I would like to think so, but apparently it is just a Minor League card of him playing for the Durham Bulls. In fact, none of Wander Franco's Durham Bulls cards are his rookie cards. At least, that seems to be the consensus of many people online. The Durham Bulls Wander Franco's are just baseball cards of him playing for a really good baseball team.
Recently, there has been some pretty intense debate around the land of baseball cards about Wander's Bowman's Best cards. By "pretty intense debate", I mean there are a bunch of grown-up, middle-aged guys fighting over what is and what is not a rookie card. If they were in the same room, there would have been punches thrown.
What makes something a rookie card?
Is it the player's first card?
First card with that little RC logo?
First card of the player in a Major League uniform?
Anyway, I ended up with three different Wander Franco cards from the 2021 Bowman's Best set. Are these his rookie cards? The important thing here is that they are cards of Wander Franco.
First, this is his base card from the set. This might be his rookie card. Maybe it is not a rookie card. I just want to get along.
Whether or not this is Wander's rookie card, this is not a very well designed baseball card. The background is incredibly busy. The Rays logo is fine, but what in the world is going on with the rest of the space here?
There are two other better looking Wander Franco cards in the 2021 Bowman's Best set. Are these rookie cards? They cost a fraction of the base card. Leaning towards no.
The second insert card.
That's all the Wander Franco's for today. It's nice to own a copy of his rookie card, or not.
Long ago, the Phillies selected Pat Burrell from the University of Miami with the first pick of the Major League Baseball draft. All the baseball card companies rushed to throw his cards into packs. I actually managed to pull a few Pat Burrell cards when they were popular and I also felt like I had somehow been ripped off. It was not really the quality of the baseball cards that were disappointing, but Pat Burrell's signature made them hard to love.
I still cringe to this date.
It's hard to believe that Pat Burrell was popular at any point based on the quality of his autograph alone.
Fast forward twenty years into the future.
The San Francisco Giants selected NC State catcher Patrick Bailey in the first round of the Major League Draft. I was excited to see the former Wolfpack player play for the Giants and appear on a few baseball cards. The baseball cards were actually slightly anticlimactic. Bailey had been playing for USA Baseball for several years and had appear in all kinds of different Panini products.
Not the best signature, but he was also in high school when this card was made. Still, I was on the look-out for his cards right up to the moment when I saw his signature.
It changed.
Bailey has now been in professional baseball for over a year. Topps and Panini have cranked out a decent number of Patrick Bailey cards. I am just getting around to adding a few of his autographed cards. They weren't expensive or hard to find. They just have an uncanny resemblance to the old Pat Burrell cards.
This is a Bowman Chrome autograph of Bailey.
I actually think Bailey has a worse signature than Burrell. This card is actually the better of the two Patrick Bailey signatures in this post. It's really hard to quantify, but this is a really bad signature. This autograph feels like it's in the neighborhood of Geronimo Gil, who was an Orioles catcher in the early 2000s.
Last Bailey card is from Bowman's Best.
This one is even worse. I feel so unsatisfied.
I cannot wait to see Patrick Bailey in the Majors and I hope he has a long career. I also hope he takes a little more time to sign his name in the future. Bailey's autograph can only get better.
I knew from the first time that I saw Steven Souza play for the Syracuse Chiefs, the Washington Nationals Triple A team, that I needed to go out and find a few of his cards. He was an older prospect, but absolutely one of those players who is fun to watch. So, I went out and I found a few of his cards with the Nats.....
Next thing you know, he gets traded to the Rays, and they send him to Durham. I got to watch a few games with Souza on the Bulls, I also had to go out and find a few cards of him in a Rays uniform. His first two seasons in Tampa were a little rough, which made finding his cards a little easier, and a little bit easier on the old wallet.....
Then last year, Souza turned into a pretty good player for the Rays.....
which means he got traded this offseason. It did seem like the Rays traded half of their team from last year away. The Souza trade was pretty surprising though. Not sure I focused on who the Rays got back from the Diamondbacks, as much as I tried to figure out who was going to be on the Rays this year. Also, whether or not the Durham Bulls would finish higher in the American League East than the Rays.
