Promises were made to be broken

I know I promised no more Allen & Ginter until I started my Gint-A-Cuffs box, but I couldn't help it.  I helped our former neighbor load his moving truck when he moved last weekend.  He and his wife stopped by yesterday to pick up the last bit of mail they had received and they gave me a $50 Wal-Mart card.  Despite my protests (I really did try to turn the card down), they insisted I take the card and "get a tank of gas" or something.

The "something" turned out to be 4 of the A&G Rack packs.  I think there are more than one kind, but I bought the ones with 3 packs plus the 3 gold bordered minis.  My hope was to get a couple of  Angel gold bordered minis to trade for a couple of Ranger ones that Laurens from Card Buzz pulled.

Did I accomplish my mission?  Let's take a look.

I appreciate the look of this year's Ginter.  The border on the base cards has a little flair to it and it looks nice.  The same border on the minis almost takes away from the cards, but it's not that bad.  The problem is with the colored border minis.  Both the black and gold bordered cards aren't different enough to get me too excited.  I think a solid black or gold border for the parallels would have been much better looking.  If you look closely at them, there is a little bit of separation at the very outside portion of the design that a solid border would have been doable. My first gold bordered mini was a horizontal Alfonso Soriano.

Have you ever seen a happier ballplayer?  I think you probably have.

Hisashi Iwakuma gave up 4 earned runs to the Rangers on the 15th as Matt Harrison got his 12th win of the season.  See, I'm not completely clueless about a Mariners rookie pitcher.  

Jed Lowrie just went on the 15 Day disabled list.

Hey, it's Mr. No-Hitter!

If John Axford played for the Pirates, this would be great.  You know, since he looks like a pirate.

You know what the red cloud surrounding Mark Teixeira is don't you?  It's the "Cloud of Arrogance".

Martin Prado is one of those fringe guys that I just don't hear much about (unless it's on a blog).  I don't watch TBS much and I haven't seen a Braves game since...I don't know when.  It's nothing personal against the Braves, I just don't watch much TV and when I take the time to watch a game, it's going to the Rangers.

I seem to be pulling a lot of Matt Joyce stuff this year.

Michael Pineda.  Yay, another Yankee.

Ricky Nolasco is a dead weight on one of my fantasy teams.

That's much more like it.  This is a great shot of Griffey.  I'm so glad they put his hat on right.

Unfortunately, I didn't get any Rangers or Angels to trade.  I might have some of these available to trade at some point, but right now I'm trying to put together around 15 trade packages.   I may be using them for those packages.  If not, I'll let you know.