The Trading Post #91: My Best Friend Collects Chipper Jones

Even though I've been in a little bit of a blogging hibernation, trade packages have continued to roll in. I figure now that baseball is starting back up, with spring training games and the World Baseball Classic being played, my focus might return to blogging. Having a sporting event of some kind on TV, especially baseball, is a muse of sorts. The period between the NFL season ending and baseball season beginning is a bit of a slow time, especially since the Colorado Avalanche have been completely atrocious this year.

Fortunately, the Rockies are looking pretty good in spring training, even with a couple of their star players opting to get up to speed via the WBC this year instead. One of those players, Carlos Gonzalez, is facing off against Italy as I write this. The colorful colors of his home country of Venezuela don't feature pinstripes, but CarGo's day job as a Colorado Rockie offer a 50 percent chance that one of his relic cards will contain a purple pinstripe.

2016 Topps Scouting Report Relics #SRR-CGN Carlos Gonzalez S2 (MEM)

Mark from My Best Friend Collects Chipper Jones found just such a card, a sharp relic from 2016 Topps. The pinstripe is lined up just perfectly on the swatch, and there still is something cool about these, especially if you suspend the cynicism and trust that this really is part of a jersey that Gonzalez wore. I've seen a few of these where the pinstripe is partially obscured by the edge of the window, or even in there a little crooked. Topps' quality control on this one certainly succeeded.

2010 Topps Update More Tales of the Game #MTOG-8 Mile-High Humidor

The other card Mark sent is one I've seen before, but it still shows what makes Colorado baseball so unique. In fact, if you can consider this a Rockies card, this is probably the single Rockies card that I see most often on non-Rockie blogs. I'd really like to go on a tour of Coors Field one of these days and see this in person. But even if I don't get that chance, it has succeeded in lowering the scores at Coors Field and turning the place into less of a launching pad. One-run games have become more commonplace at 20th & Blake, or at least the 14-9 affairs less common. The Rockies do need to do a little better in one-run games this season, but so far in spring training, that has looked promising.

I'm not sure if they have a humidor at the Triple-A Albuquerque park, but given that the Rockies selected it for the top of their farm system, it would make sense to try to replicate the conditions players would find in Denver. That's partly why Albuquerque was chosen in the first place. It's similarly dry and at a high elevation.

But the mountains are on the wrong side.

1988 Donruss Stan Musial Puzzle #55 Musial Puzzle 55-57

Another small trade came in from Peter at Baseball Every Night, a handful of puzzle cards from 1988 Donruss. I've yet to pop them out of their frame to see if they line up and match the color better with the Stan Musial puzzle pieces I recently completed, but it will be worth a try once I work up the courage to take the fragile collectible out of its sheet protector.

Thanks to Mark and Peter for keeping the trading going over the winter!