30-year old Cardboard reaches a baseball milestone!!!

Yep, that’s right.  Today, I am proud to announce that ‘3o-year old Cardboard’ has surpassed the 1,000 hit plateau.  Faster than Pete Rose, Ty Cobb, Hank Aaron, and many more I have done it!!  Seriously though, 1,000 hits in just over 2 weeks is a great feeling that I hope will continue for a long time.

‘Speech, Speech’!!!

I would like to thank the academy for recognizing my life’s works…  just kidding!!

But, seriously, I could not have done this without my readers.  I am very honored that there are people out there that enjoy my writing enough to visit once and come back for more.  Writing has always been a passion of mine and with my ‘born-again’ interest in the hobby of baseball card collecting it felt natural to document my journey.  Many people have offered help and advice and for that all I can say is ‘Thank You’.  A special ‘Shout Out’ goes to Mario at Wax Heaven who mentioned my little blog on his site and gave me my highest traffic date to this point.  I strive for bigger and better and look forward to maintaining more and more readers that come across my page.

As I have mentioned many times before, I find this to be fun.  I look forward to sharing my thoughts about the game I love and the hobby I am falling in love with all over again.  Once this stops being fun who knows what will happen.  But in the meantime, I look forward to a lot more posts and a lot more fun to be had.

Thank you all again!!!

The Marlins are fading quickly

As a Florida Marlins fan you learn to have little expectations from the team.  Don’t get me wrong, you want the team to do well, but when their payroll, or lack of, is discussed so frequently it gives you a feeling that winning is not an option.  It seems that year in and year out they are very competitive but just not enough to take that next step and get back to the playoffs.  With the wild-card spot going to one of the teams in the NL Central this year, it was great to see that ‘The Fish’ were staying so competitive as they raced against the New York Mets and Philadelphia Philles for the lead in the NL East.

2 weeks ago things were looking good.  But, we’ve now lost 7 of our last 10 games and sit stuck in 3rd place behind the surging Mets and capable Phillies.  We just lost 2 out of 3 games to the Giants who are 17 games below .500.  With a 3-game series coming up against the Diamondbacks and then the Braves, things are not going to be easy.

This team needs to overhaul their bullpen if they want to have any chance of winning.  The starters are doing a commendable job for the most part.  If you look back at the rotation in April compared to today’s staff there is a huge improvement in regards to ERA and innings pitched.  The offense, although very streaky, is able to score runs at a rampant pace.  But that bullpen is terrible.  There’s no worse feeling than to watch a lead slip away day after day and night after night.  You don’t want that ‘Oh Boy’ feeling when the manager makes the call to the bullpen!!  But lately that is how it feels as you watch the games go into the 6th, 7th, and 8th innings.  Don’t even get me started on the closer role.  Kevin Gregg is a nice pitcher, and seems like a very nice guy, but he is single handily costing us games and your closer cannot do that in late August or September when there is a pennant on the line.  Look at the teams that are winning – the closer’s role is automatic.  You need someone with a ‘nasty’ persona to come in and close out games if you want to survive a pennant race.

I am still a Marlins fan and I proudly wear my Teal, Black and White.

‘Go Marlins’ and ‘Go Get Some Releivers’

‘Oh Boy’….

The Cubs really need to retire #17

I’m serious about this.  Mark Grace screams Cubs and was a huge part of the team for 13 seasons.  As a Cub, ‘Amazing Grace’ recorded 2,201 hits, 1,004 RBI’s, 148 home runs, 456 doubles, all while batting .308.  A 3-time All Star and 4-time Gold Glove winner round out his all-around efforts that made him an instant Cubs favorite.  Grace made it to 2 playoff series’ with the Cubs and batted an ‘Amazing’ .413.  In the 1989 series with the San Francisco Giants, Grace dominated while batting .647 in 5 games.

Mark Grace signed with the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2000 and eventually won a World Series title with them in 2001.  Again, he was a key component for their success batting .298 in his first season with the team and hitting .286 through the playoffs.

No offense to Bobby Hill or Calvin Murray or Adam Greenberg or John Mabry or Felix Pie or Mike Fontenot, but none of you guys are worthy of wearing #17 for the Chicago Cubs.  Sorry guys…

Happy Anniversary Nolan Ryan!!!

Today marks the anniversary of Nolan Ryan’s 5,000th strikeout.  I remember watching this game on TV back in 1989 counting the strikeouts until he hit 4,999.  The victim of #5,000 was MLB superstar and future Hall of Famer Rickey Henderson.

This milestone was just another record set in the 80’s that baseball fans and card collectors saw as untouchable along with DiMaggio’s streak of 56 consecutive games with a hit, Cy Young’s 511 career pitching wins, and Roger Maris’ 61 home runs… oh well, I tried…

5,000 strikeouts is an incredible feat that should stand for some time.  This kind of record illustrates the domniance and determination that Ryan had to always perform as best he could.

Congratulations again Nolan!!