Wax Heaven

I can’t believe 2007 is almost behind us. It’s been one hell of a ride, for me personally & professionally. In my spare time I began collecting baseball cards again and even created a baseball card-related blog. I don’t know how long this ride will be but I hope to make Wax Heaven the #1 sport cards blog in 2008. I am leaving to Orlando in a few hours and won’t return till early Tuesday morning, 2008. I hope every single reader and friend of Wax Heaven has a happy & prosperous new year. If you find yourself with spare time and find no updates for a couple of days, check out the archives. There are tons of posts (almost 200), product reviews, and video box breaks to keep you entertained for at least 14 1/2 minutes.

I can’t wait till 2008! It will be my first full year following baseball since 2001. I am excited to learn the new names, players, & stars. I also can’t wait to start opening up 2008 product so Upper Deck & Topps…how about a little discount on the wax? For the new year my three baseball-related goals are as follow;

Manny Ramirez - I hope Manny, coming off an excellent World Series performance gets his groove back. His 2006 & 2007 stats were scary, specially in the power department. I hope Manny just had an off year and is not entering full decline. I would like him to have another 2-3 good years before he retires and hell, a run at Hack Wilson’s RBI record would be a nice swan song for one of the most unique players of all-time!

Andrew Miller - I’ve had my eye on this guy month’s before he was traded to my home team simply because he is an extremely tall South Paw who just might be the second-coming of Randy Johnson. I hope that despite his inexperience and young age he finds himself a spot on the rotation of what will more than likely be the worst team in baseball next year, the Florida Marlins.

The Florida Marlins - This might be hard to explain properly but I hope the Marlins have their worst year as far as their record & attendance is concerned. It is time for those bastards owners to pack up and move to another state that will actually appreciate baseball. All South Florida is concerned about is their washboard abs and tans. There is not enough love for this great team and we deserve to lose them forever. Florida is just not a baseball town and it breaks my heart. I do not want to see another Cabrera-Willis-like trade ever again.

“A poor man’s Bowman Chrome”

I am a huge fan of Topps and when I walked into Earth 2 Comics, my local hobby shop this morning I had a choice between all the hype that Bowman Draft Picks carries or a safe, but well-recieved box of Topps ‘52. It was a tough choice but one that ultimately was won out by Topps ‘52 and the promise of “3 autographs per box”.

Design - A - The base cards are beautiful and although the ‘Dynamic Duo’ inserts don’t quite do it for me I love the retro feel of the product. This is a set-builders dream, if only 75% of the guys on here become everyday Major Leaguers. We know that probably won’t be the case, though.

Price - B - At $90 a box it could be better but what won my hard-earned money was the “3 autographs per box”. You are going to get three hits, some nice parallels, refractors, and tons of base cards so it is not a bad deal at all but it would have been perfect at the $75-$80 price range.

Pulls - A - I pulled all the major names from the box with the exception of Joba Chamberlain, including Phil Hughes, Andrew Miller, Hunter Pence, Troy Tulowitzki, etc. I also got 2 of 3 autographs on the card itself, with another auto as a redemption (Andrew Miller).

Overall - B - The cards are nice and for the amount of cards you get you can’t go wrong with the price tag. One of the few products where you can still find autographs on cards and not stickers. A great product for rookies if you can’t afford the climbing Bowman Chrome prices.

CLICK HERE FOR A FULL SCAN

…apparently there is some big, overrated Rat that I just HAVE to see. I am leaving Saturday morning around 5 A.M and coming back real late on Monday so there won’t be a single update until Tuesday. I know what you are thinking, “finally, I can get a break from this place!” No, you don’t get a break because in a couple of hours I will be going to pick up my paycheck and since no one (I’m looking at you, Tatiana) bought me any Wax for Christmas—I am treating myself to a box of either Bowman Chrome & Bowman Draft or Topps ‘52 Rookie Edition & Upper Deck Goudey. Of course, that means two new box breaks and possibly 2 reviews (Bowman Chrome was reviewed already).

