I made it a mission to send a couple of loose cards to be signed by Fingers TTM [$15 per item] and they came back in 10 days - I am tempted to send the 1984 Donruss dual card off to Gaylord Perry, but perhaps old age has made him a spotty signer at best, even though he was doing TTM for a fee for the longest time.
To finally be able to send out a fee request to Luzinski, I needed to send a copy of the 1984 Donruss - so I ended up picking another copy from an online card outlet, look for the card to arrive in the mail and eventually send it back out, with at least another card I picked up in-person.
Tiant was a player certainly before my time, but he pitched in the big leagues for 19 years and won 229 games - he is among the Hall of Very Good, but maybe deserved more consideration for actual the Hall of Fame.
However in my return, the only card he didn't end up signing was the one I wanted signed the most - I just had to chuckle at this apparent mishap [at least for me] and ended up grabbing a signed copy of the 1990 Leaf on eBay.
Besides his flag saving heroics, Monday was also the first ever MLB draft pick in 1965 and had a 19-year big league career - hitting 241 home runs with a .361 on-base / .443 slugging and an OPS+ of 125, which meant he was about 25 percent better than the average MLB player.
This post marks my first since a month long hiatus due to being out of the country on vacation - not feeling emotionally invested in throwing out scheduled, automated posts, I wanted to create a gap, where something was clearly up with the lack of posting activity [regardless of whomever really reads what I might write on a regular basis].
I want to say something about occasionally having an old-school and/or vintage card and seeing if can still send it off TTM - maybe it takes me different places in my mind, where at least I get an idea of former MLB players who would have never registered in my memory banks.
I'm probably not as dedicated in systematically sending out unsigned cards to see if I can get ink on them - to feel like I'm still doing something to get some cheap thrills back in the mail box, I am up for sending to random subjects here and there.
I don't know remember if Greene was ever hyped up as a top prospect, but as a catcher, he put up big slugging numbers in the Angels' minor league system through the mid 1990s - he showed some power potential as a stocky righthanded hitter, but was never really able to establish himself longterm with the Angels and ended up being backup catcher for five other teams in an 11-year big league career.
Maybe Guidry's career totals past his peak years are a little short, but he was probably the ace of the New York Yankees pitching staff from the late 1970s through the mid 1980s - I'm kind of surprised he has basically received little consideration for the Hall of Fame.
However, the Tanana that pitched through the 1980s and early 1990s was way different from the one that paired up with Nolan Ryan in the 1970s as California Angels' aces - it might be fascinating to look back at how great Tanana was for a time, before injuries sidelined his career and he had to reinvent himself as both a person and a player.
Bannister maybe the type of big leaguer who gets obscured by history once their careers are over, but it's fun for me to give these guys a second look - despite a losing W-L record, the one-time Angel pitched more than 200 innings in 6 of his 15 years in the Major Leagues and had a double digits wins in 8 of those 15 years.
I think his Angels narrative was he was a power hitting late bloomer who made good, mashing his way to the big leagues - after establishing himself for several seasons, then manager Mike Scioscia 'gave up' on him because Scioscia preferred the catching skills of Jeff Mathis, who ended up never hitting at all despite eventually lasting through 2021.
Napoli would move on, help the Texas Rangers get to the World Series in 2011 and then help the Boston Red Sox win a championship in 2013 - he would be seen as this fan favorite, man of the people type who was always about the good vibes.
