There was probably about a two week period through the end of June where I didn't get any TTM successes - while it wasn't the end of the world, it really left me feeling high and dry.
Maybe it served me right where in all honesty, TTM returns were ending up as simply pieces of clutter to work through - I didn't know what to make out of the miscellaneous successes that have come back and needed to lay off the chase for a little bit to make things kind of special again.
I was able to get back Henson after a three week wait and was glad to see he signed my cards after I probably tried an outdated address for him earlier in the year - I was going to write a little something about Henson, but I already had a write up on him over 10 years ago!
Go figure, July started with a couple of days with multiple successes, so maybe my peace of mind is restored - even if the issue of seeing TTM results as misfit toys is still unresolved.
The former big league pitcher signed my cards in about a week for a $20 donation - Reed was a multi-sport athlete, playing in the NBA for 2 seasons, before focusing on sticking in the major leagues for good.
I wanted continue seeing if I could display certain collecting subset cards in nine-pocket pages - as featured in previous posts on this blog over the summer, I started to make sampler pages of my favorite mini collections to see if I could put together a binder to flip through.
With a new box of Ultra Pro pages, I wanted to add cards of my bloodlines, inking it up and multi-sport athletes collections as priorities - I put together 17 cards using one page as a snapshot of prominent pro athletes in one sport, yet might have been good enough to dabble in at least one other sport [high school / college / pros] at one point in their playing careers.
These cards were originally referred to as 'two-sport stars' collection, though in my collection, there are cards of players who simply forgettable - guys who may not have developed professionally in a sport they tried to play, like a baseball player who spends four or five years in the minors, but ends up going back to college to play football in anonymity.
First row: John Elway [NFL / MiLB], Bill Spiers [MLB / NCAA football], Todd Helton [MLB / NCAA football] Second row: Bo Jackson [MLB / NFL], Jim Thorpe, Dave Winfield Third row: Brian Jordan [NFL / MLB], Dick Ricketts [NBA/MLB], Ron Reed x2 [NBA/MLB]
First row: Nyjer Morgan [MLB / hockey], Zack Von Rosenberg [MiLB / NCAA football], Tony Gonzalez [NFL / NCAA basketball] Second row: Frank Thomas [MLB / NCAA football], Deion Sanders [MLB / NFL], Tony Gwynn Third row: Ron Reed [second card] and Michael Jordan [NBA / MiLB]
In my collecting life, it was Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders who made the idea of two-sport players a real attraction during the junk wax era - Jackson had all-world potential as a baseball player and maybe I saw Sanders as an ersatz version of Bo, maybe more flash than substance on a big league field.
Looking at his stats, Sanders was actually decent MLB player, though the NFL was always the priority - as it goes, Neon Deion was the one who didn't get hurt [insert of some of tired tackling joke here] and ended up in the Pro Football HOF while Jackson's NFL career was cut short by injury.
