No Cardboard, but Hardware!

On Saturday my baseball team played in the Regional Championship against the #1 seeded team, who had one the last three regional titles and earned a fourth place finish in the state tournament last year. Needless to say, we were the underdogs.

We fell behind early, in part to some shaky defense, but we rallied, wound up turning three double plays and came out on top, 4-2.

It's a great group of guys, and their personalities are all over the map, but they do have a few things in common: working hard, having fun, and love for the game. They are an easy group of guys to coach and I am very proud of them.

Winning the Regional Championship was kind of a big deal, as it was our first since 2009. The head coach, featured in the video below, didn't take over the program until 2011 and this is only my second year with the varsity team. All of the players were still in elementary school eight years ago.  So, yes, some celebrating was in order!

After the big game I headed north to my in-laws, which gave me an opportunity to visit the Jewel-Osco chain of grocery stores.

I came home with twelve boxes of Cubs-centric cereal and have already distributed half of those to my friends in P-town. Three will stay in my collection and the other three will be shipped out east to another fellow Cubs fan.

While up north my wife and I went out on the Kankakee River with our stand-up paddleboards. The river was a little high and it moved a little quicker than what we're used to. 

 We saw Laura's dad along the side of the river shortly after we put in. Coincidentally, he was birding in the area and he had been watching us for some time in his scope. I guess we were more interesting than the birds!

We typically don't wear our life jackets, but we had a conversation the night with Laura's parents before about how rough the river was this time of year. I'm glad we had them on when we passed her dad!  We went about nine miles on the boards and saw two fawn, four turtles, numerous fish, and a water snake.  Good times and good exercise!

Today I have two baseball practices. One practice is for my spring baseball team as we get ready for the sectional contest tomorrow evening. I'm getting pretty excited for that game... we're on an eight game winning streak and only need three more victories to reach the final four in the state tournament. Wish us luck!  The other practice is for the summer team, which is made up mostly of sophomores and a few juniors, who will be trying out for the varsity squad next spring.

Have a great day, everyone!

Tic-Tac-Toe, Pizza, and Topps Inception.

I'm fairly certain I've never gone twenty days between posts, but I suppose there is a first time for everything. I've found myself with a little bit of time this evening after my high school baseball team was rained out for the fourth day out of five. Yesterday we traveled to Galesburg and got in a game of Tic-Tac-Toe with the opposing dugout during the rain delay. (We were sent home shortly afterwards.)

It wound up resulting in a "cat" game, which was decided with a quick game of paper-rock-scissors behind home plate. For the record, my team was bested. Nothing gels a team together like a good game of Tic-Tac-Toe and pizza! 

Before we left town the head coach had us stop at the Pizza House and the team polished of eight large pizzas and ten 18" sub sandwiches.  Man, I sure wish I still had their metabolism!

I have a little bit of card news, too. Last weekend a new card show popped up in Bloomington, IL, which is only about a fifty minute drive for me. It is being run out of the second room of a card shop and had nine different dealers in all. Supposedly, it will be a monthly show and I'm pretty jazzed about that. I won a blast as a door prize, which might make it's way onto the blog at some point.

Lastly, The Vogelmonster found his way into the autograph portion of 2017 Topps Inception. I won a player break lot on Ebay of five cases of Inception and I was rewarded with two autos!

 I hit on the /25 and /99, but I still need the 1/1, /50, /75, and the /249. I really like the design of the cards and I can't wait to get these two in hand!

 I'm thinking about buying into another break, but maybe I should just snipe the rest off of Ebay. Vogelbach isn't that big of a name and I should be able to finish the rainbow, minus the 1/1, for under thirty bucks if I'm patient.  Getting the second smallest numbered parallel sure does help things!

That's it for now.  Hopefully, I'll have more motivation to post now that summer break is here. That's right, today was my last day with students.  Yippee!

Thanks for reading!

A Quick PWE from TLC

FWIW, I was not initially very big on the acronyms all my students seem to spout from the mouth with such ease, but they have grown on me. We have our little language here on the blogs, which includes PWE and LCS, but it's no where near as complicated as trying to communicate with a teenager.  What other ones can you name from the cardsphere?

Anyway, The Lost Collector (TLC) hit me up with a plain white envelope (PWE), which has a post mark on it that reads April 3rd. Wow. I'm behind.

The PWE had a nice note.

The Gleyber Torres transaction is still not my favorite, but the Cubs have a World Series trophy as a result so I can't complain. 

I pulled this Arrieta from a pack a little while back, but I'll gladly take another. One for the binder and one for the Cubs box. Nice.

Kyle Hendricks has come back down to Earth after his brilliant 2016 campaign, but in my neck of the woods his cards are about as pricey as Kris Bryant's. Crazy, right?

Speaking of ol' blue eyes... I didn't have this Heritage Bryant yet and now this one will fill a nice little hole in my Cubs binder.

Thanks for thinking of me, AJ!  Your Yankees have been on fire and that Aaron Judge character, the guy who looks like the Hulk in pinstripes, he's quite the power hitter.  I'll hit you back once I round up some Baby Bronx Bombers.  That's what the media is calling them, right?

Thanks for stopping by and enjoy your day everyone!