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.

• Russell Martin and Jason Varitek, both catchers, are shown in their catching gear.

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.

Where’s my 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.
  
  
  

• Then, there’s the classic “Show Off Your Batting Stance” pose.  Capably demonstrated here by Rickie Weeks and Carlos Beltran.
  
  

• 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.

• 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“.