1999 Bowman Series 1

Lets Rip.

#192 Tony Armas Jr.

I wonder if his dad ever shagged fly balls for him.

#179 Keith Luuloa

You don't see double-u's in a name too often.

Great utility guy, too bad he didn't stick.

#164 Jason Standridge

The Rays #1 pick in 1997.

#57 Ray Lankford

#53 DaviD Justice

(Note how he signed "DaviD"

#176 Jeff Yoder

Yoder-leh-he-hew!

#35 Manny Ramirez

#91 Arturo McDowell

Giants #1 pick in 1998

#110 Cesar King

#37 Ivan Rodriguez International

Not a bad draw for the International card inserted one per pack.

Is he catching that ball or throwing it? Either way it looks wrong.

I received two fold-out checklists in my pack, one on each side of the deck,

like they were protecting the cards inside.

1999 Bowman Series 1

Here is pack 8 of a hobby box of 1999 Bowman that I'm in the middle of "breaking" over at Cards on Cards. I believe the box ended up costing me $15. I probably overpaid, but it's a far cry from the $125 guarantee offered on the box itself.

79 - Mark Quinn (Quinn was... geez... I don't know. I'm pretty sure I know the name. The back of the card says he was teammates with Jose Cruz, Jr. at Rice. That's something, I suppose.)

35 - Manny Ramirez (Current player alert!)

112 - Jake Westbrook (Westbrook seems to be having a rough go of it, post-Tommy John surgery.)

163 - Chad Hermansen

43 - Chipper Jones (Nice signature, Larry.)

139 - Juan Encarnacion (The first baseball blog I ever got into tried to install Instant Breakfast as a nickname for Encarnacion in his Cardinal days. It never stuck and his blog, sadly, disappeared.)

176 - Jeff Yoder

157 - Danny Klassen

129 - Ntema Ndungidi

21 - Todd Walker International (This is the one-per-pack Bowman International parallel. Instead of a natural background, each player is pictured in front of his home state or country and the cards have a bit of a foil look to them. Todd Walker was apparently born in a volcano.)

And each pack has one of these lovely checklists, which fold out like cheap team pocket schedules.