213 Miles From Shea

And by awkward, I just mean awkward for people who want to write stories counting down to Spring Training.

I used to try to do that one year, every day go through a player profile, or an area of the team leading up to pitchers and catchers, but its messy. A lot of players come to camp early now, and not just pitchers and catchers but position players. Then when players don’t come early, like Tejada last year, it becomes a story about how the player didn’t come early!

So, Spring Training starts sometime this week, but it really already started with images of players in cages and on mounds.

Happy early but actually already started spring training season everyone!

We’re 9 days away from pitchers and catchers reporting, we’re in February and Ike Davis will be reporting to Florida on Wednesday, so baseball season must be right around the corner.

Topps has already released their 2013 Series 1 Cards and my first impression is a positive one. Here’s a picture of some of the cards I found in a blaster box (10 small packs – retail):

The card design is nice this year. 2011 just screamed, “HEY WE HAVE EXCLUSIVE BASEBALL RIGHTS SO HERE’S A GIGANTIC LOGO FOR EACH TEAM BECAUSE NO ONE ELSE CAN SHOW THEM” and 2012 had a pretty busy front. This year is fairly minimalist as you can see with the Lucas Duda, R.A. Dickey and Justin Maxwell card. I included the Maxwell card to show Topps updated the Houston logo. The glue to the set is this idea of “the chase”. Every card features the career stat that player is chasing. For example, on the back of the Duda card it reads, “Career Chase: With 29 home runs, Duda is 733 away from Barry Bonds’ all-time record of 762”.

I wasn’t too impressed with the majority of the inserts, “Chasing the Dream” and “Calling Card”. However one series looks awesome. Some packs have 1972 mini cards that look sharp and authentic. They are well done.

The parallel cards are fairly similar to previous years. You have the gold cards that are numbered to 2013, emerald cards (that I think are new for this year), black bordered, one of one’s etc. Joining them this year is a pink bordered and a camo border, which I think is rather hokey but whatever. For the second year in a row, if you buy retail packs at Walmart, you can get a blue set, at target a red set, and at ToysRus a purple set. This makes collecting the cards less linear than just retail vs hobby. The red parallel is pictured above, so I guess you can figure out I got these cards at Target.

If you get blaster packs, you can collect a manufactured relic series. A Matt Holiday manufactured patch card is pictured above.

Verdict: If you like the basic Topps set, you’ll like this set. The cards look clean and there are a lot of different parallel sets to collect.

Tejada’s team was eliminated in the qualifying round of this year’s tournament after disappointing performances in 2009 and 2006. Their uniform set was very similar to those years as well.  The jerseys look the same as they did last time, which is a good decision, you can see them here and the hat below:

Chinese Taipei is playing in their third tournament, and as far as I can tell, they may be the only team this year coming out with uniforms that have the logo on one side of the jersey (sorta softball style). Now they haven’t released uniforms for sale, so for the picture we have to go off of the style guide. There is only one uniform so far and it looks like this:

It looks like they aren’t going for the underarm panels, so I guess their road uniforms will be gray. It’s a uniform that stands out purely because it’s so different than the rest of the teams.

Short note today as my teaching job is taking up a good chunk of my time tonight.

213 MFS turned 6 today! Thank you all for reading this blog and spreading the word. Without you this blog would be nothing!

Keep reading and LETS GO METS!

South Africa was in the 2006 and 2009 World Baseball Classic. Last year, they didn’t win a game at all so they had to go to the qualifying round where they were beat out to the show by Spain. Anyway, their uniforms look the same, which is fine. The green uniforms look good and the font size is correct on the jersey front.  You can see pictures of the uniform in action here, and the hat below:

The Philippines were another team eliminated in the qualifying round of the World Baseball Classic. On the uniform front, they did a good job. The hat and uniform both have colors that pop and match the country flag. Nice looking set. You can see the uniform in action here and the hat below:

Wanted to watch Oliver Perez again? Of course you do. Oliver Perez will be playing for Mexico in this year’s World Baseball Classic. Mexico is keeping the same color pallet from last year and the same hat however the uniform update didn’t go so well:

The hat still looks good. The uniform is suffering from the same characteristic as a lot of other teams, the small jersey font. If the jersey said “Mexico” in larger letters, it would look a lot better.

From May to June last year, the Mets had Vinny Rottino on the team and had to use him as a starter on B-Roster Days. I remember one of these days clearly. it was the start where Johan Santana pitched a complete game shut out before pitching his no hitter. The Mets won 9-0 thanks to home runs by Scott Hairston, Vinny Rottino and a grand slam by Mike Nickeas. The starting lineup that day was Torres, Turner, Wright, Hairston, Duda, Rottino, Cedeno, Nickeas and Santana. Seriously, not the group of guys who go on to win a game 9-0 (Davis, Murphy and Kirk, who was looking good back then, had the day off to start the game). Anyway Rottino went on to hit his first homer of his career that day and his second one of his career in his next game against the Phillies. He was later claimed by the Indians and would hit a homer for them to.

Well now Vinny, who bounced around the minors a lot, is playing in Japan on a 350K deal with 100K in bonuses. In the uniform department, he did very well. Check out his new digs via the Orix Buffaloes:

Few baseball uniforms come off as intimidating. These may.

New Zealand was eliminated in the qualifying round of the World Baseball Classic. New Zealand brought a Black and White uniform set with a nice hat and a uniform that could have been a lot better then it turned out. Black and White uniforms have received some stylistic bonuses from the Brooklyn Nets. The problem with New Zealand is the name is too small across the front (the common complaint with a lot of the uniforms this year). Here’s a picture of the uniforms in action as the players perform the traditional Haka before the start of the game. And here is their hat: