My Mattingly Collection: 2008 Upper Deck Masterpieces #106

Part of my collecting goals moving forward was to re-energize my pursuit of Don Mattingly cards for my favorite player collection.

To break the seal on this new adventure, I snatched up a Donnie Baseball "lot" on the Bay of E for a decent price. It was a lot of fun to crack open and flip through - sometimes sheer volume is a wonderful thing! On the downside, there were numerous "usual suspect" cards that already resided in my collection but from what I gather it's really to be expected with these wholesale opportunities.

One of the cards that I did NOT have, however, was this 2008 UD Masterpiece:

As I am sure many of you will agree, these releases from Upper Deck usually live up to their name and make excellent additions to any collection, regardless of your penchant for modern, junk, vintage or anything in between.

This particular Donnie displays a beautiful "oil on canvas" style image of Mattingly executing his familiar swing plane from the left side of the plate. It's easy to appreciate and the dark, delicately raised and foiled border of this card works quite well with the contrast of the Yankees' pinstriped home uniforms. Throw in a little eye black and peekaboo stirrup, and we're GOOD TO GO.

Here's the back:

Please accept my apology for the blurriness of this image, but you get the idea. A cropped version of the card's front image sits atop some basic biographical data but the real gem is the popular "Mattingly statistic of choice", his streak of home runs in eight straight games during the 1987 season. At some point, I really should gather all of the cards I have that pay homage to this feat, just to get a sense of the quantity and diverse approaches.

While I poke a little bit of fun at its redundant use, this HR stat for Don truly was amazing and will always be one of my favorites. Why? Well, it still stands - having only been tied by The Kid during an eight game stretch in 1993. AND I'd be remiss as a Mattingly fan if I failed to mention that Donnie slugged ten home runs during his streak compared to the eight solo shots from Griffey, Just saying! Honorable mentions are when Jim Thome fell one short in 2002 along with Barry Bonds in 2004. I wonder if I have any Dale Long cards in my archives? Must look...

Still got it, Donnie! This is a great addition to my Mattingly collection. I hope you enjoy it, too.

Thank you for reading!

Ryan