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 #4: Revenge of the Repack!

This is becoming a bad habit of mine. Not the fact that I can't leave these things alone whenever I step foot into Walgreens, but the fact that it seems that a new month of posts starts off with one of these! I bought this particular repack back towards the end of January and since then, I've been in a self-imposed drought in an attempt to stretch my card money as far as possible. Enough about me though! Let's dive in to this repack!

This repack was chock full of Topps from all eras, including these 2008 cards. My collection has a gaping hole regarding cards from 1994-2011 (I got back into collecting in 2012) and these repacks are helping to ever so slowly fill in that hole. I was pretty happy when the Mike Piazza card fell out of the box, especially considering that it's his sunset card.

As I mentioned, more Topps cards. The Cano was the cover card of the stack. I'm slowly learning to love the 2010 Topps design too.

Hey look! Parallels from the mid 90s! Bip is a foil version and big Cecil is from the Score Gold Rush line.

Here's something you don't see cards of every day, Wade Boggs in a Devil Rays uniform. This will get added to my personal stash as will the Pujols, even though I'm not a Cardinals fan at all.

Here's another 2010 Topps card, this one of Max Scherzer, before the Nationals backed up a Brinks truck to his front door a few years later. The Cabrera card is pretty cool. I remember Topps doing a bunch of the "Super Veterans" cards back in the day but don't remember many recently so this was a real treat to pull out of this package.

This 1992 Upper Deck pack I've already covered in the first edition of my new ongoing series called "Back Packs". Read about it here

Just like the last repack, this one was stuffed to the gills with 2012 Topps. I think I like these more than most people, simply because it was the first pack I bought when I got back into collecting. This was the best of the batch that was included, any duplicate will wind up in eventual trade packs.

Finally, the requisite Reds. Hatteberg played three seasons for the Reds at first and was Votto's backup during his final season in Cincy. To be honest, I'd kind of forgotten about him. Cairo was a solid player on the two Central Division winners in 2010 and 2012. It's also a sunset card as 2012 was his last season.

This was a nice solid repack and I'll be on the look out for another next time I hit up a Walgreens.