Bad Choice or Bad Choice.

The Cardinals picked up a new pitcher last week from the Brewers in the person of former closer John Axford.  Stroll around the internet and you will find that the fans in Milwaukee have lost patience with the hard throwing right-hander, so maybe a change of scenery and a possible playoff appearance will help his motivation.  Cardinals fans also seemed a little bit skeptical of the move and thought the team should have made a bigger splash, or no splash at all.  Stark contrast, but that's the way the wind was blowing last week.  Being a Cardinals fan, I disregard the commentary on Axford's struggles during the past eighteen months and immediately searched out a few cool Axford cards.  Unfortunately I found that he has only one certified autograph were he is not wearing a goofy blanked out generic blue hat.  This one..... 

2013 Topps Tribute World Baseball Classic John Axford Autograph 

I was actually disappointed that I had to get a card from this set.  I actually thought long and hard about the Panini, but I could not pull the trigger on a non-licesenced card.  I am not against them, but I really do not like the blanked out hats and unis.  Real goofy.  So, at the same time I was avoiding the Panini the World Baseball Classic set has been notably absent from my collection this summer.  The absence of World Baseball Classic cards is not an accident.  I really do not like the event.  I know who won, but I did not watch a full game from the entire event.  I watched this cool fight.  Axford and Stubby Clapp both make an appearance.    

The event has gotten stale after its third time out and I am not sure why Topps felt the need to commemorate the event at all this year, let alone do it with a really high end set.  Needless to say, I would much rather have cards of the players featured in this set in their MLB uniforms then their national team uniforms, but in Axford's case I guess I will settle for what I can get.  Really, this card is the better of two pretty bad choices.  

My Top 50 Players on Cardboard--#50 Trammell/Whitaker

My Top 50 Players On Cardboard 
#50
Alan Trammell/Lou Whitaker 

1996 Fleer Lou Whitaker/Alan Trammell

Hobby Impact-
These two long-time Tigers infielders have had little actual hobby impact, but they do have a surprisingly loyal and dedicated fan base.  The majority of their careers was spent during the eighties when there were no inserts, short-prints, printing plates, relics, or certified autographs.  Trammell has signed for a few things since his retirement, but Sweet Lou has been out of sight for the most part since leaving the field.  Still, if you are looking to find two really good players from the eighties who are fun to collect you cannot go wrong with these two.  I love the fact that their careers ran parallel, they played for the same team for a really long time, and can be found in just about every set from 1978 until 1995

On The Field Impact-
The obvious answer to this question is the 1984 season when the Tigers steamrolled the rest of baseball on their way to a World Series title.  The duo of Trammell and Whitaker had many other good years beyond 1984 and the duo was a fixture at the All-Star game for much of the mid 80s.  Both players get a lot of play in Hall of Fame arguments and they both have some really good career comparables.  I've been getting into the JAWS ratings recently which rates Lou Whitaker as the 11th best second baseman of all-time and Trammell as the 11th best shortstop.

Favorite Card-

1978 Topps Rookie Shortstops Paul Molitor/Alan Trammell RC

This card flies under the radar often, but this card has two great rookies in Trammell and Molitor.  U.L. Washington having his picture taken with his toothpick would have made it a slam dunk all-time great, but you cannot have everything.  The card is easy to find, inexpensive, and who wouldn't want a rookie/prospects card from the late 70s or early 80s.  Pretty sweet card and definitely worth check into if it's not already in your collection.  Whiatker's rookie card is also a rookies card similar to this one, but the names on his card are more Mickey Klutts and less Paul Molitor.

My Baseball Card Top 50

I am starting a new thread of posts starting tomorrow morning which I am titling My Baseball Card Top 50.  Last fall I did a countdown series of posts showcasing my Top 50 Sets from my thirty years in card collecting.  I had a lot of fun going back through all of my old sets, scanning cards, and getting back into some boxes of cards that I had not seen in years.  I thought about doing another similar thread this summer and might make it an annual fall tradition to do some kind of list or countdown with my cards.  So, here's the run down on my latest set of posts:

I went through a whole mess of my cards with this question in mind: What players have had the greatest impact on the hobby of collecting baseball cards during the last 30 years I have been collecting?  My list started out at well over 100 players and through a series of decisions you may or may not agree with a narrowed the field of players down to a cool fifty.  Some of the players on the list started their careers before 1983 (3 years) while others have only played briefly.  I made a sample post below:




