Around the Horn: Los Angeles Angels

Ah yes, the Angels ... the "other" baseball team in L.A. Despite them taking up residence only an hour south of the Dodgers, I never really hear them get talked about as much as the Dodgers do. 

The Angels have been around in some form or fashion since 1961, when they and the new Washington Senators (now the Texas Rangers) were granted a team in the first round of American League expansion. 

This is the only card I have representing the 1961 Angels and it's a pretty interesting one, Ted Klusewski (one of my player collections I'll get to when I cover the Reds) with a White Sox hat with the Angels listed as the team. It also doubles as his "sunset card" as 1961 was his last year in the bigs.

In terms of player collections, my biggest player collection for the Angels would have to be Mike Trout. These are my two favorites. The first is from 2015 Heritage and is one of those pesky "action image" variations that I pulled from a pack I from a card shop in Jacksonville, NC on a trip to visit the in-laws. The other one is a 2016 Heritage Chrome card that came from, of all things, a random Target 50-card, 4-pack repack deals.

Some horizontal Trout cards, I always think the 2013 card is the famous rookie card because of the rookie cup but I'm not lucky enough to have that. I'll settle for the rookie cup card though.

Overall, I've got 27 unique Mike Trout cards in my collection, most of them pack pulled. I didn't realize exactly how many cards of him I had until I pulled them all for this post. I guess I'll consider him an official player collection now.

I can never figure out if this card belongs as part of my Mike Trout cards or my Albert Pujols cards. Maybe I should count it for both?

Speaking of Pujols, these are all my Pujols Angels cards. I tend to think of him more as a member of the Angels now instead of the Cardinals

I never realized I had this many Tim Salmon cards. He's not really someone I collect but when I get cards of his, I don't mind at all.

Seeing Reggie Jackson as anything but a Yankee is always cool. I always forget he had a couple stops with the Angels. My favorites of these are the Diamond Kings card at the bottom and the 1987 Topps since it's his sunset card.

I just need 1971, 1975, 1978, and 1980 to complete the entire team card run from 1970-1981. 

I had no clue that Vada Pinson and Frank Robinson were on the Angels together in 1973. They're shown as member of the team in the 1974 set but by then Pinson had been traded to the Royals. Speaking of 1973, I've got both a 1970 and 1973 Sandy Alomar card and when I see cards of his, I usually tend to pick them up.

Who can go wrong with a Kellogg's Nolan Ryan card?

Some fun players from the huge batch of 1982 Donruss I picked up in the community yard sale last spring. 

More neat cards from the mid-80s. Bobby Grich is one of only a handful of 1985 Donruss cards I have in my collection. I really like the design of it and it's one I wish I could find some more cards of in dime and quarter boxes.

A handful of Topps cards from 1985-1988. I'd forgotten that Don Sutton was still pitching in 1987. 

Dave Winfield is definitely someone I have on my player collection list but these are the only two Angels cards I have of him. Maybe once I wrap up all going through all these teams, I'll go back and show the cards I have of all my PCs.

I always like Eduardo Perez when he played for the Reds and I think I got an autograph from him when I was a kid. That minor league Classic card is probably one of my favorites.

A mixed bag of random cards from the 90s. I never understood the name change from the California Angels to the Anaheim Angels and from the red and white uniforms to the blue uniforms with the winged, flying "A" on it (seen here on Troy Percival).

I never did see Bert Blyleven pitch but seeing as he's a Hall of Famer and had a long career, I tend to pick up cards of his when I see them for a decent price. He's not on my official player collection list but if I get enough cards of his at some point, I might eventually add him.

I've shown this card off and talked about it previously but it's a pretty unique card from 1993 Topps. Long story short, the Angels scouts were looking for new talent anywhere and found it by signing three players from Russia as an experiment to see if they could open up a talent pipeline there. MLB.com did a great article and retrospective on it (here) and I encourage reading it and it's incredibly interesting.

In terms of short term stops with the Angels, Eddie Murray is probably one of the most interesting. He played 46 games for the Angels during his sunset season and swatted the final three of his 504 career home runs with them. This is the only Eddie Murray card I have of him that chronicles his brief stint with the Halos.

Some cards from the 2000s. My favorites here are the UD Decades Don Baylor and the 2001 Topps Garrett Anderson. It feels to me that 2001 Topps doesn't get a whole lot of love from the card community but I've always enjoyed it as it's the last Topps set I bought packs of during my initial foray into collecting. Maybe someday I'll attempt the set but the Pujols and Ichiro rookies might dissuade me from doing so.

Some cards of the famous Rally Monkey. Who doesn't love a little mascot action? 

A few random cards from the current decade. I'd had no clue that Jason Isringhausen played his final season in 2012 for the Angels. The Nolan Ryan I picked up at a card show last fall and it's some sort of Panini VIP card.

I don't know much about Jeremy Moore but this has always been one of my favorite cards from 2012 Topps, mainly because of the awesome throwback uniform. As a matter of fact, it's the card that inspired me to start chasing throwback uniforms.

I instantly thought of Dimebox Nick when I plucked this card out of of a dime box at a card show. It's probably one of my favorite cards in my collection overall.

