"I'm just saying you can't start Pena at first" -Billy Beane
I know that if you are a baseball movie junkie you probably remember the scene where Billy Beane goes ballistic in trading a bunch of players in order to force Art Howe to play the players that he wants in the line-up. At the center of the drama is a young first baseman the A's had picked up in a January 2002 trade with the Texas Rangers. During his 40 games in Oakland Carlos Pena had an on base percentage of .305.
Not very Billy Beane like.
Carlos ended up in Detroit, and while it's hard to sort out in the scene in the movie, I believe the Tigers either gave the A's cash to help with Ricardo Rincon, or to make the soda machine in the club house free. Jermaine Dye didn't want to walk around with quarters....
Prior to the 2002 season Carlos was actually a top prospect, rated fifth overall, according to Baseball America. All of that hype had landed him in the Futures Game in Safeco Park the prior summer and into the 2002 Bowman Futures Game relic set.
I love the autographs in that set in spite of the fact that they seem to wear off of the front of the card. I recently featured former Durham Bulls utility player Wilson Betimet's autograph from that set in this same weekly post.
This week.....
Carlos Pena. I probably paid a little bit more than a soda for this card. Really it depends on how much the soda costs. At my work, soda is only sold in bottles which cost $1, so in that case roughly two sodas. The soda at work is Pepsi though.
Yes, the signature is a little marked up just like every other 2002 Bowman Futures Game Autograph you have ever run across. Not the best, but I have also seen far worse.
You remember how I had been posting set projects the last couple months and stopped a few weeks back? Thinking this autograph set might go up on that tab.
I loved Pena and thought he was going to be a stud. I picked up a couple of cards that were at the time, expensive for me. As the cards continued to have less and less value, I just kept them. The nostalgia is much better than taking a huge loss.
ReplyDelete-Kin (beansballcardblog.com)