2005 Leaf, Hector Gimenez

#220 Hector Gimenez

Here is a card that I got in a repack box from Wal-Mart two years ago. I bought a few repack boxes from there between 2008 and 2009 and this is not the only hit that I got. In fact, I pulled my lone jersey letter swatch (or whatever they are called) from a pack that came out of a repack box. Unfortunately, I haven't bought any repack boxes recently. The ones that I was buying back then always had packs from the years that I wasn't collecting cards, so it was fun to see what I missed. It seems that all of the repack boxes that are out there now have packs from 2007 and 2008 and that doesn't intrigue me at all.

Until recently, Hector had a stat line of two games played with two at-bats and no hits. That was with the Astros in 2006. After that, he played in the Rays and Pirates organizations and he spent all of last season catching for the Pirates AA team in Altoona [on a side note, Altoona has a new mascot- Al Tuna]. Fast-forward to this year and it appears that Hector broke camp with the Dodgers. He was 1-7 to start the year before heading to the disabled list ten days ago because of a swollen knee. That is great that he made it back to the Majors after such a long break away and it is cool that he finally got his first Major League hit. 0-2 would have been an unfortunate career line.

It is funny that Baseball Almanac has this same card posted for Hector's signature. Lucky for them, though, that they have a card that is signed with a fresh Sharpie. I wasn't so lucky.