My Strange Journey with Don Welchel

Out of all of the autographs in my collection to this point, my experiences with Don Welchel have probably been the most interesting. For a long time, both my dad and I needed Don's autographs for our collection; my dad for his 1983 Orioles World Series team project and me for my overall collection.

I then traded a fellow Orioles collector for this Crown card, which was a start but personalized to Steve, so I sent a TTM request to Don, even though he had a low signing percentage on SportsCollectors.Net.

My dad then found this postcard on ebay, so he gladly picked it up to add to his collection. But he was still hoping for a 1983/84 Rochester Red Wings signed card, so he sent off a TTM request every 4 months or so over the course of a year.

At this point, we both had Welchel autograph's in our collections, but also were hoping to get our TTM requests back even though Don was about a 25% signer. He wasn't getting many requests since he only pitched in 13 games for the Orioles over the '82 & '83 seasons, but along with a few other collectors on SCN, we waited and hoped.

Then one day, I got one of my TTM envelopes back in the mail from Texas. Who could it be? You guessed it, Don Welchel!

He even personalized it as I had asked him to do. BUT there was a problem. I had put the card in a protective sleeve (a habit I have since quit). You see that line through the s & t in best? Yes, Don had signed half on my sleeve and half on my card.

AAAAHHH! At first I was fairly pissed, but in the end, it makes for a good story and I have a personalized Welchel card in my collection. It's not perfect but like I said, it might be the most interesting story behind any card in my collection.

But my dad still hadn't got any of his 3 requests back. He had to wait 2 days after I got mine, but then he received 3 SASE envelopes in the mail, and had a pretty good idea of what they were.
He got his Rochester Red Wings Welchel cards back! He gave me the two extra cards to trade and kept the other for his collection.

So we went from 0 Welchel autographs to 6 in a short amount of time. It was a pretty entertaining journey and I'm glad that I now can move on to the next "Don Welchel".

Thanks for signing our cards Don, it was very nice of you. One of the other collectors on SCN got his card back after a 1199 day wait! That's like 5 postage rate increases ago. Thank goodness for Forever Stamps.

Play At The Plate Contest

Go check it out, it's easy to enter and you can win an A&G blaster! Good luck everyone and thanks for the awesome contest Brian!

Unpossible Autograph- Billy Loes

Billy Loes recently passed away on July 15 at a hospice in Tuscon, AZ, but I hadn't read anything about his death until yesterday. It's always sad to hear that another former Oriole has passed away. He pitched in the Major Leagues for the Brooklyn Dodgers, Orioles and San Francisco Giants during the 1950's and early 60's.

Billy signed this card for me TTM in only 12 days last September, and he charged $5 for his autograph. At the time, I was disappointed that he hadn't personalized it as I had requested, especially since he charged for his signature, but at this point, I'm pretty happy to have this in my collection, especially now that his autograph has become much harder to get with his passing.

I've read that Billy was described as colorful and/or eccentric throughout his playing days and he gained National fame when an article was written about him in the Saturday Evening Post titled "The Dodgers' New Daffiness Boy". He was a member of the '55 Dodgers World Series Championship team and spent 6 years in Brooklyn before the Orioles purchased him in May 1956. He then played in Baltimore for the next 4 seasons and went 21-30 over 121 games, including 34 starts, with a 3.71 ERA and 26 saves. Billy was an All-Star in 1957 for the only time in his career.

RIP Billy, thanks for signing TTM requests when you were still around.

Matt Garza's No-Hitter-I Was There!

I've been down in Florida over the past few days visiting Kalina's family, so I haven't been posting as frequently as I normally would, but I did pick up a great baseball story on my trip.


As luck would have it, we had bought tickets to go to a Rays game a few weeks ago and it just happened to be for Monday night's game, which was Matt Garza's no-hitter. It was the first no hitter that we have ever seen and it was every bit as exciting as I could've imagined. I just got back in town late last night so I haven't had a chance to upload any pictures to actually prove that we were there, but I will post them whenever I upload them. For now, you will have to trust me that I was there. The above picture is borrowed from baynews9.com.

Kalina and I went to the game with some of her family in the area. We also brought her young niece and nephew to their first ever baseball game, so I think that they were our good luck charms. They did a great job cheering for the Rays and had foam fingers and cowbells to use as props. We've been supplying them with Orioles hats & shirts over the years, so we hope that they remember the O's are the #1 baseball team, but we were all Rays fans for a night.

It was truly a great game. Both Garza and Tigers starter Max Scherzer had no-no's going into the 6th, and the first hit of the game was a grand slam but Rays right fielder Matt Joyce, who hit one out after Scherzer hit a batter and walked two others to load the bases in the bottom of the 6th. Garza only allowed a 2nd inning walk to Brennan Boesch, who was quickly wiped out by a double play, so he faced the minimum 27 batters. The game became more exciting after each inning as Garza continued to mow down the Tigers lineup.

