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Pack Break: Two Packs of 2008 Allen & Ginter
I purchased these two packs over at Sports Card Forum a few weeks ago. I just haven’t gotten to posting about it until now. One thing that struck me is the seemingly high number of players posing with their bats. I busted two packs, which amounted to sixteen total cards. Of those sixteen, nine featured players posing in some sort of fashion with their bat. That’s a bit above 56%. In fact, when you break down the seven cards which didn’t feature a bat, here’s what I found:
- Harriet Tubman, doesn’t count. She was never a baseball player, but organizer of the Underground Railroad. So having her pose with a bat would just be plain ludicrous.
- Two of the cards were pitchers – John Maine and Brandon Webb. While they are National Leaguers and do pick up the lumber from time to time, it does make sense that a bat would not figure prominently in their cards.
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- Russell Martin and Jason Varitek, both catchers, are shown in their catching gear instead.
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That’s five cards with a plausible reason why they do not feature a baseball bat. Which leaves only Ryan Garko and Mark Texeira as the only cards missing bats. I wonder if their bats not available at the time their photos were taken? This may be a good side project – figuring out how many position players in this set aren’t posing with a bat.
Now let us break down the different poses featuring bats.
- First you have the classic “Bat Over the Shoulder” pose. You can do it with two hands like Garret Atkins and Adrian Beltre, or one hand a la Jimmy Rollins. Or you can be like Ty Wigginton and do it looking like a crazy person.
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- Then, there’s the classic “Swing the Bat” pose. Capably demonstrated here by Rickie Weeks and Carlos Beltran.
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- Or you can do the “Point the Bat” pose. You can point it at the camera, like Derrek Lee. Or you can go the “Fertility God” route, like Nick Johnson.
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- And of course, there is the “Use the Bat as a Prop While You Look to the Sky, Knowing Full Well That at Age 37, You’re Probably Not Worth 4 Years, $52.4 million“.
