'Tis The Season To Be Zippy.

       I have declared this month the one where I settle all draft folder business.  I have finally (and mercifully) come to the end of my first tier of posts to close out, my unwritten trades.  It is a relief to have these out of the draft folder and into the world, if only to thank the kind souls who sent me stuff. 

This past Christmas brought me few glad tidings and fewer reasons for good cheer, but one shining exception was an unexpected package I received from Kenny, aka Zippy Zappy.  Kenny and I have exchanged packages since he started his blog two years ago and I must say, if we were keeping score, I would say he's winning.  This one was sent as a holiday gift in thanks for all our past swaps. 

If you read his blog, you'll know that ZZ is a huge prospector and his love of rookies was my gain here, as I am now flush in minor league Mets.  One name really stands out here, L.J. Mazzilli is the son of Mets favorite Lee.  This was great to get in December but that joy has been slightly tarnished now that he has been suspended 50 games of the 2015 season.  Luckily, that tiny Dominic Smith card more than makes up for that.

ZZ sends off some major league cards too. 

Better than jokes about my shiny Dickey would be mentioning my handsome little Dickey, right? Right?  Hello?  Is this thing on?

Back to the bread and butter of ZZ, the rookie prospects.  Here is a six pack of Extra Edition.  I have heard of two of these guys, so in that arena I am batting a cool .333.

There was a bit of gratuitous junk wax, which is fine, but what makes these stand out is the immortal Kelvin Torve, the first Mets player since Willie Mays to wear #24 (the number is unofficially retired).  Hey, it's nice to have something to be remembered for.

Some more major league cards. I have a soft spot for that Topps Ticket to Stardom set from a few years ago, so it was nice to see more of those, including a Jose Reyes insert I didn't have.

Seeing Luis Castillo going up for a pop-up is kind of a mean photo, Upper Deck.  Mets fans know what I am talking about. Lets move on before I get mad.

There was a few more older Mets cards, including a tremendous 1972 Tug McGraw card that I somehow didn't have. 

He also included some New Jersey Devils cards.  I haven't bought much new hockey in the last decade or so, so these are always appreciated.  It would have been even more appropriate if they were in their green and red uniforms, given the time I got this package. 

Last but not least is the absolute highlight of all these cards:

In our first trade, Kenny included a Japanese David Wright card and even translated it for me.  Here, he makes me a multiple David Wright Asian card collector with another oddball from the far east.  He also wished me Happy Holidays in Japanese.  So let me return the fond wishes here, on St. Patrick's Day mind you, and say thanks for Zapping me for Christmas, Kenny.  I should probably take down my tree, now that I think of it.

A Retraction and Apology.

       Three weeks ago, I wrote this post.  It was well deserved, mostly because of the first three starts Daisuke Matsuzaka made for the Mets...take a look.

 First 3 starts:
Date      Opp      GS  W    L    IP    H    R   ER  BB K  ERA  WHIP
Aug 23    DET      1    0    1    5.0    6    5    5    1    4      9.00  1.40
Aug 28    PHI       1    0    1    4.1    6    4    4    4    5      8.31  2.31
Sep 2    @ATL     1    0    1    3.0    7    6    6    2    3    18.00  3.00

That's about as ugly a three starts as you could want.  Plus, he was taking about 45 seconds between pitches; it was simply awful to watch.  Somehow, for reasons I cannot quite fathom, he stayed in the rotation.  Well, then this happened...

 Next 3 starts:
Date      Opp       GS  W    L    IP    H    R   ER  BB K  ERA  WHIP
Sep 8    @CLE     1    0    0    5.2    3    1    1    3    6    1.59    1.06
Sep 14    FLA       1    1    0    7.0    2    1    1    1    3    1.29    0.43
Sep 20   @PHI    1    1    0    6.0    4    4    2    3    6    3.00    1.17

And then today he went into Cincinnati and did this...
Sep 25    @CIN   1    1    0    7.2    4    0    0    2    6    0.00    0.78

You have reason to smile, Dice-K, it is not often I eat so much crow.  I will give credit where credit is due, however.  He listened to his coaches and manager, pitched much faster and sharper, regained his former command, and now could even get a long look for next season.  謝るよ。  Shazai.

Labor Pains.

or, The Failure Files: Daisuke Matsuzaka.