MY BASEBALL CARD TOP 50
#UNRANKED
RAY LANKFORD

1990 Upper Deck Ray Lankford RC

Hobby Impact-
When I am out looking for trades, or trying to buy cards, and ask people if they have Ray Lankford cards I often get a confused looks and many moments of stunned silence.  Is it because people are reluctant to let Lankford cards out of their collection?  Or could it be that Ray Lankford is also, secretly, this person favorite player to collect to?  After more than a decade chasing down all the best Ray Lankford cards that I can I have come to the conclusion that people either totally ignore Ray Lankford's hobby impact, or it's giant and people are really hoarding his cards in large quantities.  You decide.

On The Field Impact-
While most of Lankford's career was spent as the best player on a lot of bad 1990s Cardinals teams, he did manage to make three postseason appearances with the Cardinals in 1996, 2000, and 2004.  His best years probably were between 1996 and 1998 when he spent a year and a half batting fourth behind Mark McGwire and the other half hitting in front of Brian Jordan and Ron Gant.  His career OPS+ of 123 ranks even with Tigers and Dodgers outfielder Kirk Gibson and in the same neighborhood as Eric Davis and J.D. Drew.  Mark McGwire said of Lankford, "He's the best protection I've ever had in the line-up, that includes in Oakland"  Jose Canseco cries a little bit every time he hears that quote.

Favorite Card-

1998 Skybox EX-2001 Ray Lankford Essential Credentials Future

A cool 1990s baseball player with few printing plates, autographs, or relics means you have to go with a cool chase card.  Maybe a 1993 Finest Refractor.  Could have gone with the Topps Tek variations too, but I have also liked the Essential Credential cards.  Limited print runs and difficult to find, but not impossible.  I own both the Future and Now versions of this card.  A must have for any Lankford card collector.


and a bonus...

Buy Local!

I live in one of the "cool" metro areas.  Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill-better known as the Triangle-always makes all of those really trendy city lists.  Best places to live, most PhDs per 100,000, sunshine, colleges, pine trees, schools.  Lots to love about living in North Carolina.  Be a trendy, hip, cool city means we have lots of cool things about buying local products, making local products, local business, local, local, local.  Lots of signs like this:

Or perhaps if you live in Durham you might see a sign like this: 

and Raleigh of course has their own cool Buy Local sign too.  Everyone in North Carolina is stuck on local, but I am wondering how its possible for me as a consumer of baseball cards to buy local.  There is one decent card shop in all of Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill which is far far away from my house.  The card shop which is closer to my house is not so great.  In fact, I stopped there this weekend to buy a few boxes and remembered quickly why I do not buy cards from them.  

With card shops being difficult to reach, I have been working hard to develop a few connections around Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Burlington, and a few other locales where I can trade and buy baseball cards.  This week I successfully bought a few cards from a local collector stepping out of the hobby.  Guy has some really good pictures too.  

I ended up with four new cards for my collection:

1999 Bowman's Best Scott Rolen Autograph 

First up is a pair of Scott Rolen autographs.  Both cards are from his time with the Phillies, but the autographs are on-card and very clean and clear.  Rolen was a pretty prolific signer as a Phillie, but he dropped off as a Cardinals, and never signed as a Red.  I think there might be a token Blue Jays autograph.  

2000 SPX Scott Rolen Autograph 

The 2000 SPX set was a really cool set.  Lots of autographs including rookies.  Rolen is not a rookie in this set, but the veteran autographs in this set include Canseco, Ivan Rodriguez, Jeter, Manny Ramirez.  Again, really good set. 

2005 Playoff Absolute Rafael Furcal Jersey/Bat/Autograph 

It's hard to believe that this guy is still on the Cardinals roster.  If only he were playing instead of Pete Kozma.  Furcal was a key contributor to the 2011 World Championship Cardinals team which makes his cards desirable for my collection.  Furcal has been a pretty big signer during his career, but this card is limited to just 50.  The card, just like the SPx Rolen, hails from a cool set.  Unfortunately the 2005 set was the final year of this brand.  

