Card shop finds - a random quartet

I don’t want to get crazy with impulsive non-baseball card quarter box digs if I ever stop at a card shop - so I grabbed a few that caught my eye for a moment and added them to my other purchases of supplies, some other loose cards and several loose packs.

2018 Panini Contenders Draft Picks football Patrick Mahomes II #79 - though he threw two interceptions in his team's 30-14 win last Sunday, he's probably been one of the hyped up NFL players this season; if nothing else, in my bloodlines collection, I wanted to pair this card up with a card of his father Pat Mahomes, who was a former MLB pitcher.

2018 Panini Donruss football Christian McCaffrey #22 - I had a random card of his father Ed, who played in the NFL during the 1990s, so I grabbed a card of Christian's to tie things up [for now] in my bloodlines collection.

2018 Panini Contenders Draft Picks football Adrian Peterson #4 - this card of longtime star running back can go to my beyond the glory collection or my infamous collection.

I would probably inclined to go ‘beyond the glory’ since he has been through a lot in his football life, as well as personal life - in my world of mini-collection cards, there is no need to glorify the mistakes this pro athlete has made.

2018 Panini Player of the Day football Russell Wilson #36 - as the Seattle Seahawks teams around him as been torn down and rebuilt over the years, maybe the narrative surrounding his career has lost its luster.

While Wilson has been singled out as a divisive figure in the locker room for any number of reasons - I still like the guy enough to pick up a card of his.

On the topic of my infamous mini-collection

I picked up a 1975 Topps Mini John Milner #264 off the quarter bin scrap heap - it's kind of pretty looking, but an otherwise nondescript piece of cardboard of a rank and file ballplayer who made his MLB debut in the early 1970s and played through 1982.

Stumbling upon Milner on the internets, I learned he testified about his drug use in the Pittsburgh drug trials of the mid 1980s - Milner also threw some shade at icon Willie Mays for having amphetamines ["red juice'] at his disposal.

I didn't know much about Milner, but after everything was said and done, maybe Milner was more of a sympathetic figure who just got up in the times - but I had to add his card to my rather dubious mini-collections.

Maybe there hasn’t been as much emphasis to seek out cards of guys who’ve done some bonehead things [either on the field or off the field] - since I don’t want to glorify or endorse bad behavior, especially the more serious, morbid and fatal offenses like sexual harassment, rape and murder.

However, pro athletes are my ‘celebrities’ to 'gossip about' and this mini-collection was probably inspired by Jim Rome’s radio show [from the early 1990s through early 2000s] - when he’d mock all sorts of pro athletes [he loved to ridicule and pick apart the black eyes] who messed up.

With Twitter and other social media, everyone has to insert themselves into someone’s controversy / drama and it’s kind of depressing reading all the instantaneous hot takes - it’s all overkill and it’s not shocking anymore when professional athletes are arrested, sharing pizza in a hotel room, caught for a DUI, shoplifting, blackballed for a number of things, et al.

Cards of presumed offenders will still be added, but there is the caveat that it’s all negative and while I don’t want to sugarcoat things - having a card for ‘ha, ha’ value doesn’t really put my collection in a positive light or make it particularly better [even if it’s all kind of superficial at best].

Farewell A-Rod - is it the end of the line?

Because of his immense talent, the scrutiny over his accomplishments and his misdeeds, A-Rod will always be the car crash I'll rubbernecking to watch - in what was supposed to be a week where A-Rod is playing his last game with the New York Yankees, there was some controversy over how many games he'd get into.

After a bounce back year in 2015, reality caught up to the 41-year old - who really knows what is on his mind and what maybe his possible options if he isn't bent on hanging it up just yet.

If A-Rod doesn't play in a big league game again, it will be interesting where he ends up as far as Hall of Fame consideration goes - because of the players' PED ties, I think the baseball writers have resigned themselves to letting three of the greatest players in baseball in Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and A-Rod sit in limbo as opposed to inducting them into the most exclusive club in any professional sport.

I think Bonds and Clemens have to get in first and that doesn't look like that is happening anytime soon - before they A-Rod gets any actual consideration.

Featured autograph - Dave Kingman

The notorious 'all-or-nothing' slugger played all of 10 games as an Angel in 1977 - but it's kind of fun to dig around for the obscure one-time Angels, especially when I'm looking to add more subjects to my all-time Angels autograph collection.

While he signs through the mail for a small fee [$10], TTM isn't a thing for me at the moment - so I grabbed this certified autograph card for about $3.

For the extremes Kingman represented as a big league ballplayer, he might have been considered a cult favorite of sorts, though learning bits and pieces about his MLB career - I can't get past the idea that he once mailed a live rat to a female reporter as some sort of neanderthal protest against women covering MLB baseball towards the tail end of his playing career.

1994 Fleer Update Alex Rodriguez #U86

A-Rod has always been a player to universally collect and I've found myself morbidly fascinated about how he did even when the luster has long since faded - I picked up his 1994 Fleer Update rookie card because it's a nice, clean looking card picturing a young A-Rod swinging through in presumably a spring training at-bat.

After being suspended by Major League Baseball in 2014, A-Rod has come back and actually put up some fine hitting numbers as a designated hitter - who knows if A-Rod will continue to put up the numbers, but he's had his share of hitting highlights, including passing Willie Mays on the all-time home run list, getting his 3,000th hit and hitting three home runs in one game.

A-Rod is a flawed, tained player who has stumbled in more ways than one - but by being able to play well again, his road to irrelevance has taken a little detour.

Database work
When you are supposed to put a priority on what you are collecting, it seems I'm trying to do the opposite, trying to find unique features in the thousands of commons out there. I think what makes the experience worth it is when I'm actually looking at the cards in-hand and see there is a theme, an oracle among cards from different years and different brands.

I'm trying to list all the applicable collection topic cards in a database on Excel - the task keeps me sane and gives my collecting endeavors a purpose, but it gets tedious and sometimes you have to take a step back.

These are merely the collecting topics subjects I'd like to work on as far as putting into the database I created - I probably listed over 1,500 cards already as far as cards from other collection topics are concerned, but need to list some more.

He's hitting over .400, just collected his 400th home run with a 4-for-5 performance Thursday, in a 7-5 Atlanta Braves win against the Florida Marlins. Chipper, wanna go to Hooters?

I'm trying to work on a collection of 'infamous' players - from public urination to murder and everything in-between]. I'm not glorifying these athletes, but keeping a note on what they did that maybe a 'no-no' among society.

There are also other topics such as a collection of cards - featuring players from different nations, featuring players involved in the steroid era, featuring pitchers showing the type of grips they are using during their pitching motion, uncorrected error cards and cards featuring interesting facts on the back.

Edit: I just found a binder of cards featuring players 'inking it up' for the fans and also 'bonus babies,' where star players make cameos on common players' cards - more stuff to work on and keep me busy.