2008 new britain rock cats dav team set review

2008 New Britain Rock Cats DAV team set
Official Score – walk
Manufacturer: Disabled American Veterans (undetermined printer)
Sponsor: Disabled American Veterans
Retail price: FREE SGA– not available for purchase

Behold, here is another limited edition subset of the even more limited 2008 DAV minor league baseball master set. I’ve chosen to review the New Britain Rock Cats cards as a special thank you to Cards in the Attic reader and South Dakota geography expert Mike who recently helped me figure out the difference between Sioux Falls and Sioux City- about 50 miles! Mike is a Twins fan and baseball card collector, but I don’t believe he has a blog.

The New Britain Rock Cats have been the Double-A (Eastern League) affiliate of the Minnesota Twins since 1995. Some 365,758 fans attended Rock Cats games in New Britain Stadium at Willow Brook Park in 2008, setting an all-time high water mark that I am predicting will be surpassed in 2009. Obviously if you find yourself in New Britain, Connecticut, this ballpark is a must see destination.

Rock Cats fans attending the game on Monday, July 7, 2008 received these baseball cards absolutely free of charge. Unfortunately, the Rock Cats dropped that game to the Connecticut Defenders by a final of 5 to 3.

The 2008 New Britain Rock Cats DAV team set contains only eight cards, three of which are mascots. Crazy! I know, enough with the preliminaries, and on with the checklist (an exclusive feature sponsored by the hard working folks at the Aardvark Trading Company)!

1 – [159] Francisco Liriano (p)
2 – [160] Justin Morneau (inf)
3 – [161] David Ortiz (inf)
4 – [162] Glen Perkins (p)
5 – [163] Scott Baker (p)
6 – [164] Blooper (mascot)
7 – [165] Rocky the Rock Cat (“star” mascot)
8 – [166] Toner the Copy Cat (mascot)

I guess I really only have two complaints about this “minor league” team set. First, a whopping 37 percent of the set is dedicated to mascots. Definitely overkill, but at least the mascots are still part of the current Rock Cats family.

My second complaint is that this is really more of a minor league alumni set. I honestly don’t understand the concept here. Why not take advantage of this generous DAV promotion to highlight several current players? Or if you are going to issue an abbreviated alumni baseball card set, how on earth could you not include Pat Neshek in the checklist?

Seriously, does anyone really need another David Ortiz card, or another card of Justin Morneau? (Of course I’m not talking about THIS GUY (who needs to set up his RSS feed before worrying about getting more Morneau cards).)

Similarly, the rest of the players included in this set need no introduction, so here they are in random order.

The photography employed for these cards is like looking at some Ansel Adams shots after my recent review of the Sioux Falls Canaries abomination. Of course it isn’t truly THAT good. It may just take my optical nerves a few more days to adjust.

You cannot purchase this limited edition New Britain Rock Cats DAV team set at the ballpark or via their interweb store. In fact, I haven’t even seen one of these things show up on eBay. That said, I would imagine that the set could easily fetch five bucks or more if you are lucky enough to find one on the secondary market.

In spite of the fact that the New Britain Rock Cats have not submitted any of their team issued sets to Cards in the Attic for review, I will take the high road and mention that you can pick up team sets from 2006-2008 for just under seven dollars each by following this link to the Rock Cats online Third Base Shop. I notice they also have a deck of team logo playing cards for sale. I’m of the belief that getting something like that autographed would result in a highly valuable collectible simply because not many people are going to think of doing something like that. Besides, it would look really neat.

– Kris

Tags: DAV, Double-A baseball, Eastern League, Kris, minor league baseball, team set review