3 On Card Autos: The Angel Autos

It started over at Dinged Corners and has since spread like wildfire through the card blogging world. The question they posed, "What are your 3 favorite on card autographs?". I was intrigued immediately, but realized right away, I'd never be able to narrow to just 3. So, being the rule breaker that I am, I decided to break mine into categories. My 4 categories: Angels autos, Baseball outside of Anaheim, Football and non-sports.

Today: The Angel Autos

Choosing just 3 Angel on card autographs proved to be too difficult for me, so I went with 3 and an honorable mention. Even so, I could have filled up this page with another dozen. Restraint isn't exactly one the traits that come to mind when speaking of me.

We'll start with the honorable mention, Wally Joyner.

The scan doesn't do this card justice, but since it's still encased in the plastic tomb provided by Topps, this was the best I could do. In person, this card just looks so clean and the signature pops out. Speaking of the signature, would you expect anything less elegant from the Mormon slugger?

Now onto the main event. In no particular order.
1. Jim Abbott

Unfortunately, this is another card in which the scan does it no justice. For whatever reason, chrome and scanners never quite work correctly. Had I been a bit less lazy, I'd have used the camera, but oh well, this is what you get with me. Love the signature, love the uniform, love the pose. There was something about watching Abbott as he transitioned from pitcher to fielder that just left you in awe. I still can't figure out how a guy with one hand makes the decision to become a pitcher and then not only does so, but becomes a successful major leaguer.

2. Garret Anderson

I've already espoused my love for Garret Anderson, but this card is cool for more than just the player featured. The card is a commemoration of perhaps the greatest moment for us Halo fans, the 2002 World Series. If you're an Angel fan you already know why Garret is labeled as "World Series Hero" on this card, if you're not an Angel fan, well, you should be.

3. Luis Polonia

Was there really any doubt that this card and this player would end up on my list? This card was the first ever entry in my series of "Cards that Define Me". A series that never really took off and I really need to get back to. Luis signed the card for me at a fan appreciation day and instantly became a centerpiece of my collection. I could go on, but there's no need. Spend more than two minutes on my site and you'll become fully aware of my love for the man with the jheri curl mullet.

There you have it, 4 Angel on card autos for the price of 3. How could you go wrong?

Go Halos!

*Sigh* Congrats to the champs

So the Yankees have won another World Series. Whoopty Doo!
I should be happy for their fans, but I'm having trouble mustering the fake enthusiasm. I realize you had to "suffer" through a few years in the 80's without a championship, but that doesn't exactly impress me. Let's face it, it's easy to be a Yankee fan. Your team spends ridiculous amounts of money and if you have an off year, you can be guaranteed that your team will throw more money at the issue. This off-season alone, we all know that either Jason Bay or Matt Holliday will likely end up playing left field for you. Oh and that high priced Cuban defector, why do I feel he'll end up at Yankee Stadium next April. And I don't even want to think about the possibility of Lackey or Figgins heading to the Bronx.

But it's time for me to put aside my Yankee negativity and look at one of the few bright spots in Yankee history, at least from this Halos fan's perspective. A little guy who goes by the name of Luis Polonia.






So while I find most everything about the Yankees to be vile, I will celebrate one of the great players of our day, Luis Polonia. Sure, he probably wouldn't fit in with the current crop of multi-millionaires, but he'd at least make them a little more likable.

As for my own team, it was a roller coaster year, but I one I enjoyed immensely. It started with the tragedy of Nick Adenhart, but the season ended with a number of triumphs. Although losing to the Yankees was tough, the sweep of the Red Sox was a really sweet moment. Perhaps my favorite moment of the season was Vladdy's single up the middle against Papelbon, that brought about the comeback victory. All the more satisfying thanks to Boston trotting out Dave Henderson to throw out the first pitch, a slap in the face to all Angel fans.

So for the most part, the season was a success, unfortunately with a number of free agents likely headed out of town, it could be a rough off-season. Oh well, we'll keep the faith and light up the halo again in 2010.

Go Halos!

