Torii Hunter May Make Perfect Sense

post from LADodgerTalk.com - Matt Kemp, Clayton Kershaw, Vin Scully, Andre Ethier and the Dodgers on 11 November 2012 10:01:56 PM. © LADodgerTalk.com - Matt Kemp, Clayton Kershaw, Vin Scully, Andre Ethier and the Dodgers

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30-YOC Top Ten Lists Top Ten Most Wanted
Baseball Cards For The 30-YOC Collection

post from 30-Year Old Cardboard on 11 November 2012 07:41:31 PM. © 30-Year Old Cardboard

?30-YOC Top Ten Lists? ? Top Ten Most Wanted Baseball Cards For The 30-YOC Collection This blog post is long overdue. And trust me when I say that it took me some time to cut the list down to ten … Continue reading →

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ed-baseball-cards-for-the-30-yoc-collection/

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Fergie Jenkins 1982 O-Pee-Chee Baseball Card

post from 30-Year Old Cardboard on 11 November 2012 03:58:39 PM. © 30-Year Old Cardboard

Fergie Jenkins 1982 O-Pee-Chee Baseball Card Being that Fergie Jenkins was born and raised in Canada, I have always thought that adding his O-Pee-Chee baseball cards to my collection was a necessary thing to do. It’s just not that easy though. So … Continue reading →

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Elston Howard

post from Corner Lots Baseball on 11 November 2012 03:02:49 PM. © Corner Lots Baseball

Looking at the guy behind home plate always intrigues me. Squatting in shin guards, chest protector, face mask, while holding up a catcher's mitt as a target for the pitcher, I like it. Even the guy in the black suit peeking over the catcher's shoulder wearing a face mask is cool.

There are many outstanding baseball catchers in the major league. Names that come to my mind are: Yogi Berra of the New York Yankees; Johnny Bench, Cincinnati Red Legs; Yandier Molina, St. Louis Cardinals; and Buster Posey, San Francisco Giants. But the one that fascinates me the most is Elston Howard of the New York Yankees.

Most catchers range in height from short to medium. But Elston Howard is tall for a catcher and was often used as a back up by manager Casey Stengel. While most catchers fit comfortably behind the plate, I recall Elston Howard extending his right leg out parallel to the first base foul line to accomodate his unusually tall height as a catcher. And I loved watching every minute of it with the other fans.

And they say baseball is full of surprises.

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Nolan Ryan 2001 Topps Archives A Great Card At A
Great Price!!!

post from 30-Year Old Cardboard on 11 November 2012 12:43:20 PM. © 30-Year Old Cardboard

Nolan Ryan 2001 Topps Archives – A Great Card At A Great Price!!! There are very few players that I will always buy when the price is right. And on www.sportlots.com, that price could be as low as just eighteen cents. … Continue reading →

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Sunday Rockpile: Move paying off already as Weiss
starts taking blows meant for front office by national pundits

post from Purple Row - All Posts on 11 November 2012 12:02:40 PM. © Purple Row - All Posts

155936564

How do you get rid of pesky sports columnists? Turn off the porch light.

In brutally mocking the Rockies Walt Weiss hire, Bill Madden of the New York Daily News gives a taste of the more brutal mocking that would have occurred had the Rockies hired Jason Giambi. How could they even interview Giambi without being crazy? Madden and the unnamed NL general manager he talked to laugh out loud that the Rockies would consider Giambi, which by extension automatically makes Weiss the worst manager in the National League, apparently.

Giambi clearly gets short shrift by many in the media and apparently opposing front offices right now when it comes to his potential for coaching leadership, which is why the Rockies open hitting coach position should be strongly considered by him as the necessary bridge he'll need to cross that cognitive dissonance gap that he's facing with many front offices before getting another shot at some team's managerial post. Madden's article, of course, is inane as it neither shows that Giambi would have been a bad manager, nor does it show that Weiss is, as the only evidence is that the Rockies hired him so it must be so.

Giambi's candidacy for the hitting coach position would fit with all of the Rockies other internal interviewees getting promoted or maintaining their positions within the organization, as Tom Runnels stays the team's bench coach and Stu Cole is being looked at for the team's third base coach job.

I mistakenly clicked on a Mark Kiszla link today, hoping to find something worth the energy in pixels it briefly used on my monitor, but no, instead I found an article that's filled with typical sports columnist platitudes about winning culture and the one big lie he decides to give his readers today, that the Rockies think spending on an ace pitcher in free agency is a waste of money because the pitcher won't work at altitude. No, the Rockies think spending on an ace pitcher is a waste of money because the pitcher will demand a lot more of it to pitch at altitude. It's the inefficiency, stupid.

Christina Kahrl's take on the Weiss hire at ESPN is that it's a bit of a "double dog dare" escalation by the Rockies. Her piece also feels to have some of Madden's lean that if the Rockies front office is the one that's making the decision, it must be a poor decision. I should add that there's also a lot of misunderstanding when it comes to Weiss's one year contract, because if we should learn anything from the Rockies non-firings and lateral shifts in duties, this organization will be loyal to anybody that it takes on, the franchise's problem is almost the complete opposite of what's implied in this line of complaint.

My jaw kind of dropped when Aaron Goldstein of American Spectator points out that Weiss will be the MLB's first Jewish baseball manager. Given baseball's rich history of famous Jewish players, if this is true, it comes as a surprise to me despite the coinciding history of antisemitism in our culture, and within baseball itself at times.

