I'm back with another package from my Tradebait blowout. This package come from Johnny of Cards from the Quarry. I sent him a few nice Rockies hits and he sent over these cards.
I'm not a big manu-relic fan but they have grown on me recently. I think the whole jersey scandal put it into perspective for me. As long as I think of Manupatches, Bat relic Cards, Jersey relic cards, Pants relic cards, or table cloth relic cards as rarer inserts and not as hits I can justify picking them up. Obviously they don't hold the same value they once did but after all, they are mostly paper and scraps of discarded material.I do like this Cal Ripken retired number patch though as it's one of the nicer manu-relics Topps has put out in recent years.
This card was a bit of a surprise throw in. I really like the card and I think Fleer did a great job making a unique card. But Jon Miller sucks. A lot of people like him but I don't know why. Orioles fans are always saying they liked him as an announcer and they love to hear him on ESPN. He routinely butchers players names and just gets annoying after while. Hearing him and Joe Morgan together was like nails down a chalkboard. I'm not even sure who has the call on the Laughable ESPN coverage of the Sunday night game of the week anymore. ESPN has been irrelevant in my book for about 8 or 9 years now.
I've seen different versions of this Nick Markakis card plenty of times. Something caught my eye this time though. I started to wonder whose arm was sticking into the picture trying to make a play. After close examination I did finally deduce that the lettering on the jersey was from the Diamondbacks. So I went searching for when the Orioles last played the Diamondbacks prior to 2010. 2009 obvious but not it. 2008 nope not this time. 2007 Yes. Topps used a 3 year old photo to make Nick's 2010 Topps/Topps Chrome card.
Another thing I hadn't noticed before was the blue sweat bands Nick and the mystery D-Backs 3rd sacker was wearing. Why were they both wearing blue ones? The only occasion that I could think of might have been Fathers Day. BINGO!
It was Sunday June 17th 2007. Nick doubled in the bottom of the eighth and stole 3rd and then scored on a Miguel Tejada groundout. The Orioles lost their 8th straight game that day 6 to 4.
So who was the mystery arm? None other than future (at the time) Oriole Mark Reynolds. He played the entire game at 3rd so it has to be his left arm.
Thanks Johnny for sending the cards so that I could go on 2 mini-rants and play mystery photo identification!
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