2002 SPx Winning Materials Frank Thomas/Magglio Ordonez Dual Jersey

I also picked up one non-Cardinals card.  I really like the dual jersey, multiple relic cards that Upper Deck used in the Winning Materials cards.  This was a pretty long running set for Upper Deck and they almost always made a Winning Materials set.  I did not actually see this card before buying it, but I saw several other prints and liked that most of the Thomas swatches had a pinstripe.  I went for it and got lucky.

Despite not having a local card shop I am going to keep working on buying from local sellers.  It might be a little bit difficult to do at times, but there are plenty of cool baseball cards floating around North Carolina.  It just happens that many of them are not in card shops.  

Two (Too) Many Ginters

I did a whole series of posts the last two weeks on all of the Ginter cards including the non-sport Ginters.  My main focus is always the baseball cards, but chasing down some of the non-sport cards inserted into baseball cards can fun sometimes too.  My recent pull of a Henry Rollins autograph out of a pack of Ginter has to rank as my greatest non-sport autograph ripped out of a pack.  Little did I count on running into a second copy a few weeks later.  No packs this time.  

2013 Topps Allen & Ginter Henry Rollins Autograph 

As a collector, there are times when you come across a person who is willing to sell, or trade, a card out of the sheer fact that they do not like the player, team, or in this case, person depicted on the card.  I have talked about this in several posts, but am always amazed when I run across these collectors.  They might sound like this (using Jim Edmonds as an example): 

"I was opening a box of cards and my autograph was Jim Edmonds.  I really cannot stand him and his half t-shirt warmups he wears during batting practice.  This card is going up on Ebay or I am going to trade it as soon as a get a decent offer"  

Leverage gone.  Price down.  Have a good time paying your Ebay fees my friend.  So, this Rollins card came from a local source who pulled it and immediately started complaining about how terrible all of the Rollins spoken word albums are and how his music went down hill after the mid 90s.  Replace with half t-shirt in the rant above with his Weight album and throw in something about the Grammy's, Bibles, and you get the picture...  I was happy to swoop in with a few local ACC baseball products, and a Seth Maness, to pull off my second Rollins card from this year's Ginter set.  

I believe that this card is going to be stashed away for a raining day, but will cash it in for some really nice Cardinals or Rays card.  Perhaps Topps will get a Cardinals player not named Allen Craig, Jon Jay, Matt Adams, or Shelby Miller to sign for one of their later releases.  

Durham Bulls David Price 2008 Minor League Player of the Year Statue

I am keeping with my Durham Bulls theme for the weekend for the Labor Day holiday and featuring some cool items I have picked up from my favorite minor league team over the past year.  So far, I have posted a Chipper Jones bobble head from his jersey retirement ceremony and a game used Tim Beckham bat.  My third item comes from Rays All-Star pitcher David Price.

One of the great challenges in collecting the Durham Bulls is the fact that many of the Stadium Giveaways are limited to full and partial season ticket holders.  Single game ticket purchasers are often left out on promotional items.  My wife started buying my a package every year for my birthday and I also get the set of tickets along with a pair of tickets which I can trade in for a promotional item on certain dates.  Having the tickets for a pair of promotional items does not guarantee you that you will walk away with the coolest promotional items, so there are years where you have to back track and find the items away from the stadium.

Over the years I have done pretty well putting together the different bobbles given away by the team.  I did not even live in North Carolina during the 2002, 100th Anniversary Season, but I have most of the set of bobbleheads that the team gave away that summer.  By my count, I am still missing an Andruw Jones and a local radio host (blah).  I am also missing a Jeremy Hellickson bobblehead from 2009 or 2010 and a triple bobble of Hellickson, Dan Johnson, and Charlie Montoyo.

Until recently, I was also missing the David Price statue which only was only given away to 1,200 fans.  That is a really low number for a stadium giveaway.  To compare, I also collect the Cardinals and one of their more limited bobbles was the 2001 Mike Matheny which was only given to the first 20,000 fans.  I realize there is a huge difference in the size of the stadiums, but 20,000 is probably 40% of Busch Stadium.  1,200 is 10% of Durham Bulls Athletic Park.

Luckily, I was able to track down the Price statue recently and add it to my collection.  Let's have a look:

At first glance I really liked this statue.  The Durham Bulls have always given out bobbles, so it was nice to see them give away something a little bit different for once.  The details in the uniform are also fairly strong at first galnce.  For example, from this view you will notice that the 125th Anniversary of Minor League Baseball Patch appears above the uniform number on the left-hand side of the jersey.