Getting a Card Fix From a Junkie

I've been in a bit of a funk lately, but nothing pulls you out of a funk quite like some free cards. These were courtesy of Jeffrey over at Card Junkie. First Jeff sent along some Angels cards as a thank you and then followed that up with a couple of cards from off of my 2009 Topps Series 1 Wantlist. These 2 cards put me just 8 away from finally putting to sleep Series 1.

First up, the 2009 Topps cards, both of the horizontal persuasion.

I'm thinking a more creative photo might have been in order for a card celebrating an MVP.


On the other hand, the Furcal cards is just plain sweet. Excellent use of the horizontal.

On to the Halos. Jeff sent a number of cards from various sets, so I'll hit you with a couple of highlights.

My first and maybe only 2009 Goudey card. The reviews have been poor and my budget is tight. Not a good combo for the boys at Upper Deck seeing my dollars. I've been itching to open some packs and Goudey has been at the Target for a couple of weeks, but even so I haven't been able to pull the trigger. Not a good sign.


I'm not the biggest 88 Fleer fan, but I like a lot about this card. The pure 80s spectators are nice, combined with the dirty uniform, real stirrups, the old orange railing that made any Anaheim Stadium background card instantly recognizable and the Schofield batting stance which looks to me like a guy who's a bit scared of the ball being thrown in his direction.


DiSar the prospect.


Polonia the superstar.


The highlight of all the cards. I have no idea what set this came from. It's numbered 537, so apparently there are a number of this set floating around, but outside of that it has no identification. Even the back only has a 3 paragraph write-up about the "Best Hitters in Baseball" and nothing else. Odd and wonderful.

Thanks for the cards Jeff, I really appreciate them.

Go Halos!

Halo Cards Come to Life!

It started with a challenge from Bo at Baseball Cards Come to Life! and it ended with Bo receiving a mess of Yankees from me and yours truly receiving a gaggle of Halos from Bo, plus a couple of much coveted Yankee cards.

While getting Angel cards is the highlight of most any package I open, this one was slightly different. I loved all of the various Halos, but what I most coveted were Several Yankee cards and an A's card. The horror, I know. But there is a reason for such madness and his name is Luis Polonia.


The lone Oakland card in the bunch, but it's a beauty. They're too large for most holders, they mess up my stacks and organization, but these cards are absolutely irresistible, especially when they are accompanied by the visage of Polonia.


The beginning of the Yankee cards. These card look eerily similar to...


This card. Same uniform with dirt stains, same stadium, same stache, different angle.


The backs of these cards are odd as above the stats, one stat is written out in gold. For Luis, that stat is .696 Stolen Base Pct. Uhhh...is that even good?


I've never liked the shrunken down photo in the corner of these cards. A big step down from 93 UD.


Great photo on front, great stat on back. "Went hitless in consecutive starts only once all season". It seems a bit innocuous at first, but it sums up Luis...relentless!


Bonus Yankee card featuring Halo Luis. Love the cameo card!

Now on to the Halos. It would take me three weeks to show off all of the Halos that Bo sent along, so here is a sampling.


Brian Downing Revco card. One has to wonder if perhaps Revco was supplying my boy Downing with some muscle juice. The man is a beast.


Not exactly the photo you're hoping shows up on your baseball card.


Only 21 games as an Angel, but apparently this guy made an All-Star game with the Jays.


Devo's eyes suggest that he has hit a dribbler about 6 feet in front of the plate.


Never produced in the way Angels fans had hoped he would, but I still have a soft spot for the guy.


See facial expression.


First, I love 88 Score even though it doesn't really have any of the elements I normally love in a card design, but that can be discussed later at more length. Best part of this card is how the swing and photo look so great until you look between Johnny's legs and notice the plume of dirt that is the result of smnashing the ball directly south.


F U Brian Fuentes. I miss you Percy. Sure K-Rod was great, but Percy and the tongue were legendary. The new guy just plain sucks. Of course the whole bullpen is atrocious, so he kinda fits in well.