       I know where we are in the Mets season, I am fully aware of it.  We are in the "Throw it against the wall and see what sticks" portion - lots of rookies and reclamation projects. So when I heard the Mets were going to give Daisuke Matsuzaka a shot a couple weeks ago, I was like "hey, what do we have to lose?" Well, I'll tell you what...about 12 hours of my life I will never get back and every last ounce of my sanity watching him pitch both deliberately and horribly.

I don't often speculate in prospects and rookie cards, but I will admit, it was my own failure in buying into Dice-K mania.  I didn't buy any crazy 1/1 ultra rare butt swatches or anything, but I did hoard his cards for a while.  I now wouldn't put them in my bicycle spokes for fear of slowing the damn thing down too much and making it crash and burn.

I once kind of offhandedly dismissed poor Dice-K and felt kinda bad about it, really.  Now?  If I ever see him pitch again for the Mets, I will go on the kind of rampage that will make the headlines on several continents.  This is what happens when you pitch three starts to a 10.95 ERA, and believe me, that does not even begin to say how terrible his pitching has been.  Is there anyway to luck into an 11 ERA? Well, ol' Dice-K has done it (at least we didn't pay $51 million for the privilege).  *sigh* It's all so depressing.  At least my fantasy football draft is tonight.

Two Trades and a Chicken Dinner.

       While I was idle for a couple of weeks in terms of actual blogging, I never rest when it comes to trades.  Let's catch up with a couple swaps and some contest swag.

Robert from $30 a week habit has quickly become a go-to guy for all my obsessive online trading.  First off, he's really polite.  I mean he might not be just the most polite person in the cardblogosphere, he might be one of the most polite people I deal with period.  I am a sucker for good manners.  If I had a daughter, I would totally let her date Robert.

I had seen that Parnell rookie on his Insanity Set blog and had to have it, so I swapped him a few other numbers for it.  He also had pulled that Wright and figured I would give it a good home (he figured correctly) so I sent him some other stuff and the trade was complete.  He threw in the shiny and the Archives Mets as well as those minis.  Polite and generous?  Heck, forget my hypothetical daughter, I might date him...thanks Robert.


I broke down recently and bought some Gypsy Queen (yeah, I know) and was underwhelmed as I expected to be.  But I pulled a great numbered mini Colby Rasmus card, which reminded me of a trade from while back with Dennis of Pictures of Men.  Dennis was very receptive to getting that Rasmus into his collection, so we worked out a deal for a David Cone jersey card (a Met that I somehow did not have a jersey card of).

Dennis was also quite giving by sending me most of the Topps Series 2 Topps Mets he had and a couple of my 2012 rookie cup needs (woohoo...someone reads my wantlists!).  Sadly, given my hectic schedule recently, I only just mailed his card out, with a few additions due to my laziness and his generosity.  With any luck, those cards will find their way to Canada safe and sound. 

Last but not least, I won a contest on The Chronicles of Fuji:

Not only are these Japanese cards pretty damn nifty, they were free!  I am a sucker for free.  They will find a nice spot in my small but expanding Japanese card pages.  Plus, how cool is it that Fuji has his little icon on his return address labels?  But Fuji, I have to ask, my bad eyes cannot seem to decipher what your little Fuji Avatar is thinking about...please let me know what it is. (UPDATE: I looked again, is it sushi?) Thanks again Fuji!

The Far East.

       I could not sleep at all last night.  Lucky for me, there's actual real live baseball on TV this morning thanks to MLB's odd choice to start the season in Japan a good week before the rest of the season.  I am all for the Japan Series, I just find the timing odd.  My Mets were in the first one of these with the Cubs 12 years ago and I remember waking up at the butt crack of dawn to watch those games too.  Japanese baseball crowds are fun to watch and listen to.  They sing, chant, and make a lot of noise.  When I finally break down and leave the United States, I am going to Tokyo and I am gonna make sure it is during baseball season.  This all got me to thinking about Japanese players.

America's love affair with players from the Far East, of course, started with Hideo Nomo:

Nomo became the prototype for Japanese pitchers in the US.  A couple years of dominance and popularity, followed by injury and mediocrity.  I don't know if this has to happen to all Japanese pitchers, it just seems to have happened to all of them.  Nomo, though, was first and probably best.

My love affair with Japanese players, on the Mets anyway, begins and ends with Tsuyoshi Shinjo:

He had style, flair, panache.  I wish the Mets had given him more of a chance because when he was healthy, he was a fun scrappy player.  Sadly, they jerked him around, shipped him out of town, then brought him back and didn't play him.  Wait, the Mets mishandled a player?  Say it aint so...

