Hoyle'd again

The day after I received Night Owl's envelope I got one from Mark "Friend of Everyone's Blog" Hoyle. It was like a mirror image of NO's in that it had some 2016 late release stuff and some off the wall vintage. 

The border-less (a scanner victim) Hyun-Soo Kim card goes directly into my fantasy baseball binder. I've been needing a 'real' card of him all season. It replaces a World Baseball Classic one I found somewhere. A mainstream card in the player's actual MLB duds trumps a WBC oddball.

The O's picked up Steve Pearce late in the summer (at the deadline? I forget) but he was hurt and never really contributed. Nice card though. I needed it for the same reason as the Kim card.

Next up... a 1989 Fleer Prospects card with an Oriole. I always liked this set. It contains the infamous Billy Ripken bat knob obscenity card. Boy, was that a huge deal for awhile! This one is more routine.

We have Bob Milacki alongside football coach-lookin' Jim Corsi of the A's. Milacki was taken by the Orioles in the June, 1983 draft. that's the same month I got married. He won a couple of games for the Orioles at the end of the 1988 season. That was no mean feat given how the 1988 Orioles were so utterly terrible. And that's being kind.

But he was a 14 game winner for the 1989 "Why Not?" Orioles who finished second in the AL East and were in first place as late as the eve of September. That clunky "EBW" on Milacki's sleeve is the memorial for owner Edward Bennett Williams. I never realized what a great owner he was until Peter Angelos came along. 

These Kraft Home Plate Heroes cards came on Mac'n'Cheese boxes. We went through a lot of this stuff back then as my kids were growing up but I don't think I nabbed the Ripken. Two things I do know...I never kept the two cards intact, especially if an Oriole was involved...he was cut and put in a 9 pocket. And secondly I never cut the panel as neatly as this. My 1980s  food container and box bottom cutting skills didn't improve from when I was slaughtering Post Cereal cards twenty years prior. 

Cal Jr. and Darryl Strawberry are definitely on odd couple to be sharing a panel. Hey, an Oriole and a Met...makes this something that would fit perfectly in Joe Shlabotnik's collection. And I've wondered from time to time about these food and retail issues that are logo-less due to lack of MLB licencing but list the teams' nicknames. What's different now with Panini unable to use either? 

Finally here is a 2016 Topps Update card of my free-swinging pal, Chris Davis. Topps proclaims him as a future 500 Homer Club member. He's at 241 right now, and he's 30. I'm a big Crush fan but I'm thinking that another 259 is a longshot. I hope I'm wrong as the O's have a lot invested in him. 

But either way it's a nice card of him. His swing and reaction to a blast are both distinctive. He's worth the price of a ticket even when he's off his game.  

Thanks again, Mark. I appreciate the cards very much. Those of you with a Twitter account should follow him at https://twitter.com/Markhoyle4  Mark posts a lot of neat stuff there.