Saturday, March 7, 2020

#73 - Brandon Crawford


What’s that Turtle doin’? Comin' right atchya there in the on-deck circle. I have always wanted to watch a game from there.

The actual star of the card is actually the sole of Crawford's left shoe. The card looks so 3D I half expect the various foil/shiny parallels of it to somehow make the rest of Crawford disappear into the shiny, leaving just that sole.

And there on the bottom of that shoe —— it is a little striking how no chance to put a corporate logo in to your field of vision is ever missed, these days. I have a sad hunch lately that Baseball is still in the early stages of slipping down an advertising-on-the-uniforms slope as attendance declines a little bit every year, but somehow, revenues manage to go up. And player salaries absolutely, positively must rise at all times, or else the players are getting ripped off - a sentiment of a large portion of the fans. I don't think it will all end up in NASCAR territory, but I also don't think the Swoosh now appearing on the right breast will be the last such uniform icon, either.

A minor star of the card is the ring of some sort on Crawford's left hand. I tried to do my best blogging due diligence on this, but Crawford has had so many miscellaneous small finger injuries during his career that tracking down just one in 2012, presuming this is a 2012 photo, wasn't actually possible at this point, nearly 8 years later.

I like how Crawford is not only illustrating near textbook sliding style but also seems to be waving Aloha! as he comes in to Home, without a Catcher or an Umpire anywhere to be found. 

This is another one that if I had to pick just 9 Sea Turtles to be stranded on a desert island with, I think might make that cut.

Uniform Hero? No sir.

Where’d the egg hatch? Crawford was drafted by the Giants in the 4th round in 2008.

How about the migrations? Brandon had good baseball skills it turned out, reaching the Giants in just three years in 2011, rather than 4.

Don’t flip over real Turtles.
After just a season and a half in MLB for Crawford, we get full minor league stats and a text blurb. Neither of which really tell us a whole whole lot, so I guess when things get rather staid, leather and lumber always make for a good fall back. I have a nagging suspicion I will end up borrowing that technique myself as this blog moves along.

Can the Turtle Catch the Rabbit?

CAREER CHASE: With 148 hits, Crawford is 4,108 away from the all-time record of 4,256.

This one almost makes me like how it kind of dovetails with the image on the front of the card, but then the Hit King was famous for sliding in head-first, in photographs at least.

Crawford is a bit of a rare player in the 2010s MLB in that he has played his entire career in San Francisco; he is currently signed through the 2021 season.

After the 2019 season, Brandon Crawford has 1,055 Hits in MLB action.

Subspecies? Although Crawford was just getting established after a first full season in 2012, this card does make the Opening Day checklist as well, but has no variants. It takes a little more star-power to hang on to that checklist spot later in the year in the Chrome release, and there this card can not be found, which is a bit of a pity, really, as this would be one card I would want to check out with some shiny hub-caps.

Bling That Shell Of course, I do have some options for shiny even without an official Chrome card given all the 2013 parallels, one year before the total # of those options peaked in the 2014 release. Here I am once again finishing out a page with an Emerald Giant:

That means it is time to see how the parallels all fit together; I like how on this page, the 3 shiniest options all gravitate together on the bottom row. I'll have to let that row hang out in a bit of sunshine sometime, just to see what happens.



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