Balls x3...

So I went to my third baseball game of the season (second at home in Staten Island) yesterday.

It was the rubber game between last year's NYPL Championship teams, the Staten Island Yankees and the West Virginia Black Bears.

The starter for this game was Drew Finley, who I asked to inscribe my Bowman Chrome card. Maybe I should make this a thing?

Finley wasn't quite at his best but he did get the job done. Last time out Finley was part of a 10 inning no hitter. This time he went 5.2 innings pitched allowing five hits and two runs (both earned). Like the 10 inning no hitter, Josh Roeder came in to relieve Finley and threw the rest of 4.1 innings of the game.

I managed to get the Yankees' second rounder in this year's draft, Nick Solak.
All told Solak went 2-4 with a walk and came home in the bottom of the 10th on a wild pitch to win the game for the Yankees (ha! take that BWTP!). He also broke up the no-hitter that the Black Bears had through the first five innings.

Kane Sweeney's an intriguing prospect who has potential with the bat. But in this game's case Sweeney was mainly walking as he walked four times in five at bats. All in due time I suppose.

Now of course I got to see Luis Torrens again. Prior to this game Torrens had not been playing for a few games and according to Torrens' father he was resting his legs as his legs were a bit fatigued after not catching for over a year. But it was still nice to see him.

Bang! I got his autograph on a ball too. The first autograph I've gotten on a ball in like two years.
I prepared two pens and the first one died before Torrens got to write (hence why there are other blue lines on the left side), so my behind was saved by my second pen. This is the first time I had a player sign a game used (or practice used) ball and I love it. I also gave Torrens a program of the 2014 NYPL All Star Game (when he was an All Star) and a spare black paper parallel from 2014 Bowman Draft Asia Edition that I had.

By the time this post goes up the SI Yankees should be on a four game trip to Vermont and Hudson Valley. Torrens may or may not return to Staten Island after this trip. So it was really cool to see Torrens again and get as much stuff signed as I did (although I'm worried I pushed it).

Now those of you who read the title may notice that I alluded to there being three balls. Well, one was the Torrens above. The others?

Well one was this ordinary NYPL ball I found in the stands before the game. Ironically it was how I discovered the other ball that I asked Torrens to sign. Is this a sign that I need to use it to ask another player for his autograph? More likely, it's a sign that it's almost time for a random giveaway.

The other ball was this cool promotional giveaway ball. This was given out by the Staten Island Yankees to the first 2,500 guests in attendance to commemorate 15 years of Staten Island Yankees baseball at Richmond County Savings Bank Ballpark.

Pretty cool stuff. I'm not used to balls but it's a nice change of pace from cards every now and then.

This was another game where I left early due to personal reasons (i.e. a migraine that started to affect me). Plus I can't really stay during these 7 PM night games too long anyway considering my long commute back. It might've been the correct choice because the game went into extra innings (again).

Looking at the box score it was a solid result since the Yankees won in extra innings. Finley was reportedly not at his best but let's hope it's just a slight hiccup. Torrens should be back in the lineup relatively soon. Fingers crossed.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care of your balls (thank goodness nobody reads blogposts on Saturdays).

2016 IP Count: 15

Hark, A Card From 2002!

After spending a few years in the hobby and accumulating a certain number of cards, you start to notice a pattern.

If you go to card shows or card shops, or even engage in trades (blind or otherwise) with collectors, you notice that cards from a certain era are lacking.

Of course cards from the 1920's are nonexistent (really, chances are most collectors have a gap from their T206/T205 to their '33 Goudey) but that's to be expected. I'm referring to more to the 2000's. The pretty dark decade that brought the world countless horrible tragedies (basically your typical decade).

After the 80's and 90's when everything was overproduced, you'd expect for there to be more 2000's era cards right? Well so far that's not been the case. At least not for me.

You see I'm working on this small project where I'm trying to build the Yankees prospect team sets for all of the regular Bowman products (Bowman, Bowman Chrome and Bowman Draft) ever released. Finding these cards from the 2010's to today are easy and cheap. Finding these cards from the 2000's to 2010 is difficult and costly.

In general cards released in the 2000's are hard to come by. In all my three years in this hobby, I've acquired approximately five Bowman prospect base cards from the 2000's. That is absurd. Why is it that I've accumulated more T206es during that span of time?

Well part of it is likely because I actively went after T206es and didn't go after 2000's cards.

That said, why should I have to go after 2000's cards? People chuck 80's and 90's cards at each other because they can't get rid of the stuff, why are the 2000's so different? Why are they scarcer? Where are all of the 2000's cards? Especially the mid-2000's? Weren't there collectors in the 2000's? Did collectors chuck all of these in the river?

If the blogs focused on cards and the various stories I've heard about people and their time in this hobby are any indication, a lot of people who collect cards today weren't collecting in the 2000's. Whether it was because they had to focus on college, jobs or child-rearing, a lot of people who've come back to collecting today weren't collecting in the 2000's.

That might apply to vendors too. How else can you explain why my semi-local card show (that I've been going to for 3+ years) has a ton of junk wax cards from when porno-staches were all the rage, but almost none from the mid-2000's?

I suppose that if I wanted to I could go to places like COMC or eBay or Just Commons, but even then there comes that irksome feeling that I'm overpaying. I got a Brett Gardner 2005 Bowman base card for less than 50 cents a few years back. I refuse to pay more than that for flameouts who didn't pan out. And yes I'm aware that those inflated prices are due to scarcity.

I keep hearing rumors about how Bowman keeps pumping out more and more of their products in recent times due to some predetermined algorithm based on the number of the preorders they get. If that's true, it certainly explains why Bowman prospect cards from the 2010's to today are so plentiful and can be had for dirt cheap.

As such cards from previous eras might have smaller print runs. Not too small, but just small enough that these never show up.

Ugh, I'm probably over thinking this. Point is there aren't too many 2000's era cards I see too often and I want to change that.

A few days ago I got that Brandon Weeden 2002 Bowman Chrome autograph from eBay. It's now the oldest Bowman brand certified autograph I own and a key back in time to 2002.

Weeden was a two-sport player in high school but he became a pro baseball player first after being drafted in the second round by the Yankees in 2002. Weeden had the potential to be a pretty good reliever/closer but he was traded the following year for Kevin Brown (que Night Owl's disgust). Weeden gave pro baseball a shot for a few years but hung it up for good after the 2006 season. Weeden then went to Oklahoma State University and went back to football. Weeden was drafted by the Cleveland Browns with the 22nd overall pick in the first round of the 2012 NFL Draft, ten years after his MLB draft. Currently he's a quarterback for the Houston Texans. Not too bad of a career move I suppose.

Hopefully I can track down other cards from the flagship 2002 Bowman products. That year several notable prospects from the Yankees' past could be found on cardboard like Drew Henson, Nick Johnson, John-Ford Griffin and Shelley Duncan.

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