Motter Bat For A Good Cause

Taylor Motter does not have many baseball cards, so I do not spend too much time talking about him here in my little corner of the blogosphere.  However, he is one of my favorite Durham Bulls players over the last two years.  In 2015, Motter put up a .292/.366/.471 slash line with 14 home runs, 43 doubles, and 26 stolen bases.  He ended up winning the team MVP award.  Well deserved.

One of the best qualities of Taylor Motter's game is his versatility.  The Bulls played him all over the diamond which I thought would help earn him a job with the Rays.  I was a little surprised to see Motter back in Durham to start the season.  Early in the season Motter appeared on the "Ask Me" segment on the Durham Bulls Hit Bull Win Blog and answered my question about the number of gloves in his locker.

With very few cards of Motter out on the market I have kept my eyes open for anything cool of his that I can find floating around.  Sometime last month I saw a picture of a Motter bat float across my feed from Signatures for Soldiers.  Simply put, they raise money for disabled veterans through donations of signed items/baseball cards.  There have been quite a few players who have signed cards for this charity.  There are lots of pictures on the social media sites of the cards and athletes who have signed and a list on the website.  You can follow their Twitter page here , Facebook book page here,   and homepage here.  

It's a great cause if you are looking for an autograph.  I strongly encourage you to check out their items.  

Here is a look at the Motter bat that I picked up from the Signatures for Soldiers site:

It's a Hickory Bat with good game use.  The bat looks whole, but when you tap the handle against the ground it has the broken bat sound.  No visible cracks though which is really nice.  The signature on the bat is done in silver.  You can see a little bit more of the ball marks in this picture.  There is a giant impact mark right above the words "Pro Ash"  

One of the other cool features on the bat is the handle which has a Tampa Bay Rays 38 sticker.  I have about seven or eight game used bats in my card room and all of them have a hand written player number, or some sort of writing on the handle.  I know that the stickers have become popular in recent years, but this is my first bat with one of these....

Overall, this is near the top of my game used bat collection.  Definitely the tops of my Durham Bulls players.  I need to get a bat holder and find a place for this on the wall.  I will post some pictures when it gets up.