More Lowes, But Just Brandon

There have been two players with the last name Lowe in the Rays, and Durham Bulls, lineups for the past year.  One is first baseman Nate Lowe, and the other is second baseman Brandon Lowe.  The names are not pronounced the same. 

.@RaysBaseball has Brandon Lowe and Nate Lowe.

Their explanation for how to pronounce those names made us dizzy.pic.twitter.com/6Td5VV1jwx

— Sporting News MLB (@sn_mlb) April 29, 2019

I have posted cards of both players on here, but I am a bigger fan of Brandon.  He had a great year with the Rays last year finishing third in the American League Rookie of the Year voting.  I get him finishing behind Yordan Alvarez, but I am still not sure how John Means snuck in front of him,  perhaps some sort of gesture of sympathy towards Orioles fans for having to watch their team. 

It seemed like collectors were really into Brandon Lowe for awhile, but his cards have slid back in price a little bit this year.  With all of the time I have spent on Blake Snell cards, I feel like some of the other former Durham Bulls players who are currently in the Majors have been less of a priority.

Sort of accidental, but we can get more into the positives and negatives of the Blake Snell autographs in an end of year post. 

Two new Lowe cards. 

The first one is from the bulky Gold Label set.   I think Topps has improved these cards over the past two or three years so that the frames no longer pop off the cards.  They are still really heavy and feel a little clumsy.  The design feels a little stagnant too. 

I actually picked up this card with a Snell autograph since I cannot pass up combined shipping. 

Next up. 

This card is so much better than the Blake Snell autographed card I posted yesterday.  The art work is better.  The sticker is straight.  Feel like that sort of covers it.  

This was a pretty fun five-ten minutes of my morning.  Next month, I am going to try more cards that are not Blake Snell.  

2019 Blake Snell Autograph Count: 26

Yes, there are more Snell autographs to post.  More in the mail, but I am really running out.  It would take a small miracle, or some Ebay seller dumping their inventory, to get to 30 with a month left in the year.  So, here is the latest Snell, which is out of the Wal-Mart exclusive product Topps Gallery.  

Front of the card.  

I used to love these cards back in the 1990s.  Now, that quite as much.  Still, it's not exactly their worst effort either.  I like the design of the card, the art work is pretty mediocre.  Can we put the autograph stickers on straight?  Look at the words "Topps Certified Autograph Issue" and then the bottom of the sticker.  Not so good.  

I like that there are stats on the back of the card and not just some form letter stating the obvious that I have an autographed card.  While the stats are nice, it also means that Topps tried to squeeze a bunch of other stuff onto the back of the card that makes it seem a little cluttered.  Beyond the stats, personal information, and "Gallery Notes", Topps also managed to sneak in the name of the artist and a disclaimer about the autograph signing being witnessed.  

Also a serial number, a card number, small print, and a trio of little logos at the bottom.  

That's a lot of stuff for the back of the card.  Overall, this is a decent card, nothing great.  It's solidly in the bottom half of the Snell autographs that Topps has put out this year.  

A 1980s Card Part 28 - 1984 Fleer Floyd Rayford

Two days later than normal, but the beginning of the week was busy.  I am going with one of the real cult favorite Cardinal players of the 1980s this week in the person of Floyd Rayford.  He played for the majority of the 1980s, mostly with the Orioles, but he was briefly traded to the Cardinals in 1983 for outfielder Tito Landrum. 

The Orioles were in a pennant run.  Landrum ended up hitting the series clinching home run in the American League Championship Series to beat Tony LaRussa's White Sox. 

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The Orioles ended up beating the Phillies to win the World Series. 

Rayford ended up getting a few baseball cards in a Cardinals uniform for his 56 games with the team.  All of them, from what I know, are in 1984 sets.  He has one card int he Fleer set, one in the Topps set.  The Topps card is an action shot, the Fleer card....... 

This card accurately portrays Floyd best in my opinion.  You at least get the vibe that he is a short round guy with a lot of hair.  Love the 1980s satin jacket, and if you look closely he is wearing some really sweet batting glove.  

