Waiting For Opening Day

For the past few years, I haven't been able to get into the March Madness as easily as I did when I was younger. Instead, once the final whistle of the Super Bowl blows, I anxiously await the a start of baseball season. Tuesday evening a few weeks back, I was fortunate to stumble across something to help keep me occupied until MLB's first pitch of the season on April 2nd.

It was on the shelf a day earlier than its release date and since it is one of the most affordable products of the year, I went with a blaster and a jumbo pack. Other than three inserts(shown below), the jumbo didn't yield anything terribly exciting. Here are the highlights of the night's pack ripping.

This year,s Sanchez is a significant upgrade from the pixelated monstrosity of an RC he had in OD last year. I'm diggin the emotion captured in the Andrew Miller photo and I can just imagine where the ball landed after Javy Baez put his bat to it. The bottom row is a trio of first cards of guys on new teams. This season they seem to be photoshopped much better than in previous years.

Here are three decent looking horizontal cards set next to the first few inserts from the product. I really like the team inserts and who doesn't love ballpark food?

Now, I might love some ballpark popcorn, but that has got to be one of the most generic pictures you could possibly ever see grace the front of a baseball card. Next up, Superstar Celebrations. As has been the case the last few years, these are by far my favorite inserts from OD. Photo selection is always really great and unique in this set.

Running a close second in the favorite insert set race are the mascots! If only the Yankees had a mascot, I'd really love this set. I guess I'll have to settle for Tampa's Raymond. Lastly, the Pence was the best of the blue foil parallels that I pulled. I think these are really well done. I do wish they would go back to the practice of a few years ago and put serial numbering on these. While it's true that #/2017 is nowhere near 'limited' I just like the numbering. That was all I ever expected to pull from an Opening Day blaster, but apparently the odds were with me on that day a few weeks back.

This was tucked away in one of the blaster packs! Ive never pulled a relic from Opening Day. It's a mundane, gray swatch and isn't numbered, but it was a real thrill knowing that the odds are stacked against you in this product. How high are they stacked?

Opening Day relic 1:525 packs, that's how high. One in every 53(yes, I rounded up) blasters should contain a relic pack. As always, OD was a fun break. In the big picture, I really hope a Topps brings Bunt back as a low cost option, but I don't see myself abandoning OD anytime in the near future. Thanks for reading.