A Peach of a Trade With Rhubarb Runner

I’m so far behind on posting trades on here.

“How behind are you?”

I’m so far behind that I’ve already completed a second trade with Rhubarb Runner from everyone’s favorite fake Latin phrased card blog “e’ rayhahn, rayhahn.”

Okay, I’m no Johnny Carson, but it feels like Carson could have gone through 2 or 3 wives in the time it’s taking me to get through my backlog.  Hell, even my references are out of date.

Dempster tries the hypno-strike out technique. "You are getting sleepy...you will not swing your bat."

2009 O-Pee-Chee prompted this particular trade.  I opened a box as a little present to myself a few months back and RR expressed interest in some of my Twins.  One good OPC deserves another as I got this fantastic black border parallel of a guy who has a 33% chance at being our opening day starter (personally I would go Dempster, Garza, Zambrano if anyone’s asking).  It’s nice to see decent photography and effort put into the posed shot instead of having the normal and safe head and shoulders smile.  This makes 3 OPC Dempsters for me, but none of my other guys yet.

Okay time to play a game.  The only prize is pride as the answer will be at the bottom of this post.  Here’s your question.  Of the following 2008 Documentary cards, which represent a single game from the season, how many decisions was Greg Maddux a part of? The timer starts….now.

I'll finish the sentence for them ", but not how to manufacture a win." You're welcome, Upper Deck

There are a whopping 36 different Documentary cards with the Professor’s picture on them.  And also gold parallels for each of those.  As I get more, I’m going to keep a tally of the team’s record for these cards.  Maddux is known for winning 15 games season after season.  Can he win 15 cards in his 36 starts?
Padres card record: 0-1

I think this is a giveaway that the picture doesn't match the game

The back talks about how Shawn Estes came back to pitch for the first time since early 2006 and won, despite giving up 3 early runs to the Cubs.  Lucky for them Jason Marquis was pitching for us and blew the lead in the 4th.  Nothing too surprising there.  One cool feature of the cards is that it gives the division standings as of that date, so I know the Padres brought their record up to 15-25 with the win.
Padres card record: 1-1

If they can't be bothered to match the picture to the game, they can't be bothered to change the picture on each card.

No one will notice if they reuse a picture now and again, right?  After all, there are Umpteen-billion cards in the set.  No one would be foolish enough to buy more than a couple curiosity packs.  They’ll never see two cards from the same team even, so it won’t matter.
Padres card record: 1-2

"It's my job to be repetitive. My job. My job. Repetition is my job."

I think out of the 36 cards featuring Mad Dog, there will be 18 of one picture and 18 of the other.  By this time in the season, the Padres were coming on like gangbusters.  They won 8 of their last 10 and improved to a 31-39 record.  Quite the jump from 18-32 on the last card.  To ease your curiosity, Jody Gerut (HR), Brian Giles (run) and Kevin Kouzmanoff (10th inning Grand Slam) are listed as the former Indians.
Padres card record:  2-2

Interleague play, but it looks like game 34 to me.

Oops, spoke too soon.  The Padres dropped all 4 of their next games to fall to last in the standings once again.
Padres card record:  2-3

Despite the obvious flaws of the set, I kind of like it in a weird way.  It’s sort of like baseball-reference in card form.  If I thought there was any interest in this at all, I think it would be the perfect candidate for another Pack Lottery type contest.  If the boxes become super cheap on a black friday sale, I’ll probably pick up a box to fill in some holes in my player collections.  For now, I welcome anyone to send over spares of the guys I collect in trades.

The answer to our trivia question is, as you probably could guess, ZERO.  I didn’t look up the games to see if he maybe started, but didn’t factor in the decision, but my guess is he didn’t.

Oh, I have one more item to show off in the trade, and I think I saved the best for last.

Not a pog, I swear

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition and nobody expects to get a coin in baseball card trade.  How cool is that?  I had a hell of a time figuring out which version of the coin this was, but I eventually settled on calling it the Brass version of the 1998 Pinnacle Mint Coin set.  I believe the Gold and Bronze are marked as such somewhere and this doesn’t say jack.  I do have a 1998 Pinnacle Mint card with a gaping hole in it.  I’m not sure if I want to take this out of its holder to combine the two yet or not.  I probably will at some point.  I’ll let the suspense build for now.

A big thanks again to Rhubarb Runner.  Give it some time, and you’ll surely see some more cards from him featured on here.  Hopefully I get to that before a third trade is completed, but you never know.  Isn’t that right, Ed McMahon?  “You are correct, sir!”

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