Card show pickups - The rest of the mess

I've ended up intermittently posting about what I got [like the Miguel Tejada card] - these aren't the better cards or anything, just kind of odds and ends I ended up making keepers from the particular purchase.

Off a seller that has become my outlet for whatever miscellaneous cards things I dig for - maybe I really didn't find a card or two that grabbed my attention from the stacked singles piles, maybe to bundle along the cheaper stuff I may find.

Another collector was plugging away through the seller's two-row dollar shoebox and at the tail end of this other guy's dig, I started going through the dollar bin myself - though maybe the box wasn’t refreshed from the last time I saw the seller.

It didn't seem that long ago when I went through the seller's dollar boxes, but that was already back several months ago - after some time has passed, could I expect the seller to fresher dollar material?

Maybe the seller has a cache of material he just sitting on or not knowing his M.O. - does make it where he has ways to regularly buy up new hauls of assorted cards, he can put out for a dollar each.

Featured autograph - Matt Moore

I picked this up because he was just signed by the Angels and figure a cheap certified autograph would be an easy add to my all-time autograph collection - I don’t remember whether I got him in-person during his young hotshot years as a starting pitcher Tampa Bay Rays.

Maybe it's better to have a random certified autograph to file away than to dig for an autograph I might not have at all - I looked up my memory banks and in 2012, it looks like I was able to get him in-person on an 8x10 print after being denied the previous day because he was tagging along with Evan Longoria.

Featured autograph - Eddie Rosario

I got this card of 2021 NLCS MVP Eddie Rosario signed when played in the Arizona Fall League back in 2014 - this was loose somewhere for the longest time where just kind of 'hung out' as a misfit.

Despite the small sample sizes, maybe the outfielder's postseason outburst with the bat elevates his status just a little past just being another good big league player - who can do some things well [hit for a little power, run the bases a little] but maybe overvalued for his age and the potential salary might be making.

TTM autographs received: Steve Garvey

The longtime star first baseman for the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres signed my cards in about a couple of weeks for $10 - I've gotten him to sign 4 or 5 times in-person over the past 20 years, but I needed a 1984 Donruss and saw he signed TTM.

The 1984 Donruss was my priority regardless, but I also sent a 2021 Donruss to see what the card would look like autographed - I wish I had an old school Garvey from the 1970s handy to send as a second card, but the straggler might have been ideal to throw in because it was a recent 2021 pull.

Go figure one of the Garvey autographs I got in-person years ago was on the plastic slab of a graded 1984 Donruss - it was likely at the 2000 National where some wannabe non PSA and/or BGS grading company had samples at their booth for the taking and I ended up with the Garvey.

I didn't have anything better to do with the slab, so I must have taken it where Garvey was making an appearance - after 20 years, I think the card is loose somewhere collecting dust with the autograph probably not as bold due to the cirumstances of time passing.

TTM autograph received: Lou Whitaker

Whitaker finished off my 1994 Fleer Superstar Special dual subset card with Alan Trammell - because Whitaker charges a little bit more than the usual $5-$10, maybe the stream of reported TTM successes tends to be a little more sporadic.

I probably got Whitaker through the mail 20 years ago, but had not really thought about getting him again - even though his name is thrown out as someone who should join his longtime teammate in Cooperstown.

The lure of getting a dual player card completed by an iconic keystone combination was too strong - I finally finally took a chance and sent Whitaker a request with $20.

Despite wondering if something would come back - it only took about three weeks to get a response.

Featured autograph - Cal Ripken Jr. and Tim Salmon

Both of these guys are baseball 'heroes' and coincidentally they share the same birthday, 8 years apart - while it may sound a little corny, over the past 30 years, they were among the pros I considered larger than life.

Though Salmon was never the national baseball icon Ripken Jr. was as the latter chased The Streak - Salmon may have reason I was paying closer attention to Angels games during his first full season as a rookie in 1993.

Featured autograph - Jason Castro

The former Houston Astros and Minnesota Twins catcher homered in his debut with Angels - despite unimpressive career batting numbers, hopefully he is a guy to kind of provide stability behind the plate.

Featured autograph - Ryan Zimmerman

I remember being high on Zimmerman as a potential franchise star and when he was a rookie all the way back in 2006 - I made a trade for this ball in exchange for a Ron Cey baseball I got signed during one of the preview days at the National 14 years ago.

It is hard to believe that all these years, the original National was still with the team and was part of a World Series Championship team - I suppose a number of people didn't like his appearance at the White House along with Kurt Suzuki in particular, but it is what it is.