The Minor League baseball season has started and I got to watch pitcher Anthony Banda throw against the Gwinnett Stripers a few weeks back. I also got to check out the Bulls new third uniforms.
Banda is a hard throwing lefty. Very impressed with him. A quick look at the new Rays prospect facing Ronald Acuna.
I have started working on a few Banda cards since seeing him make this start against Gwinnett. He actually started his career with the Brewers, but was traded to the Diamondbacks in the Gerardo Parra deal. He has a few Brewers cards, but they are all Panini draft type products. Hard to really tell that they are Brewers cards. He has had several Diamondbacks cards over the last few years, including in several of this year's Topps products.
So far, I have added three different Anthony Banda cards. First up.....
The only non-2018 Banda card in this post. The Bowman's Best cards are always a really nice looking brand. Last year's product was no different. On top of a nice design, I also like that this brand uses on-card autographs. Banda always signs his first name and last name in this same top and bottom style, rather than side to side. I have seen a few Diamondbacks and Rays collectors complain about this autograph, I do not mind it.
Next up.....
is an autograph from this year's Gypsy Queen set. This card is really busy. Not sure that Topps could get much more on the margins of this card. Team name, player name, playing position, a Topps Certified autograph stamp, an MLB rookie card stamp, and some sort of Gypsy Queen logo. And you thought people liked cards because they have pictures of baseball players. That's sort of an after thought on this one. Still, it has a Banda autograph.
The goggles and tattoos appear on this card too. Fairly certain that Topps airbrushed the tattoos off of his right arm on the Bowman's Best card.
Last.
A "high end" card of Banda. This is why I don't spend money to open packs of high end products. I like Anthony Banda, like his baseball cards, but I cannot imagine spending $300 on a box of cards and landing this autograph. Thanks to whoever opened this card out of a pack. This card was printed on nice stock, fairly thick card, and has a nice glossy finish.
We are now three years into the White Sox career of Carlos Rodon. I really like Carlos, so I am not going to sit here and waive the white flag on his career, or suggest that he's going to be remembered as some huge draft flop. There are a lot of positives about him in spite of whatever his win-loss record has been with the White Sox.
Besides, I just think back to his time pitching at NC State and enjoy every card of his that I can get my hands on. Locally he will always be remember as a great college pitcher who helped, along with Trea Turner, get the Wolfpack to the College World Series.
He's only been out of college a few years and he already has a bunch of items in the NC State Hall of Fame.....
Which brings me to a few new baseball cards. I picked up one new 2017 autograph of Rodon along with two 2016 cards that I did not own before last week. Brand new card first....
This is out of the Gallery set. I don't think there are as nice as the late 1990s/early 2000s version of this set, but I hold those sets on a pretty lofty pedestal, so perhaps I am setting the bar too high for these cards. I haven't picked up any packs of these cards, my local Wal-Mart is a complete disaster for baseball cards. It was a retail exclusive to that store. It's a nice enough looking card though, even if the autograph is a sticker, it's not immediately noticeable on this card.
I feel like I am getting picky about these colored parallel cards as I get older. A green White Sox card? I feel like this card is some sort of commemoration of the St. Patty's Day Spring Training Games where the teams don green uniforms.
I am okay with this for the moment, but I am seriously considering just buying/trading for parallel colors that actually look good. Purple Cardinals cards? No. Green Rays cards? No. I could go on, you get the point.
Last one. The Topps base set autographs usually have enormous print runs, and if you can hold out ten minutes after they are released, you can usually find many of them for next to nothing. Honestly, I actually really like the looks of these autographs out of the 2016 Topps base set.
