Entering The Cronezone

It's been a few weeks since I have made a post. I have been enjoying my fall break away from school by doing a few things around the house and taking in the NC State football game last weekend.  

My Wolfpack snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Losing to Wake Forest after leading by 10 at the beginning of the 4th Quarter is not cool. The coaching is less than ideal.  

Baseball cards have been slow too.

No Blake Snell autographs. 

Pumping the brakes on the Rays current young players.

Nobody likes the Cardinals right now.  

I did find an interesting 2023 Topps Chrome Jake Cronenworth card a few days back. Cronenworth was on the Durham Bulls a few years back and came up in the Rays Minor League system before he was traded to the Padres. Here is the front of the card.  

I have grown tired of my scanner, so you are getting a picture.

Notice the authentication sticker on the jersey swatch. I went ahead and ran the numbers on the swatch and came up with a time and date for the jersey that appears on the card.  

The answer is a bit disappointing........

No idea why Jake Cronenworth was wearing a Padres jersey in the middle of January, but I could not find anything when I did some digging on the team's social media pages. No press conferences, no fan fests, nothing.  

Here is the back of the card......

Playing around with scanning apps......

Not too bad. 

Friday Five: My Top 5 Oakland Athletics

Yesterday, I watched the end of the Oakland A's game. It was their last home game in Oakland.

The Moneyball music hits different on this one. 💚🥺 pic.twitter.com/ucOBSBgH78

— FOX Sports: MLB (@MLBONFOX) September 26, 2024

I don't want to get too bogged down in the backstory of what has happened to the A's during the past year, so I will let this Jeff Passan tweet do the talking.....

The Oakland A’s were killed by greed. Do not allow the people responsible for this to spin it any other way. John Fisher did not have to move this team. Major League Baseball and its owners did not need to be complicit in it. This was a choice. A wrong one. History will sneer.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) September 26, 2024

As a St. Louis native, I know the disappointment of seeing a professional sports franchise move away.  

I wanted to share my favorite 5 Oakland A's players for today's Friday Five post. 

Here is my list:

Honorable Mention: Tim Hudson 

One of my favorite non-Cardinal pitchers to watch of the past 20 years. I love the movie Moneyball, but if I had to change something about the movie, I would want more time spent on the Big 3, Mark Mulder, Barry Zito, and Tim Hudson. The three made the A's rotation far above-average and allowed them to tinker with the offense by focusing on on-base percentage. Without Hudson's quality pitching, the team would not have been a contender, yet he's barely mentioned in the film. The book gives more time to the pitchers, but still probably undersells Hudson, Mulder, and Zito too. Anyway, long-time favorite player who has a Hall of Fame argument too, but I will save that for another post.  

5. Stephen Vogt 

Before Stephen Vogt was the manager of the Cleveland Guardians, he was a fan-favorite with the Oakland A's. The catcher seemingly came out of nowhere to make back-to-back All Star Games for the American League roughly a decade ago. Before he seemingly came out of nowhere, he was actually on the Durham Bulls stuck behind Jose Molina and Jose Lobaton who were catching for the Rays. Vogt was also a fan-favorite in Durham. He was a player who did a little bit of everything on the field, while his personality made it easy to like. There have been several other Durham Bulls players who have made appearances with the Oakland A's over the years, but Vogt is easily my favorite.  

4. Jose Canseco

Jose Canseco is one of my favorite baseball villains/goofballs, but before he was blacklisted from the game for ratting out all sorts of steroid users, he was a really great baseball player. We now have a 50-50 player, along with half a dozen players who have gone 40-40 in a season, but I remember when Canseco first accomplished the feat back when I was in elementary school. He was the best of the power-speed players from the late 1980s. Throw in some tape measure home runs and a hilarious Twitter account and Jose has cracked my top 5 Oakland A's players......

3. Gene Tenace 

I have learned a lot about various baseball players through my years of collecting with Tenace being at the top of the list. When I first ran into Gene Tenace, I was a little kid collecting baseball cards and he was the back-up catcher on the early 1980s Cardinals teams. Years later, I would learn about Tenace's run as the Oakland A's catcher during the early 1970s helping the team win three World Series titles. In fact, Tenace was the World Series MVP in the 1972 Fall Classic against the Reds. I love myself some Gene Tenace baseball cards and have a deep appreciation for his contributions to the A's 1970s dynasty.  

2. Mark McGwire 

I liked Mark McGwire while he was on the A's, he's not just here because he was on the Cardinals for a few years. Such a fun player to watch, who doesn't like long home runs? I will let a video clip do the talking for Big Mac.  

