2007 Upper Deck #592 Daisuke Matsuzaka TC
I currently own 36 cards of "Dice-K".
This one is better than the other thirty-five combined, without a doubt. It's probably the greatest "checklist" card ever made, to boot.
I'm a huge fan of any cards of "pitchers at the plate". It was one of the new "themes" I was considering for this blog, but I've already shown most of the better ones I have.
There's pretty much four different "tiers" of these types of cards. From most common to the rarest, we have:
National League "pitchers at the plate". While not all that common, I still have quite a few of these in my collection. Most companies understandably opt for a shot of a pitcher on the mound. However, I'd say about one out of every 100 to 200 NL pitcher cards I own picture them in a hitting situation.
Next, there's NL "pitchers on the basepaths". Pitchers usually have quite a few at-bats during the course of the season. But given the meek hitting ability of most hurlers, chances to get a shot of them on the basepaths are few and far between. There's probably a dozen of these in my collection, at the most.
Even more rare than those are the elusive American League "pitchers at the plate". In the post-DH era of baseball, there's only two scenarios in which an AL pitcher has to take an at-bat. Interleague play and the World Series. (Three, if you count spring training.)
I'd guess that I own about six or seven cards of AL "pitchers at the plate".
Finally, we have the extremely rare AL "pitchers on the basepaths". As far as I know, there's only one of these in my collection at the moment.
This "Dice-K" is the only one I've ever seen, in fact.
Given the infrequency of their at-bats, American League hurlers are (understandably) not good hitters, for the most part. As a result, they're not on base that often, which this card highly desirable to a collector like myself.
I'm almost positive that this particular shot is from a spring training game in '07, back when the hype over Matsuzaka was nearing its peak.
Since "Dice-K" already had a regular card in their 2007 base set, Upper Deck decided to use one of these "out of the ordinary" shots for his other issue. I still don't think any player should appear more than once in any checklist. But if it has to happen, at least make the other card interesting. UD did a nice job in that regard.
It's no small feat for an AL pitcher to reach base. So take your fist bump proudly, Mr. Matsuzaka.
You deserve it.
Try this Jimmy Key with the O's.
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