To date, it was the greatest baseball game that I've ever been to, and it was truly an amazing night at Tropicana Field.

194 To Go

While updating my autograph lists today, I noticed that I only need 194 autographs to complete my project. I'm not sure how everyone else keeps track of their collections, but I have a master list and then from that, a have list and a need list. It's probably too many lists really, but I enjoy updating them and watching one grow as the other shrinks.

To the best of my knowledge, there has been 883 players who have played in a regular season game for the Orioles from 1954 until today. I had 311 of their autographs when I started blogging in March 2009, and now I'm up to 742 different Orioles signatures. I've added 431 autographs in 16 months to my collection by getting autographs at/through

Orioles Games

Private Signings

Ebay


Orioles Alumni Signings

TTM Successes

And Trades

The 194 remaining autographs I need includes the 52 upgrades I am looking for, meaning that I have autographs from those players but not on their Orioles cards. There have been plenty of guys who have suited up for the O's that never had cards produced, so for them, I'm fine having an autographed card in another teams uniform, but I prefer Orioles autographs whenever possible. So I really only need 142 autographs to have an autograph from everyone who has ever played for the Orioles. Exactly half (71) of them have passed away, so their autographs are either expensive or hard to find. I do a good job with limiting my spending on the collection, so those will trickle in at best.

I know that there will be a few autographs that will always elude me, whether due to price or scarcity, but I hope to one day have as close to a completed collection as possible. Thanks to everyone who has traded with me, read the blog, or contributed in any way. I've had a lot of fun so far.

I've shown or written about approximately 543 of the 742 autographs that I have, so there are literally hundreds of more posts to go, and I hope that you enjoy them all.

Nerio Rodriguez- Mr. 7-Eleven

Nerio pitched for the Orioles from 1996-98, but I can't really say that I remember him being around. The Orioles were really good back then, and Nerio still had a 3-5 record with a 5.77 ERA over his 20 appearances with the O's, so I'm guessing that he filled some sort of mop up role.

The picture on this card has always made me laugh. Between the unidentified hat-less player in the background and Nerio's quizzical look that seems to be saying "why are you taking a picture of me just standing here with my glove?", all around it's a strange card photo. I miss you Score, you were crazy!

Although he hasn't pitched in the Major Leagues since 2002, Nerio is still pitching and has spent time in Mexico & Taiwan. In 2009, he signed with the Uni-President 7-Eleven Lions in Taiwan. Now THAT's one heluva corporate name!

Unpossible Autograph- Johnny Powers

Two weeks ago, my Unpossible Autograph profile featured Gene Brabender, who I said has the greatest name in Orioles history. I'm not going back on that, by Johnny Powers is a pretty freakin' awesome name too, it sounds like a 1970's cartoon superhero.

Johnny Powers was a prolific power hitter in the Minor Leagues; he hit 298 HR's over his 13 seasons in the Minors, averaging just under 23 a year. Unfortunately, that power never translated to the Major Leagues and he managed only 6 homers over 215 ABs. However, one of those 6 round-trippers was historic, as he hit the last HR ever at the Polo Grounds in New York on September 29, 1957.

Overall, Johnny played 151 games with 4 different teams over his 6 big league seasons. He spent only ten games with the Orioles in 1960, but earned a spot in the 1960 Topps set, as well as being included in the Crown set that all Orioles players from 1954-91 were in. I got this card on the bay a few months back.

Johnny died on September 25, 2001 in Birmingham, AL. RIP Johnny.

TTM Success- Dave Pagan

Dave Pagan pitched in the Major Leagues for 5 seasons with four different teams. He most notably pitched his first 3+ seasons with the Yankees before bouncing around to the Orioles, Mariners & Pirates over his last season and a half in the Bigs.

He pitched in 20 games for the O's, including 5 starts, over the second half of the 1976 season and finished the year with a 1-4 record, 1 save and a 5.98 ERA. The Mariners selected him as the 29th pick in the expansion draft following the '76 season thus ending his four month stint in Baltimore.

The reason that Dave is memorable to me is because he's my lone international TTM success to date. He has lived his whole life in Saskatchewan, Canada, so I was unsure how to get my request to him as Canadian postage is different from US postage.

It was actually pretty easy; I asked another collector what to do and I just needed to include a dollar so Dave wouldn't have to pay for my SASE stamp. He put a Canadian stamp on my envelope, and since the prices of US postage continues to rise, I really didn't lose much in the deal. I would gladly pay $.56 for an autograph any day! If only they were all so easy...

I guess that it doesn't take too long for mail to get to Canada since Dave signed and returned this to me in only 22 days. Thanks Dave!

