Flipping through his early 1990s cards, the bespectacled Pasqua didn’t look like any sort of athlete - while his MLB career petered out after turning 30, to cherry pick a run of years where he was most successful, Pasqua put up a decent slash line [.251 / .337 / .455, including a 118 OPS+] through his 20s.
Wednesday, December 30, 2020
Tuesday, December 29, 2020
I found some actual cards of Faust but may not have had immediate luck in finding a mailing address for her - until someone reported a success [with an actual mailing address listed] in an autograph group I belonged to.
I mailed out [to an Illinois address], hoping for my own success and I got a response within a couple of weeks - in addition to responding to my letter, she also wrote my request was forwarded to Arizona and she would have had some extra photos to send if she was back in Illinois.
Monday, December 28, 2020
Saturday, December 26, 2020
I waited a little bit and took another shot, using the other address and finally - got my card signed in about a month or so arriving a couple of days before Christmas.
I only had a 1970 Topps card in my collection, featuring a cleaner cut Drago, who was a dependable starter early in his big league career with the Kansas City Royals - through the late 1970s, he became a reliever who bounced around several MLB teams and had started to grow out some prominent facial hair for for his era.
Friday, December 18, 2020
Maybe the blister 'bubble' was loose, peeling off the paper backing - so someone had messed with them at some point.
I got a jumbo pack as well because who knows what I may pull - even if we are talking about retail here.
Thursday, December 17, 2020
Wednesday, December 16, 2020
Monday, December 14, 2020
All I need to finish off my card is Tim Leary, who might have done his share of former LA Dodgers appearances in So. Cal over the past 10-15 years - he's never been someone I've been compelled to be interested in, but now I have to see where someone might do a signing with him.
Tuesday, December 08, 2020
Saturday, December 05, 2020
I also sent a 1985 Fleer I found in a Dollar Tree repack - the 'pre-junk wax era' cards through mid 1980s holds some allure, probably because that is where the good rookie cards from that era came from and there is some trickle down interest, even if the cards came out before my time.
The flap on my SASE was loose and I was might have panicked a little- but the cards were still in envelope.
Friday, December 04, 2020
After he was traded to the Angels last off-season, I wanted to see if I could snag one at some point - I still remember Bundy coming into the pro ranks as a hyped up prospect and still have some a couple of loose, empty boxes of 2012 Bowman Draft with his picture on them.
Maybe I could have picked up a certified autograph from one of the Bowman releases from the time Bundy was a stud prospect, just to have something with him pictured in a big league uniform - but something more 'generic' and almost without a team affiliation listed, might have been the more ideal card since he was going to be Angel anyway.
As the case maybe these cards often picture players from a hodgepodge of teams, from the minors to the major leagues - I'd really like to put a premium on cards that picture players as an Angel, but I'll take what I can get.
I did find an an an autograph of Jose Suarez, who might have been the team's top pitching prospect entering the 2019 season, thought that may be the equivalent of the No. 15 [or lower] ranked prospect in a deeper MLB organization - I don't know if he's gotten a real extensive look the past two seasons but he's still either young and inexperienced or just doesn't know how to get big league hitters out to stick for good.
I grabbed an autograph of Mike Mayers, pictured as a one-time St. Louis Cardinals prospect years ago - he was an an under the radar find that actually had a great year out of the Angels bullpen in 2020.
I grabbed an autograph of Julio Teheran, just so I don't have to worry about digging up the random in-person autograph card I got when he was still a top prospect at the 2010 Futures Game - he was a longtime starter with the Atlanta Braves with mostly positive results, though maybe the writing was on the wall with his peripherals in recent years and the gamble the Angels took on him failed.
Finally I grabbed an autograph of Tommy La Stella, a previously useful if unheralded platoon player with the Atlanta Braves and Chicago Cubs - who had a chance to play on an every day basis with the Angels a couple of years ago and continued to play well for the Angels this past year before being traded to the Oakland Athletics.
La Stella found some pop in his bat and was named to the All-Star team in 2019 - before a broken leg derailed his season.
I might have gotten a couple of La Stella in-person autographs, once in the Arizona Fall League and once in spring training - I think since he signed only one, the cards I'd gotten inked up were for sets I was chasing, so I wanted one outright.
I hope nothing 'funny' was going on when the certified autograph card from 2014 was signed - but it looks more of a complete, 'fancier' autograph, than any other versions of La Stella's I've seen.
Thursday, December 03, 2020
I could care less either way but I'm thinking whether his Angels pages should go with my other Angels - perhaps they can be hidden away with his Red Sox pages.
Maybe it's just a random thing, but him not wearing batting gloves during his at-bats - makes him more of a 'real' player to me.
Despite a relatively impressive rookie season in 2019, I don't know if I was ever aware of him enough - to predict he was going to blossom into Buster Posey lite this past season.
Monday, November 30, 2020
Considering everything, I probably stopped doing in-person years ago where I might have seen Martinez - however I took a chance in seeing if I could mail something out to him at the beginning of the abbreviated 2020 season.
