It’s 2011 Reds Team Baseball Card Set day (presented by Thompson Plumbing, Heating and Cooling), for all your Reds commemorating enjoyment.

You can add them to your pristine collection of unopened team cards sets, or, if your family is more like mine, you can find them all around the house after they are incorporated into your son’s imaginary game where the Paul Janish card teams up with the Drew Stubbs card to defeat the diabolical Bakugan on the Lego train.

If you closely at this picture, you’ll notice that they’re lying down like that to show off the shiny foil background. There are four of these super-special cards in the pack: three gold ones for the gold-glovers and one silver one for the MVP.

Why does a gold glove get you a gold card while the MVP only gets you silver? Probably because “gold” is in the name of the “gold glove” and so it would be weird the other way. If it helps, you can think of the silver as representing diamond. And not the lab-created ones; the ones people die for. Or platinum. Platinum is probably better.

Either way, it’s much easier to get the cards than any of those other precious materials. Just be one of the first 30,000 through the door to see the Reds take on the Pirates and get yours. Edinson Volquez is supposed to be back in action.

I saw this article about Joey Votto linked to earlier this week from Redleg Nation, and it’s the stuff that myths and tall tales are made of.

For starters, there’s the story about him asking for a pair of new batting gloves from the coach of his youth team, the Canadian Thunderbirds, every other day. They were free, but the constant need for new ones was suspicious. But young Votto wasn’t doing anything sly like selling them for cash. No, it wasn’t that. But the coach didn’t believe his answer.

So the two struck a deal. Every time Votto felt he needed a new pair, he had to trade his old ones in to prove it.

Not long after, the kid showed up ready for the first exchange. The pair he’d been given just a day or two before had holes in the palms. And blood stains all over them.

“They were from broken blisters,” Oswald says.

Votto swung the bat. A lot.

Also, don’t miss the story about Votto’s mighty throwing arm and the ball a teammate missed catching, and the time Votto eschewed metal bats and proved how his burgeoning awesomeness to a persistent scout.

I know it’s hard to predict the success of baseball players, but Votto’s intense focus has always been present. And I think all his practice might pay off soon.