"Fat Jack" Fisher

I'm not exactly sure how "Fat Jack" earned his nickname, since he was listed at 6'2", 215 lbs in his playing days. That doesn't seem to bad to me, but maybe it was compared to the other players back then. I would say that "Slightly Overweight Jack" or "Doughy Jack" might have fit better, but they don't sound as good.

Jack pitched 11 seasons in the Majors from 1959-69, the first 4 for the O's. His career stats are highlighted by a number of categories that he led the league in, but unfortunately, they were pretty much all bad things to be #1 in, such as most losses (2x), most earned runs allowed (3x) and most wild pitches (1x). Jack only had a winning record once in his career, when he went 12-11 for the 1960 O's.

Jack is a tough signature to track down, at least on an Orioles card, and it took me a few months to find a signed O's card on the bay, at least at a price I was alright with paying. Jack owns a sports bar appropriately called "Fat Jack's" in Easton, PA. Maybe I should try to call him there and ask him to sign...

Eastern League All-Star Game Pictures

Last Wednesday, Kalina & I drove up to Harrisburg, PA for the 2010 Eastern League All-Star game & Home Run Derby at Metro Bank Park. The Derby was held about an hour or so before the game, and there had been an autograph session held before the Derby, but I wasn't able to get there in time for that. I would've liked to make it in time for the autographs too, especially when I found out they had card sets on sale for both the Eastern & Western division teams, but I had fun anyway. I grew up in nearby Carlisle, PA so we met up with my parents at the game and had a great time.


Our Bowie Baysox were represented by OF Tyler Henson & reliever Pedro Beato. Zach Britton was originally scheduled to appear, and possibly would've been the Western Division's starting pitcher, but was promoted to AAA a few weeks before the game. Eastern League HR co-leader Joel Guzman was also selected to the team as an injury replacement, but had a previous commitment and couldn't attend.


Henson was one of the 8 players that took part in the HR Derby. Here he is hitting one out of the park.


And here's a picture of him on the scoreboard before taking his hacks. He ended up placing third in the Derby, which isn't bad since he only hit 1 HR in the first round. Tyler also played the entire game and went 2-4 with two doubles.

Adam Loewen, former Orioles pitcher, and current Benedict Arnold OF of the New Hampshire Fisher Cats, also took part in the HR Derby. The scoreboard above is incorrect and should have read HR:0 Outs: 1. (The scoreboard operator was having trouble keeping up with the Derby.) If you click on the picture, you can see that Loewen appears to be laughing, and that's because he is. He actually swung and missed at the first pitch thrown to him. It was probably a 60 MPH fastball. Great work Adam! He ended up with zero home runs, which gave me immense satisfaction.

Loewen also appeared in right field for the second half of the game, and had a few bonehead plays, including one which he tried to catch Tyler's deep fly ball and almost Jose Canseco'ed it over the fence. You suck Adam! If you don't know why I dislike him so much, I'd tell you, but it's a post for another day. If anyone asks, I can certainly share the story.

Here's Tyler standing on second base after his Loewen assisted double.

Pedro Beato appeared in the 9th inning and threw a single pitch to close out the 10-3 win for the Western Division. Now that's what I call efficient!

Great Job Tyler & Pedro! It was awesome to see our local guys in the All-Star Game. I hope the All-Star Game comes to Bowie soon, but I'm guessing they might need to upgrade Prince George's Stadium before they can bring it home.

Fernando Lunar

Don't have too much time today, so here's a guy I don't have much to say about.

Fernando caught 75 games for the Orioles between 2000-02, 64 of them coming over the '01 season. He hit .235 with 7 doubles and 17 RBI.

He is probably best remembered around Birdland as being one of the players the Orioles received from the Braves in the very unpopular and unexpected 2000 trade deadline transaction that sent B.J. Surhoff to Atlanta. I recall hearing that B.J. was very emotional when he learned about the trade. Not that Fernando really had anything to do with it, but he didn't do too much else notable for the O's.

TTM Success- David Johnson

No, not Davey Johnson.

No, not Dave Johnson.

David Johnson

All three Dave(y/id) Johnsons have played for the Orioles, and none are related as far as I can tell. I think that has to be the most interesting bit of Orioles trivia on the topic of names. What's the likelihood? I'm sure that fans are always sending the wrong cards for each of them to sign; it makes me wonder if they just sign the others' cards, or if they say "sorry, wrong Dave Johnson".

David Johnson is probably the least known of all three, at least in Baltimore. Davey managed the O's and Dave is currently a radio & TV broadcaster in Baltimore, while David hasn't had an active role in the O's family since his playing days.

David pitched for the O's in 1974-75 and Twins in 1977-78. All told, he pitched 53 games over those four seasons and went 4-10 with a 4.64 ERA in his MLB career.

One thing that caught my eye when I sent my card to David is that he lives in Abilene, TX, the town where my grandma lived for a few years when I was younger. It was nice town as far as I remember. Now isn't that interesting?