2004 Upper Deck 1st Pitch

Brent Mayne in Royals white and blue makes a play at the plate, or so it seems. Doesn't matter, as the card says he was signed by Arizona. If I had to guess, it looks like maybe Delgado is the player on the ground. Jay Payton moved from the Rockies to the Padres, but not before breaking a bat for all posterity.


Derek Jeter (Yankees), Danny Bautista (Diamondbacks), and Delmon Young (Devil Rays Star Rookie) are the last three players in the pack. I never saw the problem with calling them 'Devil Rays.' To me, it sounds more impressive than just 'Rays.' To me, that makes it sound like a bunch of guys with the same name all play for the same team. In fact, I think they should aim for that - only hire players named Ray.


Oh, and if this was any date prior to September 30, 2004, we could add this "D" to our collection to 'Spell and Win.' We could have won an auto'd baseball from an unnamed person. Maybe I'm missing the incentive to play here...

2005 Upper Deck 1st Pitch

Just how many packs of cards has Junior been on, does anyone know? Contrary to what some folks THINK that I wrote, Junior will be in the HOF one day (I just don't think he's a first-time entree) and the Hall should do an introspective of the packs on which Griffey has appeared...

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Here we have AJ Pierzynski (Giants), who is either trying to catch a pop fly, pretending to be catching a pop fly, or is looking directly into the sun so that it will force him to sneeze... Of course, he could just be asking the cameraman if his nose is clean...

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Tim Hudson (A's) is caught during an actual game. There's a runner on first, possibly a Yankee?

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Ryan Klesko (Padres) appears to be fielding a.. baseball bat!? "Hey, Klesko! See if you can catch THIS!" This looks like a VERY bizarre photoshop disaster...

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Raul Ibanez (Mariners) is giving the ol' "knockin fists" to a teammate that does not seem to be sharing quite the enthusiasm as Raul. Sidebar: Just how many Mariners can I pull from packs, anyway?? I seem to pull a LOT...

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Jorge Sequea (Blue Jays) throws a ball right at the camerman. This is a "Star Rookie" card that ends with "Sequea should make his major league debut in 2005." Unfortunately, before that could happen, he was killed in a tragic car accident...

2006 UD First Pitch and repack box toppers

Severe disappointment in recent products have caused me to go running into the arms of my only comfort - Wal-Mart repack cubes. I found one with a couple of packs on the side that were actually good, plus there were cards on the top and sides to keep people from peeking to see what other packs were in the middle. This turned out to be an excellent cube as it had eleven packs and only one was a 2006 Updates & Highlights pack. Ironically the cube is now housing my 2008 Finest and Topps Series Two cards, the two sets that have caused me to drown my sorrows in junk wax. First let's look at the cards on top of the box:

An '83 Fleer Dave Stapleton and '82 Fleer Barry Foote...


and two '82 Fleer Bobby Brown cards. Only a man with no heart would not be touched deeply by these miscut, slightly out of focus early eighties gems of cardboard. It's almost sacrilege to sully these cards by opening twenty-first century crap. Opening crap is what this blog is all about though, so we must carry on.

58 Victor Martinez
110 Rickie Weeks
DS-16 Mike Sweeney Diamond Stars
158 Jake Peavy
67 Chris Shelton

Pretty average pack. Jake Peavy is a nice pitcher, V-Mart's a helluva catcher, and Weeks has potential, but all three can't resist the overwhelming mediocrity of a Mike Sweeney insert card. Mike just hit the DL again too. Eh, it's a pack. There's better stuff in the box, I promise.

2006 Upper Deck First Pitch Baseball

This next offering from my repack box is one of the slimmest I'll be opening. 2006 Upper Deck First Pitch offers five cards per pack, one of which is guaranteed to be an insert. I assume this product is comprable to Topps Opening Day, aimed at more of a kid market. Does the strategy of small-count packs work? Upper Deck seems to think so. After all, if there's one thing kids want, it's less of what they like. From personal experience, time after time I have seen kids complain that they got too much ice cream, too many Christmas presents, and they were allowed to play in a pit filled with plastic balls for far too long. This is why I generally don't collect Upper Deck.

Let's tear in:

Top to Bottom:

29 Trot Nixon
133 Mike Mussina

HS-15 Nomar Garciaparra Hot Stove Headlines (What a ridiculous card. If anything, they should have made a fake old-timey headline card referring to the fact that Nomar gets to have sex with Mia Hamm on a regular basis. That's something worthy of an "EXTRA! EXTRA!" boast.)
142 Rich Harden
77 Juan Pierre

Grade: D for Dull. There's virtually nothing here that would make me buy another pack. This set is not even bad, it's just...pointless. I am reminded of Rod and Todd Flanders from "The Simpsons" playing one of their Christian-themed board games with Bart. When Bart asks, "Why aren't there any dice?" one of the brothers responds, "We move one square at a time...that way it's less fun." Upper Deck First Pitch is just like Topps Opening Day, just less fun. I'll take a Stomper card any old day of the week over any card from this set.