Cards From The Other World

A few weeks back, I had a little extra time at work one morning to enjoy my second cup of coffee and casually read through some blogs.  From time to time, I scroll through other blog rolls to try to find new blogs that I don't otherwise read.  In that way, I finally came across a long-time blogger, Dan from The Other World.  

Dan was in the midst of a spring cleaning of sorts.  He put out a call on his blog for people to claim a division.  Seeing no one had grabbed the NL Central, I commented and asked for them.  Then I forgot about that.  

Somewhere around mid-May, a box showed up at my house from Dan. Having forgotten about my comment, I started going through the cards. The first team I saw were Cardinals, and I thought to myself, "did someone send these to me as a joke? Or a mistake? Was I hacked?"

Okay, I really didn't think I was hacked. 

Then the light bulb went on, finally, and I recalled everything. Thankfully, the cards that Dan sent to me are very memorable and filled some big gaps in my collecting.

Such as, early 2000s Bowman:

Any package that contains a Callix Crabbe (middle name: Sadeaq) has to be a good one.  Crabbe was selected out of junior college by the Brewers in the 2002 draft in the 12th round.  He got a brief chance to play in the major leagues when the San Diego Padres selected him in the 2007 Rule 5 draft. He failed to impress, and his career went back down the minors after that.  But come on -- Callix??

Strikingly, all of these minor league guys got chances to play big-league baseball.  Salome got three at-bats in 2008, Pember got a start in his four appearances in 2002, Komatsu appeared with St. Louis and Minnesota in 2012, and Logan Schafer is still in the Brewers system.  Of all of the minor league guys, Mike Adams may have had the longest career -- 3 years in Milwaukee, parts of four seasons in San Diego, parts of two seasons in Texas, and two years in Philadelphia before coming to the end of the road at age 35 last year.

There were other cards that I needed for PCs and the team collection as well.  Such as one final Bowman -- a Lucroy rookie:

A couple of Greg Vaughns -- a Fleer insert and a Flair checklist:

And even a Rickie Weeks 2011 Topps Update All-Star card:

The two biggest highlights from Dan, though, came in small packages:

The Braun framed A&G relic is interesting. I had one of these already, but the swatch of fabric in the card is pure white.  This one is gray.  I'm calling that a short-print variation.

I am joking, by the way.

The other card is a pink mini Parallel of Mike Fiers -- serial numbered out of twenty-five!  

Dan, thank you very much for the cards.  I'll do my best to distribute those Pirates, Cardinals, Reds, and Cubs around the blogosphere and, more to the point, I promise that this weekend your return envelope will be filled!

Thanks for being patient.