Pack of the Day 69: A Free Bowman Blaster

I did what I said I wouldn't do, and I bought some retail Bowman. You see, I was involved in a Pick'em League this past NFL season, and for various reasons the commissioner and I never bumped into each other so that I could collect my prizes for winning one week and also for finishing second overall. Well, I finally got my prize money and promptly blew it on the most attractive thing in the card section at Fred Meyer, a blaster box of 2014 Bowman. This was technically free for me, because I won three weeks during the year and got second place overall, so everything after the first 1.5 weeks I won was pure profit.

The box didn't even tease me a little, starting right out with an autograph in the first pack. This is the Blue parallel which is numbered # 359 / 500. I don't know much of anything about Sam Moll, but I guess it's pretty cool to pull an autograph out of a retail pack no matter who it is. He's got a bit of Ugly Pitching Face (UPF) going on there, but it's not the worst I've seen.

Here's the back of the card. The Bowman Briefing stuff can be pretty interesting, although sometimes it seems like they are really reaching for stuff to mention in the snippets. Moll seems to have enough highlights to fill the card back, though. Sometimes I find I like prospects a little less when I find out their musical preferences. Those kids and their strange music! *shakes cane from safety of porch*

The second pack contained the other serially-numbered card in the box, a die-cut Top 100 Prospects Refractor of Miguel Andujar, some kind of Yankees minor leaguer. These die-cut cards are numbered to 99, with this one being # 41 / 99. I also got a regular Top 100 Prospects card of a Twins guy, Lewis Thorpe.

I like any kind of list that categorizes or ranks things, and this set appeals to me on that level, although most of the guys I've heard of populate the top rankings because they've either played for a while on the Major League club or are touted as the next big thing for their respective teams. Down here at the bottom of the list are guys who I've never heard of. Some people (like Zippy Zappy) have really good minds for keeping track of the various minor league players, but I can hardly keep up with the stars, semi-stars, and one-trick ponies who are useful in some fantasy baseball capacity.

After the autograph and the die-cut card in the first couple of packs, things slowed down significantly. I got a couple of the State & Hometown parallels, with Nelson Rodriguez coming from the prospects set and Zack Wheeler from the veterans set. I think he might need to get that leg checked out. He might have torn his GHL (groin holdy ligament) in order to get his foot way up there.

I also got this mini-card of Jorge Alfaro from the Rangers organization. No, this blaster wasn't all inserts. I got some base cards, too, but the prospect (ha!) of scanning a couple handfuls of them was too much for me to take. You know what they look like. Or, if you don't, you can click here and see some of them.