FEATURED ITEM REVIEW: Baseball Sports Board

Wall art for your card collection

Sports Boards® are handsomely screen-printed framed matboards that display your favorite players’ trading cards on the field or court. Display the current starting lineup of your #1 team or the all-stars of the past! Sports Boards® create a dramatic visual effect that is sure to impress your family and friends. There will be no doubt who you are rooting for!

The Baseball Sports Board

For years I have been searching for the “just right” item to display some of my sports cards that would be attractive to hang in my man cave. I know they made those little one card wall plaques in the 90’s, though they look nice and I do have a couple hanging up, they  weren’t quite what I was looking for. So I began to Google for something more interesting to display my cards in. That’s when I stumbled upon Sports Boards on the Bags Unlimited website.  I began to scroll through all of the options to figure out which one I wanted to use as there was one for baseball, basketball, football, hockey and soccer. In the end I went for the baseball option as I had an idea on what I wanted to use it for.

So I clicked on the option to see what the item was about. I found out that the item came as a kit with an assembled wood frame with mounting hardware, UV-blocking plexi-glass to help protect cards from fading, some acid-free poly sleeves to help hold the cards in place and a baseball field matboard . Sounded simple enough for me, so I grabbed it hoping that it was exactly what I needed.

A few days later, a big box arrived and like a kid at Christmas, I excitedly ripped it open.

Inside of that box, I slid this out. It appeared all of the pieces must be layered inside the frame since this is what came.

As my wife and kids know, I am not the handyman. Hang a picture on the wall, sure. Put together a simple three piece project, certainly. Just ask my kids how that turned out with a few of their toys….

With the item out of the bag, I flipped it over since I had pulled it out front side up.

Then I began to pull up the tabs on the back to take the item apart to find all of the pieces. The item had those short tabs on the back that hold everything in place as you would expect from anything that contains a picture frame.

Here is a closer look at the tabs. They are very easy to work with as long as you are careful not to bend them too far as they may snap off as I have experienced before with other frames.

The next layer revealed the mat that the cards would be seen through.

I flipped it over to see what it looked like before moving onto the final piece in the kit. It looked as good as I hoped it would in person.

The final piece in the kit was the Plexi-glass that also had the package of acid-free poly sleeves attached to the back.

All that remained now was the wooden frame.

Now that the kit was taken apart, it was time to put it back together reversed from the same order I took it apart. It was pretty simple to figure out up to this point.
So I started with what would be the glass to the frame. The plexi-glass is very thick and came with a protective peel, something you would find on Mystery Finest cards in the 90’s so I peeled it back while reminiscing as well.

I finished peeling off the film and placed the frame flat on the floor for the plexi-glass to go back in. The plexi-glass was very clear as the film helped protect the plexi-glass from getting scratches among its journey to my house.

The next layer was the matboard. I knew what I wanted to place in the frame, just needed to figure out which I cards I wanted to use.
Being a big 90’s collector since that was the era I entered the hobby, especially the late 90’s, I decided I wanted to display an baseball All-Star team from the 90’s I would have wanted to watch play together.

Here was my lineup:
C: Mike Piazza– Played 16 seasons, 12X All-Star, NLROY, 10X Silver Slugger Award Winner
1B:Frank Thomas-5x All Star, 4x Silver Slugger Award Winner, 2x AL MVP, AL batting champ in 1997
2B: Craig Biggio-7x All-Star, 4x Gold Glove Award Winner, 5x Silver Slugger Award Winner, NL Stolen Base leader in 1994.
3B: Cal Ripken Jr.-19x All-Star, 2x AL MVP, AL ROY, 2x Gold Glove Award winner, 8x Silver Slugger Award Winner, MLB Record holder for consecutive games played with 2,632, MLB All Century Team.
SS: Derek Jeter-14x All Star, World Series MVP, 5 Time World Series Champion, ALROY, 5x Gold Glove Award Winner, 5x Silver Slugger Award winner.
CF: Ken Griffey Jr-13x All-Star, AL MVP in 1997, 10x Gold Glove Award Winner, 7x Silver Slugger Award Winner, NL Comeback Player Of The Year,4x AL Home Run Leader, AL RBI Leader in 1997
RF: Kirby Puckett-(I moved Kirby to RF in this lineup despite him playing in CF) 10x All-Star, ALCS MVP, 6x Gold Glove Award Winner, 6x Silver Slugger Award Winner, AL Batting Champion in 1989, AL RBI leader in 1994
LF: Juan Gonzalez-3x All-Star, 2x AL MVP, 6x Silver Slugger Award Winner, 2x AL Homerun Leader, AL RBI leader in 1998
P: Greg Maddux-8x All Star, 4x NL Cy Young Award Winner, 18x Gold Glove Award Winner, 3x MLB Wins Leader, 4x MLB ERA leader.

I finally got my cards chosen and put them into the sleeves. I laid the mat out to figure out how to place the cards in. I decided to use the back of the frame and place a couple pieces of tape to hold the cards in place to the frame. They were in plastic so it wouldn’t hurt the cards. However I only used a small piece of tape in case I wanted to change out my players later on or come up with some new cards to replace these.

Here is my Mike Piazza that I lined up in the slot straight and put a small piece of tape on the left and the right to hold it in place.

The only problem, I placed