January is Slowly Killing Me.

Living in central Pennsylvania, I get the "experience" of all four seasons. Of course, central PA also offers its residence the joys of two "winters" often during the same storm...

I left for work this morning around 8:00 and had to slog through 4 inches of slush and shovel about 5 inches of snow off my car.

I left work a little after 3:30 to head to the mall and had to scrap about a quarter of an inch of ice off my car.

I left the mall around 4:30 and drove home in a near whiteout, complete with a car who did a 180 in front of me and ended up in a snowbank.

Welcome to Pennsylvania.

I was hoping to offset the trip to the mall with a quick stop at Target to see what goodies I could find in the card aisle. Of course, this is the dead season for baseball cards as well, so I picked up 4 loose packs of Topps Updates and Highlights and People You've Never Heard of Who Present Topps Heritage High Series Full of Even More People You Never Heard Of. At least, I think that's the official name.

I figured the packs I've bought were already manhandled by pack searchers, so I wasn't expecting anything great...which worked out since I mostly got crap. I decided to my own version of pack wars though...
5 points for any "good" player (good being quite subjective)
5 points for a player depicted as a Cincinnati Red.
5 points for short prints / black backs that I don't need.
5 points for inserts that I don't need.
10 points if I needed the card for my set.
20 points for relics.
50 points for autographs.
and -5 points for every player I haven't heard of.

Can any of the packs end with a positive score? Let's see...


Pack 1:

566: Bryan LaHair (Who? -5)
578: Carlos Gonzalez (Who? -5)
587: Mike Napoli (At least I've heard of him)
605: Greg Reynolds (Who? -5)
647: Matt Macri (Who? -5)
621: Jeff Samardzija (Black Back) (Already had this one... +5 for black back though)
UH44: Ryan Sweeney (Meh)
UH113: Justin Morneau (Finally, a legitimate good player, +5)

Pack 1 Total: -10 (ouch)

Pack 2:

564: Chris Burke (heard of him, that's a better start than pack 1)
604: Fernando Tatis (Comeback player of the year candidate in '08...ok, +5)
612: Jeff Baker (meh)
613: Houston Astros (meh)
656: Pablo Sandoval
691: Oliver Perez (Short print - and needed! +10)
UH54: Matt Ginter (who? -5)
UH63: Eric Bruntlett (the back of his card says he served wine at a charity function in '08)

Pack 2 Total: +10 (commanding lead...)

Pack 3:

510: Joe Saunders (Pretty good pitcher, +5)
557: Dallas Braden (who? -5)
639: Mike Redmond (meh)
678: Alex Romero (I think I heard of a Romero, but he was a Royal. -5)
720: Ivan Ochoa (who? -5)
RP1: Clayton Kershaw (an insert that I needed of Rookie Performer Kershaw, nice. +10)
UH87: Ryan Langerhans (he's not bad, but not quite good enough for a +5 score)
UH116: Odalis Perez (he was an all-star once, +5)

Pack 3 totals: +10 (Ooh, we have a tie for first.)

Pack 4:

580: Kosuke Fukudome (Ugh, I ought to give this a -100...I'm so sick of pulling Fukudome rookies)
590: Brian Wilson (unfortunately, not the Beach Boy by the same name)
610: Kerry Wood (I bet Kerry likes Dusty Baker just as much as I do... +5)
638: Jose Arredondo (uhm, who? -5)
650: Evan Longoria (He's no Eva, but oh well. +5)
592: Mike Hampton (Black back, but I don't need it, +5)
UH188: Ray Durham (good player for a long time, +5)
UH207: Alberto Gonzalez (who? -5)

Pack 4 total: 10 points.

So there you have it, four packs and the highest total was 10 points. No wonder these things were still available at Target. At least my want list is updated.