Back from Hawaii

 Nine days away from the grind!  I know nobody probably noticed my lack of posts, but a trip to Hawaii with my wife was the reason.  Badly, badly needed too.  Work/life has been a bear recently.

Anyway, I had at least one request for a few pics, and even though I am not much of a photographer, I got a few nice ones.  My wife probably has a lot better ones on her phone, but you are stuck with mine!  I'll only throw out a few, but we took an incredible amount of them.

This was a sunset from the restaurant we were eating at one night.  I wish the power lines weren't in there, but I can photoshop them out if I need to.  Very relaxing...

This and the next one were at the north end of the island.  Very desolate and beautiful.

This is a rainbow I caught in the aftermath of a blowhole spout.  You can see the actual hole if you look hard a little up and to the right from the center of the pic.  Don't know who the lady in the pic is, she photobombed me.

Trees.  Hopefully you have all seen one before.  This one was cool.

More trees.  This picture didn't quite capture the amazing feeling there.  It was pretty awesome.

These last three are all from the same beach.  Extremely rocky, all those lava rocks poking up into the sea.

Love the violent surf...

East side of the island.

Well that's it for pics.  We did a lot of fun things from whale watching to snorkeling.  I ate waay too much.  Good trip!

Now I have to catch up on all my blog reading, missing 9 days left me pretty far behind.

And for those of you who stuck around this long, here is a surprise Flash Freebie.  9 cards below, each commenter can take up to 3 until they are gone!

Short show show and tell

 It's been quite a month here at DK.  As happens from time to time, work decided that my life would be dedicated to it for a while.  Been seriously crazy.  I haven't posted but once since the last card draft, and I really haven't been able to read any blogs either.

I AM going to do more card drafts, as they seem popular.  Not this month though!  And likely not until June, the way things are going...

On to some happier news, my wife and I are taking a long delayed trip!  It was supposed to happen for our 20th anniversary.  But one of our kids ended up having to have some surgeries, and we had to postpone due to lack of $$.  Then we wanted to do it for our 25th, but covid slapped those plans down.  So here we are, finally heading out to Hawaii!  Should be fun.

And finally, what you are probably here for, I found an hour to hit a local card show!  Here are a few of my finds that I found interesting.

These guys were .10 and .25.  Amazing deals for vintage cards of a local standby and a HOFer!  Happy to have them.

Three oddballs.  A very weird 1995 Stouffers Legends of Baseball Pop-Ups Yogi Berra.  Dime.  Some Bo Jackson 'prototype' card I have no idea who made.  And lastly, a sweet Johnny Mize from 1977 Shakey's WASSCA Convention Superstars.  Whatever that is!  And even better, the autograph on the bottom of the card is printed on, but the one on top appears to be an authentic on card signature.  No COA, so can't tell for sure, but it looks legit.  And it was 50 cents, so I'm good either way.

Here are the backs of those three cards...

Now some one offs:

Love the burned look on this die-cut.  Hadn't seen these before.

A 2005 Topps Heritage Flashback Hank Aaron.  Who doesn't like Hank for a dime?

2014 Bowman Chrome 'Bubbles Refractor' Adrian Beltre, #'d /99.  Cool looking card.  I wasn't aware of Bubbles Refractors!

1996 Finest Jeter.  This was a quarter.

I picked up several from this unleashed set, various versions, some serial numbered, some shiny.  I decided to show this one out of the bunch.  I really like the set, but I am not sure about the black and white Ruth pic though.  Kind of incongruous.  

2021 Prizm Ohtani.  I don't know what kind of prizm this is, but out of the 40 variations or so that Panini puts out for every card, this is one of them.  Looks much nicer in person, the scanner didn't play nice with this one.

I recently found that my Topps Machado RC had a stain on the front.  Bummer!  So I grabbed this bright and funky 2012 Bowman Platinum to replace it until I find another.

This was a buck.  You might not be able to tell, but it is badly off center, top to bottom.  Don't care, I will buy that for a buck all day long.

Last card!  I have been having a bit of a hard time with photo variations.  Can't really say I love them, especially when they are not a unique or meaningful pic.  But I like this one!  Pitcher batting is nice (soon to be rare on cards?) and I love Expos unis!!

Thanks for reading, and I hope to post after my trip to the tropics!

No Shohei here

 Wow!  I haven't posted in almost three weeks, since the last card draft!  Oh my, gotta get going.

And this isn't the greatest post, full of content either, but baby steps I guess!

So I am watching the Angels/Astros game.  Of course, all the announcers can talk about is Ohtani.  With good reason, I'll grant you.  He's must watch TV.  But I have a different take after the first inning:

Jose Altuve is now on pace for a new major league record of 600 strikeouts.  Wow, huh?  I know a lot of folks don't like the Astros and Altuve.  I get it, sort of, and if you don't like him, then root for the 600 Ks!

Similarly, Mike Trout is now on pace for a new record of 600 walks!  Pretty incredible, right?  That would be quite a season.  The funny thing is, if Trout had 600 walks in 600 plate appearances, then his OPS would be 1.000, unless I am calculating it wrong.  That 1.000 OPS would be lower than his OPS for the season last year, and for three other seasons in his career.  

Does that mean that OPS is weighted strangely?  It seems to me that getting on base every single time in a season would be more valuable than hitting .300 with 40 home runs.  Who knows!

Here are a card from each player from my meager collection: