Billy Ripken, 1993 Upper Deck #181

Hey, it's been a while since I've sleuthed out a baseball card photo, so let's jump on it. Orioles at Oakland, Billy Ripken attempting to turn the double play with Dann Howitt sliding into second base. My first stop is Billy's 1992 game log on Baseball Reference. He played four road games against the A's that season, all starts at second base. The two later-season options (August 31, September 1) didn't include Howitt, so that narrows it down to May 30 and 31. Incidentally, Howitt was erased at second on a twin killing in each of those games, but the play-by-play from May 31 indicates that Cal Ripken made the putout. So, May 30, 1992 is our winner.

It was a Saturday afternoon game, with the marquee pitching matchup of Jose Mesa vs. Joe Slusarski. Two first-inning Baltimore runs were matched by a pair of Oakland tallies in the second, with Dann Howitt himself delivering an RBI single for the tying run. Then Mike Bordick tapped a ground ball to O's third baseman Leo Gomez, leading to the double play that is captured on this very card. The teams remained deadlocked until Brady Anderson put the Birds on top with a solo home run in the top of the fifth. The visitors extended the lead with a four-run outbreak in the sixth via two more homers - a leadoff solo shot from Sam Horn and a three-run blast by Chito Martinez. That 7-2 cushion didn't last long, though. The Athletics crawled back with two-spots in the seventh and eighth innings each; Randy Ready's pinch hit two-run homer off of Mike Flanagan closed the gap to a single run and necessitated a six-out save from Gregg Olson. Fortunately, the Otter was up to the task, pitching around two hits and a walk to secure his 11th save. O's win, 7-6. "The more you know..."

Brad Pennington, 1993 Upper Deck #437

Whoops. Dexter Fowler won't be an Oriole, and nobody is really sure what happened. Instead of wringing our hands over what could have been, I will move forward by convincing myself you that we are better off in Baltimore without Fowler. To wit:

1. His birthday is March 22. Do you know who else was born on that day? Wackadoo Christian televangelist Pat Robertson. Pretty suspicious company.

2. He'll be 30 next month. He's practically got one foot in the grave, athletically speaking. Why, he's only two and a half years younger than Nolan Reimold.

3. I know batting average is a dinosaur statistic, but do we really want to give tens of millions of dollars to a guy who was .025 behind Jimmy Paredes last year?

4. Dexter struck out looking in Game Four of the 2015 NLCS to eliminate the Cubs from the postseason. Choker.

5. He turned down a one-year, $15.8 million qualifying offer from the Cubs at the beginning of the postseason, only to twist in the wind all winter before ultimately spurning the Orioles' three-year, $35 million and signing a one-year, $8 million deal with the Cubs featuring a $5 million buyout and a $9 million mutual option for 2017. Should he use that option at the end of this season, he will effectively have signed a one-year, $13 million deal. Otherwise, he'll get two years and $17 million. If that's the kind of sound decision making Fowler employs on a day-to-day basis...

6. Hey, now we get to keep our 28th overall draft pick in June!

7. We'll be spared three years of huckster sports writers making forced references to that TV show about a charming serial killer.

8. A "fowler" is defined as a hunter of birds. Somewhere, the O's mascot is breathing a sigh of relief.

9. Dexter is actually his middle name; his first name is William. What's he trying to hide?

10. If Fowler played for the Orioles, our pitchers wouldn't have the pleasure of getting him out any more. In 10 career games against Baltimore, the outfielder has hit an anemic .167/.302/.194 with no home runs and three RBI.

...No, YOU'RE grasping at straws. Who am I kidding? This sucks. It sucks more than Brad Pennington.

Mike Devereaux, 1993 Upper Deck #167

I need a distraction, since the Orioles are now four games under .500 and their bats are missing in action. So I've turned to the excellent 1993 Upper Deck set to see if I can pinpoint the date that this photo was taken. Go figure - it's an Orioles-Angels game, though it's in Anaheim, unlike the current weekend series in Baltimore. Lance Parrish is catching, Mike Devereaux is batting, and there's a Caucasian runner edging off of third base. With Parrish behind the plate, we've narrowed it down to either June 1, 1992 or June 3, 1992. Devo batted with Billy Ripken on third base in both of those games, but only the Wednesday, June 3 game was played in the afternoon hours. So that is our game, and unfortunately the Birds suffered a walkoff 4-3 loss in 10 innings. However, there was a positive outcome from this particular at-bat in the top of the seventh inning. Mike greeted reliever Mark Eichhorn with a single, scoring Ripken and giving the O's a short-lived 3-1 lead. Bob Milacki served up a tying two-run homer to Gary DiSarcina in the bottom of the inning, and it stayed tied until Rene Gonzales scored on a fielder's choice grounder by Lee Stevens in the bottom of the tenth. So it goes.

David Segui, 1993 Upper Deck #792

In my times of greatest need, I know that I can always turn to other card bloggers for inspiration. If the things that they inspire me to do are wildly impractical and unusual, all the better! In this case, we're talking Frankensets.

Put simply, a "Frankenset" is a card set that is pieced together from multiple years/brands/what have you, but still numbered sequentially. It's usually housed in a binder, because that's just the best way to organize and gawk at your cards, you know? The first example of a "Frankenset" I came across was Ben Henry's "The 792", which made an entirely new set out of spare parts from all of the Topps base sets of the 1980s, with one card for each number from 1-792. A few of my other favorite hobby bloggers, Night Owl and Cardboard Junkie Dave, have each put together 350-card Frankensets of Allen and Ginter minis. Night Owl also has a night card Frankenset, and now Dave has a 2000s Topps Heritage Frankenset. This is where I say, "Me too!". But I'm not content mooshing together a bunch of half-finished Topps sets. Oh, no.

I'm making a 792-card Orioles Frankenset.

I've been wanting to put my O's collection in a binder (or binders...there's a lot of them, you know) for quite some time, but I couldn't decide how to sort them. If I put them in order by year and set, I'd drive myself to madness trying to rearrange them any time a new card came home with me. Instead, I'm just going to show off a hodgepodge cross-section. All years, all brands, everything is on the table. It's going to be murder winnowing down the low-numbered cards, but I look forward to the challenge. Some decisions have already been made; David Segui will anchor the set, as this card is my only #792. As far as the odds of completing the set, a quick check of my database shows me that every number from 1 through 500 - and most cards from 501 through 700 - are already covered. It gets a bit hairier in the 700s. I'll seek out those numbers that are missing. And if any card number doesn't match up to any Oriole, I've got a potential workaround. I'll seek out serial-numbered parallels or inserts where the serial number matches the missing card number.

Though I've got the groundwork laid, I won't actually be compiling the Frankenset just yet. I still have sorting and consolidating to do for my collection as a whole, and I'm really trying to stick to one thing at a time right now. But for the short term, I've got the idea, and I've gotten at least one blog post out of it. That's a start.

Damon Buford, 1993 Upper Deck #691

Because I really know how to have a good time, I've spent the bulk of my weekend thus far sorting a few thousand 1993 baseball cards. On the plus side, I've been able to get reacquainted with the magnificence of the 1993 Upper Deck set. Just look at this card, which zooms in on Damon Buford dancing away from the base. The photo is tight enough that it's just Damon and the infield dirt. He could be on the beach in Ocean City, if you use your imagination. I'm also really drawn in by Buford's shadow mirroring his movements from below. This is a baseball card aspiring to be art.

Mike Mussina, 1993 Upper Deck #233

Last night, Jason Hammel pitched the first complete-game one-hit shutout for the Orioles since Mike Mussina dominated the Twins on August 1, 2000. Like Moose, Jason had a no-hitter going until serving up a two-out single in the seventh inning. In 2000, it was Ron Coomer that played the spoiler; last night it was Jason Heyward ruining the fun. There was still plenty to enjoy, as the first-year O's starter ran his record to 7-2 while striking out 8 batters and walking a pair. It took him just 103 pitches, and was already his second no-hit bid of the year following seven hitless innings on Easter Sunday. To offer the cherry on top, this afternoon Wei-Yin Chen also earned his seventh win, collaborating with four relievers to blank Atlanta again in a 2-0 squeaker. In taking 2 out of 3 in the weekend road series, the Orioles' pitchers kept the Braves off of the scoreboard for 20 straight innings dating back to Friday. It's June 17, and the Birds are 39-27 and 1.5 games back of the first-place Yankees. If the season ended today (which would be silly and arbitrary), they would host the Rays in the wild card game. The surging Angels are still two games back of Tampa Bay and four behind the O's in the playoff "race", if you will. There's still a lot of games left to play, but less and less all the time. 66 down, 96 to go. This is fun.

Mark Williamson, 1993 Upper Deck #722

This is the first card I can remember seeing that tears down the fourth wall. For some reason, the Upper Deck photographer perched over the shoulder of another photographer and captured the process of Mark Williamson posing for that other shutterbug. Very meta, huh? I'll say this for Upper Deck; they were never afraid to try something new. We're talking about a baseball card featuring a middle reliever. You might as well break the mold a bit.

Joe Orsulak, 1993 Upper Deck #260

Reasons Why 1993 Upper Deck Is The Daddy Mack, Or Maybe Just The Most Visually Arresting Set Ever:

a) This card

2) Seriously, how great is that photo?

Even the neon gradient stripe with gold script writing gives just the right touch. It's unmistakably 1990s and yet it aged well. I certainly hope that Joe O caught the ball, but the great thing is that I can always play it out that way in my head.

Randy Milligan, 1993 Upper Deck #228

As part of my ongoing losing battle to better organize and display my collection, I spent the early part of this evening putting my 1993 Upper Deck factory set in a binder. It was long overdue, since I adhere to the opinion expressed by some of my favorite fellow bloggers that the card company from California was at the peak of its powers in that year. The design is unobtrusive but distinct, and I appreciate the fact that the Orioles are the only team to have a bright orange team-color stripe at the bottom of the card. The Mets are given blue, and the Giants are black. The photos (both front and back) are nothing short of amazing. They offer a great blend of incredibly detailed and dynamic action shots and imaginative and unique poses and candid moments. More than anything, the clarity and quality of the photos is noteworthy.

Randy Milligan's card had the most uniquely composed photo of the team set. Honestly, have you ever seen another card featuring the team trainer applying eye black? I love it all the more because you can read the trainer's watch if your eyes are sharp enough. I couldn't quite decipher the time, but the date appears to be 5-17, or May 17. The O's were indeed on the road that day, visiting the White Sox. It wasn't a pretty game, with Chicago battering Ben McDonald and Storm Davis and outlasting the Birds by a football score of 14-10. "Moose" Milligan had a decent day at the plate, picking up a pair of singles in five at-bats and driving in two runs, probably because the sun wasn't in his eyes.

Cal Ripken, Jr. and Brady Anderson, 1993 Upper Deck #44

As you might imagine, there are tons of multi-player cards featuring Cal Ripken, Jr. Just in my collection, I have Cal sharing cards with Eddie Murray, Jerry Hairston, Jr., Lou Gehrig, Alan Trammell and Tony Fernandez, Jeff Blauser, Bobby Bonner and Jeff Schneider, Brady and Rafael Palmeiro and Roberto Alomar, Cal, Sr. and Billy, the entire 2000 Orioles starting lineup (I may just get to that one later this week)...the list goes on.

I've chosen this card as my favorite Cal combo. First of all, it's from the beautiful 1993 Upper Deck set, and is part of the great Teammates/Team Stars subset. Each team had a card featuring two to six of its stars, with some kind of theme and accompanying fun nickname and logo. While some cards featured flashes in the pan like Pat Listach or Geronimo Pena, the Orioles are represented by Cal and Brady, who were teammates and good friends for a whopping fourteen seasons (1988-2001), a rare feat in the big-spending free agency era. Brady spent practically his entire major league career in Baltimore, excepting 41 games in Boston as a rookie and an ill-fated 34 games in Cleveland in 2002. #9 played alongside #8 longer than any other Oriole: longer than Eddie Murray (1981-1988, 1996), even longer than Mike Mussina (1991-2000).

Cal's tireless work ethic rubbed off on the speedy outfielder, as Anderson attempted to play through setbacks ranging from broken ribs to appendicitis. He even famously played a game in the late 1990s after being hit by a bus while rollerblading to the stadium! I think it's pretty fitting that Brady and Cal both played their last game in Baltimore on October 6, 2001. It wasn't a storybook finish, with Anderson striking out to end a 5-1 loss to the Red Sox, leaving Cal waiting in the on-deck circle for a final at-bat that would never come.

But this card preserves them in happier times, both in the primes of their careers playing for a contending team in a revolutionary new ballpark. They're posed in front of the trademark of Camden Yards, the towering B & O Warehouse. Everything is as it should be.

Cal Ripken, Jr., 1993 Upper Deck #36

I spent the past week at my family's cottage, far away from the Internet and cable television. On occasion this can be tedious, but fortunately our vacation this year coincided with the first week of the Summer Olympics. I've always had a tendency to watch almost any sport that's televised, but I was still surprised to find myself glued to the TV for gymnastics, volleyball, fencing, and even water polo. But one of the biggest thrills for me was watching the gripping events that unfolded all week long in the swimming pool.

Night after night, the million-dollar question was: can Michael Phelps make Olympic history by winning an astonishing eight Gold medals? I was skeptical at first, because so many freakish things could happen. But as Phelps earned his medals, one by one, my doubts were erased. Freakish things did happen - and they either didn't matter or actually benefited him. Phelps's goggles malfunctioned, filling with water during one race. As many have suggested, he essentially won the race blind. A boastful French 4X100M freestyle relay team held a significant lead going into the final lap, only for American anchor Jason Lezak to erase a huge deficit in the blink of an eye.

I marveled at Phelps' dominance; it all seemed easy, and automatic at times. By the time the most unusual and incredible finish occurred - Phelps' .01 second win over Serbia's Milorad Cavic in the 100M butterfly - I didn't even need to see the frame-by-frame photo finish. I was sure that he'd found a way to do it again. There were still some tense moments during the record-breaking final relay race; it wouldn't have taken much for an overeager teammate to jump the gun and thereby disqualify the whole U.S. crew. But in the end, Michael Phelps stood alone in the annals of the Olympics.

I've talked before about the fierce sense of hometown pride that Baltimoreans (or Baltimorons, as we lovingly refer to ourselves) feel when our guys make good. This pride was assuredly at its greatest when Cal Ripken, Jr., Maryland-born and practically raised in the Orioles clubhouse, spent his entire record-breaking Hall-of-Fame career in the orange and black. But after a week spent cheering for Michael Phelps in a foreign land (Pennsylvania is plenty foreign, trust me), it was amazing to come back to Baltimore and see the way we celebrated another world-class athlete that hails from "Bawlmer". The highlight came from Ravens Stadium, just across the street from Oriole Park at Camden Yards. The capacity crowd stuck around after a disappointing preseason loss to watch Phelps' final swim and to shout for joy. The swimmer seemed genuinely moved when NBC played footage of his hometown crowd filling the stadium of his favorite team and cheering for him.

Three cheers for Michael Phelps. Even though he seems much more enthusiastic about the Ravens than the Orioles, I won't hold that against him.

Mark McLemore, 1993 Upper Deck #801

Mark McLemore has been running for what seems like days. He lost track of the time long ago. If it weren't for the compass on his wristband, he wouldn't even know which direction he was heading in. He is a stranger in a strange land. His eyes are wide with fear and exhaustion as he finally falters. Stumbling, Mark reaches out with his arms to break his fall. But relief is in sight. He sees his base, his safe haven. Those diabolical black batting gloves that have chased him from Baltimore to Oakland must be long gone, dozens of miles behind him, sputtering as they ingest the dust and brown clay that he left in his wake.

Little does he know that the gloves climbed onto his back somewhere near Reno and sat there waiting...watching...biding their time.