Upgrading Mickey

So I'm officially back from my time away from real life and my computer. I enjoyed my holidays and hope that you all did too.

Today's autograph is of Mickey McGuire, who I profiled back in October when I add a signed index card of his to my collection. A long-time friend of the blog sent me this delayed wedding present that happened to arrive just after Christmas, so it seems like a good autograph to use to get back into the swing of posting. It's my very own Mickey McGuire autographed Orioles Crown card! This is Mickey's only Orioles card, and he was one of the very last living players that I was able to add to my collection, so his autograph is hard to find to say the least.

Thank you so much Russell for helping me to completely knock Mickey off my need list! I really appreciate your help with him.


My first real post of 2012 also seems like a good time to share an update on my collection. Of the 910 players who have appeared in a game for Orioles, I only need one autograph to wrap things up. I hope that I will be able to add a Bert Hamric autograph sometime in the next year to "complete" my collection. Of course, I'm still trying to upgrade my autographs of 30 other former O's, and it's likely that 15-25 players will make their Oriole debuts in 2012, so there will almost always be something to keep me collecting.

I hope that you all have a great 2012 and that your card collections grow exponentially.

Unpossible Autograph Friday- Mickey Scott

The Orioles family lost another member this past week when Mickey Scott passed away on Sunday in Binghamton, New York. He was only 64 years old.

Mickey was traded to the Orioles from the White Sox in September 1970 for Mickey McGuire, in one of the only double Mickey trades in baseball history. He pitched for the Orioles in 1972-73 and later played for the Expos and Angels. He pitched in 133 games over his five seasons in the Majors and had an 8-7 record with a 3.72 ERA.

After his big league career was over, he owned and operated Mickey's Mound, a bar in his hometown of Binghamton, and one of his regulars was no other than the infamous Billy Martin.

Mickey was nice enough to have signed this card for me back in 2009; I got the card back in under two weeks, so you know that Mickey still cared about his fans.

RIP Mickey.

Mickey McGuire

Since no teams have been eliminated from the postseason today (yet, at least), I don't have anything to update with the playoff bracket, but anticipate that I will have an update coming tomorrow.

To tide you over, here is an autograph that I have been trying to add to my collection for a very long time. Mickey was the last living Oriole who I did not have an autograph of, and I'm very happy to finally scratch his name off of my need list. He is featured on a card in the Orioles Crown set, so technically I could one day upgrade to that, but considering any autograph of his took so long to find, I'm not overly optimistic.

Mickey was a middle infielder who played two short stints in Baltimore; six games in 1962 and 10 games in 1967. He had 21 at-bats over those 16 games and he had four hits (all singles), two runs, two RBI and two strikeouts. He never played another Major League game and spent most of his professional career as a minor leaguer. Over thirteen seasons in the minors, he played in over 1500 games for the Orioles, Angels, and White Sox farm systems.

I'm not exactly sure why Mickey's autograph is so hard to track down, but would guess that it has something to do with a lack of supply or demand. I speculate that Mickey must not be a fan of signing, and also that not too many people are trying to add his signature to their collections. I have seen one multi-signed item on eBay that included Mickey's autograph on it, but was outbid on it.

Mickey's autograph is pretty clean and legible and I really like the flourish that he gives both of his M's. I obtained this signed index card from a fellow Orioles collector on Sportscollectors.Net and have to thank my dad for the birthday money that paid for it, thanks dad!