Wednesday, July 24, 2013

The Red Cardboard UberRidiculous Ultimate Card Tournament!

I've been watching a bunch of you bloggy types setting up voting tourneys of one form or another. Well I wanna play too (waaaaa). BUT none of yours have been ridiculous enough. Well I am now here to lead the charge of ridiculousness with a FIVE HUNDRED TWELVE card ultimate war. Yessir. I've scanned my 512 favorite cards from the collection and now am pitting them against each other. Qualifications are as follows:
  1. I must own the card
  2. I must present the card in its condition. So is a busted up '52 Topps "better" than a pristine '88 Score with a badass photo? Up to you.
  3. In thumbing through my albums, it must make me pause. I think we'd all rather have any '56 common than the best '91 Donruss. But I chose cards from a lot of sets due to their "stand out" factor. 
  4. Attempted non-bias to stars. I probably failed here. Johnny Bench will naturally make me stop flipping. But I shouldn't throw a card in just because it's Bench. It still needs to stand out. A star will, however, naturally make an otherwise boring card hold a mystique, i.e. 1950 Bowman Ted Kluszewski.
  5. Attempted non-bias to vintage. See 3.
  6. Shameless bias toward personal nostalgia. Yeah, I can't help it.
  7. Avoidance of parallels. A few exceptions, only if it adds to the design (like Bowman Hometown), but in general, I used the base version of a good card instead of a gold/green/blue/orange/purple/xfractor/glossy/black whatever version
So that's how I chose 'em. Why 512? In the many days I was flipping through binders, plucking, and scanning, I amassed about 500 that stood out. So I plucked a few more to get to a pretty power of 2.

UberRidiculous Tourney setup:
Round 1: 32 groups of 16, chosen randomly. Vote for your favorite 4. Top 4 move forward.
Round 2: 16 groups of 8, composed of 2 winners and 6 runners-up, all from different Round 1 groups. Vote for 4. Top 4 move forward.
Round 3: Seed the remaining 64 into a classic single-elimination bracket.

No THAT'S how you do ridiculous, kids.

I'll keep track of tourney history in a tab up top. Round 1: Group 1 will be up Thursday. Get pumped.

Oh, and the Didn't Quite Make the Cut Award goes to the defunct AA Vermont Reds' Trainer Rod Lich for this stellar release from 1987 ProCards...

 ...with an equally stellar back.

Go Reds.

5 comments:

  1. If Rod Lich didn't make the cut, this oughtta be one humdinger of a tournament! Lookin' forward to it.

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    Replies
    1. I know, man. That '87 Vermont AA team has always been known as the "Fittest team in the Eastern Leagues of the mid '80s" thanks in large part to 'Big' Rod Lich.

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  2. No training stats on the back of the Rod Lich card. Are we to surmise that's his RC then?

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    Replies
    1. i choose to believe he was just stone-faced with the press and wouldn't divulge his methods.

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    2. I think they should've simply put: "Training stats none of your business. Ever hear of HIPAA?"

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