The back of the jersey is also pretty awesome with the accuracy on the double patch, USA flag and Minor League logos, located at the top back of the jersey.  You can also see the facsimile signature of Price located on the base along with the numbering showing the copies of the SGA at 1,200.  After first glance however, I dug a little deeper and became a little bit more disappointed in the statue.

My first disappointment in the statute was head of Price.  I know David Price.  This is not David Price. I am not sure it's in the same zip code as David Price.  It's hard to be accurate with bobbles and statues, but you've got to come a little bit closer than this.  At least throw the David Price stubble onto the statue.

The biggest problem with the statue however is seen in this picture above.  It's a little bit like find that Goldbug guy in the Richard Scary books, but the second you realize what is missing from the statue you will kind of be shocked a team, or statute manufacturer could overlook such a detail.....Compare to the real David Price on the Durham Bulls circa 2008....

A little hard to see in this picture, but the right panel-back panel on Price as a left-handed pitcher, has the Durham Bulls logo.  The statue?  No.  It's a little hard to believe that a statue can get every little detail correct from the special Minor League Baseball patch to the double Minor League and Flag Patches on the back to the fact that Price wore 41 on the Bulls and not his usual 14...on and on and on. Yet, the team logo is left off the jersey.  Face plant.

Still cool and still going on the shelf.  Maybe I will print off a Durham Bulls logo and tape it onto the statue.

Game Used Tim Beckham Bat

I am using my weekend posts to catch up a little bit on my favorite Durham Bulls pick-ups (non-cards) during the current season.  Collecting a minor league team and players offers many challenges with the most obvious being frequent turn over.  A player might stay with a Major League team for years and develop a rapport and relationship with the fans, but Minor Leaguers rarely seem to have that chance.

The Durham Bulls fans have been lucky in recent years to see several players stick around the team for multiple years allowing the fans to follow the player a little bit closer than a player who's only in town for a few months.  Justin Ruggiano spent four years in Durham before leaving the Rays organization briefly for the Astros and then a gig playing for the Marlins at the Big League level.  Same could be said for current Durham Bulls player Leslie Anderson who is in his third season with the club.

One of the players in his second season with the Durham Bulls is infielder Tim Beckham.  He's certainly not the most popular player on the club, and many Rays fans view him as a dud given that he was the top draft pick in the amateur draft during the 2008 season, but projects to be a utility player at the Major League level.  Beckham also was suspended for failing drug tests last season.  Despite all of that, I really enjoy watching Beckham play.

Here's my run down Beckham's game:

1.  He's a really good athlete.




2.  He's got good pop for a middle infielder



3.  He's got a nice glove



In all honesty, if Beckham had not been the first pick in the draft and had just been a high school kid from Georgia working his way up to the Majors and happened to land a job as a utility guy nobody would say a bad word about the guy.  Nothing.

So, I am pretty sure that I am one of the few people in the world who collect Tim Beckham and was happy to find a game used/autographed bat of the Rays future middle infielder.  Heard he might get called up this week.  The bat is a MaxBat and shows heavy game use.

The bat obviously has a crack in it and is being held together by medical tape at the moment.  I have not taken the tape off since I acquired the bat, but I would guess it's either two pieces or close to two pieces.  The bat is made of maple wood and is really top heavy, so it's not really surprising that it's snapped around the handle.

Two things I love about this bat:

First, Beckham took time to sign the bat.  You would be surprised at how many players will not sign bats.  This is a pretty good signature from Beckham and he even signed with a silver Sharpie.  A black sharpie and a dark wood bat would not look cool.  Silver Sharpie on a dark bat.  Very nice.

Second, the bat has been used for a really long time.  There is a seriously large amount of pine tar on this bat and there are a lot of little pings and dents from game use.  You can see from the picture above the pine tar covering the bottom half of the MaxBat logo.  Below you can see all of the scratches and scuffs on the bottom knob.

The barrel also has a lot of wear and tear around the nameplate.

It's not the best game used bat in my collection by any means, but I am really happy to add it to my collection and will gladly display it in a corner of my man cave.  Remember Rays fans, Tim Beckham did not draft himself first overall and everyone needs an infielder on the bench.  Be classy, show Tim some love.