Six-Q's

A little while ago there was a little Twitter challenge set up by the official MLB account.

Pick four of players who share the same first letter of their first name with the first letter of your first name too. An outfielder, an infielder, a starting pitcher and a reliever.

Sounds simple enough right?

Well it is until you realize not everyone is going to be able to participate. Note, this isn't an invitation for you to give me your core fours, I don't care.

As the title of this post may suggest, there have only been six major league baseball players whose first names started with the letter Q. And one of them wasn't even their real name but rather their nickname. Even more interesting is that between all six of them they have a combined 0 innings pitched. They were all position players.

Might as well start with the two I picked for my "core 4" then.

OF: Quintin Berry

Scan Courtesy of COMC

MLB Career: 2012-2015, 2017 (Per Baseball Reference) | 0.8 bWAR

The most recent player among these six and potentially the last for a while. Berry's career was that of a journeyman even before he had ever made his MLB debut. He was originally a Phillies draft pick and spent a good four-ish seasons there before getting the axe. He then bounced around to the Padres to the Mets to the Reds before landing a role with the Tigers before the 2012 season. Injuries to Austin Jackson gave him an opportunity to break into the big leagues and he capitalized on it, earning the Tigers' team rookie of the year honors in 2012. Berry was then on the move again from 2013 onward going to the Royals, then to the Red Sox (twice!), then to the Orioles, then the Cubs/Angels/Blue Jays/Twins/Long Island Ducks/Brewers/Yankees in that order. He retired following the 2018 season.

INF: Queenie O'Rourke

Photograph via FindAGrave

MLB Career: 1908 (Per Baseball Reference) | -0.2 bWAR

"Queenie" is not actually O'Rourke's real name. His real name is James Stephen O'Rourke. Son of hall of famer Jim O'Rourke (those of you who were alive in the 1880's might remember him). Queenie's MLB career wasn't as decorated or as fruitful. He made his MLB debut in August of 1908 and his last MLB appearance was in October of 1908. Appearing in 34 games for the New York Highlanders and putting up a mere 62 OPS+. Other than that his career was largely that of a minor league baseball player, bouncing around from various clubs in the northeast until he retired following the 1915 season before making some brief returns in 1922 and 1924. O'Rourke passed away in 1955 at the age of 71.

So with the two I picked due to recency bias/Highlanders bias out of the way, let's look at the other four.

Quinn Mack

Scan Courtesy of COMC

MLB Career: 1994 (Per Baseball Reference) | -0.2 bWAR

Quinn Mack was an outfielder whose MLB career was only five games in 1994, for the Seattle Mariners. Originally an Expos prospect, he eventually joined Seattle as a free agent and played five games for them before going back down to the minors. He'd later join the Padres and Marlins as a minor league free agent too.

Quincy Trouppe

Scan courtesy of COMC

MLB Career: 1952 (Per Baseball Reference) | 0.0 bWAR

Quincy Trouppe was only in the big leagues for one year in 1952 as a catcher for the Cleveland baseball team. Prior to that he was an eight time all star in the Negro Leagues from 1930 to 1949. By the time his MLB stint happened he was a 39 year old veteran/technical rookie. One really interesting tidbit is that Trouppe and reliever Sam "Toothpick" Jones formed the first ever black battery in MLB history when Jones came in relief during a game on May 3rd. Anyway the Trouppe story is a lot more fascinating when you consider that the man also spent much of his prime playing in the Mexican League and Canadian Provincial League as well as the Negro Leagues. Dude was a baseball lifer.

Quilvio Veras

Scan Courtesy of COMC

MLB Career: 1995-2001 (Per Baseball Reference) | 12.9 bWAR

Quilvio Veras was a second baseman who was originally a Mets farmhand before being dealt to the Marlins in exchange for Carl Everett. The following season Veras made his MLB debut for the Marlins and went on to lead the NL in stolen bases. He also finished third in NL Rookie of the Year voting in 1995 because of that too. Veras later went on to play for the Padres, Braves, Red Sox (minors) but eventually called it a career after the 2001 season. He did sign with the Dodgers for the 2002 season but he never played for them.

Quinton McCracken

Scan Courtesy of COMC

MLB Career: 1995-2006 (Per Baseball Reference) | 0.3 bWAR

Last but certainly not least is the most successful "player whose first name starts with Q" in MLB history, Quinton McCracken.
McCracken is the most successful player among these six by virtue of having the longest MLB career. One that spanned 12 years from 1995 to 2006. During that time he played for the Rockies, Devil Rays, Twins, Diamondbacks, Mariners and Reds. He was a perfectly serviceable outfielder who played in 999 games across 12 seasons and was usually good for 110+ games every season except those that were hampered by injuries.
Veras might have had some hardware to his name but the marathon was won by McCracken. Hmm, maybe I should've picked him over Berry.

