the circus came to town

for several seasons, david at tribe cards hosted a unique card giveaway.  he would open a pack a day (sometimes more), and the contents of those packs would be set aside for people based on a draft. some years, participants chose teams, and some years the cards were divvied up by individual players.  the last version of david's giveaway - the pack-a-daily circus - was initially a player based draft.

of course, as we all know, life gets in the way sometimes, and david ultimately decided to package up the results of that last giveaway in to team lots rather than sort by the players drafted. it was first come, first serve to claim teams, and while i was too late to claim the dodgers, i did manage to claim the twins, and a couple of months later, a box of cards was in my mailbox!

perhaps the most unique card in the box was this msa disc of rodney cline carew

it is a 1978 papa gino's disc

this was a regional issue that included only american league players. it was issued in boston, and so the majority of the 40 cards in the set are red sox players.

from one twins legend to another, here is a 2019 panini donruss willians astudillo card:

catcher cards are the best for non-licensed sets.

there were other cards near and dear to me in the box, like this 1990 o-pee-chee shane rawley card

even though o-pee-chee wasn't doing the team variation in 1990, i still appreciate the "now with" text.

oh my o-pee-chee! indeed.

there were some cards of the father of the reigning nfl mvp

the 1993 fleer ultra card is nice because it shows the gene autry retired number banner in the background. i once considered starting a mini-collection of cards like this because i am a big fan of the history of the game and retired numbers are a big way that teams celebrate that history. in the end, however, i only collect cards that show the retired number 42 in the background.

side note - back in the metrodome days, i took a tour during twinsfest. the tour took us through the bowels of the stadium from the clubhouse to the press box, and it started in the twins' dugout. the tour guide pointed to a series of steps leading up from the dugout to the clubhouse tunnel and noted that only two players had ever cleared the full set of steps in a single bound. one was cal ripken jr, and the other was pat mahomes.  i found it curious that ripken (or anyone) would even risk injury to try to make that leap, but then again i've been in a locker room and there was a lot of stupid stuff going on.

back to the cards, there were a bunch from 2005 upper deck flyball, including this card of harmon killebrew

this set was some sort of interactive game, similar to mlb showdown maybe?

here's a card that was pretty popular here in the twin cities back in 2008:

even though johan had left the club.

most of the cards in the box will be heading to brian of highly subjective and completely arbitrary as part of our ongoing trading, but i did keep a couple of cards for myself, including this 2010 topps opening day orlando cabrera card

because tatooine.

i am also hanging on this this 2010 twins team card

while i no longer have a metrodome mini-collection, this card takes me back to those evenings spent under the teflon roof.  it also features the retired number banners (joe mauer is blocking tony oliva's banner), including the banner for jackie robinson, so it will go in my aforementioned mini-collection celebrating mlb's leaguewide retirement of number 42.  the card may also be the only one to feature r.a. dickey (number 39) as a twin!

in my eleven or so years of blogging, i've only hosted one or two group breaks and a small number of contests. even with that limited experience, i know that the pack-a-daily circus was a huge undertaking and a great display of the generosity that exists within this community.

thank you david!

high flying infield cards rule

like many others, i received a pwe from adam at infield fly rule before christmas. there were some nice cards for my collection in there, including a 1993 fleer ultra eric karros card.

this was one of the last two cards i needed to finish off that team set, and between adam and brian from hsca, i was able to mark it as complete.

here's a nice double play card from 1997 upper deck collector's choice that shows rockie walt wiess avoiding raul mondesi's slide

i had one of these in my double play collection already, so this copy goes in my dodger stadium collection thanks to the appearance of the left field pavilion and dodger bullpen. or perhaps my lurker collection thanks to rauuuuuuuuuul's presence on a non-dodger card.

the highlight of the envelope for me was this 1999 fleer tradition brian bohanon card

it's one of those dodger/non-dodger cards, with bohanon shown in dodger blue but affiliated with the rockies.  shades of o-pee-chee!  a couple of things that i remember about bohanon:  first,  he was a remnant of the first dodger tenure of hideo nomo, as the dodgers and interim general manager tommy lasorda traded greg mcmichael (one of the pieces they got from the mets for nomo in 1998) back to the mets for bohanon scarcely a month after first acquiring mcmichael in the nomo deal.  second, he had a really good era (2.40) and whip (1.13) with the dodgers, but a sub-.500 record (5-7) due to poor run support.  he left for colorado as a free agent after the season ended, just as this card illustrates.

thanks adam! i hope you appreciated the return pwe as well.