30 Day Baseball Card Challenge Day 26

DAY 26: A FAVORITE ODDBALL CARD FROM THE 1980'S

I always did love the box bottom cards.  I do consider these oddballs because they were not really parts of mainstream sets, and unless you bought boxes, you did not get these cards.  This one is particularly interesting because the highlight that this card celebrates is Don Baylor breaking the Major League record by getting hit by a pitch for the 244th time.  There's something to be proud of right there.

30 Day Baseball Card Challenge Day 25

DAY 25: A FAVORITE ODDBALL CARD FROM THE 1970'S

Hostess or Kellogg's?  That is the question.  Ultimately, I like the Kellogg's cards a little bit better.  And I really like players that spent a short period of time with Boston.  So here we are with the first designated hitter in Red Sox history.  Orlando Cepeda spent just one season with Boston, but it was a good one.  Unfortunately he does not have a ton of cards with Boston, particularly from his playing days.  So this one takes the honor.

30 Day Baseball Card Challenge Day 24

DAY 24: A FAVORITE ODDBALL CARD FROM THE 1960'S

The Post cards from the early 1960's are really nice.  This is the only one I have, which I hope to change in the near future, but this one will still be hard to top.  This is the only card of Willie Tasby with the Red Sox.  Tasby was the first black player acquired by the Red Sox and he only spent the one season in Boston.

30 Day Baseball Card Challenge Day 23

DAY 23: A FAVORITE ODDBALL CARD FROM THE 1950'S

I don't know that I would necessarily consider this an oddball or not, but it is the only thing really close to that in my collection.  I would love to add the Hires Root Beer cards or the Red Heart Dog Food cards.  This is one of two cards from the 1959 Fleer Ted Williams set that I have and it is my favorite of the two.  It is also the only Ted Williams card in my collection released during his playing career, something that is typically very expensive.

30 Day Baseball Card Challenge Day 22

DAY 22: A CARD OF A COMMON PLAYER THAT ALWAYS SEEMED TO ELUDE YOU

For some inexplicable reason, this card took me over a decade to add to my collection.  I do not know if I would characterize it as eluding me so much as me simply forgetting to add it.  It was the only card from the major brands in 1991 that I did not have within a couple of years.  I did not get this card until 2003.  That is a long time for just a common card from the over-production era.

30 Day Baseball Card Challenge Day 21

DAY 21: A CARD OF A ROOKIE YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE "INVESTING" IN

This is another thing I never really did.  But I did pick up a ton of Hanley Ramirez cards in the early years.  I was excited about him.  I have never really been that excited about a prospect since, because he was traded after only two games in the Majors with Boston.  I was very disappointed with that trade.  I could have probably made some money with that collection, I had a number of high-end cards, but I don't break up my Red Sox collection.  Hanley has since returned to Boston and had a terrific season last year, but the Red Sox missed out on his best seasons.

30 Day Baseball Card Challenge Day 20

DAY 20: YOUR FAVORITE PARALLEL CARD BASED ON THE PARALLEL, NOT THE PLAYER

The 1993 Finest Refractors were the first really amazing parallel set.  And for good reason.  They are still pricey to buy.  I do not think that anything will ever really come close to them.  I only have one 1993 Finest Refractor card in my Red Sox collection (though I do have a Sandy Alomar Jr. as well).  This is it.  Ivan Calderon only played part of one season for Boston and he was a massive disappointment, but I still jumped at a low price to get this card.

30 Day Baseball Card Challenge Day 19

DAY 19: A FAVORITE CARD FROM A COUNTRY OTHER THAN THE UNITED STATES

I could have gone the O-Pee-Chee route.  I could have gone the Sega Card-Gen route.  Both of those were considered very strongly.  I decided to go outside the box though and pick this card from Venezuela.  This was my first Sandy Leon card and, at the time, I thought it would be my only one.  No one foresaw what he did last year.  It is still my first Sandy Leon card though.  And it is definitely an unusual addition to my collection.  I have since added a few more Venezuelan cards, but this was the first.

30 Day Baseball Card Challenge Day 18

DAY 18: A CARD OF A PLAYER WHO BECAME MANAGER OF YOUR FAVORITE TEAM

I remember Butch Hobson being named the Red Sox manager.  He was considered a very good minor league manager and he was given a chance with Boston in 1992.  Unfortunately, Hobson was a much better player than a manager, and he was not that good of a player.  He managed for three years and Boston finished below .500 each year.  He later had legal issues.  He did have that 30 home run season in 1977 though.

