Saturday, February 07, 2009

2008 Upper Deck Documentary: What's the point?

Frank Thomas by you.
Yipes, no posts to this blog since Tuesday. So much for A Pack a Day. Sorry, but this stuff is all that I have handy. Unfortunately, I couldn't just take everyone's word for it when they said that Documentary was pointless and a waste. I just had to buy FOUR packs and find that out for myself. I'll post one pack here, and list the player pictured and the player that is actually described in the accompanying text. We'll see how often they match up, okay? Okay.

88 (CLE9) April 9: Angels 9, Indians 5. Travis Hafner/Indians offense. Well, that's at least in the ballpark. However, Pronk is not one of the hitters mentioned on the card back, which references Blake, Peralta, Shoppach, and Dellucci's extra-base hits. Hafner went 0-for-4 and was hit by a pitch. Whee.

2559 (MIL89) July 7: Rockies 4, Brewers 3. Jason Kendall/Prince Fielder. Bravo, UD. Bravo.

2598 (OAK88) July 6: White Sox 4, Athletics 3. Bobby Crosby/Rob Bowen. Seriously, how hard is this?

297 (WAS7) April 6: Cardinals 3, Nationals 0. Paul Lo Duca/John Lannan. Geez, now they can't even distinguish between a catcher and a pitcher.

287 (TOR7) April 8: Athletics 9, Blue Jays 8. Frank Thomas/Frank Thomas and Vernon Wells. HEY! Blind squirrel finds nut. Film at eleven.

HRD-5 July 14: Home Run Derby. Justin Morneau/Justin Morneau. This commemorates the Canadian slugger's winning effort in the derby. I actually like the foil All-Star Game logo, and they would have had to work overtime to screw up this subset card. Back to the crap.
Justin Morneau by you.

3923 (CIN132) August 26: Reds 2, Astros 1. Jay Bruce RC/Bronson Arroyo. At least this pack his its first card depicting the winning team in the featured game.

3920 (CWS132) White Sox 8, Orioles 3. Jim Thome/Gavin Floyd. Boooo! The loser was Brian Burres, recently salvaged by Toronto. He's your problem now, Jays.

3917 (CHC132): Cubs 14, Pirates 9. Rich Harden/Geovany Soto. I like the picture, with a batters' eye view of Harden peering toward the plate.
Rich Harden by you.

3959 (OAK132): Angels 5, Athletics 1. Carlos Gonzalez/Jack Cust. It's also fantastic that Upper Deck chose not to label the player pictured anywhere on the card. I don't know Gonzalez from Adam, and had to look online to figure out who wore #28 for the A's in 2008.

So yeah. You're probably smarter than me anyhow, but on the off chance that you're tempted to pick up a pack or two of Documentary because it sounds like a neat concept, or you're curious, or Ken Griffey, Jr. is on the pack, or Target is fresh out of 2009 packs, or any other reason you can conjure up...DON'T.

DON'T.


Don't.
at

3 comments:

  1. The Baseball Card Snob5:40 PM

    I wasn't going to. Thanks anyway.

    But that hr derby card is nice looking.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous8:55 PM

    My "favorite" is one I got in one of my "check-it-out" packs - the game is Jon Lester's no-hitter for the Red Sox. Who's on the card? Dice-K.

    This stuff is going to show up in repack boxes for decades.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Todd Uncommon3:37 PM

    I'm actually diggin' on the Seasonal Signatures auto'ed subset. Yeah, they're sticker 'graphs, but oddly well composed and nice looking cards.

    The checklist is an interesting mix of nobodys, mild prospects, hot prospects (Kershaw), minor stars (Swisher, Corey Hart), and vet stars (Jeter, Griffey).

    I think it will actually be a pretty hard subset to complete, given how much dreck you have to shovel through to get the 1-2 autos per hobby box. Of the five I mentioned above, I haven't seen a single one on eBay for at least three weeks.

    ReplyDelete