For some reason, the 'knee high' cards - the ones where the player's leg(s) get cut by the card design framing below the knee, rather than above the knee, seem to impart the most sense of motion to me, fairly often. The player then appears to be on his way -through- the card sometimes, until the photographer forced a stop so we can watch the game of baseball on our baseball cards.
The Brewers are wearing their dark blue 'Home Alternate' here; I think the roof might be open at Miller Park but it's a Great Lakes grey day overhead. The solid mass of blue helps make this quite a bit more memorable of a card, particularly as the Pitcher Parade wears on in this checklist.
Uniform Hero? Yes indeedy; the card # is one of the image elements leading the way to the plate here.
Where’d the egg hatch? John Axford was drafted twice — but still officially signed with an MLB club as a Free Agent.
First, the Mariners requested his services in the 7th round in 2001, but a scholarship to Notre Dame seemed like a better deal, and he did get a degree there, after Tommy John surgery along the way.
Then, the Reds took a chance on him in the 42nd round in 2005, but upon sending a scout to see him pitch with a final year of college eligibility (after that injury loss of a playing, but not a studying, year) the Reds declined to actually offer a contract. Which is something I haven't heard of before, possibly because it is usually kind of sunny on the back of a baseball card.
Axford seemed to enjoy playing the game, so he continued along in his home country, playing in the Canadian 'Western Major Baseball League' (Alberta & Saskatchewan), where a Yankees scout saw him pitch in the summer of 2006 and then signed him.
First, the Mariners requested his services in the 7th round in 2001, but a scholarship to Notre Dame seemed like a better deal, and he did get a degree there, after Tommy John surgery along the way.
Then, the Reds took a chance on him in the 42nd round in 2005, but upon sending a scout to see him pitch with a final year of college eligibility (after that injury loss of a playing, but not a studying, year) the Reds declined to actually offer a contract. Which is something I haven't heard of before, possibly because it is usually kind of sunny on the back of a baseball card.
Axford seemed to enjoy playing the game, so he continued along in his home country, playing in the Canadian 'Western Major Baseball League' (Alberta & Saskatchewan), where a Yankees scout saw him pitch in the summer of 2006 and then signed him.
How about the migrations? As with the Mariners and Reds, a Yankee he was not to be; New York released him after a year in their minor league system. So, Milwaukee gave him a try in Spring Training 2008 and there everything finally worked out. By late 2010 he had become their Closer.
Don’t flip over real Turtles.
Only by doing a deep dive with this card back for this blog post did I learn that Axford is from a small Great Lakes port town, just like me. And I have owned this card for a full 7 years now. Naturally here in the 21st Century, I quickly turned to the kindly free hosting service of this blog - Google - for more details.
Which must happen to the crew at Topps sometimes, when their wizard like ability to summon a 'once did X in only Y days for only the Z amount of times in team history' statistic eludes them and they turn all team-media-guide-like ("the Club"), as on this oddball card back effort.
Which must happen to the crew at Topps sometimes, when their wizard like ability to summon a 'once did X in only Y days for only the Z amount of times in team history' statistic eludes them and they turn all team-media-guide-like ("the Club"), as on this oddball card back effort.
Can the Turtle Catch the Rabbit?
CAREER CHASE: With 106 saves, Axford is 502 saves away from Mariano Rivera's all-time record of 608.
However the more common result for relievers is only a few years of being able to generate those "SV" stats. Axford would move on from Milwaukee to serve in 7 more Major League Bullpens through 2018 until a final comeback attempt for an Ontario home boy via the Blue Jays' minor league clubs in 2019 ended in season, and career ending surgery in August of that year.
Axford would finish his career with 144 Saves.
Subspecies? A dominant Closer as Axford was in 2010 and 2011 is popular enough to make a popularity based small checklist like Opening Day and this card can be found there in 2013, but not in Chrome later that year, as Rookies need cards, too. There are no variant versions of this one.
Bling That Shell I think this dynamic action based card would look good on a number of parallel options however this project wouldn't be possible without the 'retail' parallels printed in higher quantities than even Topps Gold cards, so here I paired the classic dark blue uniform with a classic dark red parallel:
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