1. Rickey Henderson 

I am going to give you a story about one of my Rickey Henderson rookie cards rather than talk about Rickey Henderson the player. Rickey would be a little sad, but I am hoping my readers will be entertained.  As a kid, I used to love stolen bases, mainly because of Vince Coleman and Willie McGee, but Rickey Henderson was cool too. Anyway, my parents have some people over to our house for dinner. I cannot remember the reason why exactly, but the people had kids who had baseball cards in their car. It was 1985 and my best card was a Dwight Gooden rookie card. This particular evening, I am hell-bent on trading my Dwight Gooden rookie card, which my older brother thought was a terrible idea. At the time, he was right. Forty years later, I was right. The best card I could get in return for my Dwight Gooden rookie card was a Rickey Henderson rookie card. I like Rickey, I made the trade and still have the card to this day.  

Rickey was the greatest Oakland A's player. 

Red, White, and I Guess Blue.

There were a pair of NC State players on the USA Baseball roster this past summer, but it appears that neither of them made the checklist for the Panini Stars & Stripes product. Jacob Dudan and Derrick Smith were both freshman for the Wolfpack and played a starring role in helping the team reach the College World Series last spring. When Stars and Stripes originally dropped, they were the first two players I tried to find, unsuccessfully.  

Amazingly, Panini included a third Wolfpack player who never appeared in a game for USA Baseball Collegiate team, sophomore pitcher Dominic Fritton.  According to what I can find on the internet, Dominic Fritton was at the Collegiate National Team Training Camp, but did not make the team.  Apparently, that earns you a baseball card.  

It sounds like I am complaining, which I am to a degree. Yes, I wish there were cards of the two NC State players who were on the College National Team this summer. They're really good players with bright futures. No, I am not complaining that Panini made a card of Dominic Fritton for trying out for the team.  In fact, I hope Fritton got a whole pile of NIL money for signing these autographs and ends up have a long and prosperous professional baseball career.  

I have two Fritton cards, the first is a red patch card with a red ink autograph.   

Obviously the preferred card color for anything involving the Wolfpack.  Flipping the thickly stocked card over and it's serial numbered out of 25.  You can also check out the bio on Fritton who was a Freshman All-American at State. There are no Sophomore All-Americans and he had kind of a rough year.  

I also picked up a jersey relic card with a blue (boooooo) autograph.

This card has a thinner card stock and no serial number on the back of the card. Did UNC or Duke even have a player on the College National Team roster last summer? 

No. 

Go Pack! 

Friday Five: Top 5 Curt Flood Cards

I do not fully understand how Curt Flood is not in the Hall of Fame. He had a very good playing career, which by itself is probably not Hall worthy, but his contributions to the game should make him a slam dunk. In fact, every modern player who is enjoying a league minimum salary of almost $800K with the possibility of making millions of dollars through arbitration and free agency should be name-dropping Curt Flood for the Hall on a daily basis. 

That's not going to happen, but I can dream.  

I have long enjoyed Curt Flood baseball cards and decided it would be a fun exercise to put together a list of my five favorite cards of the long-time Cardinals outfielder.  

5. 1960 Topps 

I love the contrasts on this card with the black and white photo paired with the color photo, along with the bright yellow letters with the black background. That red background behind the black and white photo really pops. I also love the old-style Cardinals bats-on-the-bat logo, really sweet. Overall, this is one of my favorite early 1960s Cardinals cards based simply on aesthetics. Great looking card.  

4. 1967 Topps 

I am not sure Clubbers is the right word to describe the combination of Lou Brock and Curt Flood in the Cardinals lineup, but I love this dual card.  The two were fixtures in the Cardinals outfield for the latter half of the 1960s helping the team win a World Series in 1967 and a National League pennant in 1968. I love the look of the old, wool 1960s Cardinals uniforms on this card. The off-white jerseys with the shortened sleeves and bright red accents and hats looked great together. The Cardinals also have some of the better socks in the league.  

3. 1971 Topps 

I love that Topps gave Curt Flood a card in 1971. After the Phillies traded him to the Senators, Flood only played in a handful of games and retired before the first month of the 1971 season ended. It would have been easy to skip over Flood. This was his final baseball card.  

2. 1964 Topps 

A bit of a sentimental choice for me to rank the 1964 Topps card second on my list. This was one of the first good vintage cards in my collection and my first Curt Flood. Wasn't there a collector who hoarded this card by the thousands? Yes.   Anyway, I love the green text on the white background, the photo of Flood standing with his glove, and who could miss that his name is spelled out on the fingers.  Classic.  

