The Blogging All-Stars

With the All-Star game just a few hours away, I find myself wondering what an All-Star team featuring the player collection focuses of the blogosphere might look like.

Either Hideo Nomo or Clayton Kershaw would have to be the starting pitcher, as per Night Owl. Seems like gcrl could provide the entire infield alone. Plus Hoyt would have to make the squad, right? And while Kennys Vargas isn't a household name, he'd have to get a spot on our roster (DH?), because he's the focus of one of the most determined player collection chases I've seen via Brian of "Highly Selective and Completely Arbitrary" fame.

Brian even sent me a stellar trade package recently, which included this excellent Coco Crisp mini, a strong nominee for the 'fro All-Star team should one ever come to pass.

Both of these parallels are player- and mini-collection hits for me (though insert parallels are kinda pointless, especially when said insert set already revolves around a single guy).

While he's never been an All-Star in real life, Josh Reddick should be in the Blogging All-Star mix somewhere.

 

A couple vintage beauties for the frankenset.

While my disdain for Hawk Harrelson is well documented, I'll be the first to admit that that's one fantastic baseball card.

Various 2018 needs of guys who've been All-Stars at one point or another.

It's still a supreme thrill to delete a large chunk of cards from my want lists, and Brian helped me indulge that enjoyment once again with the excellent mix he put together.

Brian just about knocked out the rest of my remaining 2013 Panini Hometown Heroes wants, though with the amount of this stuff I bought I'm frankly surprised I still needed any.

Brian's a big Joe Mauer collector, which makes the Minnesota Kid a good choice for catcher on our All-Star squad.

Both of these were want list hits, and both were doubly gratifying to cross off since I owned parallels of each without the regular base card.

Lastly, we have another annoying parallel-without-base-card want from Brian with this Matt Carpenter (the Target Red version was getting lonely in my Cardinals binder), a now-former Dime Box Dozen need crossed off the list.

Given the diverse amount of player collections alive and well in the blogosphere, I think our squad would have a good chance to take down the actual All-Star team -- but for now I'll just have to be content with the standard AL vs. NL matchup, I guess.

(Go National League.)