Sunday, November 29, 2020
Maybe these pages are not going to be as durable for long term storage but hopefully these aren't completely useless - using penny sleeves would probably help secure particular card (s) in the pages to give me some peace of mind.
I want to see if I can make use of these pages ASAP so they don’t necessarily sit around - maybe my last box of plastic pages lasted about 2 or 3 years just because I wasn't necessarilly gung-ho in displaying the assorted cards that had piled up for certain players.
He was once hyped up as the second coming, but after a good 2019 season and a bad 2020 season - I'm indifferent towards the guy.
He was a wunderkind pitching prospect, but after getting hurt and needing Tommy John surgery - his star dimmed a little bit where his cards represented a bloat I just didn’t want to see.
I tried to think up players who I had enough cards of and wanted to showcase - I didn't want a bunch of partial pages, where I had less than 9 cards to display at the moment, but I made exceptions in some cases where I expect to pull or find more cards to make a full page.
As I tried to rejigger my player binders over the past 10 years, I weeded out certain players' cards for whatever reason - Williams might hot have been associated with the Core Four, but he was an important player during the New York Yankees dynasty run from the mid 1990s through the early 2000s.
Thursday, November 26, 2020
At times, I get this itch to dig out a random card, but don't know where it ended up and I worry it's lost to oblivion - most of the time, it's not some high valued PC card I'm freaking out about, but a card worth a quarter or a dollar at most.
This time, I was trying to figure out where a 2014 Ogden Raptors Victor Gonzalez card ended up - maybe the Mexican lefty didn’t just come out of nowhere, but to reach the big leagues in 2020, Gonzalez took the scenic route through the Los Angeles Dodgers system.
I bought the Raptors team set years ago because it had what I think was Cody Bellinger’s first minor league team set card - I wanted to have an early pro card of the hot rookie back in 2017.
I didn’t know who Gonzalez was, but took note when he was at Rancho Cucamonga for part of the 2019 season - most minor leaguers from a minor league team set end up being cut and five years after the fact, it was funny to have a card of a guy still jugging along.
In a closet, I looked through my assorted bags that made up my 2019 spring training trip - the card wasn’t there in my main Los Angeles Dodgers binder.
I always try to believe any card I'm missing at the moment isn't really gone - but logically somewhere relatively safe, even if I don't have it handy.
I thought must have the Gonzalez card a tiny loose pile somewhere on the dining room - where it was obscured by the other cards that accumulated.
I dug around through the boxes I’d brought to my room from the dining room - servicing as other temporary places I’ve squirreled some team related cards away.
I decide to dig around through the closet again because sometimes I don’t take the time to look through things - go figure, the card was in a binder I’d prepped for some Dodgers backfield action, specifically the day when Corey Seager was playing in one of the minor league spring training games.
I probably looked through the binder at least once already but missed seeing the Gonzalez card the first time around - I took the card out of the photo corners and placed in a plastic sheet in the binder, so the surface is protected a little bit as opposed to being left as is for probably a few more years.
Sunday, November 22, 2020
As is, I do consider the Angels my team and one of my ideals is to have that one big league team to focus on - where it's fun to have new team related cards to go through, even if they don't go towards team sets other collectors may boast about completing at some point.
The lone Mike Trout is 2019 Bowman Sterling Continuity insert #BS-20 - I like to imagine the card is a harder to find pull, but it's a $2 card at best.
I mentioned picking up the trio of quarter century old Garret Anderson cards last year - they are probably binder material that helps make collection of 'GA' cards pop.
I picked up a couple of random Topps On-Demand issues featuring pitcher Griffin Canning and infielder David Fletcher - while they might not be outright stars, each gives a couple of current 'second tier' Angels players to collect.
There was some uncertainty about the health of Canning's arm during spring training - but the righty seemed good to go for much of the shortened 2020 season and was awarded a Gold Glove at his position.
Fletcher has established himself as this generation's David Eckstein as a runty looking guy - who can play all over the diamond and can be a spark plug at the plate or on the bases.
I picked up a Shohei Ohtani is a 2019 Donruss Action All-Stars insert / Pink Fireworks parallel No. AA4 because it pops nicely without costing much - though it may get confusing describing what these alternate versions of non-base set cards are supposed to be.
Finally I picked up a 2020 Finest Flashback Anthony Rendon #58 - I might only have 2-3 Angels cards of the third baseman and maybe they mean a bit more at the moment.
While the original 1993 Topps Finest was never a thing in my collecting universe - after the fact, it's nice to travel back in time to see a re-imagined version of the first Topps Finest cards, featuring current players.
Thursday, November 19, 2020
As it goes, I've already gotten back Billy Moran and Leo Burke, both signing the card I sent to each one - due to the lack of familiarity and the passage of time, I feel like I'm not really in a position to add autographs of the countless old-timers [1960s, 1970s for example] from my favorite team's history, but I need to find a way to try.