Soxumentary Cards 1-20

It's finally happened. 

After watching the first 20 games of the season in anticipation, creating cards, ordering them, and waiting for them to arrive in the mail, I'm very pleased to announce that my very first order of Soxumentary cards finally arrived in the mail a couple days ago.

As many of you know, I followed in the footsteps of Matt from Summer of '74 and have created my very own custom Red Sox cards, courtesy of the Rookies app. I initially went back and forth between what template to choose and what I wanted my set to be before I decided on the 1981 Fleer set and making 1 card to recap every Red Sox game of the year.

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm pleased to present the first of many Soxumentary cards.

As I stated before, the first order is for games 1-20 because the Rookies card packs come with 20 cards each. Therefore, every 20 games played, regardless if they win or lose, it will be time to place yet another order on Rookies. Each pack is $12.99 plus a few dollars shipping, so it's a pretty decent price overall. I know I've shown this card before from the Sox's frustrating Opening Day loss, but having these cards in hand makes all the difference in the world.

Fortunately for me, most of Boston's first 20 games ended up being entertaining victories that are exciting to look at when made into baseball cards. After all, no one really wants cards from when they lose, at least, not too many of them. However, I made a commitment that I would make a card for each game, win or lose, so I'm going to stick to that no matter what their record ends up being. Though the Red Sox sure are looking impressive thus far.

Given the 2018 Red Sox's historic start to the year, I've been able to make some pretty awesome cards to commemorate the achievements this team has under their belt so far. Such as hitting their first grand slam since 2016 a few weeks ago against the Rays. They just hit their 6th a couple days ago, tying the 1996 Expos for grand slams in the month of April ever. Again, this team hit none last year. 

Still, I have to make the cards about the losses too, so I try to make the losses seem as insignificant as I can. I do this by highlighting what the team was able to do well. For example, their loss to the Yankees a couple weeks ago was a highly-contested game that included a J.D. Martinez grand slam, so I made that moment the focal point of the card.

With all that being said, my favorite part of the Soxumentary cards would have to be choosing my own pictures. It's really the thing that helps me make my cards stand out and be unique. I always choose a picture of the player of the game for each card. I also try to split it between pitchers and hitters not just because they should both be represented equally, but because they have made equal contributions to the success of this team so far this season. I realize by the end of the year there will be repeated players, scores, and even some repeated highlights of each game. But that's what happens when a team plays 162 games (hopefully more). And that's what happens when you start a project like Soxumentary.