a dozen double plays

time for some more double play turns from the scanned folder.  twelve of them, to be exact.

rey sanchez avoids tino martinez on his 2001 upper deck card

and jay bell does the same to eric young on his 2001 upper deck card

on todd walker's 2001 upper deck card, however, it's the base runner who is doing the avoiding

here's desi relaford's 2000 upper deck card

with brant brown ducking

and here's alex gonzalez's 2002 upper deck card

on which he's about to land on an expo.

gonzalez's marlins teammate, luis castillo, didn't even bother to leave the ground on his 1997 bowman card

or on his 2003 fleer patchworks card

even with mo vaughn bearing down

alfonso soriano elevated himself somewhat awkwardly on his 2004 fleer ultra gold medallion edition card

to avoid lance berkman's hard slide.  i am figuring that this play comes from the 4th inning of the june 12, 2003 game in which berkman was forced at second for the second out of the inning, but soriano was unable to turn two.  this game came the day after the astros no-hit the yankees while using 6 different pitchers.

here's fernando vina on his 2004 topps chrome traded

and 2004 topps traded cards

meanwhile, michael young catches some air on his 2005 fleer authentix card

here's the newest dp turn in my collection - a 2014 topps gypsy queen nick franklin card

always nice to pull a card i collect from a pack.

mail in random order

i had a few cards sitting in my mailbox the other day. i'm behind on trade posts, and am still waiting for a few long standing return packages to arrive.  and the traveling box.  whoever has the traveling box, please get it moving.  anyway, there were three pwe's sitting there when i picked up the mail.  here's what was inside.

this 'card' is a 1985 topps rubdown, featuring half of the infield - bill russell and steve garvey

it is identical to the 1984 topps rubdown i showed a while back, except for the date in the copyright line.  the second card in the first envelope, which came from royals and randoms, was this 2003 fleer patchworks adrian beltre card

beltre has driven in over 100 runs for three straight years, after not having achieved that milestone since his monster 2004 season for the dodgers.  he's got over 2200 hits, and is only about to turn 34.  hall of famer?  we'll see.

the second envelope was from the angels, in order, and contained two sandy koufax cards from 2012 topps.  they are both 'golden greats' inserts, one of which addresses koufax's performance in the 1965 world series against the twins

 and the other which covers his first career no-hitter

i was surprised that 38 years had passed since someone took only 9 pitches to strike out the side.  that seems odd to me.

the third envelope was a sase which is pretty much always a ttm return.  and so it was - my 1978 topps jim clancy card found it's way back

a nice return, with about a 3 and a half month wait.  clancy was part of the first toronto playoff team in 1985, but made it to the world series before the blue jays did, as he was a member of the 1991 atlanta braves.  his career actually came to a close in that series as he won game 4 and made two other appearances for atlanta.  he still ranks pretty highly on the blue jays leader board, and i enjoyed following his career as a closet blue jays fan, so i was happy to get this one back.

thanks all around for the envelopes!