Floyd has a lot of Rochester on the back of his card.  I know he worked there as a coach for awhile too, a legendary player for the die hards of that Minor League team.  Not really an impressive stat line there outside of those seasons at (elevation) El Paso and Salt Lake City.  

So, what happened to Floyd and the Cardinals?  

Oddly enough, Rayford was traded back to the Orioles towards the end of the Spring Training in 1984, which is where he spent the rest of his career.  A few days later the teams made another trade where Landrum ended up back with the Cardinals.  It was not a duplication of the Rayford for Landrum trade, but it sure felt that way.  

This is how they are supposed to look right?  Rayford did not do much once he got back in Baltimore.  Tito Landrum was a platoon player with Andy Van Slyke in right field, ended up playing a significant amount of games for the 1985 National League Championship team.  

Two More Guys In My Wolfpack

I took a bit of a break from baseball cards last week to pick up a pair of basketball cards.  I had not even really thought about finding any new basketball cards, but I ran across a social media post with a picture of a former NC State basketball player.

Releasing Wednesday, take a look at the 2019-20 Panini Certified Basketball checklist now. https://t.co/ZninIbRnMY #collect pic.twitter.com/jPD5KDpA2L

— Cardboard Connection (@sportscards) November 11, 2019

I think Cody Martin might be more famous for his time playing at Nevada, but he spent the first two years of his college basketball career at NC State.  He is actually from North Carolina.  If you do not know anything about Cody Martin, he also has a twin brother who played at both NC State and Nevada.

Caleb is not in the NBA, but once did not sit down after fouling out of a game at Duke.

This is what they do when someone fouls out.....

Not sitting down at Duke three or four years ago has not earned Caleb a card, but Cody has several as a member of the Charlotte Hornets, and as a Nevada Wolfpack.  No NC State Wolfpack, so I went with the Hornets.  He was really good in college, both at NC State and Nevada, but I am not sure he is doing very much with the Hornets.  

What is this card?  

I don't know.  No idea.  It did not cost much.  I am not sure that I like the fact that Cody now has a man bun.  The NC State people used to ride Kyle Guy, he went to Virginia, pretty hard over his man bun back in the day. 

Kyle Guy is on the Sacramento Kings now.  Not sure he plays at all.  

I also picked up another copy of Dennis Smith's rookie card from Contenders a few years back.  

Smith has not really lived up hype, but he was a fun player to watch while he was at NC State.  

Cholly Jolly

Cholly Jolly is one of the great yesteryear nicknames that I have run across collecting older baseball cards.  It belonged to long-time Pirate and Cub first baseman Charlie Grimm.  I have posted a card of his before, a quick refresher....

He was a St. Louis native, but he also played on the Durham Bulls for one season early in his career.  Grimm had a solid 20 year career as a player, known as a great fielding first baseman.  Bill James has long considered him to be the greatest defensive player at the position.  He also had a pretty good run as a manager after he retired. 

Grimm was the manager of the Cubs for much of the 1930s and 1940s, and prior to 2016, had coached the last three Cubs teams to reach the World Series.  He ended his managerial career by working a few years for the Milwaukee Braves.  He helped turn over the roster as the team moved from Boston to Milwaukee, he leaned heavily on a few young players who he thought were superior to the veterans on the roster.  He swapped out guys like Earl Torgeson and Bob Elliot for Eddie Matthews and Joe Adcock, and sat Andy Pafko for Hank Aaron.  The Braves fired him before 1957, they did not give him a ring obviously, but he set up the team to win the World Series. 

Here the first Cholly Jolly card I added to my collection way back at the beginning of this year. 

I believe that this 1934 Goudey card is considered Grimm's official rookie card, but he had other cards long before this was printed during his playing days.  My second card of the longtime Cub is from the early 1920s.  Here is the card.....

This is a 1922 American Caramel card.  The card has some discolorations in different places, and the corners look only slightly rounded.  If only I could compare this to another card from this set, I'd be curious how the size of the borders are on this copy compare to others.  I am not saying that the card is altered, but I kind of suspect this has been trimmed a bit.  I traded for this card, and the person who traded it felt that the person they bought it from had some reputation with that sort of thing. 

