1994 Fleer Ultra

It's such a shame that Fleer followed up an all-time great set with this crap. In fact, Ultra would never again come close to the great looking sets they issued in '92 & '93. So in the Stadium Club tradition, and so I don't have to bag on these for the next 10+ years, I will start a new Fleer Ultra format and instead list the 5 best songs I heard today, in no particular order....

World Party - Take It Up

10,000 Maniacs - Cherry Tree

Bob Dylan - Buckets of Rain

Camera Obscura - Dory Previn

The Rolling Stones - Far Away Eyes

The 1994 Fleer Ultra Detroit Tigers:

51 John Doherty

52 Cecil Fielder

53 Travis Fryman

54 Chris Gomez

55 Mike Henneman

56 Chad Kreuter

57 Bob MacDonald

58 Mike Moore

59 Tony Phillips

60 Lou Whitaker

352 Danny Bautista

353 Tim Belcher

354 Eric Davis

355 Rick Greene

356 Mickey Tettleton

357 Alan Trammell

358 David Wells

A bonus song since there are insert cards.

The Church - Reptile

Rising Stars

5 Travis Fryman

RBI Kings

5 Cecil Fielder

I love the new format myself......

1994 Fleer

Drum roll please......

This is undoubtedly my favorite card set of the 90's. With the exception of the foil lettering, these are almost perfect. White borders, full frame pictures, nice unobtrusive team logo, and even the lettering style looks great wrapped around the logo. The beauty really is in the simplicity. 

I remember collecting this set like a mad man in 1994. Back when inserts were still in vogue, this was the first major set that gave you a real insert in each pack. (By my rough count, there were 217 total. Far too many, but nowhere near as bloated as a current Topps base issue...) 

I was something like 5 cards short of a base set when a couple of years later I found a card store selling unopened wax boxes of these for $6. I bought all three of them, finished my set, and probably have close to three quarters of the inserts.

And in all honesty this was probably the last set I collected that I enjoyed doing so. Hard to believe it's been 15 years now.  

The 1994 Fleer Detroit Tigers:

124 Skeeter Barnes

125 Milt Cuyler

126 Eric Davis

127 John Doherty

128 Cecil Fielder

129 Travis Fryman

130 Kirk Gibson

131 Dan Gladden

132 Greg Gohr

133 Chris Gomez

134 Bill Gullickson

135 Mike Henneman

136 Kurt Knudsen

137 Chad Kreuter

138 Bill Krueger

139 Scott Livingstone

140 Bob MacDonald

141 Mike Moore

142 Tony Phillips

143 Mickey Tettleton

144 Alan Trammell

145 David Wells

146 Lou Whitaker

709 Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker Super Star Special

For a set that had 217 insert cards, they sure didn't bother much with the Tigers. I only count 4, but they are great looking as well. Fleer really knocked it out of the park with the inserts too.

All Stars

7 Cecil Fielder

8 Travis Fryman

Major League Prospects

5 Danny Bautista

Team Leaders

6 Cecil Fielder

There is even something special about the Update set, which used the new logo that is still in use today. (I know a lot of Tigers fans who don't care for it, but I don't mind it so much.) I never noticed before now though that Danny Bautista had an insert card in the base set, but no base card, and then a card in the Update set. Interesting.

39U Danny Bautista

40U Tim Belcher

41U Joe Boever

42U Storm Davis

43U Junior Felix

44U Mike Gardiner

45U Buddy Groom

46U Juan Samuel

Whew, is that one tough list to look at. Not hard at all to see how the Tigers would have a losing record for the first of the next twelve seasons to come.....

1986 Topps

My apologies to the three people who are regular readers here. Between the need to take a step back at the end of the disappointing season and having a couple of friends come to visit Chicago on nights that I might have otherwise blogged, things got a little slack around here. No worries though, things should be getting back on track.

I think part of the slack though is that I've been sort of reluctant to go forward. 1986 was the year I graduated high school, and it was probably the first year that I just didn't get into collecting like I had in years past. It didn't help that the card companies made some of the ugliest and lackluster cards ever in 1986.

I can still remember my buddy Brian and I walking to the old card store that used to be on Maine St. in Brunswick, Maine on a sunny, cold morning in January when these cards first came out. I can also remember going back to his house and opening our packs and looking at these like someone had just farted. 

I could go into detail, but I won't. These cards suck. You know it and I know it. So here they are. (Ok, so maybe the team leaders card is cool, but I swear you got two of these in every pack, and one was always Greg Minton.....)

The 1986 Topps Detroit Tigers:

20 Lou Whitaker

36 Tigers Leaders - Lance Parrish

47 Juan Berenguer

73 Randy O'Neal

101 Dave Bergman

121 Nelson Simmons

130 Alan Trammell

160 Chet Lemon

192 Milt Wilcox

217 Bill Scherrer

243 Johnny Grubb

270 Jack Morris

295 Kirk Gibson

367 Aurelio Lopez

393 Chris Pittaro

411 Sparky Anderson

436 Doug Flynn

461 Walt Terrell

479 Bob Melvin

515 Darrell Evans

540 Dan Petry

563 Alejandro Sanchez

592 Frank Tanana

609 Barbaro Garbey

643 Tom Brookens

670 Willie Hernandez

688 Larry Herndon

740 Lance Parrish

788 Marty Castillo

Topps again released the Glossy All-Star cards in rack packs:

3 Lou Whitaker

10 Jack Morris

I can't remember how they were released, but Topps also issued a Glossy Rookies set too:

8 Eric King

And of course they issued a traded set.