Rich Thompson appeared in a Triple A baseball game during twelve different seasons starting in 2001 and stretching out until 2013. However, if you talk to people who follow Minor League Baseball, the most important stop on Rich Thompson's journey was actually with the Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs, which is the Phillies Triple A team. He first appeared for that team in 2008 and managed to stay there until he was picked up by the Rays in a trade during the 2012 season. It's hard to really associate a Minor League player with a Minor League team, but if I could name one player who fits that mold it's got to be Thompson and Lehigh Valley. Or if you are a Rays fan who stops by to read this blog: Thompson is to Phillies Minor League fans what Justin Ruggiano is to Rays Minor League fans. Although I would argue that Thompson is more popular with that fan base than Ruggiano is with the Rays. Thompson played two partial season in Durham. His 2012 season was pretty good. His 2013 season was not so good.
The most important part about Thompson's time in Durham was that it provided him with his longest chance to play in the Majors during his long professional baseball career. He played a few games with the Royals in 2004, but the Rays gave Thompson a full 23 games. Those games included 23 at-bats and just two hits. His career ended when he broke his foot fielding a ball in the outfield.
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Thompson was drafted by the Blue Jays in 2000 out of James Madison University. He did not have any baseball cards his first two years as a professional baseball player, but started appearing in 2002 sets after a strong 2001 season with the Blue Jays High A and Triple A teams. Quite a jump in a season. A batting average over .300 and almost 50 steals lead way for Thompson to appear in all of the Bowman products in 2002, along with the Topps Traded set and the Topps 206 set. They're all nice cards, but we are going autographs first on these posts and this 2002 Bowman's Best card is all that is out there. Not the best year for Bowman, but the cards all feature on-card signatures and the design is decent. Although decidedly early 2000s.
Carlos Beltran was a great player for many teams. While he was not on the Cardinals, most of his career, he was a player who made me nervous as a fan. While he was on the Cardinals, I knew that he was clutch and would come up with some sort of big play.
Beltran at his scariest? Non-Cardinal version has to be the 2004 playoffs.
The Astros lost to the Cardinals in 7 games, but Beltran hit .417 with 4 home runs, 5 RBIs, and scored 12 runs. After the 2006 National League Championship Series, Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa described the pressure the Cardinals faced in trying to record the final out of that playoff series with Beltran up to bat with the bases loaded:
"Carlos Beltran has hit twenty home runs against us in his last ten at bats"
It's an exaggeration, but as a Cardinals fan it always felt like he murdered our pitching staff on a regular basis. I always felt fortunate that the Cardinals got past Beltran in both 2004 and 2006.
Beltran at his scariest as a Cardinal has to be the 2013 playoffs. In the first game of the National League Championship Series he threw a runner out at home in the tenth inning to keep the game tied....
and then walked off the Dodgers with a single in the thirteenth.
On to baseball cards.
I always felt like I missed out on a chunk of Beltran's baseball cards because he came up with the Royals. He was in the 1995 Topps Traded set at a time when everyone loved them. I am not sure how much his rookie card, or is that Juan LeBron.....
actually cost at its height of 1990s popularity. I didn't really care about this card until he ended up on the Cardinals in 2012. It didn't cost me very much at that point. Well, I got the Juan LeBron card, actually with Carlos Beltran, too....
The best card of Beltran that I actually pulled out of a pack was an autograph out of the 2005 Topps set. There used to be a baseball card shop in Durham near my work when I first moved to North Carolina. It was not a great card store in terms of sports cards. Much more of a Magic and Pokemon place. You ever seen Duke students playing card games? Not pretty. The shop folded and I bought the box on clearance.
I sort of hate 2005 Topps, really busy design, but I love this card.
I am probably lucky that I did not do online trading at that point in my life because I probably would have cashed this in for something really nice. I am actually a little surprised that this didn't end up on Ebay. Perhaps it was hiding somewhere, or I forgot about it. The important thing is that it is still here in my house.
Once Beltran ended up on the Cardinals, I tried my best to find some really nice Beltran cards. The downside to Beltran's time with in St. Louis was that he never had an autographed card in a Cardinals uniform. Nice cards meant settling for relics. Not my favorite, but when your options are limited......
First up.
I got this Topps Tribute card. The jersey swatch is tall and slightly bigger than the average relic card. I actually like the picture on the card, the high gloss finish, all limited to just 99 copies. I actually would have been find if Topps had not placed a non-specific piece of jersey on this piece of cardboard.
