Yeah, B-12 Shots. Right!

This is one of my favorite cards from 1993 Upper Deck:

Juan Gonzalez was just stepping into his belting shoes.

Canseco was already a supreme masher when he joined the Rangers.

Palmeiro was just getting into his ridiculous groove.

Rodriguez was at the beginning of what is now the best defensive catcher's career.

It was and kind of still is a great card.

But we all know what is wrong with this card.

And we all loved watching these guys hit, even though the cloud was just starting to descend on them and many of their contemporaries.

I do want to say that Palmeiro never looked like he was on steroids.

Pudge always had a bit of a cloud over him which greatly intensified when he hit the Tigers' camp having lost 25 pounds of muscle from the previous season.

Never in my life did I think Gonzalez was on it because when he came up he had such an explosive swing and great size already.

Canseco--------HA! Still fun to watch.

I wish 1993 Barry bonds was in the picture just to show the dramatic size increase from then compared to 2001.

Here are the four bulkheads combined numbers:

• Runs: 5364
• Hits: 9677
• 2Bs: 1885
• 3Bs: 128
• HRs: 1776(We just celebrated that)
• RBIs: 5978
• SBs: 450

Those are ridiculous!

I used to be a big fan of the Texas Rangers, mainly because of Gonzalez.

I still like all of them but Pudge. The fact that it was obvious he used and has been left alone is a something I don't get. His power suddenly disappeared and nobody made a big deal of it. Bench will always be the best because he didn't have to take any thing to be who he was.

I hate Pudge Rodriguez.

But I still like this card.

Fathers and Sons

 In 2000, Topps made a rather unique card:

Three prospects who all had fathers who were extremely productive.

Tim Raines has over 1,500 runs and 800 stolen bases and is eventually going to get the green light to Cooperstown.

Garry Maddox suffered from burns during the Vietnam war and has worn a beard til this day to hide the scars. He was a tremendous fielder, winning 8 Gold Gloves in a row. He was also a very solid hitter.

Gary Matthews, or Sarge, is known to me mostly as the back bone of the Cubs run in 1984 and overall clubhouse guy. A former Rookie of the Year and solid hitter and overall excellent OBP guy.

So did these young guns ever mount a charge to reach anywhere close to what their fathers did?

Let's see:

First the fathers' combined stats:

• Runs: 3431
• Hits: 6418
• Doubles: 1086
• Triples: 226
• HR's: 521
• RBI's: 1812
• SB's: 1239

Wow!

And the progenies of these three?

• Runs: 636
• Hits: 1090
• Doubles: 234
• Triples: 30
• HR's: 108
• RBI's: 491
• SB's: 105

Yuck.

All three are out of baseball now.

Junior Maddux never reached the majors and Junior Raines had cups of coffee over three years. But he was a base fiend throughout his minor league career.

Junior Matthews produced 95% of the numbers above but used steroids to produce most of them. At least the other two did it the right way. Or did they?

I'm sure their dads were and still are proud that their little guys followed them into pro ball.

It just goes to show you many things jump a generation, not just genes.

I'll show them!

In an effort to prove that he has always been more than a slap hitter and bunter, Juan Pierre has recently begun a strenuous weight program that includes seven hours of upper body lifting every day, huge protein shakes, and the dreams of all those before him who hit home runs only on video games.

It seems to be working:

Wow!

Where before his jersey was so baggy it looked like the word maximum was on front of his jersey, now you can clearly see the word Miami amongst those Adonis pecs.

And you can tell it's all natural because his head is still shrunk from that witch doctor he fell out of favor with so long ago. It's not the size of Bond's head.

The results so far from all this hard work:

• 28 hits
• 1 double
• 2 triples
• 34 fly balls out of the infield 
• 0 home runs
• 1 fly to the warning track-during batting practice
• 38 bunts which one hopped the wall!
• 13 stolen bases-until his massive upper body pulled him off the bag and left him standing upright on his head, resulting in 13 tag outs.

*stats are taken from a secret source


Since July 4th, Juan has quit his strength regimen and gone back to his regular one.

He has hit three grand slams since.





Not.

Sometimes, it just takes time

As the Cubs wait for their future to come to fruition, the Phillies have had one of their future core players bust out this year.

Domonic Brown is hitting .281 with 23 HR's and 62 RBI's in the season's first half to catapult himself into the All Star game.

And to think the Phils were thinking of moving him to the Cubs for Alfonso Soriano.

It's nice to see a player whose compass was going South in his first few seasons find North.

Congrats to Domonic.

Now I just have to wait two to four years for one of the Cubs uber prospects to copy what Domonic is doing.