Category: Misc

A Prospect and a Future Hall of Famer

Today was a fun day for mail! Jim Leyland signed autographs on September 19th at the Main Line Autographs show in Pittsburgh. I had a few things I had wanted to be signed for a while so I sent them in. I received the following items today:
Lanny Frattare scorecard from 04.08.1986 signed with “MLB Managerial Debut Opening Day 4/8/86”
Ticket stub from the 04.08.1986 game with “Managerial Debut”
Ticket from the 09.25.2013 game with “Final Win 1769”
2 baseballs with the following inscriptions on them:
1997 World Champs
1769 Wins
1728 Losses
2017 WBC Team USA Champs
3X MOTY 1990/1992/2006
All the Leyland items have JSA Witness authentication too! I love how these turned out and look forward to his induction into the Hall of Fame.

The other package was three baseballs from a signing that Fan HQ had with Jose Miranda. Each of those have Fan HQ authentication on them.

A Whise(nant) Man

Today was a fun mail day. I received a scorecard signed by John Smoltz I had sent in for a private signing at Waukesha Sportscards via Mark G (hofcs on SCN). Smoltz signed it exactly as requested. It was from his 188th career win on August 21, 2006. John went 8 innings giving up 3 hits walking 1 and striking out 10.
The other package I received was from Howard C (favorite_things on SCN) who was breaking up a signed near set of 1961 Topps. I purchased four cards from Howard. Three were upgrades and one was a need. I am pretty familiar with two of the signatures on two of the cards. Of the other two, I was fairly confident one was bad but the other was good. I paid for a Beckett Quick Opinion on the two cards and, just as I suspected, the one that I thought was bad was confirmed as bad and the other good. Howard said he would give me a money back guarantee within 60 days so I will send the one back. The other three are beautiful cards and got me within three signed Twins cards to complete the set. The three cards I added to my collection are:
1961 Topps Zoilo Versalles
1961 Topps Jim Lemon
1961 Topps Pete Whisenant

I Got Goosed!

If you have been following my blog, you have seen a recent trend with getting Lanny Frattare’s scorecards signed. I expect to receive another one tomorrow but today’s scorecard was signed by Goose Gossage. Many will not remember his single season pitching for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1977. I know I did not realize it until I was going through the list of available scorecards and saw Goose pitched for them. I acquired the scorecard for the 06.22.1977 game in which the Pirates beat Padres in San Diego 3-1. What is cool about this game is Gossage pitched to four batters and struck each out and picked up the save. When I sent him the scorecard to sign, I requested he add “4 Up! 4 Down!” and “42nd MLB Save” to it. Not only did he do that, he also included “HOF 2008” and the following “They never had a chance, fun!” to it. I thought that was awesome. Thanks for making a cool scorecard even cooler Goose!