30 Day Baseball Card Challenge Day 17

DAY 17: A CARD FROM THE FIRST SET YOU PUT TOGETHER HAND COLLATED

Again, I am not a set collector, but I once bought a hobby box of 1991 Conlon and managed to put the whole set together out of it.  This Berg card was my favorite of the Red Sox cards, even though that included Babe Ruth.  Berg is such a fascinating character and this was my first card of him.  I do not have any idea if I still have this completed set, but it was the first one that I was able to put together myself.

30 Day Baseball Card Challenge Day 16

DAY 16: A CARD OF A PLAYER WHOM YOU APPRECIATE BUT DON'T LIKE

No, I was never a big fan of Manny Ramirez.  I definitely loved it when he was hitting well and helping the team, but he did so many things that were so frustrating.  From constantly complaining about his contract, to fighting with Kevin Youkilis, to pushing the traveling secretary to the ground.  Of course the worst stuff happened after he complained his way into being traded away.  Manny had a lot of faults as a person, but he was a damn good hitter.  I have a ton of his cards with the Red Sox, but that is more due to his status as a great hitter and getting a ton of cards made.

30 Day Baseball Card Challenge Day 15

DAY 15: ONE OF YOUR FAVORITE CARDS FROM THE 2010'S

It is very tough to beat a World Series celebration shot.  I have considered cards for one of these posts before, so I needed to get one in somehow.  The 2013 season will go down as one my best baseball memories.  I had just bought a house literally a few days previously and I was watching this final game from my brand new living room.  Koji Uehara was my favorite player from that run, despite David Ortiz's one-man wrecking crew.  Koji is the one I will remember best and this card captures why.

30 Day Baseball Card Challenge Day 14

DAY 14: ONE OF YOUR FAVORITE CARDS FROM THE 2000'S

By the time I started collecting, food issues were becoming a thing of the past.  They were far less common than they had been in previous years.  There were still a few here and there, but my family typically did not get the kinds of things they appeared in.  In 2001, Post issued cards in cereal boxes for the first time in a long time.  And I picked up a box specifically to get this card.  It still remains a favorite of mine because it was so rare for me to get food issue cards the way they were intended.

30 Day Baseball Card Challenge Day 13

DAY 13: ONE OF YOUR FAVORITE CARDS FROM THE 1990'S

I know, I have already had a card of Greg Harris in this series, but I do really like this card.  This card features Greg Harris pitching left-handed in a warm-up.  Harris was ambidextrous and really wanted to pitch from both sides of the mound in a game, but he never got that chance with Boston.  This is his custom-made glove that he could switch hands with to pitch with both hands.  It is just a fascinating card.

30 Day Baseball Card Challenge Day 12

DAY 12: ONE OF YOUR FAVORITE CARDS FROM THE 1980'S

As readers of my blog know, I am obsessed with really good players who spent a short amount of their careers with the Red Sox.  And the first player that I really was aware of that fit this description was Tom Seaver, who spent the last half season of his career with the Red Sox.  Seaver pitched well, but was injured and missed out on the post-season.  This is a great-looking card from an iconic Topps set.  It is one of my favorite cards from the 1980's.

30 Day Baseball Card Challenge Day 11

DAY 11: ONE OF YOUR FAVORITE CARDS FROM THE 1970'S

I loved the In Action subset.  Early 1970's Topps had a lot of nice action shots, but unfortunately so many of the Red Sox photos were kind of boring.  So it was up to subsets like this to get really good photos of the Red Sox, and this one definitely qualifies.  I first saw a picture of this card in a book that had photos of all the Red Sox Topps cards from 1952 to 1988 in it.  I loved this card, partly because Aparicio was a Hall of Famer and partly because of the photo.  So I eventually hunted it down.

30 Day Baseball Card Challenge Day 10

DAY 10: ONE OF YOUR FAVORITE CARDS FROM THE 1960'S

This 1961 Fleer card was sent to me by Zippy Zappy.  And I love this card because it is so off-the-wall.  1961 Fleer was a set dedicated to old-time players and alot of these guys are not particularly well-remembered now.  Including Pipgras.  So there is the player selection.  Then there is the fact that is not exactly known as a Red Sox player.  He was a very good pitcher for the Yankees for a long time and only spent the last three seasons of his career with the Red Sox.  29 games total.  Although interestingly he was originally a Red Sox prospect and was traded to the Yankees for Al DeVormer before he made the Majors, a trade that worked out much better for the Yankees, of course.

