Tribute to 2008 Allen and Ginter - Chris Sabo

Here's my first stab at 2008 Topps Allen and Ginter. These are simply beautiful cards, which is why I've shied away from them until now. I hope I've done a worthy tribute.

I've chosen Chris Sabo for the inaugural card. Sabo was an excellent player for the Reds in the late 80's and early 90's. He was, among other things, noted for his distinctive eyewear. He lead the Reds to a World Series Championship in 1990.

I have other reasons for choosing Chris Sabo, however. Sabo's namesake was also the team moniker of my fantasy baseball rival in 2008. The owner, named Travis, battled me until the very end of the season. It literally came down to the second-to-last day of the season, at which point Travis had climbed back from 20+ points behind me to create a tie for first place. Ultimately, however, on the strength of five strong pitching performances (Ricky Nolasco, Chris Young, Jamie Moyer, Todd Wellemeyer and Joakim Soria) I was fortunate enough to pull out the victory.

Travis and I talked back and forth a lot during the season, and I had a lot of fun with it, even down to the last nail-biting days. For that reason, I knew I had to do a Sabo card at some point. I wanted to pay homage to the 2008 fantasy baseball season. Oh, and if you haven't figured out, I love fantasy baseball. As an aside -- if you're a fantasy baseball junkie at all like me, I strongly urge you to check out the awesome Fantasy Baseball 365 Blog, which is by far the best baseball blog going on the web. But I digress...

P.S. I also figured I'd pay homage to JT and his gang of Cincinnati Reds over at The Writer's Journey. JT runs an excellent blog and was kind enough to give me some publicity the other day on his own accord. So even though a Sabo project was in the queue already, it gave me the thought to move it up a little bit :)

Hope you enjoy the tribute card of Chris Sabo!