Fitting Farewells(not those kind)

I briefly posted this Thursday night, but realized that the title was extremely misleading given the passing of both Chyna and Prince. I therefore took it down and figured I'd repost in a few days. Sorry if anyone saw it and thought it was insensitive in any way.

The 'Big Papi' Farewell Tour is underway. As a Yankee fan, I never thought I'd say this, but I'm going to try to enjoy as much of it as I can. Until recent years, I couldn't appreciate David Ortiz for the great player he is. I was too busy hoping he wouldn't do something to beat my favorite team. However, looking back at his career, I'm really glad that he was such a huge part of the Sox-Yankees rivalry. His knack for late inning heroics made for incredibly dramatic baseball. I can truly say that I will miss him when this season ends. I'm happy that he decided to announce his intent to retire prior to the season so that he can have the 'Bon Voyage' he deserves, much like Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera before him. I'm quite interested to see what the MLB clubs come up with to give as retirement gifts. 

For now, this is my favorite Ortiz card even if it doesn't fit the 'sunset' or farewell theme of this post(I'm getting to that). This is the blue parallel of my favorite card from my lone Opening Day blaster. While I hope that Ortiz gets a 'sunset' card as great as Jeter's from last year's flagship, that's also not the point of this post(I swear, it's coming up). Speaking of Jeter and Rivera, one club in particular created an awesome going away gift for fans during their team's last series with each player.

The Angels created this as a SGA for The Captain back in 2014. Up next is the one they made for Mo the year prior.

I love everything about these. Granted, I'm quite biased since these are two of my favorite players, but still, these are great tribute cards. They are quite a bit larger than your standard card and are made of stock that is more like paper, but they are wonderful nonetheless. I hope that come July when the BoSox roll into LA for Papi's last series against the Halos that fans will be treated to something like this devoted to him. I'd love nothing more than to add such an awesome oddball to my incredibly small collection of the sure fire HOFer. Thanks for reading.