#MyCardMonday

I am not have the smoothest of Mondays, so #MyCardMonday is making it onto my blog a little bit late this week.  I didn't spend much time this weekend on cards, but did take about ten minutes out of my school work on Sunday to put away a few autographed Cardinals cards I had picked up over the past week.  Don't worry I scanned them and will share them this week. 

While I was in my box of Cardinals autographs I stumbled upon my 1996 Leaf Signatures Cardinals autographs.  There were a bunch of good Cardinals players in that set.  Guys like Tom Pagnozzi, John Mabry, and Brian Jordan.  There were also a few veteran players in the Cardinals team set that you probably wouldn't associate with the team, but had ended up on the Cardinals during Tony LaRussa's first year as the manager.  There was a Mike Gallego autograph, I think of him as an A's player, and Rick Honeycutt, Dodgers.  There was also Gary Gaetti who is always a Twin in my book, but was the Cardinals third baseman in 1996, 1997, and part of 1998.  

Gaetti is actually from a small town in Illinois, Centralia, that's not far from St Louis.  The veteran third baseman had two pretty good years for the Cardinals before he was released by the team in 1998.  When I moved to North Carolina I ran into Gaetti again as the first base coach for the Durham Bulls.  I decided to add a Gaetti autograph to the collection. At the time this was his only certified autograph, but he's signed for several of the Topps Archives/Fan Favorites sets during the past decade. 

 He also happens to be one of the few players who has appeared for both my favorite Minor League team, the Durham Bulls, and my favorite Major League team, the Cardinals.