44

Obama Invited To Throw Out First Pitch

The voting machines haven't even fully cooled yet, but the White Sox are making a push for the President-elect to throw out the first pitch, at U.S. Cellular Field, in 2009. Barack Obama is a long time White Sox fan and is friends with Kenny Williams, the general manager.

"I'll make an executive decision right now," general manager Ken Williams said Wednesday at baseball's GM meetings in California. "Let this be a formal invitation: If he would like to throw out the first pitch on Opening Day next year, we can find a spot for him."

The last time that Barack threw out the first pitch at a White Sox game was Game 2 of the 2005 ALCS.

"They were 0-1 at the time, but they won eight straight," Obama told the Chicago Tribune in 2005. "I'm not saying there is a correlation, but I e-mailed [White Sox chairman Jerry] Reinsdorf and said if they start getting in a jam, my arm was rested. I was ready to go."

That would be interesting having a sitting U.S. President actually throw out the first pitch in Chicago. I think that would go over pretty well.

Think of the card image as a bonus card. It is not intended to be a part of the virtual 2008 White Sox set. I just thought it would be fun to do for this story. Although if it was part of the set, I think it's ironic that it would be the 44th card.

A White Sox Fan In The White House

I would have bet on the Cubs winning another World Series before a White Sox fan was elected to lead the United States. Good thing I didn't waste my money.

No matter if your candidate won or lost, thank you to everyone who voted in the 2008 election. Everyone's vote counted. Everyone's opinion mattered.

Now, back to baseball.

Some eBay Sellers Are On Crack

I ran across this auction on eBay of a 2008 eTopps Allen & Ginter card of Barack Obama. The opening bid is $2,008.00. Does this seller expect anyone to bid on this? If someone purchases this card from this seller, they must have eaten paint chips as a kid, then had a frontal lobotomy.

I get the cuteness in offering it for $2,008 dollars. Ha ha. A more practical opening bid would have been $20.08. If someone is stupid enough to purchase a potato chip in the shape of Jay Leno, then someone is stupid enough to pay over $2,000 for this card.

What a shock, the last feeback as a seller is negative. This is the only thing that the eBayer is selling. It's stuff like this that makes me not like Topps. I want to like Topps, but they shoot themselves in the foot all the time.

These cards go to the sellers, not the purchasers. Every eTopps card that I've bought, a total of 3, I've bought off eBay. I have never puchased a card directly from Topps. This makes me suspicious, but that's just me. As a public service, please avoid sellers like this like the plague. I'll gladly take this card off the seller for 1 cent. It would serve the seller right.

More Upper Deck Surprises

Well, well, well. Upper Deck certainly seems to be full of surprises today. Not only do they get their product out on time, they have unannounced Presidential Predictor insert cards. Kudos to Upper Deck!

They certainly come out smelling better than Topps in the candidate themed cards, so far. Hmmm, another card featuring Barack Obama in White Sox garb. Very interesting. Yes, this is on my watch list. I have found a bunch of these that have popped up on eBay within the last few hours.

I'd say Upper Deck has the upper hand here. I ordered my eTopps cards Tuesday morning and have not yet gotten a positive confirmation. I've gotten plenty of e-mails saying that the order is being allocated, but nothing on the results yet. Why does this remind me of Tuesday night?

So be on the look out for Presidential Predictors in packs of 2008 Upper Deck Series One. Normally, I don't like inserts that have nothing to do with baseball, but these all incorporate baseball themes. So, I'm OK with it. Plus, there's another White Sox related card to collect. I may draw the line at the Mitt Romney card featuring him as Carlton Fisk, since it doesn't actually feature Carlton Fisk.

***UPDATE***
It seems reader Hardcle just squeaked by me on the first eBay auction of this card. Congrats Hardcle! You beat my strategery.

Super Tuesday

Well, Super Tuesday is here. It doesn't feel very super. Just a normal day. Larger images of the 4 Presidential candidates featured in the latest eTopps release are now available.

Barack Obama can clearly be seen wearing a White Sox uniform, but that was always obvious. He has always spoken of being a White Sox fan, so that's not a huge shocker. The next one is a shocker.

Now, Hillary Clinton can be seen wearing a Cubs hat, which is her first team. She abandoned them in favor of the Yankees when she moved to New York. It's like when she campaigned for the Republicans in Chicago and switched to the Democrats because she didn't like the candidate the Republicans ended up endorsing. It might've had something to do with campaigning for a candidate that lost out on the presidency.

John McCain is clearly wearing a Diamondbacks hat, which makes sense. That would explain the World Series jacket that he's wearing. And here I thought it was the Florida Marlins, from the tiny image that was released prior. Silly me. Why didn't I think of Arizona before? It all makes perfect sense to me... now.

There's a reason that Mitt Romney's image wasn't featured in the pre-release hype. He doesn't have any baseball team affiliation whatsoever. Mitt's just wearing a simple button-up shirt. You'd think with a name like Mitt, he'd have a hat or a jersey or something. Maybe Mitt's just a button-up kind of guy.

Enough political mumbo jumbo. What about the cards?

The cards look like the typical Allen & Ginter style card. Very sharp looking. Will we get sick of this design like we did the 1952 design? I hope not. The A&G design looks like it's here to stay and Topps will use it in everything from online cards to wresting cards.

And yes, I've put my order in for the candidate wearing the White Sox uniform. Don't think of that as an endorsement. I'm not endorsing anyone on this blog. It's a card with someone in a White Sox uniform. That's good enough to add to my White Sox collection. I'll leave the political endorsements to the political blogs. This is a site about baseball, baseball cards and the White Sox. I don't aspire to stray much into anything else.