Brian Raabe on baseball cards

Brian Raabe played nine years of professional baseball, including three years in the major leagues for the Twins, Mariners and Rockies. He now works at Central Bank in Forest Lake, MN, and is also a baseball coach at Forest Lake High School. He kindly responded to my request for his thoughts on baseball cards.

"I don't have many stories about cards, but one story is that my picture was on a major league card with Marty Cordova's name. I don't collect cards anymore but my son Zack loves to collect cards."

Thanks! I couldn't figure out which Cordova card he is referring to - any of you readers know?

Here is Raabe on a 1993 Classic Best card.

Rags and other riches from the Great Sports Name Hall of Fame

Recently I wrote about the three on-card autographed cards in my collection. SpastikMooss at the Great Sports Name Hall of Fame decided that was insufficient for a self-respecting blogger and immediately sent me six autographed cards, thus tripling my total! He also sent me some of his duplicate Fred McGriffs and 1990 Donrusses.

My favorite, of course, is this Dave Righetti from 1989 Donruss. "Rags" was easily the best pitcher on the late 1980s Yankees, so much so that NY headline writers would call the Yankee pitching staff "Righetti and Meatballs." This card has an interesting provenance - SpastikMooss recently won this card from Omega Cardboard. So this will be the third blog a picture of this exact card will be on in just over a month.


He also sent me four of his winnings from Padrographs.
Andy Benes won 155 games over 14 big league seasons, mostly with the Padres and Cardinals.


Adam Eaton has won 71 games in his ten year major league career. This year he was 3-5 for Baltimore and Colorado.


Heath Murray pitched in parts of four major league seasons, going 2-15 with a 6.41 ERA.


Greg Sain was the Padres fifth round draft choice in 2001, but retired from pro baseball in 2007 without making the majors.


Finally, here's an autographed 1988 Donruss Curt Ford. He played six years in the major leagues, mostly for the Cardinals. He was a .245 lifetime hitter who hit .318 in the 1987 playoffs.


Thanks, SpastikMooss! There are some Gary Sheffields, Bob Walks, Red Sox, and other oddities on their way to you!

Attack of the killer ivy

A great card from 1993 Upper Deck, showing Pittsburgh's Denny Neagle about to be completely devoured by Wrigley Field's man-eating ivy.

Ouch!

The biggest free agent on the market this year is Matt Holliday, who is most famous for trying to catch a fly ball with his thighs, blowing a playoff game for the Cardinals. He's got nothing on Joe Orsulak, captured on this 1991 Leaf card attempting to catch a long fly ball with his chest!

Pitching scared

It is rare to see much emotion on a baseball card, which makes the sheer terror on Bryan Rekar's face on this 1996 Donruss card so interesting.

This appears to be in Florida, so I am guessing he is pitching to Gary Sheffield and is afraid of a line drive coming back toward his head.

Bullseye!

Got a free pack of 1990 Donruss cards yesterday, just for printing out a coupon and going to a local card shop (Bullseye Collectibles in Merrick, Long Island) and signing up for the mailing list. (For any readers on Long Island who are interested, here's a link to the coupon.) While I was there, I also picked up some .50 packs of common cards from 1994 Donruss and Score and 1995 Pinnacle and Classic Draft Pick.

I was pleasantly suprised that five of the sixteen cards in the 1990 Donruss pack were ones I didn't have, since I have more than two-thirds of the set. My favorite from the pack is Kal Daniels, with some random rope barriers behind home plate at Jack Murphy Stadium.

Recently I posted a Donruss card of light-hitting Oriole Brady Anderson posing with six bats. Here's a Donruss card of light-hitting Oriole Damon Buford posing with six bats.

The Pinnacle pack had a lot of Yankees, which is surprising because usually places like this will pull out all the Yankees and Mets. Here's a great picture of Yankee catcher Mike Stanley.

The 1994 Scores included a bunch of checklist cards with very nice stadium shots. Here's one of Montreal. It's a little hard to tell from the small picture, but it's an exciting moment in the game with two runners going on contact. Which must make it very irritating to the fans that two idiots in the front can't wait until after the pitch to get up.

The Classic pack, interestingly, was the only which was mostly dupes, if anyone is interested in a trade - I now have two dupes of the Garciaparra rookie in his Georgia Tech uniform.

My three favorite on-card autographs

Dinged Corners has asked the blogging community to show off their three favorite on-card autographs. Here I am posting my most favorite and my least favorite - as I only have three. (I don't actively collect autographs but I enjoy the ones I've gotten.) I also have one sticker autograph card but that apparently doesn't count - I'm not really clear on how a signature on a card is better than a signature on a sticker.

This one came from David at TribeCards - George Williams was a backup catcher for Oakland in the mid-1990s.

And here are two Yankees I got a while back in a trade with Paul's Random Stuff. Brett Jodie made one start for the Yankees in 2001 before being traded to San Diego for the second coming of Sterling Hitchcock.

Lee Guetterman had a fine Yankee career for some bad teams. In 1989 he set a record for longest scoreless streak for a reliever to start a season - 30.2 innings.

Jason and Voorhees minor league cards

As I was going through some minor league cards last week I found some cards of players posing in a different position from the one listed on their card. Then I noticed the juxtaposition of their names and realized I should hold this post until Friday the 13th.

Here's a guy named Jason wearing an awful lot of extra gear for a third baseman. Actually, though he only caught in 1993, Moler was moved to third base for the 1994 season, which is probably why Upper Deck went with that position on his card.

And here is the only Voorhees in major league history, Van Voorhees Snider. That's some really shallow infield he's playing. Actually, he was solely an outfielder in his pro career, then switched to first base in 1991.

Interview with Matt Hirsh

Matt Hirsh made his professional baseball debut in 2005 as a pitcher for the Greeneville Astros. He is now attempting a comeback as an outfielder and played this season for the Long Beach Armada. You can follow him and his brother, Yankees pitcher Jason Hirsh, on their Hirsh Brothers website and blog. Matt kindly answered my questions about his baseball card experiences.

-Do you have any stories about cards of yourself or of other players?
This is a story about my one and only baseball card. Back when I was playing with the Greeneville Astros of the Appalachian League, we were all looking forward to getting our first pro baseball card. To our disappointment, the cards didn't arrive until about 2 weeks before the season ended. The photographers had all season to capture great photos for the cards and we were all anxiously awaiting to see what they would look like. When they arrived I looked for my card of course and couldn't believe my eyes. My first baseball card is a picture of me eating a sunflower seed. Out of all the games I pitched in, that was the one picture they chose for me. I was thoroughly disappointed with the way it turned out and now it's kind of a joke to me that the one card I have the only action you see is a sunflower seed being put in my mouth. On the other hand, I've never seen a card like it so in a way it's a one of a kind card, but still disappointing nonetheless.

- Do you have a favorite card of yourself or of another player?
I can't really say that I have a favorite baseball card of any other players. Like I said before, my card is quite unique.

- Do you collect baseball cards?
I used to collect baseball cards when I was younger. I have quite the collection, but haven't added to it in a very long time. There are too many sets and different types of cards to collect these days, which makes collecting a very expensive hobby nowadays. I don't have quite the passion or the money for collecting as I did when I was younger.

Thanks, and good luck next season!

Invisible basketball

Is David Wells dribbling an invisible basketball here? Or tempting Schottzie with some doggie treats?

Or perhaps he brought some object onto the field that is not family-friendly (no surprise for Boomer) and Donruss had to cover it up with the big ugly logo box they used for their 1996 design.