I'm sure most everyone forgot about Brandon Phillips' 24 game sojurn to L.A. towards the tail end of last season. Truth be told, I'd forgotten about it too until I pulled this card out of a Heritage pack earlier this year. Despite him being an anchor of the Reds infield, he never was one of my favorite players. I always found him a bit too cocky and show-boaty.

Even though I've shown this card previously, I felt it was appropriate to close out with my lone card of Shohei Otani that came out a Gypsy Queen retail pack.

That pretty much covers the best of the Angels cards in my collection. I hope you enjoyed this entry in the "Around the Horn" series. 

Next up .... the Houston Astros.

Retail Repack Adventures #16

As I was putting some cards away the other day, I took inventory of just exactly how many of these 100-card bricks I have sitting around. Not including this particular one, I've got two baseball oness and two hockey ones left. I guess this is a good a time as any to tear into this.

As usual, the cover card. This time is a 2017 Donruss Optic of Freddie Freeman. I bought a box of Optic back in 2016 and wasn't impressed with it. I don't mind getting Optic (or Chrome) singles here and there but I'm not going to be buying any packs of it.

The one thing I like about these repacks is that you find little random cards like this. How this card of factory set limited edition card of Albert Pujols would up in this re-pack at a Walgreens in the middle of the country, I'll never know.

Here's something I never really knew I was searching for until I found it, that being this 1986 Topps Tom Seaver. His official "sunset card" would come the following year in the 1987 Topps set but 1986 was his last active year of pitching. For a White Sox squad that was on their way to finishing 4th in the AL West that year, he appeared in 12 games, going 2-6 with a 4.38 ERA. In June of that year, he was swapped to Boston for Steve Lyons where he appeared in 16 more games. Overall, in his sunset season he went 7-13 with a 4.03 ERA in 28 games.

2000 Topps I always think is a bit of an under appreciated set for a few reasons. First, the design was pretty clean both front and back. Second, there was a plethora of nice action shots (see the Barry Larkin card) and finally, it's the first set of the new millennium for gosh sakes! Now, all that being said, the Craig Biggio card certainly didn't Chrome up very well since it's a basic posed shot. And yes, that's my reflection you see at the bottom of the card. 

Man, this repack is rife with Hall of Famers. Here's a few from the middle of the junk wax era. Yeah, the 1990 Donruss set may be bowling shoe ugly, but the Diamond Kings card, well at least this particular one, are pretty nice looking. It almost makes me want to get a box of it on the cheap and tear into it.

Random minor league cards are always fun to find in these repacks and boy are these random. On the left, we have Bob Davidson of the Albany-Colonie Yankees, someone who literally was one and done in the majors. Not one season and done, but one inning done. He pitched one whole inning in his major league career, presumably at the end of the Yankees season in 1989, at left with an 18.00 ERA. As for the 1989 Albany-Colonie Yankees? They finished 92-48 in the Eastern League that season.

The other card of this duo was a mystery until I started doing research for this article. It turns out that it's a 1980 team issue card from the Nashville Sounds, which oddly enough, was a Yankees affiliate in the 1980. Anyway, Ted Wilborn played in 121 games for the Sounds that year, hitting .270 with 6 HRS and 63 RBIs. He also had a very brief career in the majors, appearing in only 30 games with the Blue Jays and Yankees over parts of the 1979 and 1980 seasons.

Here's something I found rather curious on the back of the Ted Wilborn card, it looks more like business card instead of a baseball card. Sure, it's got the vital info of the player but look at the bottom right, there is the photographer's name, address, and phone number. Also, there is no date or stats or anything. I don't think I've ever really seen a card like this before. For curiosity sake, I plugged the address into Google Maps just to see what came up ...

And wouldn't you know it, looks like the photographer is still in business after all these years.

There was plenty of 2016 Topps included as well, these are the best from the mix of standard base cards and team issues. Ben Revere was briefly with the Reds during Spring Training this year but obviously didn't thrill anyone as he was cut towards the end of camp.

2016 Heritage ... still meh.

Some gems from 1990 Fleer that were included. Being a card blogger has afforded me the opportunity to gain a nice appreciation for cards from this time as previously I had just overlooked most of them and kept only the notable stars. Kevin Appier was a fresh faced rookie for the Royals during 1990 and finished third in the ROY voting that season. The photo on the card looks like it was taken during spring training that year as why else would there be a scoreboard in the background. Pedro Guerrero was still going strong in 1990, finishing in the top 25 of MVP voting. He'd hang around with the Cardinals for a few more years after this and finally hung up his spikes in 1992.

Speaking of 1992, I've always had a bit of a soft spot for 1992 Upper Deck. While I'm not trying to complete the set or anything, the design was a favorite of mine as a kid, mainly because of the "alternate logos" (for lack of a better term) and the photography that Upper Deck used on the cards.

I'll close out this repack by showing off a smattering of random cards to finish this up. 1994 was the first year I really liked Stadium Club during its original run as the design was very MTV-ish and Topps tried to be hip and cool. The designs of the previous years I always get mixed up because they all look nearly the same. Also, there's a Carlos Delgado rookie card from Triple Play (did anyone else forget he was a catcher?) and a 1983 Fleer Carney Lansford, which I though was the oldest card in the box until I discovered what year the Ted Wilborn card was from.

I'd say this was one of the better repacks I've torn into in recent memory. Was there some junk? Yes. But for five bucks and a few minutes of enjoyment thumbing through cards that are new to me, I'll take it.