Featured autograph - Ichiro Suzuki

As an in-person autograph collector at one time, Ichiro was the scribble to get back in 2001, along with some other rookie who was doing some things in the Senior Circuit - looking back, I might remember outlasting some of the other yahoos who came by, expecting Ichiro's Seattle Mariners to arrive after traveling from other city.

Ichiro might have been going out to dinner when the prominent 'all-star' grapher back in the day begged, "there's only four of us" and Ichiro came over, grabbed the guy's pen and quickly signed our items - it was such a satisfying get, since it was the most random 'never gonna happen' thing.

Looking back, the Mariners were supposed to play the Angels - but the MLB games were postponed because of 9/11.

Featured autograph - David Fletcher

When he was first starting his professional career, maybe I've heard him mentioned on Twitter just a few times and he was just another guy to me - I got him to sign a card when he played in the Arizona Fall League in 2016, so eventually I was able to add it to my all-time Angels autograph collection when he got to the big leagues in 2018.

Fletcher fits that scrappy, grinder, David Eckstein mold that might be a little overplayed or at worst biased - but it's true that Fletcher can be described as many adjectives mostly saved for right guys [guys who play the game the right way]; he's not Manny Machado and he's going to scrap and battle every time he is inserted into a big league game.

In his second year and first full season in the major leagues, the now 25-year old Fletcher has played five different positions as a utility player - but hitting like an Up & Up version of Jose Altuve, Fletcher seems to have nailed down a regular spot in the Angels' lineup.

Featured autograph - Griffin Canning

I didn't get a chance to get Canning at all at the beginning of the 2018 season because he made two starts in the California League before he got promoted to Double-A - as it goes, I was able to get the now current Angels rookie pitcher later in the summer as a visiting Salt Lake Bees player in Las Vegas.

One of the collecting things I'd like to focus on at the moment is gathering the loose autographs I have of players who are playing or have played for the Angels - I've counted up around 290 autographs for my all-time autograph collection so far and the goal is perhaps not completion, but to get a good representation of players in franchise history.

Featured autograph - Yordan Alvarez

He might not have had many cards back when he played in the Arizona Fall League in 2017, so I had Alvarez sign a 2015 Topps Pro Debut Fragment of the Farm Round Rock Express seat relic I'd bought at a card shop - I thought I'd turned a non-player relic into something unique even if I had to wait a couple of years before Alvarez would presumably be playing his home games at the stadium where the relic was from.

As it goes, I didn’t actually look to see which big league team Round Rock was affiliated with at the time and what level [Round Rock had been the Texas Rangers’ Triple-A farm team since 2011, when I thought it was Houston's Double-A affiliate] - it's just not a big deal, but now I had this 'weird, phantom' in-person autograph card signed by a player whose relation with the subject featured on-card was non-existent.

Alvarez reached the Triple-A level in 2018 with the Fresno Grizzlies [when the Grizzlies were affiliated with the Astros] - but was in playing in Double-A when the Fresno made its only trip to Round Rock, so I couldn't say he at least played at the ballpark as a visiting player.

Go figure, after the completion of the 2018 season, the Astros ditched Fresno and had a new agreement with Round Rock to be their Triple-A affiliate - I could finally show off this card, signed by a Cuban slugger tearing up the Pacific Coast League so far as opposed to stashing it away in a box of fails.

Featured autograph - Brian Goodwin

Goodwin has been a solid addition so far for the middling 2019 Angels, getting an opportunity to stick at the end of spring training after Justin Upton got hurt - I got his autograph when he was in the Washington Nationals organization, playing in the Arizona Fall League in 2013, long before he was an Angel.

Featured autograph - George Foster

Even though this old-school Sports Illustrated magazine showed Rod Carew on the Twins and not the Angels - I bought the copy on eBay to have it signed by Carew at the local card show back in 2007.

I put away the magazine for good and never thought about getting Foster’s autograph until I saw he was doing these spring training autograph signings with Fergie Jenkins - in recent years, maybe Foster has been a white whale of sorts, since he has shown up where it may not have been convenient for me to go.

I was able to go the Cactus League for a couple of weekends this past spring and on my last day, I saw a Facebook post by Jenkins' foundation that they were going to be signing at the Texas Rangers game in Surprise - regardless of whether I got any actual active players, one of my priorities was getting Foster.

I saw the Fergie Jenkins booths as I finally got in through the left field gates after going through security / a metal detector - Jenkins’ table was between Foster on his left and Byron Browne, a former Cubs player, who I knew because he participated in a kids camp in Peoria 11 years ago.

During the start of the game, I made my way to the Jenkins booth [Rollie Fingers was actually signing on the concourse, behind home plate, so it seemed like he getting most of the foot traffic] to get things over with - I looked over the price list posted on the tables [Jenkins was $30 and Browne was $20 maybe for the flat / balls] and Foster was the only one that the basic price was dependent on what you had.

