Pablo Sandoval: King of Kings

My top player for collecting - the one whom I'm somewhat optimistically ultimately planning to have all 2,305 cards for - is Pablo Sandoval. He's been my favorite player pretty much since he materialized on the San Francisco Giants in 2008 as a catcher - a guy whom I'd not even heard of as a prospect before he was called up - and a guy who promptly started to rake, hitting .345 in his first year and then .330 in his first full season of 2009, with a .387 OBP.

Though it certainly helped, those stats weren't why we all loved the guy so much. It was the dude's joy de vivre; his ability to transcend what looked to be an almost comical amount of unathletic weight distribution and make totally insane plays at third base; and the fact that he raked. I never cared for the whole "Big Panda" / pandamania hoo-hah around the guy, but I'm glad he got the attention, because he earned it in spades, culminating of course with that crazy three-homer game in the 2012 World Series - perhaps the only time in my lifetime in which I believed the San Francisco Giants were truly the absolute best team in baseball.

Anyway, we let Pablo get away in 2015 and he said some dumb things going out the door. He was infamously awful for the Red Sox. He wasn't really my favorite player any longer - but then in 2017, he came back to the Giants, and he's been a total delight ever since. He pitches! He gets married in a blowout wedding! And he keeps raking, at least in a manner in line with his diminishing abilities. The Giants signed him again for 2020, and man, I hope the season actually happens.

So this is the guy whose cards I'm really going after the most. Autographs, prospect, rookie, parallels, commons, uniforms, whatever. Here are a few of the ones I have now.