All-Time Teams are GO!

Major League Baseball is celebrating its 150th Anniversary this season. I've been trying to think of a way to celebrate the history of the game since before spring training started, and I think I've finally thought of a decent idea.

Every day in September I will post my All-Time Teams - a 25-man roster made up of each MLB franchise's best players. I've already started building the rosters, with a couple parameters:

• I'm not setting a strict rule as to how a player "qualifies" to represent a certain team. It would be ideal if every player met a sizeable innings pitched/at-bats minimum, but that's not always possible. For players who bounced around the league I tried to fit them on the team for whom they played the most games.
• National League teams will be assigned a Designated Hitter because let's face it - you'd rather see each team's 12th-greatest hitter than another bullpen arm, amirite?
• Also, players can only represent one team - and it might not always be the team you'd expect. In these cases I'll assign the player to the team that "needs" him the most.

I'm planning to scan up my best cards of each player in their team's starting lineup and the full rosters at the bottom of each page will serve as my own personal checklist. Players represented in my collection will be listed in bold.

Since I'm taking a trip to Washington DC at the end of August I'll have to pre-write the first couple of posts (and I might even start with the Nationals/Expos franchise) The next few nights will be spent building the rosters, scanning up cards, and tinkering with the details. I should be able to fit in a regular post or two before September 1. However I don't have a lot of new cards incoming so..maybe I'll write a post about my wife's Stranger Things box break.

I hope you'll enjoy The Collector's All-Time Teams series. It should be a lot of fun to build the teams, write the posts, and debate the choices with all of you. 

Thanks for reading!

~