I also got this card.
It's a jumbo piece of bat. Jumbo. The card is limited to 25 copies. I am not sure the Beltran love is coming through on this card. It's nice. Just a little sad about not having a Beltran Cardinals autograph.
I have moved on.
After leaving the Cardinals I kept up with Beltran cards. I have Yankees cards. I have Rangers cards. I have Astros cards. A lot of my effort recently has been spent working on looping back to Beltran's Royals years to find some of his early gems. There are some really good ones out there floating around. This is my favorite post-Cardinals Beltran card that I have ended up with.....
Beltran seems like the player who might stick around and stay relevant in the baseball card world, especially if he gains traction towards being in the Hall of Fame. He belongs. I will miss seeing Beltran play baseball, but I still am going to find some more of his cards along the way. Maybe there will be a Cardinals autograph at some point.
Canada has contributed greatly to the world of sports cards over the years. Where would we be without hockey cards.....
or football cards from a league with a 55 yard line and field goal posts in the front of the end zone? (Go Redhawks! Beat Kansas)
or baseball cards with the players position written on the front in both French and English?
I shutter to think of a world without all of these great contributions that our fine neighbors to the north have made to my favorite hobby. The Canadians have also had a pretty good run of producing some fairly nice baseball players. The Cardinals have even had a few over the years, most of them not as good as Fergie Jenkins or Joey Votto, but still good.
Who remembers Stubby Clapp?
He's actually turned into a really nice Minor League Manager for the Cardinals currently working for their Triple A team in Memphis.
John "Axman" Axford? Probably a better memory for Brewers fans, but I actually have a card of him playing for the Canadian National Baseball team......
He's been making some pretty funny tweets recently about being an unemployed baseball player. Then there is Larry Walker who is easily the best Canadian born player to have ever worn the Birds on the Bat.
Walker played for the Cardinals the last year and a half of his career. Not sure people always remember him ending his career in St. Louis, definitely a very memorable career with the Expos and Rockies, still a nice player during that time for the Cardinals.
His power dropped off and he was much more of a role player behind stars like Pujols, Edmonds, Rolen, and Chris Carpenter.
It's been awhile since the Cardinals have had a Canadian on the roster, but there is a pretty talented outfielder in Triple A right now who has a pretty good shot at getting to St. Louis in the near future.
Meet Tyler O'Neill.
The Cardinals actually traded for him this summer. He was originally drafted by the Mariners out of high school back in 2013, but was traded over to St. Louis in exchange for Marco Gonzales. Over the last three years in the Mariners system his home runs totals have been 32 in 2015, 24 in 2016, and 29 this summer. Almost every major baseball publication who ranks prospects puts him within the Top 50 in all of the Minor Leagues.
Seemed like the type of player you'd buy a baseball card of, file it away in a box for a few years, and then revisit it at some point in the future. So, I set out to find one. Maybe two.
Here's the first one I found.
For a Top 50 prospect, who hits a lot of home runs, his cards aren't too expensive. I mean, they aren't giving them away on Ebay, but it's realistic to set a $5-$10 budget and walk away with something fairly nice. I ended up with this Bowman's Best autograph which made me very happy. There is a nice finish on this card and the signature is on-card, always a plus.
The only thing I don't like about this particular set of Bowman's Best, 2016, is the honeycomb design in the background of the card. Sort of reminds me of the alternate Georgia Tech football helmets.
Now the really nice autograph. I have always loved this set, every year it has been released, and was happy to have another player with a Cardinals connection in this set.
This is also a 2016 card, but the year doesn't really matter with the Inception brand. Topps always does a really nice job with the cards. It's one of the few sets with a dark background that still looks good with a signature on the front. The autograph of O'Neill is consistent between the two cards, but this is easily my favorite of the two. If he were to not remain on the Cardinals, they do have a ton of outfielders between their Major League and Triple A rosters, I would still keep this card. The scan doesn't even really do the nice card stock used justice.
Hopefully I can look back at this card in a few years and O'Neill will already be amongst the best Canadians to ever play for the Cardinals. Not sure that's a very high bar considering that would mean being better than Stubby Clapp and John Axford.
