Around the Horn: Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays

Today, in honor of spring being just around the corner, I decided to catch some rays .... Tampa Bay Rays that is ... for this installment of "Around the Horn". This will also be short compared to the others as I don't have that many Rays cards to share.

The then Devil Rays first started play in 1998 as the first American League expansion team since 1977 when Seattle and Toronto were added to the league. The 1998 team wasn't anything to write home about, going 63-99 under manager Larry Rothschild. That first roster had a unique make-up of older veterans, like Fred McGriff, Jerome Walton, and Dave Martinez plus younger players like Miguel Cairo, Randy Winn, and Esteban Yan.

Perhaps one of the biggest coups that the Rays pulled off before their debut season was signing Wade Boggs as a free agent in December of 1997. Boggs would spend the final two years of his career with the Devil Rays primarily playing third base and doing DH duties. He also got his 3,000th career hit in a Devil Rays uniform. Most of these cards came from repacks and other miscellaneous stuff. Cards of Boggs as a Devil Ray never get old.

After the first two seasons being nothing to write home about, the Devil Rays went out and acquired some heavy sluggers like Jose Canseso in 1999 (where it was his last all-star season) and Greg Vaughn and Vinny Castilla in 2000 to compliment Fred McGriff, who was part of the original 1998 team.

By 2005, the Devil Rays went through three managers (Larry Rothschild, Hal McRae, and Lou Piniella) and never finished higher than 4th. In 2006, they took a gamble and hired Joe Maddon as the manager. In 2008, they rebranded themselves as just the Tampa Bay Rays and with a team that included Ben Zobrist, Evan Longoria, and Carl Crawford plus pitching from James Shields, Edwin Jackson, and Matt Garza, they Rays shocked everyone and made it to the World Series, losing to the Phillies in 5 games. 

Despite the Rays never existing in the 70s, you have to admit these are sweet throwback uniforms that they put together.

It's fascinating to look back and see just who passed through Tampa Bay. When digging out cards for this, I honestly forgot Johnny Damon donned a Tampa Bay uniform at one time.

To close things out, here's a few newer cards. The 1960 style cards from Archives a few years ago are just super cool. I really hope Archives has a good return to form this year, I thought it was a bust last year.

And that's all the Rays cards I wanted to feature. See, I said this would be short.

Only six teams left in the American League ... next up in the series is the Boston Red Sox.

Retail Repack Adventures #10: Return to Walgreens

I told myself that I wasn't going to buy anymore of these. 

After the last two packs being less than stellar plus loaded with duplicates, I had sworn off of these for an undetermined length of time. However, thanks to a heads up from AJ over at The Lost Collector, the card blogging world was notified of a sale on these for $3.99 each. Never have I wanted to go to Walgreens so bad. When I stopped by there were three of these on the rack, I grabbed two, mainly because the cover card on the other pack did nothing for me. Curiously, they were the regular price. I asked someone who appeared to be managerial about it. Turns out there was an error and the price was wrong but was promised the right price would show at checkout. It did and I brought the packs home ready to tear into them.

Here's the cover card, a 2002 Fleer Focus Jersey Edition Alex Rodriguez. I've never understood the point of calling cards "jersey edition" or the like if they don't actually have a piece of a jersey in them. Regardless, this will go with my 2000-2009 cards for now. I'm not sure I like the way my cards are sorted though, but that's another story for another day.

As with any repack, it's rife with 2012 Topps. These are the best of the lot. A few things to check out here, first there's James Shields in a Rays uniform, a team I'd forgotten he played for. Second, look at the celebration on the Neftali Feliz card. I'm not sure what game it's from but it's definitely a keeper.

There were a ton of 1988 Score cards, nearly 20 to be exact. Again, these are the best of the batch. My favorite here is the Steve Bedrosian, simply because of the way everything just seems to fit perfectly. Plus, it's a night card so that works in its favor too.

1989 Topps ... yay. Interesting little side note, how strange was it that the Twins had a player in the late 80s named Greg Gagne and the AWA, which was based out of Minneapolis, had a wrestler during the same time named Greg Gagne. I wonder if they ever got confused for each other?

As with any repack, it was loaded with junk wax and commons. These four are the best of the junk wax pile that was in the middle of the pack. I'm still baffled as to why Lee Smith isn't in the Hall of Fame. He ranks third all time in saves (478), was a 7-time All-Star, holds a career ERA of 3.03 and appeared in over 1000 games in 18 seasons. Perhaps the fact he was a career reliever might be a strike against him but then again, so was Bruce Sutter and he's in. So why not Lee Smith?

Ah yes, minor league cards. For the longest time, I didn't think twice about these and either added them to my trade box or my discard box (for donations and misc stuff). For some unknown reason, these just spoke to me and I think I'll have to start adding them to my binders. For a fun exercise, I though I would explore the careers of three of the four pictured, the exception being Jon Woodworth because he's listed as a trainer.

Ken Greer - Spent 10 seasons in the minors with various teams. He did make it to the majors though. He only appeared in 9 games combined over the 1993 (Yankees) and 1995 (Giants) seasons. On this particular card, he's featured with the Ft. Lauderdale Yankees, which was the High A affiliate for the Yankees in 1990. During this particular season, he was 4-9 with a 6.45 ERA in 38 games.

Keith Schmidt - Played 6 seasons in the minors from 1989-1994, never advancing above single A ball. Here he's pictured with the Bluefield Orioles, the Rookie League affiliate of Baltimore. That particular season he had a .278/.356/.462 slash line in 55 games.

Larry Walker - No, not that Larry Walker, the other one. I didn't know there was more than two. This particular Larry Walker got into 79 games with the Greensboro Hornets of the South Atlantic League in 1990 hitting .230 with one homer and 15 RBIs. Two years later, he was out of the game, only playing six games at any level above high A.

Two more cards to show off here. First this Sportflics Eric Davis card. I think this might be the first Reds Sportflics card in my collection. I was pretty thrilled when this came out.

Dave LaPoint isn't normally someone I would think about showing cards of, mainly because I'm not familiar with him but this isn't any ordinary 1988 Donruss card. It's from the 1988 Donruss Baseball's Best set. I'm not sure what the distribution method of this set was but I really dig the orange borders. 

The back is nice too as it presents the career stats in an easy to read format with a lighter color and a different orientation that the regular 1988 Donruss cards. 

Had this repack not been on sale, I wouldn't have purchased it as I prefer the 4-pack, 50-card repacks found at Target. However, this wasn't a complete waste as I got a few fun cards and some trade fodder.