1986 Topps Traded:

17T Bill Campbell

26T Darnell Coles

27T Dave Collins

53T Eric King

59T Mike Laga

61T Dave LaPoint

Not even bad ass Darnell Coles cold make these cards look cool, and if he couldn't do it, nobody could.

2008 Detroit Tigers Fantasy Camper of the Year

I have to give Leo Barbour another big shout out of thanks for including an autographed card of a Detroit Tigers Forum legend, Mr. Ed DeArmond. Over the past few years, "Mayor Jose" has given us great stories from his exploits at fantasy camp in Lakeland with the Tiger heroes from years gone by. One of the all-time greats of the Tiger Forum, and another great reason to come and sit for a spell and hear tales of the days of yore.

Unfortunately, the back of his card did not have enough room to tell the tale about him, so I will attempt to fill in the rest.

"Ed was the original fan of Carlos Perez, a huge Murphy Brown supporter, a big time Randy Smith advocate, a die-hard Nolan Richardson guy, and a staunch believer in Dontrelle Willis. A life-long devotee to Hillary Clinton, Avion Casion, and Mike Mussina, Ed loves eating at Cracker Barrel and is particularly fond of the Chickenchoker special with a side of Rabblerouser. His greatest sports memory is France's win in the 1998 World Cup matches."

Ed, I hope I did you justice. The indictments are coming down anytime now.....

2008 Tigers Tickets

I would like to give a big thanks to my good friend Leo Barbour over at the Detroit Tigers Forum for passing along to me his 26 game tickets from 2008. If you're a Tigers fan and you've never checked out the forum, come stop by. It's been said that our forum is like a neighborhood bar, and Leo would be part-owner and proprietor. But knowing him as I do, he would wish me to stop right here with the accolades and get on to business.

These are one cool collectible. I've slowly come around to liking the 2008 Topps cards, so these are a no-brainer. They're too big for 6 pocket pages though, so I've got to figure out a cool way to display them.

I'm not going to bother posting a checklist, since all anyone would need to do is look up the Tigers home schedule. I am curious though as to how many different "cards" there are. Of the 26 tickets I have, there are 24 different. (May 8 and August 13 both picture the same Bonderman photo, May 5 and August 10 both have the same Polanco photo, although there are 3 other dates that picture different Bonderman photos) 

Thanks again Leo. This are very cool. 

Now I just have to hunt down tickets for the other 55 home games......

Love, Comerica Style

I wrapped up my five day weekend/business trip/vacation with a game at Comerica Park last night. As always, it was a great time with great friends. Despite a wasted outing by Nate Robertson, it was great to be back in the city for a game.

Over in the right hand column, you might notice a link to the Detroit Tigers Forum. Originally born in 1996 at freep.com, it's as great a collection of cyberspace Tiger fans as you will ever find. (Don't try the link today, as the site is temporarily down...) Over the years of endless debates about everything ranging from just how sorry a GM Randy Smith was to what type of beer we might be tasting some evening during a game, the Forum has brought together a couple hundred Tiger fans from all over the globe to commiserate and celebrate the last 12 years of Tigers baseball.

Over the years many of us have met in "real life," and I've developed great friendships with people I would have otherwise never met. I met up with three such fellows yesterday. They go by the names of Joe Sweet, LP Fan, and Nightwing in our forum, and I'll refer to them the same around here. (LP Fan was the guy that I went on the monster road trip with earlier this year.)

We did what every Tiger fan should do on game day, and that's meet up at Nemo's for pre-game beers and eats before taking the Nemo's bus over to the park for the game. Prior to the food and drink though, we walked over to see Tiger Stadium for what I am sure will be my last time.

The demolishing is about halfway complete. For the first time in my life, I stood on the corner of Michigan and Trumbull and was able to look into the stadium. All of the outfield is entirely gone. There was nothing left but the flag pole. All of the seats have been stripped from the lower level of what is left of the stadium. It was a weird combination of emotions to see the place where I spent so many great nights in my youth mostly reduced to rubble. It was like visiting that sick relative that you know you are seeing for the last time. It was sad, but you'll always remember her in her prime, and not how she was when she finally went.

However, the rest of the day was enjoyable. It was a nice evening at Comerica Park. The game was nothing to write home about. Nate pitched a great game, only to see F-Rod blow it in the 8th. The A's won 3-2. Oh well, we're not going anywhere this year anyway. This brings my 2008 record to 4-4 at Tigers games, with my last planned trip to see them play coming up Friday night at U.S. Cellular Comiskey Park Field.

Our gang had loads of fun catching up last night, and many missing forumites were discussed, but to a man we all agreed that we couldn't wait to do it again next year. And isn't that really one of the great things about baseball? No matter what, there is always next year.

I had a great time boys. Thanks.