In the Mail - A Spanish Trade

The Red Sox won their home opener today in fine fashion.  I saw the highlights, but hope to catch a replay of more of the game on YouTube.  David Price pitched very well again.  Is it too early to say I think he's back to his old form?  I'm still waiting for Andrew Benintendi to do something.  But a lot of the other hitters are more than covering for him.

Most of my recent trades on the TCDB have been to add cards to the complete sets I'm trying to complete.  That's fine and dandy, but sometimes the players are unknown and the trades lack pizazz.  The trade package I received in the mail yesterday was an exciting break.  The trade was with madams30.  The majority of what I received were Red Sox cards from the 1993 Spanish Pacific set.

Starting in 1981 when there were multiple flagship sets produced, the 1993 Spanish Pacific is the earliest Red Sox team set that I have not yet completed.  For the longest time I was mistaken in what it really was.  I saw it listed as "Pacific" in some places and "Spanish Pacific" in other places.  So I assumed there were two versions, and decided to go after the English version.  Well that proved very difficult to do.  Everything I saw, no matter how it was labeled, was in Spanish.  I'm embarrassed to say I only figured out in the past six months that there is only a Spanish version.

I like how the entire card is in Spanish.  It's a nice change of pace.  I wish baseball cards were made in more languages as well.  But I realize there wouldn't be a market for that.  I may look into O-Pee-Chee to see if any of their cards are entirely in French.  If so, I might try for some Red Sox team sets.  Does anybody know off-hand?

I wish I would have taken Spanish in high school.  We had a two year foreign language requirement to graduate.  I reasoned that since I was closer to Canada, French would be better to take.  So I took that.  But I've been in far more situations since then when Spanish would have been useful than French. Really the only time I find French useful is during the Tour de France each year.

1993 was a ho-hum year for the Red Sox.  Former tercera base Butch Hobson was their manager.  But they did have an interesting cast of characters in lanzadors Roger Clemens and Frank Viola, receptor Tony Pena, and jardinero Ellis Burks.  It was the last year depicting Wade Boggs playing tercera base for the Red Sox.  And Carlos Quintana was in the process of handing the reigns of primera base over to up and coming Mo Vaughn.

At first glance the card brand Spanish Pacific seems like a contradiction.  After all, Spain is on the Atlantic Ocean.  But if you consider that more countries along the Pacific Ocean rim speak Spanish than any other single language, then it makes sense.

For good measure a couple of 1972 Topps came my way in the trade as well.  That set now stands at 23.0% complete.  Thanks for the trade, madams30!