1. 1958 Topps 

My scan is pretty terrible, but this is a great card.  I love all the bright colors here with the bright green background, yellow logo box...err...triangle, and the red name box on the bottom of the card. Love the blue Cardinals cap and that Curt Flood is smiling on his rookie card.  

High School Kids at Target

I have largely avoided the card aisle at Target during the past six months. There is just nothing there that has sparked my interest this year. Maybe I will buy a Topps set at the end of the year, but the 2024 products have done little to move me to make any purchases. That all changed at the end of last week when I spotted a few blaster boxes of Panini's USA Baseball product.  

I always enjoy taking in games at USA Baseball, which is five minutes from my house, so it's nice to find cards of some of the players who appear there.  I was mainly looking for a few NC State players on the checklist, but knew I would most likely run into a bunch of high school kids. It's how USA Baseball cards work.  

I ended up with a Dominic Fritton card, NC State player, but no autograph. 

I typically do not watch the high school teams at USA Baseball, but they are loaded with future high draft picks. Similar to buying a box of Bowman, I open the packs and just file the cards away for a few years and revisit. I have pulled some nice cards over the years.  

So, what came out of my blaster boxes?

Wake Forest, North Carolina High Schooler Cameron Small.  

When I saw the 13U on the bottom of the card, I thought I had pulled my first middle schooler. Not so, but I think Cameron is a freshman, so he is not committed to a college or even does not have a college list. Maybe he will end up at NC State.  

Next up, Jackson, Mississippi high schooler Konnor Griffin.  

Konnor was actually drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates in the first round, 9th pick, this summer. He would seem to have a bright future, so this card is a more immediate win than I am used to getting out of a USA Baseball pack.  

Last autograph.  

California high schooler Andrew Jimenez. He's a 15U player, so really young with no college commitment. 

I will file all three of these autographs away and see what becomes of these players in a few years.

Beyond the three autographs, I also got two relic cards of college players.  

First up, Rutgers pitcher Christian Coppola. Not sure what sort of pro prospects he has after college, but if he's pitching at USA Baseball, he has to be pretty good.  

Last card.  

TCU pitcher Ben Abeldt. Again, not sure about his professional prospects, but they have to be pretty good.  He looks like a high school kid.  

Monday Morning Autograph - Albert Belle

 

Today's Autograph: 1999 SP Signature Albert Belle 

Why Do I Own This Card?

Albert was a pretty incredible player. His career was too short for him to make the Hall, or so it would seem, but he was a scary hitter. I remember him getting 50 home runs and 50 doubles in a season when I was in high school, I followed along that summer with the box scores. Been a fan every since. Sure, Albert had his faults, but he could absolute hit a baseball. I have other cool Albert Belle cards, there might be a bonus at the end of the post.  

P.S. - Remember that time he got hit by a pitch, but he didn't want the free base?

Back of The Card

Haiku About Albert Belle Running Over Fernando Vina with Video 

Ground ball to Vina

Albert Belle Runs Him Over 

Let's Get Some Water 

 

Bonus Card:

Goal Number 1, Part 1

Way back at the end of 2023, I made a few goals for my 2024 card collecting year. My first goal was to find more Blake Snell insert and parallel cards. It's now the middle of September and I have not posted a single one of these cards. I actually worked on the goal during my blogging break this summer, but never got around to posting any of the cards until today.  

I decided to put heavy emphasis on parallels to start. I made them brand specific, which you will see as you continue reading this post and future posts about this card goal. Plus, there are tons of parallels these days and they are easy to find. I am a long-time Snell collector, but I am a little late to the party when it comes to non-autographed cards.  

For today, I am going to post several parallels I have picked up from Gold Label sets.  Always liked the looks of these cards....

First up is a 2019 Gold Label card. It's a Class 1 card, so it has higher serial numbers. I believe each class of the three classes of cards has a few different parallels, which all have different serial numbers. This card is out of /150 and cost me less a few dollars on COMC. The pictures on the card also change by class. Thinking facial hair versus no facial hair here? That's not actually a thing.  

The next three are all from the 2016 Gold Label set, which make them all rookie cards.  

All red parallels.  

The middle card is photoshopped from a Durham Bulls game.  The tall, dark blue wall is from the left field corner and the sign to the right his head is from a local orthopedic office. The bottom card is the obvious prize of the post with a serial numbered print run of just 25 copies. 

Overall, a nice start to my my first goal of the year, even if came a little bit late.