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So after doing 50/50's for the first time in years back in May, here's my second 50/50 of the year barely a month after. What a world.

This time I enlisted the help of P-Town Tom.

Tom lives in P-Town, home to the Peoria Chiefs. A one-time Cubs affiliate that's currently a Cardinals affiliate. They might change affiliations again after their Player Development Contract expires in 2020.

But for now they're a Cardinals affiliate, and more importantly they have one of the best Cardinals prospects in the org on their team this year (or at least they did at the beginning of it).

Yup, Nolan Gorman!

Gorman was the Cardinals' first round pick in 2018 and made a lot of buzz as the first player born in the year 2000 to be drafted in the MLB Player Draft. Technically 2000 isn't the 21st century, but it was cool to see that the draft is starting to leave the 1900's. Terrifying because it causes us to remind ourselves that we are mortals with finite amounts of time, but still cool.

Tom managed to get Gorman thanks to one of the signing events the team hosts. He told me that Gorman specifically gets his own setup because there are a lot of people who want his autograph. For good reason given his status as a top prospect and being the first 2000-born player to be drafted, but Tom also stated that it's easy to see that he'd prefer he didn't have all this attention. Truth be told I wouldn't blame Gorman if he got tired of signing stuff by this point. Even though I'm being a hypocrite who contributed to the problem. So yeah, two existential crisis' today for the price of one!

Accompanying the Gorman were these wonderful TCMA cards of NPB players. These are the first ones to enter my collection, and thankfully two Dragons are here too. One of the things I plan on testing with these is seeing if these ever made it to Japan. Gotta see if some of the more knowledgable folks over there ever saw these.

HECK YEAH! JAPAN REPRESENT!

Yuzuru Hanyu was a big deal for a while in Japan because he took gold in the men's figure skating portion of the 2014 and 2018 Olympics. He's also done extremely well in several other international figure skating tournaments. Enough to put him into the GOAT discussion. Very cool.

As for Naomi Osaka I talked about her in a previous post where I highlighted Japanese athletes. But it's good to have another copy of an Osaka card around.

I also must've asked PTT for this Shea Tiley card at one point. I love these SI for Kids cards because they cover a broad spectrum of athletes, and Women's College Hockey is definitely something you'd probably only expect in SI for Kids. After graduating Tiley turned pro and is currently with the Toronto Furies. She also routinely plays for Team Canada in several international women's hockey tournaments.

And that was another little boost from my friends in far of places.

Thanks to Tom and Gorman for the autograph.

And as always thank you (the readers) for stopping by :).

Take care.