I am not chasing anyone down, nor pointing any fingers.  Happy to take an old card with a bit of a discount due to it's "condition", which I will admit looks a little too good to be true. 

Back of the card. 

You can see more discoloration on the back of the card.  The front and back of the card has a similar orientation as the Cracker Jack cards.  I wish there was something more to the back, but this is from the 1920s, so no love lost because the American Caramel Company slapped some advertising on their baseball cards. 

Overall, I am really happy to add a second card of Grimm to my collection.  The former Durham Bull had a good playing career, and had some solid contributions as a manager.  I need to find a few of his manager cards, which will be a project for next year. 

A 1980s Card Part 27- 1982 O-Pee-Chee Lonnie Smith

The Topps Traded sets in the 1980s were great, but you had to wait all the way until the end of the year to get new cards of new players on your teams.  If you did not get the Traded sets, then you had to wait all the way until the following year to get the new players in their new uniform.  Then there were the O-Pee-Chee cards.  You know, the Canadian version of Topps. 

They were sort of a halfway point between the traded set and the regular Topps cards.  I am not sure when they came out during the year, but they often included traded players, so later than the base Topps set.  They also did not show the players in their new uniforms, just merely restyled their Topps card to fit the design of their new team. 

I have already covered a bunch of this in a post a few months back with a John Tudor card from the 1985 O-Pee-Chee set.  Great card.  

I know there are likely some who would put out that John Tudor is wearing a Pirates uniform, but the card clearly says, "Traded To Cardinals 12-12-84" and the logos and word marks also all belong to the Cardinals.  This is his first Cardinals card.  I feel like I could make a whole post of "Traded To..." posts of Cardinals O-Pee-Chee cards, but for today I am just going to stick with Lonnie Smith.  

Here is the card.  

Lonnie was a really important player on the 1982 Cardinals.  He finished second in the National League MVP voting in 1982 with almost 70 stolen bases, an average over .300, and an on-base percentage just a tad over .380.  The team won the World Series, so that's always a good thing.  

Prior to playing on the Cardinals, Lonnie played a few years for the Phillies.  It was the only team he played for prior to getting traded to the Cardinals.  Here is the back of the card.....

The coloring on the back is a little different than the standard Topps card, which were a little darker shade of green.  The information is obviously different since it is written in French and English.  Also love that Lonnie was a young enough player that you can see all of his Minor League stats, as well as his Major League numbers.  

Lonnie played on the Cardinals until the beginning of the 1985 when he was traded to the Royals to make room for Vince Coleman.  He was apart of the Pittsburgh cocaine trial along with Keith Hernandez and Joaquin Andujar.  That was where the guy who was inside Pirates parrot mascot was selling drugs to players.

Whitey Herzog ditched all the Cardinals players involved with the Pirates drug scandal.  Lonnie did get a 1985 O-Pee-Chee card, but it did not have a "Traded" stamp anywhere on the front of the card.

I have been saving the greatest 1980s Cardinals O-Pee-Chee card, might need to post it sooner than later.  Anyone have any ideas of player who might have a card like the Lonnie Smith or John Tudor card above?  

2019 Blake Snell Autograph Count: 25

Well, I have reached my goal of 25 Blake Snell autographed cards for the year.  

I couldn't have done it without all of you.  

Thank you for stopping by to read about all the autographs I have found over the past eleven and a half months.  

Also my wife for putting up with my baseball card collection, and my son for bringing in the mail most of the time.  

Here is the card.  

This is my third autographed card of Snell out of the Topps Clearly set.  I have the base autograph, the red parallel, and now the black parallel.  I like this better than the red parallel, but it's still not as good as the base autograph.  

Here is the back of the card.  

I really like the back of the Acetate cards.  The flipped image and the black and white player photo always look nice together.  I feel like black border on the front of the card does not offer the usual contrast with the design of the back, but I still like the overall appearance and design of this card.  

Now that I have reached my goal, that does not mean that I am done with Snell autographs for the year.  If there are quality cards at the right price I will consider adding them to my collection.  I also know that there is almost no way that I will get to 30 Snell autographs for the year unless someone goes crazy with cheap Buy It Nows on Ebay. 

I need to do this again next year.  Maybe with a different player.