Black Beauties

A slice of live evil. Easily the most evil card I have pulled this year, but since I am a Tigers fan, I mean that in a very good way. I have been wanting to post this one for a while, and I think finally it is about that time. If you were standing on the corner, this one might just make you want to duck into a cellar door.

Black. Red. Power colors. The ball will come out of a black and red glove, delivered by a power arm.

Tigers. Jungle. Yes, I know that is overdone. After this masterpiece, probably Topps should find a new spot in Lakeland to pose the Tigers; this meme should be retired.

What's up with Max's eye there? That is a condition called heterochromia. The colors of his eyes don't match; he was simply born that way. I have to wonder how well you can see that from the batter's box. Which makes me think that would be an awesome place to take a picture of a pitcher from. I wonder if that has ever been done for a baseball card? Anyhow, sometimes you can see that on Max's cards, sometimes you can't. This is one of the clearest examples.

It was a pity tonight (especially for the Red Sox), that Clay Buchholz was still unable to start. I don't know how much power Fox has on moving game times around the way NBC can with football games, but I would imagine a Scherzer<>Buchholz match-up of unbeatens would have been a Game of the Week. I would also imagine the press would have decided the winner should be the All-Star starter for the American League.

Speaking of Tigers in the jungle, that is something the Tigers have added to the list of various charitable causes they work with.....efforts to keep wild tiger populations healthy via the sale of a special stamp, if you feel like collecting something besides baseball cards. It made for a nice event in Washington D.C. back in May, which included Max and his girlfriend. I would post the pictures from that day but it connects a bit too much to the way the top Google Image suggestion for each and every baseball player's name you type in is 'wife' or 'girlfriend'. Weird world we live in.

I recently wandered across a nice blog post detailing a few other things about Max's life and one of his first cards. I got to see Max pitch a game last year and I'm glad I did.

And of course I couldn't have pulled that great Scherzer card from a pack all by itself. Here's the card that came next:

A 3 card pack becomes a Tigers hot-pack! These are of course from the 3 pack blister pack of Heritage available at Target. Well, sort of available. I've been into a lot of Big Box stores this year looking for not-your-everyday packs of baseball cards, and these are some of the toughest ones to find. I can't get to a Target that often, but I have to wonder if there will even be any left this year, as I strike out on finding them more often than opposing batters do against Scherzer.

There is something else interesting about these 3 card packs....here is the next card from that first pack:

Nice card. 2 short-prints out of 3. I'm not sure how these were collated, but I don't think the short prints were short printed on the black parallel versions.

I have been able to find only 2 other packs (only one each time I was in Target). Here is the next one:

Not really a fan of the lime green on the regular Cardinals Heritage cards, but it works great here.

The Diamondbacks cards look good in black as the lack of an extra color border on the team name make them look centered correctly.

And another short-print! In general I have to wonder about distribution and collation of these little packs. Here is the third pack:

Yet another short-print, which was followed by yet another short-print:

Hey, haven't we seen that card already? Yep, but that's what I got. It is so nice I don't mind showing it twice. And I'll leave it as the final image too, even though I should have one more card to show. But I won't, since it is another double - Prince Fielder. 2 packs each with the same 2 Tigers. One of those things that make you go hmmmmm. Pretty sorta ingenious of Topps/Excello to deliver those right to me via a store in Michigan.

I am just a tad bummed about these in that I wish I would have known of their existence earlier; then I wouldn't have bought any other type of Heritage packs. Though perhaps then I wouldn't have pulled a different super purdy parallel I'll show you some other night as the keystone of a different post.

I'm not sure what to do with these. What's that you say, these are up for trade? Well, not really. I think they would make an outstanding sampler page as there is no way I could consider chasing a set of these. So having 9 is the perfect #. But of course, I only have 7 different cards, so I need to trade a little. Ideally I could get  some of the other Tigers. Verlander and Cabrera would be outstanding. But I dream too big on trades I think. And if I made it to 4 Tigers on such a page, perhaps I should go for a set of Black Tigers. Most likely I just want to get a third Tiger, to make one row of them.

I think I'll just add these to my list list list and see what happens I guess.

And I still have a Heritage post or two to go. Perhaps I'll never catch up. I am enjoying Series Two so far, though I haven't ripped all my packs yet. Polar Pete is keeping his eye on a few cards in that Series already, but I also have some posts from Series One still to go as well. A baseball card is worth a thousand words you know.