C.A.: 2004 Upper Deck Play Ball Home Run Heroics Carlos Delgado

 (*sigh* Looked like a catch to me. Time for Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 362nd in a series:)

  

I picked up this card at the monthly show yesterday (more on that tomorrow). It's the first time I've come across this insert, though it's possible someone showed it off on a blog post 12 years ago or something.

 

It's a pretty cool medium-thick card. The boxscore is recessed into the card and it's a glorious moment-in-time item, which are some of the best kinds of cards. This one commemorates Carlos Delgado's four-home run game.

 

Surprisingly, this card is from the 2004 Upper Deck Play Ball set, which I've long disdained for the "melted faces" paintings of the base cards. That's all I've previously seen from the set -- the only cards in my collection are base Dodgers. It goes to show you how sets are always stashing the good cards in the inserts and collectors consequently hoard those cards.

 

This card was a dollar purchase and I quickly went online to grab the two Dodgers in the insert set (Shawn Green and Rickey Henderson). Neither of those were costly either. So on that point alone, the monthly show was a success. I love learning new things at shows.

 

It's interesting that I stumbled across this card yesterday because the exact same day, my order for this card arrived:

 

This is from the 2008 Upper Deck Yankee Stadium Legacy set. Upper Deck fell a long way in four years.

 

I've featured this card before. In fact it was a Cardboard Appreciation topic eight years ago. It's the only card that I've shown on C.A. that I didn't own at the time. I mentioned in that post that I was actively searching for it. But then I forgot about the search all the way until just a couple of weeks ago when the the mammoth YSL set came up as a topic on Bluesky. That's what prompted me to get this card.

 

The card mentions the first MLB game I ever attended: July 15, 1978 at Yankee Stadium. An 8-2 victory for the Royals. I've written about this particular game many times on the blog.

 

It's the only YSL card I'm interested in owning and I'm glad I finally have it, but the execution is terrible. Ron Guidry didn't pitch in that 7-15-78 game, yet the photo shows him and the back mentions his '78 Cy Young season plus a blurb about his 18-strikeout game in June of that year -- hey, weren't we discussing July 15, 1978??

 

But at least I get a linescore of the actual game that I still remember well. And at least there is a card representing my first game -- this was long before Topps Now.

 

 

But the 2004 Play Ball card both looks better and explains better.

 

And it made me aware of Dodger cards in the set. ... There are no Dodger cards in Yankee Stadium Legacy.