I waited a little bit and took another shot, using the other address and finally - got my card signed in about a month or so arriving a couple of days before Christmas.
I only had a 1970 Topps card in my collection, featuring a cleaner cut Drago, who was a dependable starter early in his big league career with the Kansas City Royals - through the late 1970s, he became a reliever who bounced around several MLB teams and had started to grow out some prominent facial hair for for his era.
The next day, I was putting together my request for Davis and even took a picture of what I was sending - however in the rush to jam everything into an outgoing envelope to place in my mail box, things got mixed up and only after the fact did I realize I still had my handwritten letter to Davis.
I was sweating out this request, wondering if I'd be scolded for sending a letter to the wrong guy - what if I just didn't get my stuff back?
However, after four weeks, my cards came back signed and there was no note or anything - I was almost disappointed that I didn't get a reaction, though my best assumptions are the guys who have signed regularly for decades don’t particularly read their mail and / or have seen it all.
Maybe someone presumably helping Davis go through his mail, saw and pointed out my goof - but I did send Davis his cards and not another former player, so the intent was there to show my request was for him otherwise.
I was digging around and jumped on a listing for the card, spending about $1 to land a copy of this all-time beauty - finally getting the card in-hand, it does feel a little weird, where the surface isn’t that regular 1996 Pinnacle glossy finish that is prone to brick up over the past 25 years.
The stock is a little thinner and for a moment, I wondered if I have a fake card in-hand [seriously?] - doing some research, most sites referencing the card uses ‘foil’ to identify the card.
What I definitely have is a more of a ‘foil’ like card, though I wouldn't remember if 1996 Pinnacle had such a parallel - I wonder if Hamelin has a regular base card which is what I originally wanted in the first place [if it actually existed].
I’d probably have to make the autograph a cut, then send it to PSA/DNA to be slabbed - so it would be harder to fit into my collection of all-time Angels autographs outright, with my collection mostly being trading cards.
FWIW, I don’t know if a trading card booklet would fit into my all-time Angels autograph collection either - but it is still otherwise a card I can add to my regional PC as well, even though a Bo Jackson Angels booklet card seems simply odd in general.
I remember 'Bo' being a two-sport superstar, who was probably as popular was Michael Jordan in the short period of time when he was playing for the Kansas City Royals in baseball and the Los Angeles Raiders in football - but of course his professional career as a baseball / football player was derailed by a hip injury suffered during an NFL game.
Jackson was simply a shell of himself by the time he spent one final season in Major League Baseball, playing for the Angels - still, with the help of eBay Bucks that came in handy, the decision was made to splurge on this pick up.
The card pictures Juan LeBron, who was the Kansas City Royals' first round pick [19th overall] in 1995, but failed to reach the major leagues - Beltran, who was the Royals’ second round pick [49th overall] from the same draft class is pictured on LeBron’s card, though the card listed with Beltran’s name / bio should still be the one that commands any interest [regardless of the goof].
After a player retires like Beltran did in 2017, there maybe an extended period of time where you are just out of sight, out of mind - though as a borderline Hall of Fame player, Beltran may gain support for his eventual induction in Cooperstown.
Balboni's Kansas City royals record for home runs hit in a season [36] was surpassed by Mike Moustakas - who ended up hitting 38 in 2017.
"A card that reminds you of a family member."
I think my parents were in line at a Costco, before it was a Costco warehouse club store and I just came up to them, wailing and pleading for this random box of cards - I remember my mother being so mad at me that she wanted to slap the box out of my hands.
However, I caught her in a bad spot in public and she couldn't do anything to keep me from calming down - I think she was angry because she's the rational person to rein in the spending in my family and I'd challenged her authority, where now she had to go plunk an extra $10-$11 on a box of cards [I don't think she even had a concept of trading cards at the time] just to shut me up.
I ended up with the box of cards, all 36 packs of them to rip and to flip through - though the cards are long gone, to this day, I can still imagine the wrath of my mother.
As I fill holes in my award winners collection, I try to make 'era appropriate' card finds - this doesn't mean always looking for original player-era cards, but any cards picturing players with the teams they've won an award with as well as finding cards that sort of focus on the award winning season.
I'm trying to weed out cards in my award winners collection that seem mismatched, even if the card pictures the player - it seems odd to use a manager card for Piniella to represent an award he won as a player and for Chambliss, using a late career card that doesn't picture him with the team he won an award with.
After bouncing around the minors for the past 6 years, it was a surprise Wang made the Kansas City Royals Opening Day roster in 2016 - maybe Wang finds his late career calling as a MLB relief pitcher, who maybe stretched out as a fill-in starter, if he continues to put together solid outings to build trust.
I wouldn't have thought Christian Colon would get the opportunity to come through and get game-winning hit to lead the Kansas City Royals to their first championship since 1985 - even though Colon had been obscured as a utility guy, I guess it should be no surprise since he's just another valuable cog the Royals were able to trot out.
Though I probably wanted the New York Mets to stretch out the World Series to at least a Game 6 - the Royals were relentless and were not going to be denied, while the Mets kind of just ran out of magic.
Though I take no particular interest with the Royals, in the aftermath of their accomplishments in 2015 - it's kind of fun searching for what was written in the last five years when it came mocking and/or deriding the organization's apparent non-commitment to building a winning franchise.
Maybe with the Royals getting to the World Series in 2014, some of the doubt from the baseball pundits kind of went by the wayside - however it's much more interesting to read some of the doom and gloom now, with the Royals actually winning a championship, rather than when they fell short of their run last year.
I don't see the Royals as a great team made up of superstar talent, but they are a confident and fearless team that has overachieved - it will be interesting to see if the Royals' lineup can battle and compete against the New York Mets' trio of Matt Harvey, Jacob deGrom and Noah Syndergaard.
I want to say that the superior Mets starting pitchers will shut down the Royals' bats - but I don't think the Royals are just going to roll over regardless of who the pitchers are on the other team.
Results vary, but I cling to the the idea hobby packs gives me a better chance to pull a card of note - regardless of actual value since flagship Topps costs $2 a pack.
Pack one
#184 Melvin Upton
#15 Joey Votto
#320 Shin-Soo Choo
#269 Jordy Mercer
#343 Shane Greene
#H-19 Mike Schmidt - Highlight of the Year insert
#237 Lucas Duda
#89 Michael Choice
#266 Brandon Phillips
#274 Ryan Zimmerman
Pack two
#178 Christian Yelich
#52 Fernando Rodney
#29 Brandon Belt
#190 Zach Britton
More than likely however, the road to Anaheim isn't as clear cut as I assume for players like Giavotella - if he does stick around through spring training, he'll probably end up in AAA for much of the season.
A Kansas City prospect, Raul A. Mondesi hit only .211 in the minors this past season [with 24 walks and a 122 strike outs] - but with youth and potential on his side, he was still tagged by Baseball America as the Royals' number one prospect for 2015.
He maybe a clogger on the bases and also limited defensively - but he seems sort of a low key guy who just comes to the ballpark and play.
It's amazing that the Giants didn't have Matt Cain, a past his prime Tim Lincecum was mostly unused and both of their veteran pitchers [Jake Peavy and Tim Hudson] really stunk it up - I was hoping the Royals would have one more run [literally] in them to change things around in Game 7, but the Giants still had Madison Bumgarner to close things out on his way to being named World Series MVP.
To watch the Royals lose was mildly disappointing because they had come so far and even though they snuffed out the Angels early in the Division Series - how they kept surging on was pretty impressive.
Maybe I check on the box score on ESPN when I can but I've pretty much set any interest aside besides bits and pieces I might find out - maybe I'm just weird, maybe I'm not a true baseball fan or maybe I'm just tired of all the narratives that would be pushed around the series by Fox perhaps, by the mainstream media and/or by the baseball analysts who focus on the numbers.
One thing is clear that San Francisco Giants starting pitcher Madison Bumgarner is just a beast - the guy might be some kind of country bumpkin [no offense] in more ways than one, but Bumgarner just takes the ball and sets batters down one-by-one like a machine.
In recent years, there was Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain and Tim Hudson in the Giants' rotation and while Bumgarner has always been well regarded - maybe the other guys have garnered much more of the attention.
Now it's kind of come to be that Bumgarner is the Giants' ace pitcher and there is a certain steeliness and confidence in which he pitches with that seems admirable - especially when he is only 25 years old.
