“…Come and talk to us. We’re from a different country.”
I wouldn’t put it past the Blue Jays to use a Zaphod Beeblebrox pickup line on the Mets faithful. It occurred to me that, intentionally or not, they’re doing a lot to ensure that the interest of Mets fans ends up directed north of the border. Think about it…
They’ve got the guy who rose to stardom, became a fan favorite and won a Cy Young with the Mets…
They’ve got the guy who was an 4-time All-Star and also a favorite of many Mets fans…
They’ve got the Mets’ 2012 starting catcher…
…and one of his backups…
Their new AAA affiliate is the Buffalo Bisons, the Mets top farm team for the past 4 years…
Heck, even their manager is a former Met.
Their filthy Canadian schemes won’t work on me, though… Not as long as I’m also an Orioles fan.
Well, OK, maybe I’ll root for the Blue Jays, perhaps they can win the Wild Card while the O’s win the division. But no matter who the Jays acquire, I’m never calling their home ballpark anything but the SkyDome.
I don’t always follow the College World Series, but Stony Brook is a team that anybody who likes an underdog or is from the Northeast can get behind. I’m declaring them to be the official CWS team of The Shlabotnik Report.
The Seawolves have made an impressive ascent through college baseball; bear with me while I give you some perspective on how far they’ve come. I grew up on Long Island, and at the time SUNY Stony Brook was a state school with a large percentage of commuter students, an emphasis on science and technology. The Division III sports teams went by some team name which I don’t remember because I was barely aware that they had teams. They’ve since re-branded the teams as Seawolves and have only been Division I since 2000. This year they beat Miami and other teams to win the Regionals, and then pulled off a major upset by eliminating the host LSU Tigers in the Super Regionals, playing in front of a bigger LSU crowd for that one game than the Seawolves had drawn at home all season.
Aside from the fact that they’ve advanced to the College World Series for the first time in school history, they’re also the first CWS team from the northeast since Maine in 1986 (Mike Bordick played on that team) and the first team from New York State to make the CWS since St. John’s in 1980. That team included these guys:
Although the roster has a significant number of Long Islanders, the entire northeast is represented, as there are players from Connecticut, Pennsylvania, other parts of New York state, as well as 4 players from Ontario, Canada.
Seven Seawolves were taken in the MLB draft, including OF Travis Jankowski (drafted 44th overall by the Padres with a supplemental pick) and C Pat Cantwell (Taken in the 3rd round by the Rangers.) The one Major Leaguer to have played for Stony Brook is Joe Nathan, who donated a large sum of money to the baseball program; not coincidentally, the Seawolves play their home games at Joe Nathan Field.
If you ask a Stony Brook student, faculty member or alumnus “What is a Seawolf?”, the answer you will get is apparently “I am a Seawolf!”
Stony Brook, NY is on the north shore of Long Island, about a 55 mile drive from midtown Manhattan (for those of you who think that the entirety of Long Island is a 20 minute train ride away from NYC).
This card looks like a Star Trek outtake; Brayan Pena is screaming in pain and surrounded by a sparkly special effect just before he disintegrates into his constituent molecules.
Too bad he doesn’t play for a team which wears a red shirt.
Yesterday I introduced a new series of posts illustrating how card companies latch on to a particular type of photo for certain players. While updating my team binders the other day, I discovered another example of card companies beating a particular photo to death… Ryan Hanigan, Catcher In Action!
I hope you don’t want to know what Ryan Hanigan looks like, because about all you can tell is that he’s Caucasian. Wikipedia says he’s one of two active MLB players born in Washington D.C., and Baseball Reference seems to bear that out (the other one is the Giants’ Emmanuel Burriss).
So, for Ryan Hanigan, that’s 4 cards, 4 defensive action shots in full catcher’s gear, with mask on.
Card companies sometimes get caught up in visual clichés… They get so hung up on a particular trait of a player that they just keep repeating what is essentially the same photo over and over again. As long as I’m going through my cards to bring focus back to my collection, I thought it might be fun to track certain players and see how pervasive that cliché is.
The first couple of cards are for Bronson Arroyo, let’s take a look at his 2011 Topps Card (Diamond Anniversary Edition! WooooHooooo!!!!):
A horizontal card featuring his leg kick. Topps loooooooooooooves his leg kick, and I want to say that the majority of his cards feature his leg kick from some angle.
Here’s his 2010 Topps card, and another leg kick.
Finally, here’s a 2008 Topps Heritage card and… WHAT THE –? It’s a portrait! What’s up with THAT?
So, as I run across these for Arroyo and other players, I’ll be keeping a running total of the clichés. Coming up soon, I’ll be featuring a newly-discovered cliché involving another Cincinnati Red.
Usually when I pull one of these legend shortprints my reaction is “Yeah, whatever, at least I can get something for it on COMC”. But when it’s Tom Seaver, that’s another story… even when it’s Tom Seaver in an ugly White Sox unform. Unlike a lot of these legends, I remember Tom Terrific as a player, and I was anguished when the Mets traded him in 1977 and again in 1984 when they lost him in the free agent compensation draft.
