The Pack Rat #10: Let's Get Weird
Talkin' New Mets, New Me, New Year
Welcome to the tenth issue of The Pack Rat, the monthly newsletter where I open a pack of baseball cards.
PACK: 2024 Topps Allen & Ginter
Banana Joe - Affenpinscher, West Minster Kennel Club
Allen & Ginter is my favorite series because of cards like this. Banana Joe isn't a baseball player or team mascot; he's the 2013 Westminster Kennel Club Best in Show winner. This release is designed to look like the cards that the 19th-century tobacco company of the same name would package with cigarettes. Still, it includes enough epically random inserts, like a show dog or a sandwich, to make it more Millennial than DoorDash-ing avocado toast when you should be adulting.
Sorry, not sorry, but Allen & Ginter is awesome-sauce! Why not have fun while breaking my 1,000,000th Corey Seager base card? Now I get to see what he looks like in front of an old-timey background.
Corey Seager - Shortstop, Texas Rangers
Corey and his older brother Kyle, a former All-Star in his own right, grew up Yankee fans, but I wonder if the younger Seager has more nuanced feelings about Juan Soto signing with the Mets—a win for little brothers everywhere.
I tried being gracious about Soto leaving the Bronx for the Bombers' cross-town rivals, but it feels incredibly disingenuous. It also seems unfair to the Flushing faithful, who deserve to see me suffer after celebrating the Subway Series win for a quarter century. Steve Cohen outbidding Hal Steinbrenner & Co. for Juan Soto, a generational talent and author of the greatest baseball moment of my adult life, has rattled me to my core. Forget what it means for the Yankees organization; I don't even know who I am anymore.
For this to happen mere weeks after Aaron Judge went AWOL in the World Series against the Dodgers is like waking up from a nightmare while behind the wheel of a car that veered off the road and into quicksand. At least I can still listen to WFAN as I slowly sink to the bottom.
John Daly - Golfer, PGA Tour
Before I came of age, I thought I'd be drinking John Dalys, a sweet vodka cocktail named after the hard-partying golfer, all the time—but I've still yet to try one. And I'm afraid I missed the window of time where the sugar wouldn't give me a weeklong hangover. It’s an alcoholic twist on the Arnold Palmer—a lemonade and iced tea medley popularized by another golfer said to be a great hang—and not for the tender-toothed.
Yet, after all we've been through, my receding gums deserve a saccharine send-off. In the immortal words of John Daly, maybe I need to "grip it and rip it" before it's too late.
Triston Casas - First Baseman
I hope the trade rumors are true and that the Red Sox are planning on sending Triston Casas to another team because I'd like to root for him. I think it's cool that while some professional athletes pride themselves on being grounded or always grinding, Casas is all about "grounding" and absorbing energy from the earth by laying shirtless on the grass before games.
I don't know if I'll try doing that exactly—though I could see it happening after a few John Dalys—but that's the crazy I'm trying to bring into 2025.
Happy New Year!
—Alex Watt