Thursday, January 7, 2010

Rapping Things Up

Pat Rapp 2000

In a moment of weakness, I picked this card up on eBay. It was cheap and it's on an Orioles card but it's not the greatest autograph, I already had an autograph of his on a Marlins card and Pat is a good TTM signer. I think my tipping point was the fact that I didn't have an Orioles card of his so I would've had to buy the card and then mail it out to him so my total cost would've been about the same either way. Also, I keep typing Patt Rapp instead of Pat Rapp. The double p's at the end of his last name screws me up for some reason.

Pat signed with the Orioles as a free agent before the 2000 season and started 30 games for the Birds that season. He went 9-12 with a 5.90 ERA, so things didn't go well, but then again, not many pitchers on that '00 team had much luck.

Over his 10 MLB seasons, Pat pitched for 6 teams, and I remember him most for the 5 years he was on the Marlins towards the start of his career. He was on the 1993 team and I was really into the expansion at that point of my life so I followed both the Rockies and Marlins those first few years. Honestly, I think that I liked the colors and logos of the two new teams as much as anything else. Or maybe it was David Nied and Nigel Wilson.

According to his Facebook page, Pat currently seems to be living the good life and really enjoys bass fishing.


2 comments:

Contrary Guy said...

My first impression in looking at that card is that this is not worthy of a Ryan-type autograph but now I see your (very acceptable) explanation.

Orioles Magic said...

Cheers Kevin-I am actually working on an upgrade at this point. Staring at that autograph while working on this post lit a fire under me.