Featured autograph - Fred McGriff

I found a card for McGriff in the '15 for $1' box at a card shop I visited and was able to get him to sign it for me - the autograph doesn't resemble his 'sit down' autographs but he can sign any way he wants to after hitting 493 home runs in the big leagues.

Featured autograph - Victor Robles

Unfortunately I don't get to see him, but after making his MLB debut this past season, the 20-year old top prospect is set to join the Mesa Solar Sox in the Arizona Fall League - I picked this certified autograph card because Robles is a 'fresh face' to me and I wanted something inked up by him.

FWIW, the sticker autographs ['E R B'] Panini has used for the cards they've made for Robles look different than any other autographs [looks more like 'dismissive' but a little more 'legible' scribble] he has signed for either Topps or Onyx - that sort of gives me pause, but I'll chalk it to the idea Robles is a youngster who was signing autographs as a teenager just a couple of years ago and his penmanship [or lack of it] stick out like a sore thumb.

1978 TCMA Stars of the 60's I finds

I was out in Arizona on vacation for a week and at an outlet mall near the University of Phoenix Stadium, I stumbled upon a one stop 'pop culture' shop that had comics, sports memorabilia, etc - the setup looked kind of like a swap meet of sorts and I actually saw they had a trading card 'section' with some showcases, assorted junk wax era / junk boxes, etc.

I saw what looked to be a tub / bin of assorted sports cards and started casually going through them - I'm a guy who can be entertained by rummaging through all this miscellaneous cardboard collecting dust, though I wasn't sure if I'd find anything of interest or if something was going to bite me back.

There were cards still individually priced from 20-25 years ago and I didn't want to ask about any junk cards with no prices] - I spent $2 on what looked to be 1978 TCMA The 1960's San Francisco Giants / California Angels team sets [in loose team set bags].

The Giants 'set' had a Masanori Murakami card on the back and figured picking up the 'set' for the individual Murakami card wasn't the worst buy for a dollar - I'm vaguely aware of TCMA sets but compared to mainstream, original Topps releases, the TCMA produced cards have less appeal to me as strictly collector issues.

After the fact, I looked up a checklist and discovered the Giants 'set' was missing the biggest name [Willie Mays #280] and also another notable [Orlando Cepeda #50] - not a big deal since Murakami was the card I really wanted.

The Angels set [complete unlike the Giants one] looked like it had the remains of a dead insect, but I took the cards out of the team set bag and cleaned the excess debris off with my shirt - the cards looked fine afterwards and after paying for the cards, threw the team set bag away.

TTM autograph received: Paulo Orlando

I sent a request to the Kansas City Royals outfielder in April and got my card back signed this month - a longtime minor leaguer from Brazil, Orlando has spent parts of the past three seasons in the big leagues, though he got hurt and played in only 39 games in 2017.

2017 Bowman Platinum fat pack breaks

I hadn't seen these Walmart exclusive cards all year long and I assumed the display box put out in the card section with a set number of fat packs, value boxes and collector's boxes - were either wiped out as soon as they were stocked on the shelvesor just never made it to the few Walmarts I kept hitting up.

People who looked to resell on eBay saw Bowman Platinum as the equivalent of 2017 Bowman Mega Boxes available at Target - especially when the Mega Boxes were pulled due to some undisclosed 'snafu' and were hard to find.

Bowman Platinum are nice looking cards because they are shiny and modern but not quite the definitive product collectors chase year after year - however the Aaron Judge / Cody Bellinger rookie hype drove current year products to new heights as far as demand.

On a random Walmart stop, I finally saw a couple of loose packs - people may have moved on already, but I still hadn't seen this year's cards up close, so I had to get the two lousy packs in my grubby hands.

Pack one
#49 Giancarlo Stanton
#41 Andrew McCutchen
#66 Craig Kimbrel
#40 Jon Lester
#72 Alex Reyes
#62 Reynaldo Lopez

#RR-AJ Aaron Judge - Rookie Radar insert

#TP-BR Blake Rutherford - Exclusive Prospect card
#TP-ZC Zack Collins
#TP-AK Alex Krilloff
#TP-VR Victor Robles

#TP-JJO Jahmai Jones

Pack two
#51 Matt Strahm
#24 Trevor Story
#10 Aledmys Diaz
#48 Freddie Freeman
#15 Gregory Polanco
#53 Nolan Arenado
#RR-JC Jharel Cotton - Rookie Radar insert
#TP-JJ Joe Jimenez - Exclusive Prospect card
#TP-RR Raudy Read
#TP-FW Forrest Whitley
#TP-KT Kyle Tucker
#TP-MKO Michael Kopech

TTM autographs received: Mike Krukow

The longtime broadcaster for the San Francisco Giants signed my cards in several months - Krukow's career in the booth with partner Duane Kuiper and dealing with a condition called IBM is detailed in-depth in this ESPN story I stumbled upon through Krukow's page on Wikipedia.

TTM autographs received: David West

The former big league lefty signed my cards in several months - he had his best run in parts of 4 seasons with the Philadelphia Phillies, where he appeared in 122 games and struck out 217 batters in 251.2 innings.

I guess I knew of him as a rank-and-file guy who pitched through the junk wax era - so he was someone whose cards seemed to always kind of 'just there' through the masses of random baseball cards produced from 1986-1992.

TTM autographs received: Greg Harris

The former MLB pitcher signed my cards in a couple of weeks - besides having a 15 year career, Harris' most notable big league quirk was being able to pitch with both arms.

TTM autographs received: Xavier Hernandez

The former big league reliever signed my cards in about 10 days - rather than just being some sort of chicken scratch scrawl, I like how his autograph is a little more distinctive.

TTM autographs received: Byung-Ho Park

The Korean slugger signed my three cards in black Sharpie in about a couple of weeks - I'd seen successes with him through the past year and wanted to send my cards off before the minor league season ended.

