Walk-ing to the mailbox

Ahh, the Bob Walk The Plank puns!

When I got back from vacation, I had an unexpected bubble mailer from Matt over at The Walk. He mentioned in a note he found something he thought I'd like, and well, he was right.

The package contained three cards, but each was pretty great.

The first is this cool Carlos Beltran relic from 2015 Topps Tribute. It celebrates one of Beltran's Player of the Week wins, as the jersey spells out "Player of the wk". It's cool that there are three pinstripes, although I would have liked to see them spaced out evenly. The card is numbered to 36, which was Beltran's number in NY.

Clint! I love this healthy-sized jersey swatch from one of Frazier's minor league stops. It's definitely my first Frazier relic of any kind. Matt sent this before Frazier got called up. Hopefully he didn't regret it once Clint homered in his first game, although he's gone a little cold since then.

Lastly, Matt found this very cool relic of AL ALL-STAR(!) Luis Severino. If you hold told me he'd be an All-Star this year after last year's messy season, I wouldn't have believed you...unless you told me he was a reliever all year. Yet as a starter, Sevy has excelled, and has given the Yanks something to look forward to for the next few years.

I'm uncertain where in the minors this relic is actually from, as I don't recognize the colors. Zippy Zappy and I both guess Charleston at some point for a minor league promotional night.

Matt, these three cards are excellent. Thanks for thinking of me.

Out of sorts

I feel very out of sorts with my blogging right now. Although my posts aren't particularly insightful in general, I'm having a tough time just finding the time to cobble anything together.

It sounds trivial, but it started when my blogroll inexplicably vanished from my blog. I didn't do anything to edit or change the layout. I just woke up one day and *poof* it vanished. I'm not sure how each you consume other blogs, but I'd start by going to my site and going through my blogroll. It's probably inefficient and leads me to miss some posts, but it's been my formula for the last five years.

Blogger help has said they are working on the issue, but we're going on three weeks now. It actually happened to many other people, from the looks of it on the forum. I highly doubt that they are going out of their way to help us though. At the end of the day, we are using a free platform, and although they screwed up, they don't have much incentive to repair what was done.

Luckily, a fellow blogger helped me to view a cashed version of my blog, and he was kind enough to pull the list I had of blogs I had. I'm dreading it, but I think I'll soon start repairing my blog roll manually, one by one. At least I have the list.

Ok, enough whining. Here's are two relic cards, that came together in a lot I bought not too long ago. I needed the Pineda, and the Beltran was a nice bonus. Apparently there are two different relic designs - an A and B versions. I didn't know that when I bought them, but noticed upon arrival.

Simply Fantastic

Weston over at Fantastic Catch is a very thoughtful guy. He always adds a little something to trade packages that is unexpected. Last time, he sent a broken down blaster box with Michael Pineda on it. This time, he sent a USA Weekend cover with Masahiro Tanaka. Very cool!

He also likes to send me Yankee prospects cards. In fact, he sent me this Leonardo Molina card, which I then sent to Molina for an auto. It now looks like this.

Here are a few other goodies.

Weston, I owe you a return package. I haven't forgotten!