The Lessons of Jon & Howie

     Every good team has that one cornerstone member that they can always count on. The Yankee's had Gherig, the A-Team had BA, and BRAWLIN310 has Jon Lester. He's always been one of the cornerstones of my BUNT lineup since the opening of my first pack. Needless to say, it's a priority to know if and when he is pitching. Yesterday morning was no exception but looking back on it, I should have tripled down and dropped my Common series and both of my Green Parallel Uncommons given the monster game he ended up having. Damn you Miss Cleo!

"Call me now for your incorrect information"

     My lone UC (that means uncommon because I'm tired of writing the whole thing already) grabbed me +335 points!!!!!! The guy K'd fifteen guys in eight innings. It was pretty damn dominant. Unfortunately, I didn't give the Bo Sox enough credit against the abnormally good pitching of the Oakland A's. Side Note: How are the A's so good with a Burger King Kids Club lineup of no name players? Anyways, Big Papi's OnDeck Limited card I have was not in play and he had a great game. I survived. I had a lot of key players playing all at once so I know I missed out on some gems outside of the Sox-A's match up.

The rest of the day was tough for me outside of the scheduling obstacles. I'm one of the founders of a Social Club and today was our much anticipated club outing to the Rangers Vs Angels at the Big A. The game started 6:06 PM PST and I had to pick an area to tailgate. Prior to that, I had a whole laundry list of things to accomplish before my flight out to Seattle for business. That means my new tradition of vegging out and watching MLB.com was put on hold for the weekend.

     My game plan was a real mash of jumping between Facebook, Bunt, Text, and phone calls trying to heard kittens to a spot to drink and get acquainted with guests. Thankfully, I picked up the Doyers game in progress on the AM and immediately could tell Yasiel Puig was gearing up for a big game. I also dropped in Adrian Gonzalez for good measure. Right before game time, I had 5% of my battery left and only a short time to drop in the the Angels I wanted. I forwarded all of the texts, calls and FB messages to another founder and began to swap out parts. I was pleased as punch to pull a Garrett Richards Common this week and earlier in the day I pulled the Pujols UC. I had a good amount of Mariners beating up on the Astros in the lineup with the Wild Horse of Baseball still giving a batting clinic in Miami so I opted to settle for the Trout rare, Richards Common and Pujols rare This lead me to a mistake I've made multiple times this season.......Never bet against Howie......

"Pitchers have seen this face a lot recently"

     The long time Angel's second basemen has been a beast for my squad in my young Bunt career. The past two games Mike Sioscia has found it reasonable to put him at lead off, and it has worked well. I left Howie out and missed his UC's +88 pts. Pujols and Trouty brought in twelve points all together. By the time I realized the error of my way, my phone was dead and my chances of getting a charge at the Big A are on the same level as a reboot of Different Strokes with Donald Sterling as the father.

"Casting search continues"

    Garret Richards Scored me +99 pts which is great for a number four starter against a team like the Rangers. Had he lasted another inning, he'd be on a three start streak of scoring in triple digits. He has been good for at least six to seven innings this season and is good for five K's during that time. It was a great performance for a player I'm hoping is the future number three man in the rotation. It's always good to see a guy battle his way on to a rotation and exceed expectations.

     I was even more unhappy with my phone battery management when they brought in Ernesto Frieri to set up Joe “The Hammer” Smith or “Smokin'” Joe Smith or “Cup of” Joe Smith. Frieri was in top form and pulled a couple of strikeouts. I'm sad to see Ernesto get moved to Set Up from Closer. But honestly, I really think the one two punch of Smith and Frieri in any order is great. I would much rather have two guys who can close so if one goes down you aren't scrambling to have closer tryouts during a grinder of the season. Much like my phone battery, a back up would have been nice.

Beast of the Day! Jon Lester!

Sleeper of the day! Howie Kendrick

Got Me Steady Buntin'

     Thanks to the highly addictive Topps: BUNT app and no one willing to simultaneously talk baseball and its fantasy baseball app equivalent, I decided to blog my mobile device exploits. Like most life altering addictions, it started as an innocent inquiry on line as to what this new app is. I'm no stranger to Topps Baseball cards thanks to my years of baseball card collecting. I also knew that Topps had the eTopps brand rolling around in my early adulthood which mimicked the stock market in a round about way. So, I was pleasantly surprised that an old friend like the Topps card company was trying something new. What I didn't expect was that Topps, the wrinkled old Chemistry teacher, was fed up with its lot in life and began to produce this highly addictive e-drug.

"I only deal in high quality insert cards"

WTF is Topps BUNT?

Good question! For the first week of the season I didn't know. I'd get that question a lot from people I hoodwink into a conversation about baseball. My usual answer was, and possibly still is, in layman's terms, “baseball card collecting meets fantasy baseball.” At that point people would  usually remind me that card collecting and fantasy baseball are some of the most boring hobbies they've ever heard and couldn't envision why anyone would want to meld them together. After the conversation, I cut them from my life.

Little did I know, Bunt is one of three apps Topps has unleashed on the sports nerd world. The other two are Huddle and Kick. Huddle for the NFL game and Kick for that sport the rest of the world calls football. Thankfully, I'm only interested in the Bunt app mainly because baseball lasts nearly 340 days.

So you downloaded it and.....

So I downloaded it and immediately received my first digital cards. You're initially asked to choose a favorite team. I chose the Angels since they've been my favorite team as long as I can remember. Within a week I still did not know what the hell I was doing or how the hell to do it but I found myself falling in love with baseball again. It was like The Notebook, if in the Notebook the guy went on to have a ton of other cool adventures. What can I say, I'm sentimental. I  love GI Joe still, I think Pro Wrestling is a misunderstood art, and the Nineties were the greatest ten years of the modern world. So I welcomed my renewed interest in baseball back. Eventually, I've gotten the hang of it. I've also learned that the more attention I pay to baseball the better I am. As I write this, I'm having my best week yet and my collection is really sub par at best. So I must know enough about this to warrant someone needing my expertise in blog form.

So why write about it?

I like to write. Plain and simple. I just want to write about baseball and hope other people find the blog and say “Hey, I feel the same way”. Maybe, I might entertain someone. Who knows what lies before me. I just want to stick it out and let my imagination run wild.