hong-chih kuo the distance

not all team collectors are blessed with an icon with a name so amenable to puns, and so i have tried and failed to live up to the high standard set by matt at bob walk the plank.  i'll try to do better with some cards he sent me last year to wrap up one of our many blind trades.

here's hong-chih kuo himself, 

on a 2006 upper deck sp authentic card.  it's an auto, but it's also kuo's base card.  i'm glad i'm no longer a set collector.  i had a hard enough time as a kid trying to figure out if the bump wills error was needed for my 1979 topps set to be complete (i decided that it was needed), so these short print 'base' cards would really chap my hide.  topps even killed me a bit as a team collector in 2012 with the super short print dodger variations in update that year.  that was the last year that i separated out my flagship and traded dodger team sets from the rest of my dodger cards.

moving right along, here's a 2008 upper deck spectrum rafael furcal and jeff kent dual swatch card

which reminds me that i figured by now i would be typing 'hall of famer jeff kent', but he's not getting the votes that i thought he would.  if i were to vote next year, he'd be in my top ten, but just barely, so that may explain why he's only at around 16% with other players also vying for a limited number of votes.

this next card features a hall of famer - it's a 2008 upper deck sp legendary cuts mike piazza/russell martin relic

that would be better for this dodger collector if piazza were featured as a dodger.  kind of a passing of the torch thing.  however, the point of the card is not to be team specific so i shouldn't nitpick.

last card is this 2008 upper deck premier trio relic card featuring james loney, russell martin, and takashi saito

james loney will always be remembered fondly by me for his grand slam in game 1 of the 2008 nlds against the cubs. the cubs were up 2-0, and were cruising to some degree, but then ryan dempster walked the bases loaded in the fifth and loney went deep.  i don't think the cubs recovered from that unlikely home run, and the dodgers swept them to reach the nlcs for the first time since 1988.  now they just need to get over the nlcs hump.

thanks for the cards matt - i'm sorry it took so long to post (so long, in fact, that matt has already posted the cards i sent him after i received these).  i'm eagerly awaiting the next round of trading!