I dug out my magazine and asked how much it would cost to sign - hoping it wouldn't be like $30 or $40.

"$20," Foster said.

As I handed him my magazine and my Sharpie - I gave my money to the handler next to him.

Foster suggested a spot where to sign my magazine and I pointed at a different place - he signed where I wanted and shook his hand after he was done.

I thought about taking a picture of him signing my item or maybe a photo op but it was nighttime and I was a little harried - to worry about anything but getting ink on my SI and leaving for a 5-hour trip back home.

Featured autograph - Nick Margevicius

This is an autograph I got last September of an anonymous Lake Elsinore pitcher who was playing long toss with a teammate - before doing some running across the warning track from foul pole to foul pole.

I waited around until he was walking to the dugout to ask him to sign one of those preprinted The Autograph Card blanks - “I don’t sign those” he said.

I don’t know why I wanted his autograph in the first place - for the 30 minutes I'd waited around, this guy shut me down rather quick and had to rummage through my autograph book to see if I had anything that could be signed.

Maybe just where the netting ends, he stopped to sign for at least a couple of kids and I whipped out a ticket stub from the previous night's game - he relented to scribble on that and my mission to get this random Cal League pitcher was done.

Featured autograph - Jonathan Lucroy

The Angels just signed Lucroy to be the catcher who presumably gets most of the playing time next season - he had some nice years in his prime, though his production with the bat has bottomed out the past few years.

The signing is only for one year and if Lucroy can bounce back just a bit, he probably helps the Angels - though many catchers tend to run into a wall, once they are on the wrong side of 30.

I guess he was a decent signer between his time in the Arizona Fall League and maybe in spring training his first couple of years in the big leagues - I found some signed cards of his, so I can add him to my all-time autograph collection once he plays in a regular season game for the Angels.

FWIW, I remember Lucroy was going from field to field during a spring training Texas Rangers workout I went to in 2017 - presumably he was done for the day, but still wouldn't stop for just about anyone.

Featured autograph - Odrisamer Despaigne

Despaigne wasn't ever going to be a star, but the Cuban righthander had a promising rookie season in 2014 with the San Diego Padres - after leaving the Padres, Despaigne has hung onto professional baseball as a journeyman and had an ugly 8-game stint with the Angels this past year.

In 18 2/3 innings pitched, Despaigne allowed 17 earned runs, walked 11 hitters and was battered around for 30 hits - he elected to be a free agent and will probably be pitching in Mexico, Japan or Korea sooner than never.

Whatever he does with the rest of his pro career, he'll always be an Angel to me and was nice enough to sign back in the day - at the very least, the autograph of his I already had on some sort of Padres game day scorecard, can be listed as part of my all-time Angels autograph collection.

Featured autograph - Francisco Arcia

Arcia, who spent 12 professional seasons before reaching the big leagues, has had quite the week - hitting a pair of home runs and collecting 10 RBI in his first two MLB games for the Angels.

When Arcia was signed by the Angels as minor league depth, I picked up this 2012 Bowman Chrome refractor to pair up with a lone card I had - I was hoping to get his cards signed in-person during a spring training trip in 2017, but that didn't happen.

Digging through my notes about miscellaneous card pick-ups, I actually picked this up as part of a group of 120 cards I picked up for $8 and loose change at a card shop last fall - I typed out Arcia was a minor league journeyman 'who was in the Angels system this past season [2017], likely somewhere else next year.

In 2018, Arcia ended up back in the Angels system as minor league depth and I was able to get my cards signed - when Arcia was playing with the Salt Lake Bees.

Featured autograph - Cliff Pennington

This post is more about the stragglers I still need to account for as far as my all-time Angels autograph collection goes - Pennington is one player I've gotten to sign long before he spent parts of two seasons [2016-17] with the Angels.

Though the players won't be pictured as Angels and are more rank-and-file guys - I need to dig out in-person autograph cards of guys I may have gotten in the minor leagues, spring training or the fall league.

Featured autograph - Rickey Henderson

The number of Henderson certified autograph cards are fairly plentiful since he seems to sign regularly for pay - he's not the easiest in-person autograph get however and I wanted at least a pack pulled autograph to pair up with a rookie card I purchased some time ago.

This card might not be one of the real fancy ones, but it's a pretty nice card - this card has a dual bat / jersey with a blue ink sticker autograph, which can turn off other collectors, but it's fine to me for this particular card.

Obviously there are no logos on this card [Henderson is identified with Oakland] - which is fitting because he ended up playing for nine MLB teams.

The best leadoff hitter in the history of the game - there is still a fascination with the player and the personality.