Contested Shots 7: Better Winning through Losing Pt. 2

"How can you fail so hard, RAZ?" - Aristotole, Ancient Talker of Trash

My previous post was about a prize I won for being the last person to appear on a randomized list. This post is about I prize I won for finishing in last place in the March Madness bracket tournament hosted by the Cards on Cards blog. I felt pretty good about my bracket heading into the NCAA tournament (doesn't everyone?), but pretty early on my picks started falling hard and entire sections of my bracket were marked out in red ink (I like to keep manual brackets and mark the game results down by hand as the scores come in). I didn't realize that I had lost until I saw the post announcing the end of the contest. Maybe next year I will be able to redeem myself. In the posts surrounding the contest there were veiled threats that the last-place prize might be a stinker, so I wasn't really sure what to expect when I saw the envelope.

The stacks of cards were book-ended by these Ray Lankford cards from the early 90's, and I half-expected the rest of the cards to be nothing but Portland Trail Blazers cards featuring Rick Adelman and Cliff Robinson. But Ray Lankford was actually hiding a whole stack of cards for my team and player collections, as well as the Aristotle mini that heads this post. Here is a partial review of the cards in the package:

There were a number of Felix Hernandez cards in the package, including a folding stand-up card from Topps Lineage, an Opening Day insert, a Chrome Heritage card from 2015 (it looks like Hernandez has been taking hat-wearing lessons from Fernando Rodney, and the Atlanta Braves are likely to want to fight about it), and a Bowman Chrome Refractor. That's a lot of cool cards, and it's not even all the Hernandez cards from the group.

Jose Bautista got a few nice cards in the package, too. That Heritage card is again a shiny Chrome number, the Attax game card is a shiny foil example, and the card featuring him in a Pirates uniform is actually from 2015 Topps that celebrates his first big-league home run in 2006. Ken Griffey, Jr. also made an appearance in the package, and on an insert card to boot!

The horizontal stuff had to be scanned together, so King Felix and Joey Bats make additional appearances in this post along with a cool insert of Bryce Harper losing his helmet in order to show off his hair and a nice Hakeem Olajuwon insert from '94-'95 Fleer Ultra. That card is 20 years old now, which makes me feel a little bit old, since the mid-90's were the heyday of my teenage basketball-collecting life.

The basketball cards in the package focused heavily on my favorite team, the Houston Rockets, while also featuring other players I collect, like Spud Webb there in one of the better basketball card photos out there. Luis Scola had some decent stats for the Rockets, but I can't say I liked him all that much. And for those who are into celebrity gossip, James Harden is supposedly dating Khloe Kardashian. Someone named Amber Rose is super-mad about this because people keep dating her and then bailing to hook up with various Kardashian sisters. I guess Kanye West and Amber Rose were an item before he went off and married Kim Kardashian and James Harden and Amber Rose dated at some point and now he's paired up with Khloe Kardashian. No word on how Farrah Flositt feels about this situation.

Rounding things out are a couple more basketball cards. Otis Thorpe snagged a ring with the Rockets during their first Championship season, and then was involved in the deal that brought Clyde Drexler (back) to Houston for the Rockets' second Championship run. After Hakeem Olajuwon, Gheorghe Muresan is my second-largest basketball player collection. And Spud Webb makes another appearance in this package, with a card from an Upper Deck promotional set distributed by McDonald's. There was plenty more stuff in the package, including more cards, some stickers, some oddball stuff, and even a couple of redemption cards good for coins in the Topps Bunt mobile app.

I have to say that this package was a pretty darn good consolation prize for the dubious honor of making the worst picks out of a few dozen players. I really thought I had done my homework on the bracket this season, and it just blew up on me in every way. This marks the end of my Better Winning through Losing series, although the other day I did wind up in last place on another contest randomization from the Jaybarkerfan's Junk blog. I'm starting to get a bit of a complex about appearing at the bottom of lists.

At the Trade Deadline 26: A Big Dose of Basketball Nostalgia from The Prowling Cat

A while back The Prowling Cat blog held a week-long Clearing the Closet giveaway of various trading card sets that had been accumulated over time. There were quite a few of them that interested me, but in an effort to let other people have some fun I claimed just two sets. One was a fantasy and sci-fi art set featuring illustrations by Keith Parkinson, and one was this '92-'93 Upper Deck McDonald's NBA set. It features 50 cards, and I had a good time flipping through the cards and seeing some of the players I collected back in the day as well as remembering some of the players I'd forgotten about over the last fifteen or so years. Apparently these cards were distributed in packs with Value Meals, and there were regional sets too. I don't know anything about all that, as these were put out slightly before I got into basketball cards.

One of the highlights of claiming this set was getting a Hakeem Olajuwon card I didn't already have. On the front is a pretty nice Upper Deck design which kind of splits the difference between the '91-'92 and '92-'93 Upper Deck flagship sets. It's got the wood floor aspects and team logo in a circle aspects of the earlier set and the team color accents of the later set. The back of the card features a few lines of stats as well as career totals, some personal information, and an action photo. The hologram is in the shape of the McDonald's Golden Arches logo, but that is the only mention of McDonald's' involvement in the promotion.

Each team gets one or two players in the checklist, depending I guess on how many stars a team had at the time, although in some cases it looks like Upper Deck just had to grab someone from the roster, whether they were popular or not. I guess the big card in this scan would be the Michael Jordan, but I never really was a Jordan or a Bulls fan. Everyone liked the Bulls because they were dominant, but that was too mainstream for me. I did like Horace Grant, though, mostly because of his goggles and the fact that he responded to my TTM autograph request. Larry Johnson and the Charlotte Hornets were a pretty big deal during this time frame.

