Drinking in the Gwynn (Beermas Day 5)

My wife has a good idea of which beers I'd enjoy when she picks out my Beermas beers. This year, I had one specific request for her, and that was to keep an eye out for San Diego Pale Ale .394 by AleSmith Brewing Company... also known as "The Tony Gwynn Beer." I've been aware of it for a couple years now, but never had the chance to give it a try. A beer that pays tribute to my all-time favorite baseball player?! Yeah, that's right up my alley! At first it seemed like my wife was going to strike out, as she didn't have any luck finding it up here.

While she wasn't able to find the regular version of the beer, she did eventually find the "Hall of Fame" limited edition imperial version to surprise me with today. For you non beer drinkers, imperial basically means it has a higher alcohol content (9% here), but sacrifices some taste, generally. Excited to give this a try!

So far in my 12 Days of Christmas Cards, I've been only showing new 12/25 cards to my collection. But seeing as it's Tony Gwynn Day here on the countdown (and since I don't have any new 12/25 Gwynns to show off), I figured I'd pull out the two Christmas Cards I have of Tony, both of which have already been featured on the blog in the past, but hey, they're worthy of repeating. A couple top favorite cards in my collection, for sure.

There was only one Gwynn card in my latest COMC order. I think I was just browsing serial-numbered Gwynns lowest-price-first, and pulled the trigger on this /199 2011 Topps Marquee card for a buck. You don't seem to see many defensive action shots on Gwynn cards, so this is a nice change of pace. Love the cap on the ground. It's easy to forget, since his hitting is so legendary, but Tony could really move during the first half of his career, and won 5 Golden Glove awards.

The back of the bottle has some background on the beer. I hadn't realized Tony was personally involved with its creation. That's pretty cool. I haven't drank it yet, but check back for my review later this evening. (UPDATE: Oh, this is very good! A respectfully delicious tribute to Mr. Padre. Very drinkable.) I guess I'll have to hang onto this bottle as part of my PC.

Speaking of which..

Here's a peek at my Tony Gwynn PC. Probably my biggest organizational accomplishment of 2017 was finally sorting this beast, weeding out hundreds of dupes and sorting by year. I haven't actually counted them, though. How many would you say that looks like to you? Hey, maybe that's a good contest bonus entry idea! In the comments below, guess how many unique Tony Gwynn cards I have. Then sometime before the end of the contest, I'll count them up and give a couple bonus entries to whoever was closest.

Thanks for reading and Happy Holidays!