Allan Ramirez Joins the Collection

Allan Ramirez 1983

I have to thank my dad for this one. He is collecting the 1983 World Series Orioles team and came across an extra copy of Allan's auto and sent one my way. Needless to say, I was excited to add another player to my collection.

Allan was drafted three times; 1975 Phillies 23rd round, 1978 Rangers 10th round, and 1979 Orioles 5th round, who he finally signed with. So there was obviously some demand for his services. Strangely enough, his Major League career lasted all of 11 games for the '83 Orioles. He made his debut on June 8th and pitched in his last game on September 13th. He went 4-4 with a 3.47 ERA in those 11 games, 10 of which were starts. And then that was it.

His stats were decent that year so I'm not sure how he didn't latch on with anyone in 1984. I couldn't find anything about it but I can speculate that it was either due to injury or a loss of interest in baseball.

My Dad's O's autograph collection

This is something that I should have written about well before this, but my dad has been trying for the few years to put together an entire autographed set of (preferably Orioles and/or '83 Topps) cards from the '83 Orioles World Series Championship team. He is trying to get the entire roster of players, not just those who were on the field for the last out. Many of the guys don't have '83 Topps cards, so he is substituting them with (in order of preference, at least I think I have this right) an '82 or '84 Topps, an '83 card by another card manufacturer (Donruss, etc.), or a Minor League card from 1983.

I know that he is getting close to his goal and just received a signed TTM Dave Huppert card today. That is actually what motivated me to blog about his project since it was his first successful TTM autograph. He also was sending requests to Mike Boddicker, Bobby Bonner, Leo Hernandez, John Lowenstein, Dan Morogiello, Allan Ramirez, John Stefero & Bill Swaggerty. I will be able to get his Stefero & Swaggerty autographs thanks to the O's Alumni Autograph series at OPACY, but if anyone else might be able to help him out, please let me know. He also still needs an Aurelio Rodriguez autograph, but that is tough since he died in 2000.

Let's hope the O's can take another game from the Rangers tonight in that bandbox of a ballpark in Arlington! Three series wins in a row sounds really nice to me...