Despite considerable success back in Korea, Park has languished in the United States, posting underwhelming numbers - if the Minnesota Twins cut ties with Park, who knows if he ever gets another opportunity to play for a big league team.

Justin Upton and Brandon Phillips

After sweeping the Oakland Athletics to salvage a homestand that had them fall short against the Texas Rangers and Houston Astros - the Angels picked up couple of veterans for the team's September push to get into the Wild Card game.

While Angels lost speedy outfielder Cameron Maybin to the Astros - picking up Upton gives the Angels the middle of the order bat to complement Mike Trout.

Phillips should give the Angels a boost at second base for the last month of the season - he's simply an immediate upgrade over the likes of Kaleb Cowart and Cliff Pennington, still putting up the solid, dependable batting numbers with some athleticism left after playing in 16 seasons in the big leagues.

Ugh, yuck...something smells like Pujols

Go figure, the Angels are right there in the chase for an American League Wild Card spot [68-65, 1 game behind the Minnesota Twins] and while Mike Trout has recently been mired in a slump on his own - it's hard to watch another rally killing ground ball hit by Albert Pujols to the left side of the infield while he can barely run it out to first base.

Unfortunately, Pujols isn't going anywhere, but it would be nice to see him come up clutch with the bat over the last month of the season - Pujols has proven to be a 'money player' before, but his turn in the lineup has just a black hole of suck.

At times I feel like the old man that he is, still grinding it out, like the good pro that he is - but I can only take so much out of his recent performance and from fan to player, Pujols needs to put up numbers fast.

TTM autographs received: Chili Davis

Davis signed my two trading cards in black Sharpie in about 12 days c/o The Boston Red Sox, where he is the hitting coach - on SCN, it looks like successful responses are spotty at best but I must have seen a posted success on another collector's Instagram account and figured to try and get a couple of my loose Angels cards signed.

I was thinking I might not get my cards back or if I did, it would be one of those situations - where my SASE randomly shows up out of nowhere after a couple of years.

TTM autograph received: Mark Whiten

The former MLB outfielder personalized and signed my trading card in about 4 weeks - Whiten's most memorable big league game was when he slugged four home runs against the Cincinnati Reds in 1993.

TTM autographs received: John Schuerholz

The longtime general manager and president of the Atlanta Braves signed my two cards in blue Sharpie in about 10 days - I saw that the 2017 Hall of Fame inductee was a pretty good signer TTM, but since I didn't have anything in particular to send him, I figured why not send him a couple of 'generic' team cards.

I like the fact both cards came back with nice, bold autographs with 'HOF 2017' inscriptions - Schuerholz also briefly responded to my letter asking about whether he had to huddle up with the on-field manager and pitching coach to sell a pitcher on being a reliever as opposed to a starting pitcher.

"Yes we did," Schuerholz wrote. "Psychology is a worthy and valuable tool."

2017 Topps National Baseball Card Day

It was probably not in the spirit of national baseball card day, but instead of ending up at a card shop to pick up a NBCD promo pack as well as spending $10 to get some sort of Mike Trout bonus card - I ordered a set of 29 cards [plus the Trout] on eBay for about $15.

At the very least, I've gotten all the cards in-hand as opposing to having to trek to participating card shops [I only really go to one anyway] - to see if I can pick-up multiple packs, just to sort of come up with a complete set

While these cards are really designed to promoted the baseball card hobby for a younger demographic - it's fun to go through a current-year card set with a distinct design.

Jered Weaver - a tribute to a franchise ace

Weaver was a starting pitcher who to put his heart and soul for the Angels, winning 150 games for the franchise - he was a hot shot rookie posted an 11-2 W-L mark with the Angels in 2006 and established himself as an No. 1 guy several seasons later.

In his prime, Weaver chose to stay with the franchise on a 'hometown' discount - he won 20 games and threw a no-hitter in 2012.

There might have been a natural inclination to compare Jered with older brother Jeff, who was already a veteran MLB pitcher - when Jered was starring at Long Beach State.

However, Jered seemed so much better than his older brother - even if Jered's last couple of years in an Angels uniform were tough, especially as his velocity had drastically declined.

The last time I saw Weaver in-person was when he was with the San Diego Padres in spring training - he was participating in a bunting drill with the other Padres starting pitchers.

No one is going to remember Weaver's final MLB season with the Padres, where he was 0-5 and allowed 16 home runs in 42 innings - it would have been nice for him to enjoy some kind of bounce back season, though that never did materialize and after 12 big league seasons, the 34-year-old made the decision to retire.

TTM autographs received: Heidi Watney

The MLB Network host and reporter signed my two cards and personalized one in about two weeks or so - I was going to scan the personalized card with the 'God Bless' inscription but the card pictured 'jumped' out of my SASE and onto my scanner bed.

Featured autograph - Cesar Puello

Puello was picked up as AAA depth by the Angels earlier in the year and made his MLB debut Wednesday afternoon - going 1-for-4 with two stolen bases and RBI in the Angels 5-1 win against the Baltimore Orioles.

I was able to get a few of my cards signed by Puello at spring training this past year when he was at Texas Rangers camp - the 26-year old outfielder was a one-time prospect with the New York Mets until a 50-game suspension and injuries derailed his pro career.

Featured autograph - Hideki Irabu

I got Irabu to sign this card during his stint with an independent league baseball team back in 2009 - as much as I'd like to say he was this import from Japan who turned into an ace quality MLB pitcher, his professional baseball career in the United States became a sore disappointment, if not an outright joke.

As is, I don't really know if there was more to his life off the field - however, reading this Sports Illustrated story does paint a bleak picture of a guy who never belonged and was kind of a tormented, aimless soul.