Opening and closing

Every year at this time I buy some Opening Day and I apologize for doing so. I was going to do the same thing again this year (because I already said somewhere else that I wasn't going to buy any), and then I decided I'm not going to do that.

I was out shopping for another birthday yesterday and I ended up in the card aisle and grabbed a fat pack of Opening Day. Everyone else would do the same. It's new. It was the first pack out of a brand new box. You're not a collector if you see an untouched box in front of you and don't grab a pack. (Oh, god, I just uttered the "you're not a collector" line. I'm sorry, so, so sorry).

Opening Day has been pretty good to me the last couple of years despite the limited attention I've given it. Two years ago, it produced the Stadium Lights insert set and I drooled all over the thing. Last year, I bought a single blaster and pulled an autograph.

So there's your incentive for buying a pack.

Plus, I wanted to see if these blue parallels that folks have been showing off were really better than the emerald parallels in flagship. I had my doubts.

It turns out the pack was pretty underwhelming. Not only didn't I find a blue parallel, but I didn't find any photoshopped Dodgers or really much of anything interesting. I didn't even pull one of those Public Humiliation Inserts that would have at least produced a delightful rant. (They're not really called "Public Humiliation." They're called "Ballpark Fun," and although at least one of the cards is a bit of pie-in-the-face awfulness, the set contains a range of activities, some actually legitimate, like signing autographs).

So because of the so-so I'm not doing a blow-by-blow pack breakdown. I'll just show you the basics.

First, you've got the cards that you've already seen before, except with an Opening Day logo included:

You can have fun with the positioning of the logo and the player, imagining all kinds of clever things, like how Murphy used a performance-enhancing logo to get that extra leaping ability.

Here, the rookie trophy is floating in mid-air above the Opening Day logo. There are logos all over this thing. OD, cup, Angels (three times) and Topps. Why don't we just go full-fledged auto racing, throw a Viagra ad on the wall and be done with it?

Of course, Opening Day also offers a preview of what the flagship Series 2 cards might look like for players who weren't in Series 1:

And then we have this ungodly thing:

Have mercy.

I think this needs to be a meme:

There you go.

But what everyone looks forward to in Opening Day are the photoshopping jobs.

Bring out the fake uniforms!

Yeah, sorry I had to spoil it for you with the Swisher. I was really hoping for a Carl Crawford.

Even though I didn't find any blue parallels or Ballpark Fun or the 3-D cards, I did get a couple of inserts.

That's the Superstar Celebrations insert that's been in OD the last couple of years. Someone needs to tell the guy at the lower right that Felix is up there.

The Play Hard inserts are pretty fun. I wish this insert set was in flagship.

But I don't necessarily think that the OD inserts are better than the flagship. They're about the same.

Unfortunately, I think that will be it for me with Opening Day. I don't plan to buy any more of this stuff. It's floating my boat even less than it has every other year.

If I get a blue parallel somehow, I'll be sure to do an obnoxiously detailed breakdown on that card compared with the emerald parallels.

But as for everything else, Opening Day is officially closed.

(But send me your Dodgers!)