Featured autographs - Brandon Laird

At various points last year I had three of Laird's American cards just lying around and I'm thinking what am I going to do with his cards - I didn't even know he ended up in Japan.

After brief stints with the New York Yankees and the Houston Astros, Laird was probably typecast as a 4A player - looking at his stats, the ability to hit for some pop probably attracted some scouts from Japanese teams and given an opportunity to play with the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters, Laird hit 34 home runs in 2015.

I was probably looking to dump my loose Laird cards in one of my mini-collections - maybe a card for the bloodlines collection, a card for the local [Orange County] collection and maybe a card for the infamous / police blotter collection [since he got into a fight while attending an NBA game with family back in 2009].

However, my friend gave me an opportunity to tag along with him for three days to actually see Laird's Japanese team practice in Arizona - in addition to getting my Laird cards signed, my buddy gave me other cards here and there, so I could make the most out of the trip.