I live twenty minutes from NC State, thirty minutes from Duke and UNC, ninety minutes from Wake Forest and East Carolina. There are a few other Division I school within that radius like Campbell, UNC-Greensboro, UNC-Charlotte, Elon, and probably some other school that I am not thinking of at the moment.
There are plenty of great college athletes around these parts who end up playing professional sports. In the past few months residents of the Triangle, that's the North Carolina nickname for Raleigh-Durham, have seen high end draft picks in the NFL in the person of Mitch Trubisky......
or in the NBA draft with Jayson Tatum.....
and Dennis Smith Jr.......
or in the Major League Draft with J.B. Bukauskas.....
There are also plenty of other local players who were fun to watch while they were in college, but they never really experience much notoriety at the professional level. One of my favorite NC State basketball players who was there while I was in college was Courtney Fells. He had some injury problems that made him miss some time, but overall he was a great athlete and really fun to watch. He made tons of really cool plays like this defensive stop against Duke.....
and Courtney could always dunk. He was fun to watch in the open court.....
Yes, that was off of a Steph Curry airball.
Beyond all of the local North Carolina schools having some great talent come through the area, it's also fun to watch all of the other schools in the ACC, or other power five conference, come into town to play their games. Just like the North Carolina schools, there are plenty of superstar caliber players who go on to enjoy success in professional sports and others who were fun to watch in college, but just don't really go anyway afterwards......
One of my favorite baseball players who fits into the later category, great college player/shaky professional, is actually playing locally this summer for the Brewers A Ball team in the Carolina League. I first saw former Louisville outfielder Corey Ray while he was playing summer ball with the USA Baseball College team a few summers back. Seemed like a nice player. He also appeared locally while playing against NC State, Duke, UNC, and for the ACC Tournament. The tournament is held at the Durham Bulls stadium.
The Brewers drafted Ray high in the first round in 2016. In almost 150 games, Ray has hit .241/.315/.376 with 11 home runs, 5 triples, and 37 doubles. The extra base hits aren't actually that bad, but that slash line is ugly. Anyway, all of it has caused some slippage in the price of Corey Ray cards which were a little pricy after he drafted.
I recently actually picked one of his autographed cards out of last year's Bowman's Best.....
There are several things that I really like about this card. First, I like the Bowman's Best cards. Pretty nice design, clean spaces for the players to sign, and a nice on-card signature from the Brewers outfield prospect. I also the fact that he included his number 2 on the card. He's wearing that number in the Minors this season, but there is no guarantee that he will have that number once he gets to Milwaukee.
There is still time for Ray to pull it together, get the Majors, and be a good player. If he never gets there though, he was still a really good college player.
Things happen to players that makes us want to run away. Sometime in the spring of 2005 I went all in on Mark Mulder cards. The Cardinals had just been to the World Series and upgraded their starting rotation by trading for one of the A's big three pitchers. As a Cardinals fan I loved the move. The team had a very good starting rotation in 2004, I figured Mulder was going to be a big winner with the Cardinals.
I started hitting up the local card shops around St. Louis looking for cool Mulder cards and found plenty of great options. Plenty of other Cardinals collectors did the same thing. His cards were pretty reasonable and Mulder had done a fair amount of signing while he was with the A's. One of the first Mulder cards I picked up was a copy of his 2003 Donruss Signature Series Autograph.
The 2005 season came and went. The Cardinals reached the NLCS and lost to the Astros. Mulder did not have his best season, but still won 16 games. Chris Carpenter had a career year and won the Cy Young, so really being the second starter in the rotation seemed decent. Then 2006 happened and Mulder's shoulder basically fell off.
Collectors flipped out and there were tons of cheap Mulder cards everywhere. I was happy to take some cheap cards off other people's hands and loaded up on his cards. My favorite cheap Mulder card was a copy of his 1999 Topps Traded autograph.....
