Snow Day Rather than Topps 2011 Day

So due to the depicted item below, too much of which appeared outside my door this morning, I was not able to find any Topps 2011. 

I actually checked one walmart, with no expectations, since I had to be out anyway but they only had 2010 Topps stuff.

So instead of opening Topps 2011, I added 22 cards to my Edgardo Alfonzo collection thanks to my first purchase from sportslots.com.  Sportslots has its benefits and drawbacks.  The big benefit is price and shipping.  Commons are as low as 18 cents each and shipping can be had for 8 cents each.  The drawback is that it is harder to search for specific singles and most cards do not come with pictures.

Regardless, I certainly enjoyed picking up so many Alfonzo cards on the cheap.  Here is my favorite: a 2003 Edgardo Alfonzo Diamond Kings #125.  It's one of those depicted in a Mets uni despite being signed by the Giants as a free agent during the off season.  Enjoy!

Card of the Week: Fractal Materials Part III - Leather

1998 Fractal Materials #94
Edgardo Alfonzo
Materials: Leather and Cardstock

The Player:  For those of you that have followed my blog or my collecting interests, you probably already know Alfonzo is my all-time favorite player (that is why I have all these cards).  So what is there to say about him that I haven't already said?  Well since this is a leather card I thought it would make sense to talk about Fonzie's prowess with the glove.  Alfonzo played four positions during his 12 years in the big leagues.  He spent 889 games at second base, 549 at third base, 34 at shortstop, and 2 at first base.  Fielding is notoriously difficult to capture in a statistic, so I'll talk about his statistics in relation to the league averages.  His fielding percentage was incredibly consistent: while playing several positions he always kept his fielding percentage above the league average.  This shows how well he made the plays on balls he was able to get to.  His range seems to have been less stellar and slightly below average with the exceptions of 1996, 1997, and 2002 (his last year with the Mets) when his range was above the league average.  It seems, then, that he was a consistency-over-range player who had several years of very good defensive play over his career.

However, it was good enough to earn him a spot on one of my favorite Sports Illustrated covers ever (which is also depicted as a mural on one of the walls in Citi Field's new Mets Hall of Fame).

The Card:  The leather cards from the Fractal Materials parallel set were numbered to 1000 and again have the image printed on a textured leather card front with a normal cardstock back.  It is a bit thinner than the wood or nylon cards and I have to admit that it is not obviously leather.  The front could easily be confused with a 2007 Turkey Red Card front because of the similar textures.

The Material: Leather is sort of a sibling to the previously discussed suede. Leather is made from an animal "[h]ide or skin with its original fibrous structure more or less intact, tanned to be imputrescible. The hair or wool may, or may not, have been removed. It is also made from a hide or skin that has been split into layers or segmented either before or after tanning."  Now, I have no idea whether this card is made from real leather or some sort of imitation leather.  I do know that this card contains no hair or wool.  If you are interested in learning more about leather and the differences between real and imitation leather check out this site, from which I got the above quotation.

Trades

Thanks to Roy over at The Paper Chase for a great stack of my favorite Mets. It was a pleasure sending him some Blue Jays cards in return.

Here are some of the cards I netted in the deal:

First, on the heals of my last post, an Aurora John Olerud. Aurora was a weird set, but now I have Olerud, Alfonzo, and Piazza from this set.

Next an Ultimate Victory Edgardo Alfonzo which I like because he's got some shades on.

Here's a sweet Piazza SPx Radiance card. I enjoy the fact that the SPx medallion (or whatever you call their logo) is actually cut into the card. Plus, I think the rays emanating from the medallion are amusing.



Finally, a nice John Maine from Topps 206. I like the Topps 206 set because of the exposure effects on the sets, and I like Maine because I kept reminding everyone that the Mets got a young pitcher in return for Kris Benson and that he could turn out to be an interesting player even if Jorge Julio stunk. Then Maine went out and had a great year (better than anything Benson would do with the remainder of his career), and while he has never replicated that performance I am hoping he has a solid, injury free, high strikeout year.

Draft Day Special: Edgardo Alfonzo Lucky #13

So today is the day of my fantasy draft. It is a NL only keeper league and I am the defending champion. If I repeat this year I get to keep an otherwise rotating trophy.

In honor of such a fun day I posted the "Have List" of my all-time favorite player: Edgardo Alfonzo. Take a look, and if you have any Alfonzo cards not on that list, please contact me for a trade.

I also took a picture of my favorite card of #13: a 1998 Metal Universe card. While the card is not actually metal there is some foil which gave the set some link to its name.





















As a kid I was in love with the Metal sets. I think the 1998 Metal Universe set in particular has actually grown on me over the years to the point where I like it more now. This is not necessarily true of the sets' previous years and the subsequent year was awful even to my childhood tastes. As you can see in this card, the backgrounds were taken from the area where each team plays. This idea worked really well for players from cities with lots of well known landmarks like New York, Chicago, and even Baltimore (maybe not so well for the Marlins).

Putting Fonzie in front of Radio City Music Hall of the famed Radio City Christmas Spectacular, of which I also have fond childhood memories, sealed the deal with my choice of this as my favorite card of my favorite player.

To succinctly sum up why Edgardo Alfonzo is my favorite player of all time I refer to pages 241-242 from The Last Best League by Jim Collins, which I highly recommend (it chronicles the 2002 Season of the Cape Cod League's Chatham A's).

Basically, those pages explain a test created by Herb Greenberg that measures self confidence and competitiveness that many major league teams use to project how well talent will translate to on the field performance. Out of between six and seven hundred of these tests that MLB teams get analyzed every year only eight to ten get the highest score of 1. Edgardo Alfonzo got a 1 on this test which meant that he would likely "exceed his talent."

Add that to all the big hits that Fonzie got for the Mets over the years and the superb defense at two positions and you will begin to understand my rationale for liking him the best.

Hopefully my own competitiveness and self confidence will lead me to a great draft tomorrow.

Wish me luck!