Christmas Cards from Too Many Verlanders

Dennis at Too Many Verlanders is one of the most generous bloggers around. I've gotten several envelopes from him over the past several months, and each one has great cards in them.  What did the Christmas package hold, other than the incredibly nice handwritten Christmas wish?

First off, a 2010 Topps George Kottaras card. Kottaras is Canadian -- from Ontario -- and got the opportunity last September finally to play for his hometown Blue Jays.  Here's his tweet about that. And here's the card.

The next card? Another catcher who got to fulfill his dream, perhaps, of playing for his hometown team. But for Damian Miller, the team he wanted to play for was the Milwaukee Brewers. Interestingly, Miller was not a member of the players' union because he was a strike breaker back in 1994. As a result, Wikipedia claims (without attribution...but it could be true) that his name was left off 2001 Arizona Diamondbacks memorabilia celebrating their World Series win.

Those union guys...sometimes they hold a grudge.

Next up, two lefty starters who bounced around the leagues a bit. Randy Wolf, who pitched 25 innings for the Marlins last season, appears on a 2011 Topps base set card.  And Doug Davis is pictured here on a 2010 Topps Update Gold card in his second tour of duty in Milwaukee.

Next, we come across two current Brewers.

First off, there is fourth/fifth starter -- and late season ace -- Mike Fiers. Everyone who talks about Fiers mentions that his stuff just isn't that great and that they are always waiting for the other shoe to drop when it comes to his pitching. I look at his results, and, outside of a tater-induced disaster in 2013, he has put up some impressive numbers in 200 innings of big-league work. Especially look at his K/BB ratio -- 3.75 in 2012 and 4.47 in 2014. Maybe that's a fluke, but he's always had good control and struck out a ton of guys at every stop in the minors. Something's working.

The other current Brewer is a Wal-Mart parallel of Jean Segura from the 2013 Topps Update set. It's always nice to add a card to a player collection, and my adding to my current player collections other than Ryan Braun has been slow this first year collecting again.

The final card from TMV was definitely the highlight. I mentioned a few months ago that Gorman Thomas was a guy who really never hung around to sign autographs after games. As a result, I never was able to add his autograph to my collection on anything. Either Dennis remembered that, or he just figured I would love this card because Gorman's a Brewer and a player collection. In any case, it was absolutely a fantastic Christmas gift to get!

Thank you so very much, Dennis, for the excellent cards and the holiday wishes.