No breakdown of Japanese players would be complete without Ichiro:

What can you say about him that hasn't already be said?  He's an absolute artist on the ball field.  I have seen very few players like that, no matter where they were born.  I don't think the question is if he belongs in the Hall of Fame, but should he go in on the first ballot.  Plus, dig that Upper Deck card with Mr. Met.  I wish I had a whole page of just that card.  We have recently seen, more and more, that Ichiro is a bit of a jokester.  I wish he has shown this side earlier.

The Yankees have a hit or miss record with Japanese free agents.  The big hit, of course, was Godzilla!

Hideki Matsui!

Matsui is the only Yankee of recent vintage I did not despise with every fiber of my being. 

The misses, on the other hand, have been huge.  Kei Igawa (not shown) is the absolute king of them. As of last year, Igawa was still pitching in the minor leagues, playing out the ill-advised gigantic contract the Yankees gave him with Michael Scott in Scranton-Wilkes Barre.  I saw him pitch a couple years ago at a Durham Bulls game in North Carolina.  He got lit up for like 6 runs in 2 innings.  I have never seen a player look more defeated when, after about the fourth double in a row, Igawa looked into the dugout practically begging to be pulled out of the game and no one came.  I actually felt sorry for him.  Of course, I also heckled him like a New Yorker would and got a lot of gasps from the more congenial southern crowd. 

The other Hideki - Irabu - also did not turn out quite the way everyone imagined, but the man just passed prematurely, so I will not speak ill of the dead.

I will, however, speak ill of the living.  The Mets, at the same time the Yanks got Hideki Matsui, signed Kazuo Matsui, which was a total disaster.  He wouldn't move positions (why the Mets signed him when they had Jose Reyes is besides the point - they got the wrong Matsui), he had one good week to start out, and then settled in to be a little more exciting than tapioca pudding.  I am very bitter about Kaz Matsu, I bought a ton of his cards; the three of them that are left are shown here.  It's not the money, mind you, it is the sour memories.  Loving a sports team is a lot like loving a person sometimes in that respect.  The Mets have also signed about 50 different middle relievers from the Far East - one of them, Hisanori Takahashi, is shown on this page as well - none of them lasted more than a season of two. Who is Jinten Haku?  I had to look him up myself; apparently, he was a pretty decent player for a long time.  That card has been in my collection for as long as I can remember...it is a 1979 TCMA card.

And then there is Dice-K. 

Dice-K should have been...could have been.  He showed flashes of such brilliance, then fell into the same pattern all other Japanese pitchers have.  Plus, he got fat. I mean try-out-as-a-Sumo-wrestler fat.  I know $51 million is a lot of money, but was it too much to ask you to buy a stationary bike alongwith all those cheeseburgers?

For anyone who wants to invest in Yu Darvish cards, remember Matsuzaka.

Lots of Mets.

       I love lots.  No, that is not an incomplete sentence, I love buying and selling lots of cards on eBay.  All sorts of people will tell you all kinds of strategies for getting a good price on the venerable auction site; ideas ranging from searching misspellings to sniping to days of the week, etc. etc.   I have bought and sold on there for over a decade and I find the best way to get bang for your buck is lots.  When I sell in lots, I always list everything that's involved, including names, card numbers, and serial numbers - not just one of these but all of them.  Sure, it can be time consuming, but such completist actions gets results.  And conversely, when I am looking for a card, I will always use the "search description" option to see if I can find it in a lot to get some other cards with it, either to add to my collection or turn around and resell.  I find this adds to the fun and since this is a hobby, that is the name of the game.

       I don't always have a specific target when I search, sometimes I just plug in a few words and "lot" and see what comes up.  "Mets lot" is one of my five most common searches on eBay and last week I found a rather vaguely worded listing, offering 50 cards including "serial numbers" and "refractors" with nothing listed and only one card pictured.  Normally, I would not take a chance on such a lot, but I was feeling frisky and the price was right.  Lucky for me, the lot was all refractors and serial numbered cards.  It is one of my favorite buys of recent memory.  Lets take a look:

Right away, there are some Topps gold parallels, I happen to love these cards.  Johan is always appreciated, I am still a little weary of Pelfrey.  Pagan is now gone, but he did have one good season on a bad team and, last but not least, Brandon Looper.  I like Brandon Looper strictly because in MVP 2005, he was listed as B. Looper - so that means the Mets closer was literally a Blooper!  How appropriate. *sigh* Moving on, there is some Heritage Chrome and those wacky Topps Co-Signers cards, with their labyrinthine system of colors and numbers.  Luckily, Jose Reyes is in the dark shadows of two of them and not featured.  My love affair with Jose Reyes is over and I am very broken-hearted about the whole thing.  It is always nice to see David Wright's smiling face, with any luck, we will see more of it on the field this year. 

