Five Card Stud

Robert of $30 A Week Habit sent folks five cards. All we had to do is write a 100 word post about them. Here goes....

'59 style Topps Bill Russell. Love Russell. Love pink cards. Love '59 Topps. Fun card!

'75 Dan Dierdorf. Vintage football cards are cool things. That helmet logo bites though. LOL

Arian Foster. Shiny chromified 2011 card. Cool card, odd guy. Goes in my Texans binder.

Rod Gilbert. My first hockey hero! Great skater, wicked shot. The GAG Line, Goal A Game. Gilbert, Nevin, Ratelle. They were awesome!

100 words, on the nose. Thanks so much, Robert!

My Entire Star Wars Collection......

......in one post.

OK, I'll confess. It's the second most successful movie franchise in history. And the current one is about to become (or maybe already has become) the highest grossing movie of all time. And I don't follow it. I think my problem is that when I watched first one I didn't bother to read the crawl that rolled up the screen and explained the background. From that point on I was way behind the curve and I had no idea who was chasing who or why. So when it comes to the Star Wars chatter these days the whole world is a tuxedo and I'm a pair of brown shoes*.

Hey, that's enough negativity for one post. Let me feature some things I do like with some cards I have sitting on my desk that were waiting for a reason to be scanned.

Baseball. Maybe not like I did as a kid but I do like baseball.

I needed a Carlos Gomez card for my fantasy baseball binder this year. But when I picked up this one off eBay or COMC or wherever it came from I didn't know it was about as thick as a floor tile. No way it would fit in a regular nine pocket page. $0.99 wasted.

I really liked this Lindor card which I bought this summer for the same reason as the Gomez. But in the spirit of having a card of a player in his big league uni I replaced it recently. But I still think it's a cool card.

Hockey. I really really love hockey. I love it more when the Rangers win, like last night. But even when they don't I still love hockey.

Someone posted this Martin St. Louis card on their blog a few months ago and i knew I had to find one for myself. The Madison Square Garden ceiling visible in the background isn't as iconic as the Yankee Stadium stands that provide the backdrop for so many vintage baseball cards. But to me it means even more because the Rangers, unlike the Yanks, are my team. I love the Garden!

Football. My football 'interest index' follows the relative success of the Texans and Houston Cougars, and to some extent the Nebraska Cornhuskers. Right now the Cougars are riding as high as they have in many many years. The Texans, not so much.

Ameer Abdullah didn't have a bad rookie season but I bet he (and the Lions) expected more. He's got a ton of talent (and is a great guy as well) and I hope he has a big second season in Detroit next year.

I get asked a lot if we (Texans fans) will ever see Arian Foster on the field here in Houston again. I tend to doubt it. He hasn't been healthy for several seasons and I don't think the club is going to invest more money in a questionable running back, not even Foster.

And that's in for this edition of 'What's on Bob's Desk'.

*tip of the cap to George Gobel.

Your 2013 Baltimore Flyers!!!!

I had my fantasy draft last Wednesday. I only participate in one league, my league. I've tried one or twice to play in another league but I can never give it the effort I put into mine.

This is our 34th season. As far as I can tell there is only one league in the US that has played continuously since before our first year, 1980. That league is one year older, founded in 1979. Every year I hope they disband. One other group has been around since the mid 70s but for many years they were more of a football 'pool'. At least that's all I can find using the internet and believe me I've tried.

Our draft is always fun. We get together in the Houston Medical Center where one of our owners is a tech director and gets us a big room full of tables laden with computers. It's a lot like the NFL's war rooms.

I have a collection of cards of the players I've had on my team since Day One. Adding my new draftees is Job One the day after the draft and the cards I needed arrived today. So my opening day line-up is complete in my binder. I am willing to overpay to get cards of players quickly rather than wait until more common cards are available. I'm quirky that way.

So, without further ado, here are my '13 Baltimore Flyer starters:

My quarterback is Matt Ryan. I had Peyton Manning last season but dealt him for Ryan a couple of weeks ago. Ryan plays in better weather and is more likely to still be standing later this season. That, plus I was able to move up in a middle round of the draft as part of the trade. Ryan become one of my three allowable 'keepers'.