The way I saw the whole Mulder injury at the time was that he was going to miss a year, come back, and generally be his former self. Not what really happened since Mulder's career was basically sunk after 2006. He pitched a few games in 2007 and 2008, tried a comeback with the Angels a few years back, but basically he was done. I probably should have known a little bit better, although I still love the Topps Traded autograph.
Since the days of collecting Mark Mulder cards I have developed a system of sorts for collecting cards of players who are injured. There is inevitably either some level of panic with a drastic sell off, or just a slow steady decline. Either way, the price of the players cards are going to go down. So, here it is. Shoulders are bad and we do not touch them. I could see good reason to flip out.
until the price of their cards levels off. Scott Rolen had a bum shoulder after he was run over by Hee-Seop Choi in 2005. He missed time, his power numbers dropped, and he ended up on the Blue Jays and Reds. For awhile I just avoided his cards, but they are pretty consistent now and much more affordable than when he was with the Cardinals.
Then there are elbow injuries. Everyone is always bummed out when a pitcher on their team has Tommy John surgery. People can flip out about these injuries, but should they? I remember back in 2011 when the Cardinals lost Adam Wainwright to an elbow injury. Sure the Cardinals won the World Series that year, but they lost Adam Wainwright right? So many affordable Wainwright cards......
and then he came back and won 53 games in 2012, 2013, and 2014. No, Wainwright did not win a Cy Young Award, but everything after the elbow injury worked out pretty well. Until that whole Achilles Tendon thing, but I haven't really thought that one out yet. Not a real common occurrence in baseball. Maybe a reason to flip out, the Achilles thing, not the elbow.
Currently there is a bit of a meltdown amongst Cardinals fans about Alex Reyes. I am sad he's out for the season too, but it's an elbow injury. I am feeling alright about his future still and am still out trying to find his cards. No need to flip out.
I just picked up a really nice looking Bowman's Best autograph of the hard throwing pitcher just a few days back......
His card prices aren't sinking like a boulder in a lake, but it sure does seem like a lot of people have really lost interest in this guy. I am still happy collecting cards of Alex Reyes and I am pretty sure that he's going to be a good pitcher. Yes, there are pitchers who do not make it back from elbow injuries, there is always that chance, but in that case I can look back at Alex Reyes and think about would could have been....
Conger was drafted by the Angels in the first round (25th overall) of the 2006 Amateur Draft out of high school. Conger was a highly regarded prospect for many years making the Baseball Prospectus Top 100 Prospects 4 times between 2007 and 2011. He graduated to the Majors full time in 2011, but Conger never hit enough to stick a starting job with the Halos. In 5 years with the team Conger posted a slash line of .224/.294/.353 with 17 home runs, 34 doubles, and 71 RBIs. He was traded to the Astros after the 2014 season where he was the backup catcher and post home run Robot Dancer. I believe this was actually called the "CongerBot"
Conger ended up with the Rays in 2016 which is probably not a great thing considering the Rays seem to run through catchers fast. Not really a surprise, but Conger ended up in Durham and did not hit at all. In 30 games with the Bulls Conger hit .165/.200/.303 with 3 home runs, a triple, and 4 doubles. Conger is still in the Minors this year with the Diamondbacks.
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I am not a huge Angels person, so I never really went after any Conger cards back in the days when he was regarded as a serious prospect. I also never pulled one of his cards, so I am not sure what they actually were worth in terms of trade or monetary value back in the day. According to the biggest Angels card collector that I know his cards had a decent following in the years he was in the Minors. Sort of dried up quickly after he got to the Majors. I got this 2007 Bowman's Best autograph, which was one of his nice autos, for pretty much nothing. I have always liked this set a lot though, even if it is sticker autographs, the silver on the sticker and card fit together well.
Wake Forest did not quite finish last every year that Will Craig was playing baseball for the Demon Deacons, but the team only finished at .500 once during his three years in Winston-Salem. There place in the standings had nothing to do with Craig's on-field performance as much as it did with the fact that the Deacons are a little short on talent and play in one of the tougher baseball conferences.
He hits, he pitches, he was the greatest Wake Forest baseball player to ever don Deacs uni....