Alan Johnson, once part of the magical trifecta (along with Greg Reynolds and Brandon Hynick) that would land the Rockies Roy Halladay, pitched all of 2012 with an independent Pennsylvania team in the Atlantic League, the Lancaster Barnstormers. Johnson had a good year for them. So too, did one of his teammates, Blake Gailen, who's now been signed by the Rockies on a minor league deal. It's almost like there's some sort of weird connecting web of not quite ready for prime time players that somehow hold the team together and if Colorado started looking at truly elite talent, it would be a sign that the universe was undergoing the big rip and we'd all be doomed.

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A Trip Down the eBay Rabbit Hole

post from Talking Chop - All Posts on 11 November 2012 11:01:10 AM. © Talking Chop - All Posts

Autos

It isn’t easy to find a Greg Maddux card with an autograph on eBay at an affordable price that pictures him in his Braves uniform. I should add a disclaimer that it’s hard to find a card with a Greg Maddux signature that was signed specifically for the manufacturer. If I’m willing to trust people, I can find numerous autographs of the great Maddux, sometimes for as little as ten dollars. I am not the trustworthy type though so I can’t go there. None the less, I have a hundred dollars and my goal is to find a Greg Maddux autograph that doesn’t suck that pictures him in an Atlanta Braves uniform. It also can’t be ugly, which means no Panini autographs.

So, I type Greg Maddux into the little search box on eBay and I get over 11,000 results. I narrow them down by clicking “Cards” and then selecting Autographs which gives me around a hundred and twenty listings to go through. Some I can reject out of hand. I don’t care how great a card is, I don’t want a graded card trapped in a hard plastic enclosure. What’s the point of a baseball card you can’t hold in your hand? A great many of the listings are hand signed cards, and I can only assume that the vast majority of them are fakes. I skip those. There are a lot of cards that show Maddux in his Cubs, Padres or Dodgers uniforms and I surely don’t want one of those.

There was a time where I would use other tricks to limit the number of listings I have to comb through. I could specifically select ungraded cards, but I’ve found that sellers almost never include the correct information. I could include Braves in my query, but many sellers list every team a guy ever played for in the listing, and others don’t include a team at all. 120 listings is not an unmanageable number anyway.

The best autograph I see is his 2001 Donruss Notable Nicknames Signature card. Maddux not only signed the card as Greg “Bulldog” Maddux, but the “Bulldog” part of his signature is readable. (His name remains as unreadable as ever. He has what is easily the worst signature of any major athlete.) The seller is asking for a thousand forty-nine dollars. I expect that a “Best Offer” of a hundred bucks would be declined automatically, and I’m proven right. As I keep scrolling down, I notice an interesting listing in the ”Popular on eBay” section shown with every search.

The card in the listing is an ugly one. It’s a 2012 Upper Deck SP Signature Series autograph card of Chipper Jones. While the card itself is within my hundred dollar price range, and while Chipper’s autograph is as beautiful as ever, this is simply one ugly card. Basically, I don’t buy baseball cards that don’t include a players picture. I wish that Upper Deck still had a license because these are the kinds of cards you get from an unlicensed card manufacturer.

I had set out to spend a hundred dollars on a Greg Maddux autograph, but now I’m after a new Chipper Jones auto card. The one I have is older and isn’t nearly as valuable as some of the newer ones. I repeat my search for Chipper Jones, and I find quite a few autographs in my price range, but there weren’t any that really appeal to me. Every Chipper auto card that I find that I want to add to my collection is out of the price range. So, I type Greg Maddux into the search field again and drill down to his available autograph cards again. Before I can even start scrolling, I notice another listing in the popular section.

I’ve mentioned the amazing 1953 Bowman Warren Spahn card before. It’s one of those iconic Braves cards that every collector should have in their collection, and I’m a little ashamed to admit that I don’t have one in mine. The listing pointed to a nearly perfect example of the card. The card is well centered with good corners and only slight wear on the sides of the card. A classic vintage card like this is worth all two-hundred and seventy dollars for which the seller is asking. That’s out of my price range, but I need this card.

So, I’m looking to purchase a 1953 Bowman Warren Spahn for under a hundred dollars. I start at the bottom and two cards around thirty-five dollars have my attention. The first is in rough shape. (The card is the one on the left above.) The corners are a little round. There’s surface wear. The card has at least a dozen creases, some small and a few very large. This card is a perfect example of what makes the 1953 Bowman set, and the Spahn card in particular, so amazing. This card, which would almost certainly grade in poor condition, is utterly beautiful. The set is to first to use full color photography and the colors pop off the card. There’s nothing ugly about this baseball card. It would be a privilege to add it to my collection.

The other thirty-five dollar listing is actually a thirty-three dollar listing of the same card. While the card is far from mint condition, it is in excellent shape. The corners are slightly rounded and the edges are somewhat rough. Still, there are no visible creases. There are only a few spots where the surface of the card is blemished. I think I found my card.

So, this is the story of how I acquired my 1953 Bowman Warren Spahn card. With a budget of a hundred dollars, I was able to acquire one of the all-time great Braves collectables for just thirty-three bucks, including shipping. I wonder if I can find a Greg Maddux autograph for sixty-seven dollars.

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http://www.talkingchop.com/2012/11/11/3630334/a-trip-down-the-ebay-rabbit-hole

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Mike Schmidt 1980 Topps

post from 30-Year Old Cardboard on 11 November 2012 09:18:30 AM. © 30-Year Old Cardboard

Mike Schmidt 1980 Topps There was no better player in the sport of baseball in 1980 than Michael Jack Schmidt. Don’t believe me? Just check out the numbers: 48 Home Runs (LL) 121 RBI (LL) .624 Slugging % (LL) 1.004 … Continue reading →

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GM Meetings Edition

Bob Nightengale writes probably the best state of the GM meetings piece out there, which is to be[...]

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http://blog.lovemyteam.com/2012/11/11/gm-meetings-edition/

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