autograph then was $50 if I remember correctly.  It’s no wonder that a good number of collectors showed up to get her autograph here.

We made our way to the exit after I got my autograph.  I had worked that day (6th in a row out of 10 in a row I will be working) and it was the second long day in a row after going to a Wheel of Fortune taping the previous day.  My daughter was starting to get restless as well.  She had been in line, but grew tired of that and so my wife took her down to the kids area where they had a giant inflatable slide.  It was a great day though because I got to add this card to my collection.  Allen & Ginter cards are beautiful to begin with, but they look even nicer with an autograph on them.  This came out really nicely and it capped off a great evening.

Technorati Tags: Jennie Finch,Brockton Rox

Juicing the Fun Out of the Game

You may have noticed a lack of updates on the site ever since the “story” broke regarding David Ortiz’s alleged steroid use.  The reaction that I saw everywhere after the story broke was disgusting.  It seems like a lot of people were chomping at the bit to take shots at the Boston Red Sox and their most popular player.  Now the World Series victories are supposedly tainted and of course all of the critics knew all along that Ortiz had to have been using steroids.  The only problem is that nothing about Ortiz’s past screamed steroids unless you’ve got your witch hunt blinders on.

The first piece of evidence that people always point to is Ortiz’s stats with the Twins.  They cite the low home run totals, but for some reason never mention the injuries or low number of games played.  Ortiz’s 16.8 AB/HR in 2001 is very respectable.  To put it into perspective, this year Jason Bay’s AB/HR is 15.60, Justin Morneau is 15,75 Ian Kinsler is 16.08 and Ryan Braun is 17.42.  Albert Pujols leads the league with 10.84.

The only numbers that jump out at you are 2005 and 2006.  Ortiz led the American League in 2006 (Ryan Howard just edged him with 10.017) and that tied for the 26th best of all time with Kevin Mitchell’s 1994 season.  Bagwell had a season at 10.256, Frank Thomas had a season at 10.500 and Ken Griffey Jr had a season at 10.825 and they are all players considered to be clean.  I don’t see how these numbers implicate Ortiz.

A lot of people like to think that Ortiz came out of nowhere, but that’s not the case.  Ortiz hit 31 HR in 1997 for three teams between high A, AA and AAA before getting a cup of coffee with the Twins at the end of the season.  He hit 30 HR in 1999 in AAA after a rough start to his major league career.  He was a player that I always picked up as a sleeper in my fantasy leagues so it was frustrated along with the Twins when Ortiz succumbed to injuries and couldn’t translate his minor league success to the big league level.  Ortiz was a solid fielder, but never spectacular (and much better than he ever gets credit for).  When Doug Mientkiewicz showed up with a slick glove and lofty batting average, it led to the Twins deciding to let Ortiz walk.

The biggest factor in the jump in Ortiz’s statistics once coming to Boston was health.  Until the 2008 season, Ortiz was able to remain relatively healthy which he was never able to do in Minnesota.  He fractured his wrist in 2001 which cut short what probably would have been his breakthrough season.  2002 saw Ortiz plagued by knee problems which led to him getting the knee scoped.  Ortiz did what everyone expected him to do when healthy until injuries sidelined him again in 2008.

The other huge factor in Ortiz’s improvement was the help of hitting coach Ron “Papa Jack” Jackson.  Ortiz sang his praises highly and he seemed to straighten out the problems that Ortiz was having by getting him to open up his stance allowing him to get his bat on more pitches and use more of the field.  Ortiz got off to a slow start at the beginning of the 2007 season which was the first after the Red Sox let Papa Jack go.  Reportedly, he made a couple of phone calls to Jackson and found out what he was doing wrong.  He went on to have the highest batting average of his career that season.

Many people pointed to Ortiz’s slow start in 2009 and said that it must be due to Ortiz coming off of steroids.  Of course there’s no way that the injury could be a factor.  Some local pundits said that it looked like Ortiz was having trouble seeing the ball especially since he was swinging late on a lot of pitches.  Whether the new eye drops he started using were the reason or not, Ortiz caught fire after that.  His average is still pretty low, but since June 6th he’s leading the American League in home runs with 19 and as you can see from the chart above, his AB/HR is right where it usually is.

Ortiz maintained his innocence all along, but few believed him.  He held a press conference where the Major League Baseball Players Association stated that he was on the list, but didn’t test positive for steroids.  They haven’t spoken up on behalf of any other player.  It was interesting to hear Peter Gammons touch on this because after hearing all of the details released by the MLBPA about that list, he believes that there’s only around 60 – 70 different names on the list which tested positive for steroids.  Gammons also believe that Ortiz hasn’t ever taken steroids.  That hasn’t kept large numbers of people from continuing to insist that Ortiz took steroids.

What bothers me is that you won’t see one retraction.  For some reason, people would rather believe two “anonymous lawyers” who are breaking the law for a pay day over a ballplayer who hasn’t done anything to cause people not to believe him.  I guess it’s not suspect that the only names leaked this time were a couple of Red Sox by a New York newspaper about a week before a huge Red Sox/Yankees series.

If you don’t believe Ortiz then you can’t believe any player.  Whether it be Pujols, Griffey Jr, Vlad Guerrero or Frank Thomas.  There’s no way that anyone that’s clean is outhitting all of these players who have supposedly taken steroids.  With the Players Union not allowing blood tests for HGH, anyone could take it without fear of being caught.

I never understood the fun in tearing down other teams and/or players.  Hearing “Yankees suck” chants at Red Sox games, Celtics games and concerts makes me cringe.  It makes fans sound petty and sad.  If a team with 26 championships sucks then I wish the Sox would suck a little more.

Nothing good can come of outing these players from the 2003 tests.  If the Players Union allowed for HGH testing and we could definitely know who was clean, I’d be of the mindset that the list should be released, but since we don’t know if people who aren’t on the list are actually clean then there’s no use.  The list definitely shouldn’t be leaked a name at a time and Bud Selig should be doing all that he can to prosecute those two lawyers which leaked these latest two names to the full extent of the law.

Major League Baseball just gave Topps an exclusive license to produce baseball cards citing a need to bring kids back into the hobby as a reason for doing so.  Making kids suffer through their favorite players being called cheats and liars could alienate the kids that are already interested.  I know it has affected my enjoyment of the game and I’m 33 years old.  I can only imagine how little kids have reacted.  I feel badly for young fans of Ortiz, A-Rod, etc. who have to see their heroes torn down by a bunch of adults under the pretense of “the sanctity of the game.”  I don’t even want to imagine how badly I would have taken it if Dwight Evans had been labeled a cheater when I was a kid.

Who knows how fans will look back upon this era in ten, twenty or even fifty years from now.  Right now, it seems like too many fans are of the mindset that every player has used PEDs at some point in their career and don’t believe any of the denials.  There have to be some players out there not using due to the health risks or other reasons and that mindset isn’t fair to them.  A lot of players used before it was against the rules.  Are their accomplishments tainted?  It’ll be interesting to see how this all shakes out.  I have a feeling that baseball’s already hurting reputation isn’t going to get any better.

Technorati Tags: David Ortiz,steroids

Blogger Fail

When I moved about a month ago, I changed e-mail addresses as well as physical addresses.  I thought that I had updated everything, but it looks like I forgot to update the address where comments are sent.  I just looked and it seems like I missed a bunch of them.  I have updated the e-mail address and will be going back over past posts to make sure I catch up on all of the replies.  There were some trade offers and stuff that I’ll be sure to reply to.

Sorry ‘bout dat.