[zeprock]

I have always loved animals. My favorite snack when I was a preschooler in the early '60s was Animal Crackers. The first thing I ever collected were little plastic figurines of animals. If I was a good boy, and I usually was, my Mom would take me to Grants or Freeses in downtown Bangor and I could pick out a new animal for my collection. The more exotic the better. I must have had three or four dozen of them.

I had a slew of pets growing up, hamsters, turtles, newts, tropical fish, a couple dogs, numerous cats and a rabbit. When I was a teenager, we moved to a farm where we had goats, cows, horses, a donkey, a pig and chickens. These days I just have two Golden Retrievers pictured here in a very rare docile moment, probably because I have a camera in one hand and a banana in the other. That's Loki on the left and Toby on the right.

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I'm combining my love of animals with my love of baseball for today's post. Here are nine baseball cards from my collection that also feature an animal.

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1959 Fleer Ted Williams #54 Ted Hooks Big One (The self proclaimed "Greatest Hitter of All-Time" was also a pretty good fisherman. So good that in 2000 he was inducted into the International Game Fish Association Hall of Fame. Here he's posing with a 1,235 pound black marlin that he reeled in.)
1984 Fleer #182 Glenn Hubbard (Forget the Phillie Phanatic in the background. How many cards have you seen featuring a player with an eight-foot boa constrictor draped around his neck?)
1990 Broder #NNO Ryne Sandberg (I got this card from the only trade I ever made on Zistle. Ryno with a Rhino!)

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1991 Pacific Ryan Texas Express I #108 Nolan Ryan (Ryan was just as comfortable on a horse as he was on the mound. A successful cattle rancher, he even produces his own beef, Nolan Ryan’s All Natural Beef.)
1991 Studio #216 Steve Lake (Steve's career literally went to the birds. After he retired, he and his wife maintained 40 breeding pairs of large parrots. On this card he is posing with his pet cockatoo.)
1993 Milk Bone Super Stars #12 Cal Ripken (This card pulled from a specially marked package of Milk Bone Flavor Snacks and Dog Treats features Cal Ripken Jr. with his wife's 100 pound female Akita presented to her as a gift along with a bottle of champagne, hence the dog's name.)

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1993 Triple Play #261 Jay Bell (Here's Jay participating in a cow milking contest at the ballpark.)
1997 Upper Deck Shimano #6 Tony Gwynn (Mr. Gwynn was an avid bass fisherman and on this card produced by Upper Deck in conjunction with Shimano, he's showing off his catch. Shimano is a large manufacturer of fishing, bicycling, and rowing equipment.)
2016 Leaf Babe Ruth Collection #29 Babe Ruth (This picture taken in 1928 shows Ruth with his manager, Miller Huggins. Well, not actually although they do sort of look the same. This is Mike the Chimpanzee from the St. Louis Zoological Park. Apparently the Bambino was also an animal lover.)