a few more double play turns and some other cards from the heart of texas

here is some more goodness from the box of cards that i received recently from brian at play at the plate.

a few more double plays that are new to my collection - 1999 pacific denny hocking

1999 pacific crown collection rey ordonez

2000 fleer ultra tony batista

and a couple from 2001 fleer tradition - ron belliard

and pokey reese

i'll give fleer some credit for bringing to mind 1956 topps without being totally obnoxious about it.

brian included a 2002 fleer ultra eric karros gold medallion edition parallel

which cleanses the palette between vintage-y looking cards, more of which you are about to see.

a good portion of the box included cards from 2002 upper deck vintage.  this was the set that was basically 1971 topps with the photo moved above the team/player/position text.  here's the carlos febles card from the set

looks like a rundown.

strange to see david ortiz in a twins' uniform after all these years

one of the more interesting cards in the bunch was this ichiro card

with him legging out an infield hit, which he often did.

now, upper deck would tell you that they were paying homage to 1971 o-pee-chee, which is why the backs of the cards are yellow

this would be what the latter series of o-pee-chee looked like in '71, with the rectangular photo like topps had for the entire set run.

anyway, we know that o-pee-chee claim to be tenuous at best since upper deck wound up altering their 2009 o-pee-chee set to look nothing like the 1977 set which it was rumoured to be featuring prior to its release.

whether by design or not, some of the cards do remind me of 1971 topps, like this bernie williams card

that reminds me of the tommie agee card from 1971, just a bit more 'zoomed in'.

here are a few cards from the postseason scrapbook subset

an alfonso soriano walk-off in the alds

jeter walk-off in the world series

i'm not sure why upper deck chose to say "a last at-bat" on soriano's card, but "walkoff" on jeter's

more jeter love from game 5 of the world series

he drove in two runs and took to breakdancing at home plate, apparently.

finally, however, let us recall the fantastic end to the 2001 world series, thanks to mark grace and luis gonzalez

that was awesome.  just like the box of cards brian sent.  i'll be showing some of the pacific goodness in another post or posts.  stay tuned…