In the meantime, check out the Prospect Corner, which garnered Wax Heaven over 600+ views yesterday! Also, I wrote a fictional piece about former pitcher Mike Moore and no one picked up on the fact that it was a joke. Long time reader Dylan and my wife thought it was factual. I think I should leave the comedy up to Cardboard Junkie.

Another blog post I did about the greatest “O” Face in baseball cards garnered a semi-angry response from the kid’s father and a photographer of his. Don’t make me call Dick Perez on you, sir! When Wax Heaven mocks, it is all done in fun, well, unless you are Jose Canseco. He deserves the criticism.

Todd Van Poppel

My write-up on Joba Chamberlain was recently posted on the Baseball Think Factory Newsblog page with the following description:”Everything you need to know about Joba Chamberlain. Is he the next Roger Clemens or another Todd Van Poppel?”

It was nice to see that others had taken an interest in my musings, but there were four words in the title that made me nervous:

1) Everything
2) Todd
3) Van
4) Poppel

The “everything” was a concern simply because I didn’t actually write much about Joba, just posted his stats, made some comparisons and made a few basic projections. In a biographical sense there was a lot I didn’t say about Joba, so I was concerned that readers may be disappointed when they realized my post didn’t cover “everything”. But that’s inconsequential and I think most people could look past that part. What really mattered about the title was the “Todd Van Poppel” bit. When I sat down to write about Chamberlain, I never once thought about comparing him to Van Poppel, even though he is one of the most notorious “busts” in baseball card history. How could I overlook Van Poppel?!

After seeing the title, I immediately feared that I had failed to find any comparable pitchers that could have provided us with a realistic idea of Joba’s “bust”-factor, and had thus exposed myself to an onslaught of naysayers and their stacks of stat books and unyielding knowledge of all things baseball. In a moment of panic, I pulled up all the stats I could find on Todd Van Poppel.

I was about 10 years old when the Van Poppel craze began, so naturally I don’t remember much about that event in baseball history. However, looking back at his stats, it’s difficult for me to imagine what all the fuss was about. Van Poppel’s A- number were good, but after that his BB/K ratios completely fell apart and he never put up any kind of “elite” numbers that would have given any support to the hype surrounding him. Even if I had remembered to include Van Poppel on my “bust” list, his stats are not at all comparable to Chamberlain’s.

Apparently, when the A’s signed Van Poppel, they signed him to a major league contract and not a minor league contract. Consequently, the A’s could only use a limited number of minor league options on Van Poppel, so they had to rush him through the minors and he never really had time to develop. In scouting reports, Van Poppel was described as having a blazing fastball with no movement, which helps explain the discrepancy between his A- numbers and the rest of his career. I’m not sure what other pitches he developed, but they obviously weren’t good enough to compliment his fastball. Van Poppel also suffered from set-backs due to injury, and that probably added to his demise.

Looking at Van Poppel’s stats got me thinking about a few other pitching “busts” of the last 20 years and one of the first names that came to my mind was Brien Taylor.

Brien Taylor Minor League Stats

Taylor was signed the year after Van Poppel, and had similar hype surrounding him. After his year at AA ball, Taylor suffered a torn labrum in a fight and his numbers only got worse after his stint in rookie ball at the age of 23. His labrum tear was supposedly one of the worst ever seen by doctors and considering that the success rate today for labrum tear surgeries is about 70%, it’s easy to assume that 15 years ago the success rate was much lower. In a sense, Taylor was a bust, but really he was just a kid that lost it all due to one bad decision in a heated moment.

While I feel more assured in my analysis of Joba Chamberlain (at the very least we know he most likely will not be the next Todd Van Poppel), I am interested to know if there are other pitchers out there that I missed that posted similar numbers to Chamberlain but went on to have mediocre careers. I’m sure they are out there, so if you find any, let me know.