Craig was the ACC Player of the Year in 2015 and was a 1st Team All-American in 2015 and 2016. While he did not take home any of the big hardware in college baseball, he was certainly deserving of consideration for awards like the Golden Spikes and Dick Howser Trophy. In the end he did take home the D1Baseball National Player of the Year which is sort of like that time Ernie Banks won the MVP award when the Cubs finished in last place.
I'm not sure how Will Craig will fair as a Major League player, but the Pirates picked him up towards the end of the 1st Round in last summer's amateur draft. While he can hit and pitch, the Pirates have made him a full time position player, so for the moment he will have to just be Babe Ruth at the plate...I'm sure he can talk his way into pitching at some point.
While Craig was one of the better players in the ACC over his three years in college, the Wake Forest star never appeared in any baseball card sets up until last year. I was a little disappointed that he never appeared on any USA Baseball teams, but now that he's in the Minors it's time to catch up with some of his cards.
I just picked up my first autograph of the former Wake Forest hitter/pitcher.
I was happy to see Topps include the Pirates third baseman in their end of year Bowman products. They even did a pretty good job of airbrushing his Pirates uni over his Wake Forest uni. Craig had a nice start to his professional career last summer, so he should continue to appear on baseball cards for the foreseeable future. In just over 200 at-bats in A ball Craig posted a .280/.412/.362 slash line. The power is a little disappointing, but no complaints about 40 walks in 200 at bats.
No pitching appearances.
Will Craig is the stuff of legends in Winston-Salem and many in central North Carolina are eager to see what will become of his professional career. While he was sort of a modern day Babe Ruth during his college career, many ACC baseball fans would take a nice solid professional career for the greatest college baseball player in the history of Wake Forest.
I have been fortunate enough to witness two no-hitters in person since I started this blog a few years back. The first no-hitter was thrown by Cubs pitcher Mike Montgomery while he was pitching for the Durham Bulls. The second was a combined no-hitter between three college baseball players playing for the USA Baseball Collegiate team. Ever since the no-hitter thrown by Montgomery I have enjoyed collecting his cards. The same would have been true of the college players except they weren't really on too many cards at the time....
Two and half years later and two of the three players from the USA Baseball no-hitter have made their way into the Minors. I finally have a chance to collect a few of their cards. A.J. Puk was selected near the top of the first round by the A's and Ryan Hendrix was picked by the Reds. Tanner Houck is in his final year at Mizzou.
I have posted a few Ryan Hendrix cards this past summer almost immediately after the draft. I have held out a bit on Puk since he was a highly regarded prospect and his USA Baseball cards tended to run a little bit higher than most of the other cards in those products.
Puk has popped up in some of the late year Bowman products and his cards are much more affordable now. So, I finally picked up my first autograph of the top pitching prospect......
This is also my first autograph from last year's Bowman's Best. It's an airbrushed picture from his time at the University of Florida, but still a good looking card. I have high hopes that A.J. Puk will be a good Major League pitcher, but if not, I still always have the no-hitter....
Malaska appeared in 15 games for the 2003 Durham Bulls team all as a left handed relief pitcher. He pitched 23 innings in those 15 games, so obviously more than a LOOGY pitcher. The 2003 Bulls won the International League South Division and also went on to win the Governors Cup (IL Championship), but Malaska got called up to the Devil Rays in the middle of July and was not around for the team's playoff run. Malaska made his Major League Debut against the Texas Rangers on the 17th of that month in a 12-6 loss. He ended up being selected off of waivers by the Red Sox at the end of the 2003 season and he ended his professional baseball career after pitching with the Red Sox and Pawtucket in 2004 and 2005.
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I really liked the Bowman's Best cards in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but as the product moved past 2001 it became less likable in my opinion. There were 130 cards of rookies with lots of autographs and some game used relics in the 2003 set. There are some decent names like Ryan Howard, Hanley Ramirez, and Kevin Youkilis, but the list gets thin fast. Malaska has a few rookie cards beyond this Bowman's Best card, but this is his only certified autograph. Since I am trying to load up on as many autographs for these Durham Bulls posts as possible, this was an easy choice.
