2015 Topps Stadium Club blaster recap III

I relented to pick my third blaster of 2015 TSC even though I still have not picked up one 2015 Topps Series II blaster - I've thought about building the 300-card base set but I don't want to be huffing and puffing to focus my energy on one trading card product.

Because I like the cards, I am going to be hunting down the base cards in bits and pieces [for my mini collections] - I printed out a generic trading card checklist to mark off cards I end up with, so when I'm looking for loose cards, I don't end up with dupes.

#240 Josh Beckett
#40 Josh Hamilton

#243 Salvador Perez
#272 Alexander Guerrero

Pack two
#229 Dayan Viciedo
#28 Dallas Kuechel

#233 Felix Hernandez
#268 Carlos Baerga
#194 Carlos Gomez

Pack three

#217 Yu Darvish
#101 Mookie Betts

#53 Chipper Jones
#T-5B Giancarlo Stanton - Luminous Triumvirate insert
#297 Wade Davis

Pack four

#16 Robinson Cano - I like the way the image captures the dirt on Cano's batting gloves as he swings away; when cards have images of players hitting a ball, I always wonder if the guy actually got a hit or merely made an out.
#15 Adrian Beltre
#193 David Wright
#185 Josh Harrison - Gold foil parallel
#220 Jake Peavy

Pack five
#205 Jose Altuve
#57 Marcus Stroman

#264 Alex Rodriguez
#CS-2 Andrew McCutchen - Contact Sheet insert
#19 Scott Kazmir

Pack six
#263 Anthony Rizzo

#91 Dusty Baker
#123 Lenny Harris - he had a fine career, holds the career record for pinch hits and played until he was 40, but why is he in a 2015 trading card product?
#TCA-AP Albert Pujols - True Colors insert
#207 Doug Fister

Pack seven
#139 Andrew McCutchen
#148 Kevin Gausman

#288 David Peralta

#210 George Brett - Black foil parallel; I've wanted this card since the image used was supposedly the inspiration for 30-year old singer Lorde's Royals song that got popular a few years back; it's a nice bonus that it's a parallel version of the base card.
#29 Trevor Rosenthal

Pack eight
#118 Yasiel Puig
#253 Hisashi Iwakuma
#245 Edgar Martinez

#78 Juan Gonzalez - Foil board parallel serial #'d 20/25; Gonzalez is a 'has been,' with at least couple of bad raps in his MLB career, but 'Igor' was simply legit in his prime and may still have some die-hard collectors.
#219 C.J. Cron

Autograph request through the mail received: Juan Gonzalez

Juan Gonzalez c/o home - I was surprised 'Juan Gone' was responding to autograph requests sent to him. I scurried to find what I assumed was the working address online and sent a small package to him, with a blue Sharpie [it may have been the second time I've ever sent a Sharpie out with an autograph request, though I'm pretty sure I've sent some ballpoint pens out]. It may have taken a week before I actually sent my request out and in another two weeks, before I got my self-addressed stamped envelope back with my cards signed [on Wednesday], including a 2004 Topps Cracker Jack 'set card.'

At his healthiest during the mid to late 1990s, Gonzalez was an RBI machine - all the ribbies he got may have been the result of guys hitting infront of him and getting on-base, but there is no denying the man could rake.

I remember being so excited to get his and Ivan Rodriguez's autograph on cards 10 years ago after getting into a baseball stadium before the gates were scheduled to open - Gonzalez actually was a pretty good signer if you saw him and I think even have a picture with him.

Of course things went sort of downhill for Gonzalez when he turned down something like $140 million over 10 years from the Detroit Tigers in 2000 - he had a great season with the Cleveland Indians in 2001, but various bumps and bruises presumably ended his Major League career a few years later [he tried to make a comeback with the St. Louis Cardinals in the spring of 2008, but pulled up lame].

Gonzalez is probably a borderline Hall of Famer but possible red flags in his prolific Major League Baseball career [during the Steroids Era] - include being associated with noted [or infamous] Dominican Republic trainer Angel Presinal and also with good ole' Jose Canseco who implicates Gonzalez [among other prominent, early 1990s Texas Rangers' players] of PED use in Canseco's first book [Juiced].