Here are my other two 'keepers. Both Arian Foster and Ray Rice have been on my club for several seasons. Runningbacks are gold in my league (and most leagues) so having two studs has been very beneficial. Foster has been a health concern this summer and frankly I considered my options with him. But I couldn't get value in a trade and I wasn't about to risk letting him go and regretting it later. So I'm rolling the dice and he's still my guy. Plus, I get to see him play every week, in person or on TV. There is something to be said for that.

The Foster card at the top of the post is my favorite card of his but it will not go into my Flyer binder because it is a horizontal card and in my hierarchy of cards vertical cards of a player in the correct uniform trumps a horizontal one.

Having kept a QB and two RBs I knew I'd have to concentrate on receivers early in the draft. We use three and we combine wide-outs with tight ends (we are a dinosaur league after all) so I grabbed the best guys on my list with my three first picks. Randall Cobb, Torrey Smith and Hakeem Nicks each bring some sort of issue with them but I'm satisfied if not overly happy at the receiver spot. 

I always avoid the 'kicker panic' that seems to grip my fellow owners starting around Round 11 or 12 when someone will grab the highest ranked kicker and most of the other guys start grabbing others from the top tier. I can show you stats that say the #1 kicker is worth only a point a game more than the #12 kicker so I'm usually going to take one with my last pick. And I did again this year. Cowboy kickers are usually a safe bet and I'm OK with Bailey. besides, this gives me another reason to root for the @#$%^&*()(*&-ing Cowboys to stall out just inside the red zone several times a game. 

There seemed to be only a couple of Dan Bailey cards available and they had a premium due to being autographed or being some fancy-assed chrome thing. This one didn't cost much, about $6 shipped but I still hate paying more for my kicker's card than any other one. Oh well. 

Our rosters are 15 players and I won't show every guy but here are my top reserves. 

My tip for late drafting fantasy player who may be reading this.... take a late round flyer on Alshon Jeffery. You can thank me in November.

Oh, What a Night!!

Last night was pretty cool. The Orioles tied up their series with the Yankees. Another tense, exciting game of course. Nice effort by Wei-Yin Chen. I didn't pull any Orioles in Gint-A-Cuffs but Night Owl and a couple of others supplied me with the O's out of the set. I've kind of become jaded to the A&G set after only two years of messing with it. Last summer I thought the 2011 set was the coolest thing ever. But after the 2012 set I have kind of lost interest. Unless there are some really kick ass subsets next year I think I'll pass on it.

I nearly had to treat my remote button pushing finger with an ice pack because:

And up in Jersey, while the baseball game was on, across Route 3 from my aunt and uncle's Secaucus home, my Texans beat the Jets. It wasn't very pretty but it's a win and that's all that matters. 

And last, but not really least, Arian Foster slashed his way to 22 fantasy points to give me a win. At 4-1 I trail my sons (damn newbies!) by one game in our division. I like this Foster card even though I don't really know one set from another. I buy random Texans cards off the web as they catch my eye. 

The night wasn't perfect though. Brian Cushing went down with a season ending injury. That's gonna hurt. But, as the Texans said (many times) last season.."Next man up!!" Here is another great looking football card. Same brand/set logo, different year maybe?

Game Day 2012

I've got big expectations for the Texans this year. I've poured a lot of money, time and emotion into this team as a fan and season ticket holder. It started to pay off last year. Ready for more.

I'm on the way to Reliant for a tailgate breakfast and hopefully a win today. Arian Foster is iffy for the game. No matter.

Next man up!!

Case Keenum

I'll be at the Texans preseason game tonight. I hate preseason games and resent having to pay full price as part of the package but not enough to quit being a season ticket holder. I only go because I want to keep my seats filled as they have been for every game the team has played. But nothing good usually comes of NFL preseason games. Usually nothing, but not always nothing.

In a preseason game in 2010 Arian Foster ran all over the Cowboys. I mean he looked super. At the time he wasn't a lock to play over Steve Slaton. He had finished the '09 season before with a 100 yard game against New England but that was a game the Pats seemed to sleepwalk through on their way to the playoffs. But that night against the Cowboys I decided that I'd grab Foster for my fantasy team as early as possible. Lots of eyebrows were raised when I drafted him in the third round.

Tonight Case Keenum, like myself a University of Houston alum, is supposed to get significant work at the qb spot. He's in a battle with John Beck for the #3 slot. I suspect he'll end up on the practice squad (just like Foster did in 2009) but I've seen enough of Keenum to never sell him short. He has a lot of heart and desire.

This will be one of the few exhibition games that I don't doze through from my seat upstairs.