It’s just a couple of days until 2008 and I am dying for a baseball card fix. White Sox Cards blog came through for Christmas but I need something in the way of Wax. I was thinking of busting another box of Bowman Chrome now that my local shop, Earth 2 Comics have the hobby boxes at $80.  So while waiting for payday I start scouring through eBay to see what the big pulls from that release are going for when I run into a Bowman Draft Pick card of Madison Bumgarner. I know, terribly name but check out the card itself!

I have always dreamed of becoming a big league baseball player and someday having some kid or grown adult marvel through their collection of Mario Alejandro cards but unfortunately, I have a non-baseball player name and it could never be. Thankfully, I have my baseball card blog which is almost just as good (cue sarcasm). Anyways, a rookie card can make or break you. For example, look at Griffey Jr.’s 1989 Upper Deck rookie card. It is a perfect photograph of the “kid” that has survived it all and is nearing 600 home runs and a certain first ballot Hall of Fame entry. On the other hand, look at Jose Canseco’s 1986 Donruss Rated Rookie. It is a miserable close-up of a 21-year old with a 12-year old’s facial hair growth and a look of confusion. See? A rookie card can make or break you so what does this do for Madison Bumgarner?

By the age of 17, Mike Moore was one of the gayest men in his high school. He was a stud pitcher for the varsity team, was dating the prettiest girl in his school, and being scouted by the Seattle Mariners ball club. It was not an uncommon sight seeing him skip from class to class whistling a tune of love. After all, Mike’s life was as close to perfect as imaginable. That all changed on a tragic night on Mike’s 21st birthday. Having just been drafted by the Mariners, Mike and his high school sweetheart & and now wife were going out to celebrate when the unthinkable happened. After a night of binging on Crack future slugger Kevin Mitchell mistakenly beheaded Mike’s wife thinking it was actually his girlfriend hiding his Coke. On that day Mike Moore lost his smile.

Mike would eventually go on to become an underrated star pitcher for Seattle, Oakland, & even Detroit but for 14 years in the majors he never once cracked a smile. Before a game he would show up after hours of searching the ghettos of South Central, Watts, & Compton looking to avenge his wife’s murder but could never find Kevin Mitchell. He would go on to pitch 8 innings, strike out 7, give up 3 runs and go back on his manhunt for Mitchell, who was now a home run hero in the unlikeliest of places, San Fransisco. For Major League Baseball, it was imperative to put a happy face on all its players and every photographer was given the task of catching Mike smiling so they could put it on a baseball card for kids to collect but every single one of them failed.

In 1995, at the age of 35, Mike could no longer control his anger & rage and lost 15 games that season. Without as much as a goodbye Mike shaved his head, bought an arsenal of weapons, and flew to the jungles of Colombia, where rumors were flying about a big, monkey-looking man killing gangs of guerillas with nothing but his bare hands. Unfortunately for Mike, that fabled killer was just Andres Galarraga.

Mike Moore was never heard from again. Some believe he was another victim of the monkey-man Galarrage but others believe he became the most powerful gang leader in all of Colombia. In fact, there have been stories written about Mike Moore’s powers and Wax Heaven has found a few that are now going to be published for the first time ever!!!

Guns don’t kill people. Mike Moore kills People.

There is no theory of evolution. Just a list of animals Mike Moore allows to live.

Mike Moore does not sleep. He waits.

Mike Moore has two speeds. Walk, and Kill.

The leading causes of death in Colombia are: 1. Heart Disease 2. Mike Moore 3. Cancer

When the Boogeyman goes to sleep every night, he checks his closet for Mike Moore.

Mike Moore doesn’t read books. He stares them down until he gets the information he wants.

Mike Moore counted to infinity - twice.

Mike Moore can lead a horse to water AND make it drink.

Mike Moore’s calendar goes straight from March 31st to April 2nd; no one fools Mike Moore.

Mike Moore once won a game of Connect Four in 3 moves.