Thank you Bo, for the Halos of course, but also for the addition of some Yankee cards featuring my homeboy Luis. You sir are a gentleman, even if the team you root for is pure evil. haha I keed, I keed.

Go Halos!

Luis Polonia: Seeing Double

Not a lot to say today, so I figured I'd post a couple of Polonias that have been added to my attempt at a master set of all things Polonia. Going through the stack, a couple of oddities stood out and I had to share with the world, because you can never get enough Polonia.




'93 Donruss and Upper Deck

I realize that Luis probably dropped a few hundred bunts in an Angels uniform at home, but it just feels like these two cards are pictures of the same at bat, just fractions of a second apart. The Donruss card is more zoomed in and not nearly as sharp, but shows Luis just as he is dropping one down. Same batting gloves and sweatband placement, same background look and notice the ball on its way down in the first picture and on the ground in picture two. Same year, different companies, perhaps the same moment.




'89 Upper Deck and Fleer

Now these two cards are obviously not the same picture, but you have to think these pictures were taken on the same day. Notice the background, the one and only Big A in Anaheim, California. In one he has the right field stands for a backdrop, while it's the field level seats in the other. Everything else about these photos is identical. Hat laying on top of jhullet, gray undershirt with green BP jersey on top, green wristbands with A's logo inside white triangle. His smiles even suggest a slight evolution. The Upper Deck picture was probably first, Luis is pleased to be posing and has a bit of joy. The Fleer photo however, shows Luis after a few minutes of photos, slightly annoyed, but still willing to offer up a smile.

So there you have it, a little seeing double with my man Luis Polonia. It's not as cutting edge as black Topps cards or discovering Heritage out on the market, but that's what I got for you.

Big 12-3 victory for the Halos today against the White Sox. Clearly this is a sign of dominance for the Angels in 2009. The future, Hank Conger was 2-3 with a couple driven in, so I was excited by that.

Go Halos!

The Pursuit of Polonia Continues

My love of all things Luis Polonia is no secret. In fact, his 1991 Upper Deck card that was later signed by him in person, is one of my favoirte cards in my entire collection. So while I've been obsessed with finding new products and new Halos for 2009, I still keep coming back to the Pursuit of Polonia. Over the last couple of weeks I've acquired or found a few more Polonia beauties. Here they are, in all their glory, chronologically.

1991 Topps

'91 Topps got a lot of attention for the photography and an attempt at competing with Upper Deck, but unfortunately Luis did not get the super photo treatment. Still I like the card's color combos a team script at the bottom.

1992 Topps

Definite photo improvement here. Luis on the run at Yankee stadium, the moment befor he propels himself on the slide into second. Always nice to have a player in midair on card.

1993 Upper Deck

The front is cool, with Luis dropping down the drag bunt towards thrid, added bonus for finally being in a home uniform. I much prefer my Halos in the home whites on my cards. The real fun here though is on the back.

It's batting practice, Luis is wearing the flapless helmet, he's got the Oakley blue shades, and of course he's running the bases with bat in hand. Awesome!

1993 Donruss Diamond King

That's right, Diamond King. The cynic would say, "Damn the Angels really sucked in 1992", the optimist prefers to say, "Holy crap! Best. Diamond King. Ever.".

1993 Mother's Cookies

Gotta love the Mother's Cookies cards that you'd pick up at the stadium on "Baseball Card Day". To show the extent of my Polonia sickness even back in '93, I have multiple Polonias from this set, yet no doubles of any other player. I can remember convincing my parents to stay for the entire game so I could search for extra packs that people left behind after the game. A good look at the old enclosed Big A back in 90's.

There you have it, more Polonia Perfection.

Go Halos!

Cameo Cards

In an odd run of events, I inspired Cincinnati Reds Cards to wonder whether or not the players in the background mattered to team or player collectors. His question in turn inspired me to want to search my own collection and discuss this topic. I have always been fascinated by what else is happening on a card. One of the first cards that popped into my mind was the 1991 Score Kirt Manwaring card.


