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Barry Larkin Collection 742: 2004 Donruss - #248

Barry Larkin
Year:  2004
Brand:  Donruss
Card number:  248

The year 2004 was a busy year for me personally - I split time between my junior (spring 2004) and senior (fall 2004) year of college and I was actively looking for a graduate school to attend.  Suffice to say, baseball cards were not a priority...or heck, even a passing interest at the time. 

Thus, I have to admit to not knowing much about most baseball card sets from 2004.  In fact, the only 2004 set that I've decided to collect is the '04 Upper Deck Vintage set, a set that I bought a box or two of much, much later than 2004! 

Today's card isn't from Upper Deck though, instead it's from a set that (being honest) I probably wouldn't have collected much of in 2004 even if I were buying cards.  You see, I generally avoid most things Donruss, especially after say the year 2000 or so.  For me, this card looks like it belongs in a box of cereal or something...but ignoring the design, my real question is who is the dude in the flannel shirt in the dugout?!  I'm not sure I've ever seen someone in flannel in a dugout during a baseball game (and presumably this photo was taken during game action).

As for other Larkin cards from the 2004 Donruss, there's a few pointless parallels including Larkin's Career Stat Line (#/295 - his career batting average) and Larkin's Season Stat Line (#/70, his games played in 2003, a super lame stat if you ask me).  There are also four (!) versions of Press Proof parallels (red - retail only, blue - #/100, gold - #/25, and black - #/10).  Finally, there is an Orange County parallel from the 2004 Orange County card show in California. 

The sheer number of useless parallels is proof enough to me that I made the right decision in avoiding the 2004 Donruss set.  It's not a terrible design I guess, but it's not particularly memorable or even all that fun to look at which means it's an easy set to take a hard pass on.  That being said, I would happily scoop up any of the other many Barry Larkin cards that I don't yet own from this set because player collectors are crazy like that!

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