Jay Gibbons is like a bad penny; he just keeps turning up. (I'm not quite sure what that means either, but I know I've heard it before. Bear with me...it's late.) As I've gotten back into collecting in the past few years and started ripping packs from the middle of this decade, I've found that I still get a little charge from unwrapping an Oriole. But those mid-2000s issues are just loaded with Jay Gibbons cards, and he's a less-than-thrilling find, what with the injuries and the performance-enhancers and the middling output and the hey-hey.A little while ago, fellow blogger Thorzul announced a Five Dollar Group Break. He'd gone and bought a random mess of packs, and he was going to bust them all open and sort his findings by team. You could claim one or more teams by leaving a comment on the blog and dropping five bucks in his PayPal account. Seemed easy and fun, so of course I grabbed dibs on the O's cards. Luckily, Thorzul posted previews of each scrambled team set, forewarning me that he had pulled not one, not two, but THREE copies of the Jay Gibbons card posted above. Baltimore's own redheaded stepchild was once as ubiquitous in wax as Elizabeth Banks is in movies these days. Of course, all was not doom and gloom in my portion of the Group Break; I got an awesome Cal Ripken, Jr. Turkey Red, a 2001 Upper Deck Vintage team card with a bunch of floating heads, and a hilarious Sammy Sosa card from some Upper Deck subset or another that touts his Hall of Fame prospects. A nice little assortment, all in all.
I had already planned on writing about Jay Gibbons when I learned earlier this evening that he had just signed a minor league contract with the Marlins for 2009. Jay Gibbons is here. Get used to it, America.
He's also shown for a split second in "Wedding Crashers" during the montage when Jon is depressed and withdrawn.
ReplyDeleteAll of the Gibbons cards were from the 50-loose-card stacks lying between the packs. I believe they all came from separate boxes, and they were he only cards from that set that appeared.
ReplyDeleteMy verification word was "skyblep." Great word.
William - I knew a guy in college who had a two-second cameo in that film. At Rachel McAdams' sister's wedding, her boyfriend says "let me introduce you to Travis" and then you see a wide-angle shot of the boyfriend giving this guy an awkward man-hug. The guy I knew was the giver of the man-hug, and he was unbearable. I think he assumed that it was going to be his springboard to fame or something.
ReplyDeleteThorzul - Skyblep, huh? Sounds like a perfectly cromulent word.