Rally Squirrel

Keep this in mind, when you are struggling to find cards of your favorite common player...

The Rally Squirrel has not one, not two, but five cards out there.

On cardboard, it started with the St. Louis Cardinals in 2012.

Wanting to explore the league a bit, Rally Squirrel found itself in Philadelphia in 2015.

But Rally Squirrel had had enough of the transient life. It longed for its first home. By 2018, he ended back with the St. Louis Cardinals. All is right with the world again. Rally Squirrel had come home.

Rally Monkey could not be reached for comment.

2008 UD A Piece of History

After reading Steve's last two posts I thought, well, I've got a card cut from a cardboard food box and I've got another card I've altered. I decided to go with the altered card first.

In a recent trade with Andy, I received from him a bunch of Phillies cards. In the pack was this Ben Franklin A Piece of History Card. I decided to keep him with my Phillies cards since he is, after all, one of the most famous Philadelphians. And I decided to give him a Phillies cap as well.

Isn't Photoshop wonderful? The hardest part of this was finding an already scanned Phillies card which had a hat facing in the right direction.

Shameless self promotion

In addition to occasionally writing for this blog, I do my own blog called Capewood's Collections. But you already know this because my blog is listed in the side bar.

I've been toying with doing a baseball card only blog of my own. I got some encouraging feedback on my idea from several bloggers (including Steve here) so I've gone forward with my idea of making what will essentially be an on-line encyclopedia of baseball cards. Some of the feedback I got suggested this would be better done as a wiki instead of a blog. I had no idea how to set up such a thing but it turned out to be easier than I thought. And this will work better as a wiki (after all a wiki is designed to be an on-line encyclopedia).

The site is ready for the public. It can be found at http://baseballcardref.pbwiki.com/. I'd appreciate it if you'd check it out and visit often. I am open to suggestions on how to make it better. At some point I may solicit other contributors but its too early for that.

I'm starting with cards from 1980. The Pete Rose card is the first card to be posted.

1991 Donruss #744 Dr. Dirt & Mr. Clean

I remember Lenny Dykstra and Dale Murphy being huge deals in the 80's and early 90's. I do remember both as being on the Phillies. I associate them with different teams though. Dale will always be a Brave to me and Dykstra will always be a Met. I can never shake that.

This card is odd. This was also when anyone who sniffed a baseball ended up on a card. This was the time of filler cards. Not that two players of this caliber didn't deserve a card together. It's just overkill though. On the other hand, it is nice to see.

This card feels like a free promo for a Philadelphia area dry cleaner. Dr. Dirt is kinda dirty looking, but in a clean kind of way. Sort of like Dennis the Menace. Mr. Clean lost the earring, grew some hair and traded in his floor cleaner for a Phillies uniform.

This is where gimmick cards got their start. Not with this specific card, but cards like it in this era. Could this be the inspiration for the Studio line that Donruss put out in 1991? Maybe. This reminds me of two buddies in their softball uniforms. After many beers, they decide to go to Sears and get a portrait done in their uniforms. It didn't matter that one played all day and the other sat on the bench watching. They had the uniforms that looked like real major league uniforms.

I hope Lenny and Dale got some good money for that dry cleaners spot. I'll bet they had no idea that it would end up on a card. That should be a lesson to all players. Don't take show up to Sears in your uniform. They will get you to pose in front of a cheesy background. It will end up on a card.