I've always liked Mutombo, and those Denver Nuggets jerseys are so awful they're good, kind of like the rainbow-era Astros uniforms. He spent the last few years of his career with the Houston Rockets, and is second on the NBA's all-time blocks list to my favorite player, Hakeem Olajuwon.

Because the playing field is so small and it's a relatively close-quarters kind of game, there is a high chance that NBA cards will feature cameos by other players, like Patrick Ewing lurking in the back of Mutombo's card. One thing I like about collecting Olajuwon's card is that he played in an era where big men were extremely popular, so his cards often feature another famous player in the vicinity, like David Robinson, Shaquille O'Neal, or Patrick Ewing.

I guess I should mention Reggie Miller. I never liked that guy. Some players just rub you the wrong way, and for me Reggie was that kind of player. If I had to choose a favorite Pacer it would probably be Rik Smits.

This scan is about as devoid of star power as you can get in a set that is supposed to feature the best players on each team. I've got nothing to say about any of these guys.

That Clyde Drexler card tried to glide right out of the picture, but luckily there was a defender in the way who kept him in check long enough for the scan to go through. Drexler would later play for the Rockets and won a Championship with them in 1995. He also had that little moustache and looked to me more like someone's uncle than a top-level athlete.

Scott Skiles always looked like a jerk on basketball cards. Maybe he's a great guy, but on cardboard I always imagined that he was kind of a villain. I didn't have to imagine when it came to Patrick Ewing, though. I knew he was a villain, and the heroic Rockets defeated him in 1994.

Spud Webb was evidence that even if you weren't incredibly tall you could still make it in the league. Webb and Muggsy Bogues both kind of filled the role that Nate Robinson does today, being the little guy who can hang. Spud Webb won the Slam Dunk contest in 1986 and assisted Nate Robinson when he won the 2006 contest.

This group of cards is big on star power, even if 1/3 of the scan is taken up by the hated Utah Jazz. There are a couple of nice dunk shots for David Robinson and Shawn Kemp before he got fat. I was actually wearing a pair of Shawn Kemp shoes today. When I was a teenager I had a pair of the blue Kamikaze II's similar to the ones he wore to the All-Star game. A while back Reebok reissued a pair in a similar color and I grabbed them up.

I guess Stockton wasn't too bad, but I never liked Karl Malone. I don't know for sure who the Rockets' main rival is these days, as the Jazz haven't been good enough lately to be anyone's nemesis. Maybe Portland or one of the other Texas teams? There seems to be a little bad blood with the way Chandler Parsons was handled by Houston and his subsequent move to sign with the Mavericks. I will keep on hating the Jazz, though, because it is tradition for me.

The last eight cards in the set make up the Future Force subset, and feature eight of the first nine draft picks from the 1992 draft. I wasn't sure why, but Wikipedia tells me that the #4 draft pick, Jim Jackson, held out in a contract dispute for most of his rookie season, so that is probably why he didn't get a card in the set.

The checklist starts out strong, with Shaquille O'Neal and Alonzo Mourning leading the way. Laettner was extremely popular when he came into the NBA, having won college National Championships with Duke and making the Dream Team as the only college player on the roster. He never really lived up to the hype, though. I remember La Phonso Ellis by name, but I can't remember much about his body of work.

Most of these other guys had pretty good careers, although none of them became superstars. Todd Day at least gets a nice photo on his card as he posterizes some poor defender.

This was a fun set to go through, and I am glad that The Prowling Cat was generous enough to send it out to me. I am usually so focused on the couple of NBA guys that I collect heavily that I forget about all the other players who I followed over the years. Thanks you for the cards!

What eBay Hath Wrought 5: Variations

One thing I've found I like is variation cards. They're fun, and they're rare. I especially like this Spud Webb variation from 2013 Upper Deck Goodwin Champions. It doesn't just feature Spud Webb; Muggsy Bogues makes an appearance too! Both players were famous for making their way in the NBA despite their height. Webb is 5' 7" and Bogues is 5' 3". The variation cards in the set are expanded horizontal versions of the regular base cards, as you can see from the base card below. I was never much good at basketball, but guys like these two showed that you didn't have to be well over 6' tall to be successful at the pro level.

This is one of the more famous photos of Muggsy Bogues, in which he is standing next to the tallest NBA player, Manute Bol, who was 7' 7". Unfortunately, Bol died in June 2010 due to an aggressive skin condition. After his basketball career, he was famous for using his wealth and NBA name recognition to help the people of his native Sudan. He is tied with my 2nd-favorite player, Romanian Gheorghe Muresan, for the record of tallest NBA player. I may just start a Manute Bol player collection. It probably wouldn't take much to collect most of his mainstream issues.

Here is another variation, a 2012 Topps Update David Wright card. But I didn't get it for David Wright, I got it for the guy standing next to him, R.A. Dickey. It's a pretty good card of a couple of teammates enjoying the All-Star game, and it came a lot cheaper than the $20-$25 folks on eBay are asking for Dickey's 2013 Opening Day press conference variation card.



These are a couple of good additions to my player collections, and they're a lot of fun to collect. Variations are a good way for the card companies to make the base cards more interesting, although I like base cards plenty anyway. Contrary to what the internet would have you believe, the base cards are more than just a vehicle for delivering hits.