By the third night, you've got the rhythm down again. You probably remember the prayers without having to look them up. You've also perfected your dreidel spin. And the more candles you have, the more fun it is to watch them dance in varying ways, even just a centimeter apart.
Something else where your muscle memory comes back quickly is opening packs of cards. I might go months without opening a pack, but partway through a blaster, I have that little tear of the back flap of cellophane just perfect.
2018 Stadium Club #59 Yonder Alonso |
This card shows the rapid recent evolution of the Cleveland Indians uniform. Red and dark blue are becoming more prominent, and the Indians are gradually moving away from the Chief Wahoo logo, which is barely visible on Alonso's left sleeve. Starting in 2019, the longtime logo will not be used on-field anymore.
2018 Stadium Club #266 Alex Verdugo (RC) |
This card has the general look of those 1970s cards everyone loves so much. Other than the massive amount of ink on Verdugo's forearm, the chain link fence and various parked vehicles in the background just scream "retro". That's also one of the better examples of a bat's woodgrain that I can recall.
2018 Stadium Club Never Compromise #NC-MT Mike Trout |
I'm not sure what the point of this set is, other than an excuse to make another card of Mike Trout. The paragraph on the back mostly talks about Trout's clubhouse demeanor, including a quote from former Angel Howie Kendrick.
I am a frequent Redditor, and things get quite different around the /r/baseball subreddit during the offseason. There are plenty of highlights and game recaps during the season, but between November and March, people are grasping at straws a little bit. One offseason post pointed out that Shohei Ohtani was the first Angel not named after a fish to win Rookie of the Year, after Mike Trout and Tim Salmon.
Sometimes April is a long way away.
2018 Stadium Club #280 Harrison Bader (RC) |
Back when I was a young Beckett subscriber, they'd occasionally run a feature where fans would write amusing captions for their cards and send them in. Gloves on heads, dugout shots, Bip Roberts, that sort of stuff. Upper Deck cards were frequent candidates. Anyway, I always wanted to send a card like this in to Beckett, and caption it, "Hurry up and take the picture! I can't hold this pose much longer!"
I may have stolen that from my dad. It was a long time ago.
2018 Stadium Club #300 Hideki Matsui |
There is definitely some funny business going on with the background of this card. The umpire, catcher's head, and fans nearer the third base dugout are much blurrier than the fans on the other side, leading me to believe that either Topps applied some weird artificial bokeh effect to the upper right quadrant of the photograph, or else an image processing algorithm got confused. I speak from experience when I assure you that light does not work this way.
I haven't played with new smartphone features like Portrait Mode much, but they can get confused when a background is encircled by a foreground object. Someone with their hands on their hips, for example, or a chair arm. The enclosed area might not be digitally blurred like the rest of the background in the same focal plane. For my money, a fast lens with a wide open aperture is still the best way to get a nice bokeh effect, but I'm a purist.
It's a good photo selection, as is usual with Stadium Club. But the strangeness of how it was manipulated knocks it down a few pegs in my book. However, this is the final card in the set, #300, so that raises it back up a little bit.
Our streak of Washington Nationals has come to an end, but it's never too late to begin a new one.
Nice Trout insert, unnecessary though it may be. (That's a funny observation about fish-named Angels ROYs) I have that Verdugo card and I hadn't noticed how '70s it looks until now.
ReplyDeleteYour would-be Beckett caption for Bader is spot-on. It looks like he's doing a one-handed push-up and can't hold himself up another second.
You should subscribe to SI for Kids. They have a feature where they show off cards and have kids submit captions for them.
ReplyDeleteThat's fun, I will have to look into that. Some of those Beckett ones were hilarious.
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