Hargrove Comes Home

All-time Fan Favorite, former coach and manager and Indians player, Mike Hargrove returns to the Tribe as an advisor to Manny Acta for the 2011 season! 

He spent 22 years in an Indians uniform as either a player, coach or manager. In 1974, he grabbed the AL ROY Award with the Rangers.  He batted .292 in 888 games over seven years as a member of the Tribe.  According to Indians.com, Hargrove also ranks second all-time in club history for managerial wins with 721 from 1991-99, guiding the team to AL pennants in '95 and '97. He was inducted into the Indians Hall of Fame in 2008.

As a life-long Indians fan, I have to say this is AWESOME news!  Wahoo!!  Welcome, back, Hargrove.

Full story: http://cleveland.indians.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20110118&content_id=16452784&vkey=news_cle&c_id=cle

Getting Jack'd from across the pond

John (that's JackPlumstead to you, mister!) from merry ol' England sent me a package of cards! There were more than 50 cards in the envelope! Wahoo!! I decided to scan in two sets of nine cards rather than the whole package. I chose each grouping for a particular theme:

First up, we have a Hardball Heroes Albery Belle, a silver Topps Total Scott Stewart, and a Topps Opening Day Omar Vizquel.  Okay, it's generally not a good idea to forget what the theme was on your opening card display, but, well, I don't remember what I was going for here... Enjoy anyway:

Next up, we have Ken Griffey Jr UD "For Promotional Use Only," Carlos Baerga, and Jeff Treadway.  I chose these for the action in the cards!  I like cards featuring the players in the middle of doing something, even if you can't tell just what Junior is doing there.  John also remember that I have I penchant for "PROMO" cards (which is how I ended up with a Mariner in a stack of Tribers):

Next up, I went for SHINY!  We've got a Sizemore Topps Attax silver foil card, Manny Ramirez Big Bats with VERY shiny gold foil, and an Albert Belle "You Crash the Game" Silver Set:

This next set includes a very shiny purple card of Manny Ramirez (Fleer Ultra), a Topps sticker of Joe Carter, and a Goodwin Champions Grady Sizemore.  I chose these for two reasons: First, they were actually the first three cards, and second because they are all looking to the right.  Who decides these things?

The last set includes Junior Ortiz, Grady Sizemore/Travis Hafner, and Charles Nagy.  I picked the Ortiz because he has the same look on his face that I would have if I were in his shoes!  The Sizemore/Hafner is a team checklist.  Do they still make team checklists?  I loved the old cards that had the checkboxes on them.  Of course, you don't see that much (if at all) anymore because writing on one's cards depletes the "value" of the card.  Yeah, back when I was a kid, we didn't care about that stuff.  Heck, we even GLUED our cards into spiral notebooks! 

The Nagy is one of my all-time favorite cards.  I love the retro uniform on him and he has the look of someone that played back in the era of the uniform he's sporting.  I remember the first time I saw the card, I did a double-take, thinking I had pulled some kind of blast from the past:

Sterling.. In every sense of the word

Thorzul recently had a "Bowman Sterling" group break and I received my take from that break the other day. Also included in the package we these two "Sterling" performers:

The cards above are 2007 SP Legendary Cuts, featuring Bob Feller and Lou Boudreau.  I really like these cards.  They have a cool marble-like background and the gold foil adds to the card rather than takes anything away (as often foil does).  The black-and-white images surrounded by the red gradient fill really makes the images POP, too!

The other "Sterling" cards in the envelope comprise my take from the break:

If memory serves, each participant chose a team and then was assigned a random team.  My team ended up the Marlins.  Of course, it is entirely possible that I picked Florida as my secondary team if given the choice of remaining teams.  You never know with me.  I digress.

The two players I received are Aaron Thompson and Chris Volstad with signature-on-sticker autographs.  These Sterling cards are very cool-looking.  They are clean with the large white space around the player's face.  Normally, white space just eats up card real estate, but in this case, it makes the closeup really stand out.  Like the Legendary Cuts, the ornation on the card adds to it attractiveness.

Thanks, as always, Thorzul!  You really do rule!

The Hall of Fame Welcomes TWO Former Tribers!

Domo Arigato, Mister Roberto!  I knew that Styx song was ahead of its time!  Oh, wait. That's *not* the lyric!?  Well, I'm going with it anyway!

Roberto Alomar and Bert Blyleven have both been inducted to the baseball Hall of Fame today!  Wahoo for Tribe fans everywhere!

Turfdiggers Tuesday

It's official - the Turfdiggers squeeze out a win over the Foxhounds in the Super Secret League, giving the team a 5th place overall finish on the season.  The team scored just 4.11 points more than their opponent to snag the 5th place finish.

The final season standings look like this:

League Champion - Seymour Bengals
2nd - Florida Vikings
3rd - East TN Roadkill
4th - The Red Grange Halls
5th - Tribecards Turfdiggers
6th - Fighting Foxhounds
7th - Gold Sox
8th - Stumbling Blox

The final standings show what a difference one or two weeks can make. The Halls led the league for much (if not all) of the season, only to fall during the playoffs to 4th place. I have to admit, I was totally surprised to see that. Equally surprising? The Stumbling Blox ended up in last. By all accounts, either the Turfdiggers or the Foxhounds "belong" at the bottom. Alas, just like in "real life," the playoffs can change everything.

The Turfdiggers started off pretty well, but quickly headed into a free fall during some of the most critical games of the season.  Things eventually slowed after a nearly complete reworking of the team, but that like putting an adhesive bandage on a broken nose.

I want to thank Mark for inviting the team back again this season!  It was a lot of fun!