I thought I had a card for Today

Today should be a great day for baseball card photographers to get some unique shots. A lot of teams wear today-only Special Uniforms: green ones. Considering some baseball cards were printed in Ireland, I believe, they could be a nice tip o' the hat.

I thought I had such a card; I've been saving this one for nearly a year, just for today. I figured a light hitting utility/reserve infielder who has toured our country extensively on the rosters of probably several dozen minor and major league teams (currently in camp with the Rangers, hoping to "catch on" as they say), with a rare card hiding out in the Update set, might be a perfect candidate for Topps to feature with a St. Patrick's Day card.

But doing my blog posting homework I discovered the Devil Rays wore green uniforms for several years. Green Rays - who knew? At least I have a green entry on their slowly building Patch page, to go with blue, and white. I'll be needing a card from their really odd technicolor teal years I guess.

Those were during my years in the baseball card wilderness, purchasing just a pack every year until finally the 2011 cards picked me up and shook me back to enjoying the little pieces of cardboard. One of the minor details that had me reunite with cards was probably the colors of the uniform. The announcer I listen to the most, Dan Dickerson for the Tigers, would start each game with a description of the team uniforms that day. Frequently of course this would be a simple "…and the Tigers are in their road greys with the block Detroit across the front…"

But other times, on those Special Uniform days, I would wish I could see them through my radio somehow. Baseball cards fixed that problem right up for me. And so does my brand new little mobile scanner, for, uhhh, scanning receipts for proper self-employment business tax calculations, of which I have thousands, yeah — that's the ticket. It works for baseball cards too? Who would have guessed that? That this Neat new little scanner doesn't get along with foil, agh more's the pity. Maybe I'll just have to go back to collecting only cards without foil. That will brighten my days.

Now there was a great St Patricks Day card issued last year. I would have loved to pull one, and even participated in a Group Break of the set it appeared in with some hopes for a shot at such a variation. But of course, gambling very rarely pays off with your exact desires. I pulled the final spot in a hit draft, and the break yielded just one short-print variation, Matt Kemp I believe, which went very quickly in the draft. So today I really wish I actually had this card in hand:

But since Topps Chrome short-prints are heavy on the word "short", and for a superstar player, I think I will be content to just collect this one digitally. I have been thinking to make a little screen saver folder of favorite baseball card images, whether I own them or not, and at a current single Buy-It-Now price on eBay (and none on COMC) of $35, seeing this one shuffle onto my screen once in a while will keep me happy enough.

Unless of course, a dear blog reader were to have one of these with little idea of what to do with it aside from looking for some sort of middle-end trade, say for a rare Shin-Soo Choo 3D card perhaps.

But while doing my homework, I did discover the cards I was looking for today, via Bob Lemke's excellent blog. I hadn't thought there would be enough of these cards to even make a pretty binder page, but when you start with a few hundred thousand unique baseball cards to search in, they can be found. Look here for some great examples:

http://boblemke.blogspot.com/2012/09/collect-st-patricks-day-uniform-cards.html

I'm not sure I'll ever find one as I have no plans to invest in bulk quantities of 1990s baseball cards, as enjoyable as that would be. It's like a classic joke o' the day, today:

An Irishman walks past a bar…






Hey, it could happen.

Apologies to anyone offended by stereotypes. As my name is Brian and I was born with red hair, I've been taken to be an Irishman for many years of my life, and one of my better friends in the world could well be the subject of the previous joke, which would make him laugh. But this is a baseball card blog, so if you want to hear my story of getting kicked out of an Irish bar for ordering a Car Bomb, well laddie you'll have to buy me a drink.