As a collector of Mark Grace cards for a number of years I knew just where to find this card of a Giants catcher...in the back pages of my binder dedicated to a Cubs First Basemen. Besides just being a very cool action shot, I loved that this card had one of my favorite players on it. It instantly lost its status as a Giants card or Kirt Manwaring card and instead became a Mark Grace card.

So I decided to break out one of the storage boxes and grab a stack to see what I could find. To my surprise, I found a couple of nice examples and one jewel to add to a collection.


1992 Score Mike Brumley. Clearly these cameo cards most often show up on cards depicting an attempt at breaking up the double play. Here we have HOFer Cal Ripken Jr. sliding under the leaping Brumley. The vision of Ripken is small, but definite.


Clearly I bought too many packs of 1992 Score. Bill Doran just trying to save the throw into second while Ryne Sandberg slides in. Another real crisp action shot, with another HOFer on the slide. Score was all over it in 1992.

Finally, the card that made my day.

1992 Donruss Joey Cora Luis Polonia!
My main man Luis Polonia immortalized on yet another card. A card that I may never have known about were it not for the bantering of blogs. The Pursuit of Polonia continues and has just been strengthened. I love the Cameo Card!!

Go Halos!

The Pursuit of Polonia

After mentioning in my first Cards That Define Me post that I'd like to go back and pick up every Luis Polonia card I could get my hands on, I got a very cool start from Jim at Taste Like Dirt.

The iconic '88 Donruss with the funky red pipes running in the background.

'89 Topps

Since most of my collection has gone missing over the years, it was fun to open up the package and see these again. And what's even better, the '89 Topps card features the jhullet in all of its glory.

I've already started scouring the few boxes I have left from the 80's and 90's and finding whatever I can on the internet, so hopefully the pursuit will continue and the Polonia plunder will bountiful.

Go Halos!

The Cards That Define Me: #1 Luis Polonia

"The Cards That Define Me" will hopefully be a series I can keep going throughout the year or at least until I run out of cards that define me. I'm not that complex, so expect this to peter out by Valentine's Day.

Luis Polonia probably seems like an odd choice to start out a series of cards that defines a person, unless of course you had the misfortune of watching the early 1990's Angels play baseball.

Luis came over in a trade from the Yankees in late April of 1990 for Claudell Washington and Rich Monteleone. Angels 1 - Yankees 0. You may have signed Teixeira, but we completely owned in you in this swap.

Luis quickly became my favorite Angel during this period. Wally Joyner was nice, but that was part of the problem, he was too nice. I needed an Angel with some edge. The man with the jheri-curl mullet, had that edge.

As for the card, a 1991 Upper Deck Luis Polonia, #187 in the set. Yeah that's right, Upper Deck gave him card 187, the Cali penal code for murder. Did I mention this guy had an edge?


Classic Luis. I'm assuming he's breaking up the double play here or perhaps more likely, the A's knew better to even attempt to go after Luis at second and instead just went after Winfield at first following another of his spectacular ground outs that season.

Even better is the back.


Is there any doubt that this was one of Luis's three errors on the season? Not that I care, Luis made the game fun for a 12 year old watching from the Upper View Level. Note the Jheri curl mullet peaking out the back. There should be a word for this, I vote "jhullet". I miss cards where the back was often as exciting as the front. I've had my fill of flipping to the back only to find the image from the front cropped into a tiny box...yes, I'm looking at you Stadium Club.

So why does this card define me?
1. I loved Luis Polonia. He was everything that made baseball exciting for me. Sure, I loved the bombers just like everyone else, but Luis was the only guy I would stare at for the entire game.

2. I was able to get this card signed in person during the last home stand of the year, when the Angels would have fan appreciation days. It was almost impossible to get to someone like Joyner, Winfield or Abbott, but Luis was not exactly mobbed. He signed my card, talked to me for a bit and made me a fan forever.

I often think about going back and trying to pick up all the old Luis Polonia cards that I can find, but well...Luis isn't exactly a guy filling up the eBay auctions or easily found in the monster boxes at your local card shop. One day Luis I'll do my collection of you proud, but for now I'll just enjoy the memories of your jhullet and this card that defines me.

Go Halos!