I snagged a few more 2012 SEGA Card-Gen cards from that eBay seller before his auctions ended, mostly filling in some guys from favorite teams, some big names, and some of my player collections. Kicking off the group is Astros 2nd Baseman Jose Altuve.
I also added a key Blue Jay in the form of Jose Bautista, who gets 8 stars on the front of his card, probably because he had just come off of two massive seasons where he led the league in Home Runs and was in the discussion for the MVP Award. That uniform is butt-ugly.
Next up is another slugger, this time Jay Bruce of the Cincinnati Reds. He doesn't get 8 stars, though. I lived in Ohio for a while as a kid, so I have a little affinity for the Reds.
Ryan Dempster's card describes him as 'The Inning Eater.' I tend to think of players in fantasy baseball terms, and I think I had him on my rosters from time to time as a useful guy from approximately 2004-2012, or basically three quarters of the time that I have played fantasy baseball. This is also a pretty interesting photo selection, with Dempster tossing around the rosin bag.
I also picked up a card of Adam Dunn, a power hitter who I mentally lump in with Paul Konerko and Jim Thome, I guess because of the White Sox connection. Dunn and Thome weren't ever on the same roster, but I guess they were there as complements to Konerko. In looking all that up, I noticed that Dunn's Wikipedia page seems pretty critical of him. I guess he isn't seen as a real high-effort guy.
Edwin Encarnacion is another Blue Jays player that I was happy to add to my collection. I like all of the red, white, and blue in the background of this picture. I guess the blue is really part of the border and not the picture, but that doesn't stop me from liking it.
Jeff Francoeur is one of those high-effort guys that you want to see succeed wherever they go. He has managed to stick around for a long time, but never quite materialized into the superstar he was projected to become. Again with the Royals players who don't quite ever live up to the hype. Francoeur was recently in the sports news world for being the victim of a weeks-long prank instigated by his AAA teammates, who convinced him that one of the other players on the roster was deaf.
J.J. Hardy is (was?) a pretty good player to have on a fantasy team the last few years, as you don't often find a guy who will hit 25-ish homers from the SS position. He appears to be off to a slow start this year, compounded by injury. But he is locked in my memory as a shortstop with some pop in his bat.
I am rapidly running out of stamina for this blog post. It feels like I've been writing for days. And I kind of have been, just off and on every time I get some time to work. Todd Helton basically IS the Colorado Rockies, although I guess CarGo and Tulo had kind of taken over that mantle in recent years.
Isringhausen was around FOREVER. He came into the league the year before I started high school, and before this 2012 card for him was issued I had graduated from high school, served two years as a missionary in California, gone to Iraq twice, been married for 8 years and had three kids. Crazy. That's FOREVER! Not quite Jamie Moyer FOREVVVARRRR!!! (he made his debut when I was starting kindergarten and was still pitching in 2012), but it is a long time. It has been quite a while since Isringhausen was relevant in fantasy baseball, though, probably a decade or so.
I mentioned Konerko above in the Adam Dunn snippet. He definitely had some good years as a hitter. I guess it's pretty good if you can last in this league long enough to have multiple peaks instead of one peak and one decline. He doesn't quite have Hall of Fame numbers, but he was pretty good.
I don't have much to say about Pedroia, but how often do you get a relatively rare card of a star from a big market for under $2? Not very often.
I don't remember why I grabbed this card over the other cards that were on offer. I guess because Rauch was in a Blue Jays uniform? Anyway, I am getting to the point in the post where I am moving quickly in anticipation of being done with it.
Chris Sale gets a coveted 20 rating on the back of his card, and seems to be a bit underrated according to the gold star-based salary cap.
I should have saved this card for last, with Jim Thome tipping his helmet to the crowd, but there is one more card in this group and my plan is ruined. I've always liked Thome, probably a little bit more than Konerko and Dunn. I don't know why, but that's how it is.
The formatting on this last duo of pictures is going wonky on me, and I hope that Blogger doesn't dump my whole post before I get through writing this. I love these Card-Gen cards, and I will probably work to put together as many of them as I can even if a full set doesn't ever materialize.
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