Let's move on to the shiny, OOOOOOooooooooooo..... shiny...

Night Owl was right when he said the 2010 Chrome cards were the worst offenders of the curling, that Jason Bay bows something awful and it was packed tight with these other cards.  Oh, but those Blue and Orange refractors are purdy.  I can't tell which color works better.  That David Wright looks 100x better in person, with its orange popping right out at ya.  More stately and beautiful is the 2011 Johan Santana; that might be my favorite new Johan.  Heck, the blue even makes Armando Benitez look good.  There, once again, is a mega-shiny X-Fractor Jose Reyes...there was a time when I would have been thrilled to own that card.  Then there are some Bowman refractors, which are always hit or miss.  The shine on the black borders is hard to see in person, much less in the scans here.  And while I love the color purple normally, it does nothing for Mets cards.  I do like that those cards are numbered out of /777 - I like it when they mix it up from the usual /999 or /500 or what have you.

Here are some more Mets shiny.  Told you there were a lot of refractors...

Lots of painful memories in this scan, but being a Mets fan is knowing the meaning of the words "what might have been."  That Daniel Murphy X-Fractor is quite something in person; he is the only potential positive here.  The less said about the others, the better.

Even more shiny and some die-cut rookies:

Kurt Presley's claim to fame is being a cousin of The King; too bad Lisa Marie has a stronger arm.  That gold refractor David Wright is the rare card that looks better in the scan than it does in person.  The colors don't quite work in real life, but the scanner seemed to get the right angle on it.  Odd.  Oh, and Darryl Strawberry.  I have been in an abusive relationship with Straw since 1983.  I wish I could quit you, but a low numbered blue shiny Topps Tribute card is not going to help at all.  Deolis Guerra was one of the pieces of the Johan Santana trade, I think he parked my car last week in the city, I can't be 100% sure.  Then there are two more Orange vs. Blue examples.  These are both off colors to the Mets colors, but both work; yes, even with Victor Zambrano prominently involved.  Matt Den Dekker opened some eyes in Spring Training this year, and this is the first card of his I have.  The only thing I have to look forward to this year is some young bucks going out there and showing something, so I hope they keep some of these kids up.  If you're gonna fail, you might as well do it with rookies.  I remember we picked Steve Matz in 2009 and this is the first I have heard of him since.

Getting a little older with these, and a little more random:

Mike Piazza and Tom Glavine.  You cannot get further on my love list than those two.  I have never said a kind word about Tom Glavine and I never will.  OK, Carlos Beltran.  I avoided commenting on his cards now long enough.  I want to like Carlos Beltran.  Heck, I want to love him.  I have a boatload of his cards.  And yes, I know he had some good years for the team, but I am afraid in the long run, the best thing about Carlos Beltran for the Mets is he got us Zack Wheeler.  Sad.  The bottom row has a neat old Topps Gallery Players Private Issue card of Rey Ordonez.  I now look back on Rey Ordonez fondly, so I guess there is hope for Carlos Beltran.  I have that Dynasty card in a gold ultra-low numbered version, so having it in orange is nice too (the back has Keith Hernandez and Darryl Strawberry).  That last card proves the old Meatloaf lyric correct: two outta three aint bad.

This was a 50 card lot, so the last scan only had five cards:

The top row are three rookies that didn't pan out, two of them from Japan.  I love all of the Mets failed experiments in free agents from the far east, so these cards will find themselves in good company with Kazuo Matsui and Tsuyoshi Shinjo, et al.  The last two cards kind of belong together...Darryl Strawberry and Jose Reyes.  Probably the two best position players the Mets have ever developed.  Both of them left for greener pastures and fatter wallets.  One of them regrets it, I hope the other one lives to. *double sigh* To end this post on a more positive note, those Upper Deck Baseball Heroes cards sure look wonderful in blue.