So there you have it. The only six major leaguers in MLB history whose first names start with a Q. And one of them technically doesn't/shouldn't count. But when you're this desperate, you bend the rules.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care.

They Will Be the Architects of Their Own Destruction

There are certain characters in Star Wars that hold a special place for many fans of the franchise. The reasons why they're special may differ, but that doesn't change their uniqueness and charm.

For example, Grand Admiral Thrawn.

Thrawn, aka Mitth'raw'nurudo was an military leader who notably played a part as one of the Empire's most cunning admirals and tacticians. Noted for his unique methods of combat that centered on making careful moves after spending time studying and researching his opponents and their habits. He's also one of the few non-humans to play a significant role within the predominantly human Empire.

Thrawn's introduction to Star Wars lore dates back to 1991 when author Timothy Zahn published the book Heir to the Empire. A book detailing the aftermath of the fall of the Empire five years after the events in Return of the Jedi, as well as the first in the "Thrawn Trilogy" novels with Dark Force Rising and The Last Command also coming out in 1992 and 1993 respectively.

Although these books aren't canon anymore in Star Wars lore post-Disney acquisition, they were instrumental in starting what would go on to be the Star Wars Expanded Universe. A huge jumbled mess of different storylines, predominantly focused on events after Episode VI or far before Episode I. Outside of this trilogy and the KOTOR video game most of these expanded universe things were honestly terrible and Disney giving them the axe was very welcome.

Thrawn is significant in that he's one of the best things to come from that EU. As such there were few characters that rivaled him in popularity in terms of who fans have been waiting to see in a medium other than novels or comic books. Maybe he could've shown up in the prequels? Or the Clone Wars cartoon? Neither of that happened but he did finally join the new Star Wars canon thanks to the Disney cartoon Star Wars Rebels.

The character wasted no time making an impact when he did finally show up.

Thrawn's noted features of being very cunning, calculating and patient carried over into the cartoon version. Complete with a calm yet sinister voice provided by Lars Mikkelsen (brother of Mads Mikkelsen who played Galen Erso in Rogue One), and an incredible haunting theme produced by Kevin Kiner.

He is ruthlessly efficient and strives to take every single battle he's a part of as a learning experience. Win or lose the key for him is always knowledge. Knowledge about the very opponents he's going up against and using their characteristics, culture and tactics against them to destroy them in the long run.

In a way Thrawn's character was a welcome sight and yet somewhat underwhelming. Not because of Thrawn himself but because he's the type of threat who, by all rights, should be more than plenty to bring down Ezra Bridger and the early Rebel Alliance. And yet the Rebels portrayal of him showed him losing small battles and the only real major victory shown on screen was nearly destroying the Rebel Alliance but just having to settle for making them flee their secret base.

The other military leaders around him often set him back more than the rebels themselves did. In a way the one thing he couldn't comprehend, the nature of The Force, is what technically led to his downfall but the Empire's inability to get anything meaningful done kinda set things up to go bad for him. Not like Disney would allow a scenario where the bad guys wins anyway.

Personally Admiral Thrawn getting bested by Bridger and his band of rebels was something I kinda saw coming anyway and accepted. I know some hardcore Thrawn stans were super pissed but luckily for me I didn't care.

No, what made me care was that Thrawn (and his species the Chiss in general) are tied to a much more interesting concept/potential threat, the Yuuzhan Vong. An outside threat to the Republic/Empire/galaxy as a whole due to how they were essentially invaders from another galaxy with advanced weapons and tactics that the galaxy had never fought against.

The new Disney canon does not have the Vong (although it has been confirmed that there were ideas to bring them into the picture in The Clone Wars), but instead it has the "Grysks" now. This is all written in Zahn's Thrawn book from 2018, Thrawn: Alliances. Thrawn vs the rebel alliance doesn't interest me nearly as much as Thrawn vs the Vong/Grysks. A true external threat that is neither Jedi or Sith that will give the galaxy a huge shakeup is extremely my shit (it's why I was a huge fan of the Eternal Empire in The Old Republic MMO).

Thrawn's fate following the liberation of Lothal in Rebels remains to be seen but Filoni has confirmed that the character is still alive. What he did afterwards is a story for another time and I just hope the Thrawn vs Grysks conflict takes precedence over whatever the Empire does because the Empire vs Rebel Alliance stuff bores me. I'm also low-key hoping it comes in the form of a movie or TV show rather than a book. Thrawn's such an interesting character that it's fun to read about him, but it's even more fun to see him fully realized as an on-screen character brought to life.