30 Day Baseball Card Challenge Day 9

DAY 9: ONE OF YOUR FAVORITE CARDS FROM THE 1950'S

Harry Agganis is a very tragic story.  He was a terrific local athlete that could have been a professional football player if he had not pursued baseball.  And he was developing into a young star when he was stricken with pneumonia.  He appeared to be recovering when he suffered a pulmonary embolism and died suddenly at the age of just 26.  This is the only real card of Agganis from his playing days.

30 Day Baseball Card Challenge Day 8

DAY 8: A CARD THAT REMINDS YOU OF A FAMILY MEMBER

I have mentioned this card before with this same story, but it bears repeating.  This was the first card I ever got in a trade.  And the person that it reminds me of is my older brother.  He and I never had a real close relationship growing up.  But when I first got into collecting, he returned to the hobby after getting some cards here and there for a few years before this.  In my third pack, I did not get any Red Sox cards for the first time.  I did pull a checklist card and my older brother offered to trade me this Harris card for the checklist.  I never forgot that.

30 Day Baseball Card Challenge Day 7

DAY 7: A CARD YOU BOUGHT IN PERSON AND THE STORY BEHIND IT

Kind of a weird one, huh?  Well this is what I remember.  In my very first trip to a card shop, I was digging through a box of random oddballs.  I saw this card and loved it.  This was actually the very first card that I ever bought at a card shop.  It is the first Red Sox card I ever got through means other than packs or trades.  It was also my first Red Sox catcher card, which was a big reason that I bought it.  It was the only card I bought that day and I spent a whopping nickel on it, but it remains the first card I ever bought at a card shop.

30 Day Baseball Card Challenge Day 6

DAY 6: A CARD YOU SPENT MORE THAN $10 TO GET

I have spent more than $10 on a lot of cards.  But this is the first really high-end card I ever purchased.  More than just an autograph, more than just a relic, this was my first button card.  This card was kind of an opening for my Jason Varitek collection to really take off.  Yes, I spent more than $10 on this card, quite a bit more, but it was far from the most expensive card in my collection.

30 Day Baseball Card Challenge Day 5

DAY 5: A CERTIFIED AUTOGRAPH CARD OF ONE OF YOUR FAVORITE PLAYERS

I decided to go outside the box here and pick one of my favorite active players.  Jackie Bradley Jr. is a terrific athlete, a great defensive outfielder, and when he is on, a very good hitter.  He is a little too streaky and can be unbeatable at the plate, or he can be terrible.  But last year he had a breakthrough season and a 29 game hitting streak.  He is a lot of fun to watch.

30 Day Baseball Card Challenge Day 4

DAY 4: A ROOKIE CARD OF ONE OF YOUR FAVORITE PLAYERS

I am going with an early favorite player here.  As readers of my blog are aware, I really like players that kind of fly under the radar.  Carlos Quintana was an underrated, solid player for a few years.  And those years were right when I was first watching baseball.  Quintana was never the best player on the team, but he did a lot of the little things to help make the team better.  This is his Score rookie card and it features a nice photo.

30 Day Baseball Card Challenge Day 3

DAY 3: A CARD FROM THE FIRST SET YOU TRIED TO COMPLETE

This one is kind of tough for me because I have never been a set collector.  But I briefly considered trying to put the 2003 Topps All Time Fan Favorites set together because I liked it so much.  I loved the premise and the player selection.  I still wish Topps would fully bring this set back.  I managed to buy enough packs to put the Red Sox team set together solely through packs, which was the first time that had ever happened.  This Tiant was the final card I needed for that team set.  Once I had it, I stopped buying packs.  I think I was fewer than 20 cards away at that time.  Since then I have traded a bunch away to set collectors though.

30 Day Baseball Card Challenge Day 2

DAY 2: A CARD WITH MORE THAN ONE PLAYER ON IT

This was the first Red Sox card in my collection that had more than one player on it.  It was my first card of each of these three players.  Dennis Eckersley and Carl Yastrzemski would of course be elected to the Hall of Fame, while Mark Clear was a good, if inconsistent relief pitcher.  The Red Sox were not terribly good in 1982 and these were the team's only All Stars.  I would add tons of cards with more than one player as the years went on, but this one was special because it was my first.