Anyway I bought the Lars Mikkelson autograph seen a few times in this post on eBay a while ago. Mainly while I was in a huge Star Wars mode while watching the final season of The Clone Wars (which I will talk about in a future post). Originally I was looking for either Ashley Eckstein (Ahsoka Tano) or Sam Witwer (Darth Maul) for obvious reasons, but when I saw the Thrawn autograph for fairly cheap it was a no-brainer.

Star Wars High Tek has slowly but surely become my favorite brand of Star Wars collectible cards. The thin card stock suits me and my binder pages just fine and considering how all of my favorite Star Wars autographs are in Tek format, at this point this has stuck.

I'm still looking for Steve Blum (Zeb Orrelios), Eckstein and Witwer, and also Sarah Michelle Gellar (Seventh Sister) in Tek auto form but I'm willing to be patient with them. Eckstein and Witwer will inevitably fall back down to reasonable prices after the Clone Wars finale hype has come and gone. Buffy the Jedi Slayer might be tougher by virtue of who she is, but considering how I already have her husband Freddie Prinze Jr. in my Star Wars autograph collection I might as well.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care :).

The God Of Forkballs, Vintage Edition

For the past four years (at least) I've had a quasi-goal of obtaining a vintage card of Shigeru Sugishita. Preferably from his playing days. Because while the modern cards featuring cards of him from his prime are cool and everything, I do admit that the charm of vintage is that nothing can really beat something that was made in the moment.

This is something that was pretty difficult to do in Japan. For whatever reason baseball card shops don't really deal with vintage too much and even longtime card dealers say they never saw Sugishita's vintage stuff in the flesh in all of their years in the profession. And they live in Nagoya! I've got my own theories on why but that doesn't matter.

Instead they're a lot easier to find in America apparently. I don't know why or how, but they are. Or rather they must be because, well, look!

Yes friends, that is a vintage Shigeru Sugishita card from 1950. Sent to me by NPBCardGuy who runs Japanese Baseball Cards.

The card in question is from the 1950 JBR set (according to NPBCG's blog). A name I have to assume some gaijin collector bestowed upon the set (probably an acronym or something) because none of my Japanese sources recollected any type of name of that nature. Also looking it un in Japanese produced bupkis.

The design reminds me of 1947 Bowman, what with the black and white photography and the white border around it. Also the two are pretty much the same in terms of size.

NPBCardGuy didn't stop there. There was also this second vintage Sugishita card. One I like even more because the full-bleed, no border-ness of it is absolutely fantastic to me.

Trying to look up information on this card was tough. I couldn't just ask NPBCG what it was because that'd be too easy and convenient. I had to do stupid roundabout shit like spending well north of two hours looking far and wide throughout the internet in both English and Japanese. Which produced bupkis too. My educated guess is that this is something along the lines of a bromide from the 1950s because a lot of vintage bromides at that time were done in this black and white photography format with the players' name and/or the team name (and/or occasionally the position) written somewhere around the player.

I didn't scan the backs of these because they were both blanks (a sure sign that both of these are bromides for sure). But rest assured that they also reek of vintage character.

Accompanying the two cards were a crisp $20 bill that I only meant as a joke but NPBCG actually followed through on it. As well as a business card.

NPBCG alerted me to this package/PWE a few days before it actually arrived and by that point I had all but forgotten that he even owed me anything. Mainly because the biggest benefit I got from our trade (which you can read here, here and here) is that I got to dump a bunch of stuff on him. In return he sends back two vintage bromides of a Japanese baseball God and cold hard cash before a recession. Now that's nothing short of awesome.

Of course now the issue is "I have the vintage stuff, do I dare attempt a TTM?".

I want to but currently I've got three issues.

1). I lost Sugishita's address

Back in 2017 I got Sugishita's address through a Japanese TTM collector. That collector has been offline for years now and I never properly recorded the address. I did manage to find another address for Mr. Sugishita but I'm not 100% sure it's accurate.

2). Japan Post isn't accepting any international mail

I'm not sure if Japan isn't taking any mail that's been sent from overseas (aka outside Japan), but as of right now it isn't accepting any mail headed overseas (aka from Japan to elsewhere). Which is to say that even if I were to get my letter to Mr. Sugishita (assuming the address I found is correct), there's no guarantee it's coming back until the Japan Post decides to ship things outside of Japan again.

3). Sugishita is 94 years old

The last thing I want to do is absentmindedly transmit the virus to Mr. Sugishita through something as stupid as a TTM request. On one hand I'm not super knowledgable on if the virus is transmittable through mail (doesn't look like it's likely but it's not entirely impossible either), on the other hand it's much better to be safe than sorry.

We'll see what happens here I guess. It'd be a shame if the bromides went unsigned for the rest of their existences, but if nothing else I absolutely love that I'm in a position to wonder about the optics of possibly doing something.

So big thanks to NPB Card Guy for the two awesome bromides in exchange for taking a huge load of stuff off of my hands.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care :).