Auto(matic) Auto(graph) Sunday

Like I said yesterday, I typically find that Sunday's are the best day to get Orioles' autographs, at least in my experience. So Kalina coined the term, Auto Auto Sunday, and I liked it, and I'm using it for the title of this post.

Here are the autographs I got at the game on Sunday; some of these correspond with the pictures from yesterday.

I'll start with the autographs you are probably expecting to see...

Now I have both the action and posed versions of Zach's 2011 Orioles postcards signed. 

Jaku has one of the less exciting cards from the OPC set. The picture looks like it was taken in deep space. But at least we know he's a ROOKIE.

 

This is the second time I've gotten this card signed, but since it's Gonzo's only Orioles card that uses a picture of him that wasn't photoshopped, maybe somebody else needs a copy.

 

 This is my umpteenth Ryan Adams autograph, but first since he's actually been an Oriole.

OK, that's it for what you might have expected to see. Here's the rest...

For you fellow 'graphers out there, whenever you set out to get signatures at a game or event, do you have a top priority in mind? I almost always do and my top two for Sunday were Clay Rapada and Jeremy Accardo, since I had never got their autographs in person.

 

 

 

 Problem Solved.

I got Rapada almost immediately as I walked in (he had been throwing with Jaku) and added Accardo not long afterwards. Rapada's autograph looks almost nothing like the pre-printed version on his card, though in all fairness, I didn't expect him to sign "Clayton Anthony Rapada". 

And while it's hard to read his name in the signature, I'm a fan of Accardo's stylized autograph, especially the first (two?) J's.

This was the first time I've seen Buck sign since Spring Training and I was thrilled to finally get this epic card signed. If you don't know, Buck seems very professional and business-like, so I can only imagine the conversation that took place to get him to pose like this near that giant cactus.
 

Wayne Kirby always seems like a personable guy, and he is normally joking around with the fans.

Finally, I more or less ran into Boog Powell out on Eutaw Street near his BBQ stand, and he kindly signed my Crown card. He's around for most Orioles home games, but I've got his autograph enough times over the years that I generally don't make the trek out to centerfield to see if he's around.

So I got 10 autographs in under 2 hours inside the stadium. Pretty solid day considering my average is generally more like 1 or 2.

Orioles Fan Fest Recap

Three days later, I'm finally getting around to writing about my 2011 Orioles Fan Fest experience. At least three other Orioles bloggers have already wrote about it, so I really hope that you weren't waiting for my account of it.

Overall, I had a good time but it seemed like there was a little less to do than in past seasons. I spent most of my day in autograph lines, which is exactly where I wanted to be, so I was happy. And I got everything signed that I had hoped to get, so it was a nice little day. Not many people seemed to have a problem paying the $15 per autograph station since you knew you were guaranteed an autograph of whomever you wanted. It's obviously not as good as free, but it's better than wanting a Matt Wieters autograph and ending up with Robert Andino instead (sorry Dino!).

 

Speaking of Wieters, the highlight of my day was getting his SI cover signed. I carried this issue around in my gameday backpack during the entire 2010 season but didn't see Matt sign at a single O's game. It feels nice to finally have this autographed, and I hope to get it framed sometime soon.

Also signing at Wieter's station were Craig Tatum and Dick Hall. I got Tatum's autograph for Austin and Hall's autograph for Zach of Autographed Cards.

 

Lucky for me, the guy behind me in line didn't want Tatum's autograph, so he got my card signed for me. 

Next up was Zach Britton, Kevin Gregg, Jake Arrieta and Boog Powell. The Arrieta autograph was for Aaron, who collects Orioles Crown autographs and any other O's autographs he can get. The Boog autograph was for Paul, who just won the Earl Weaver autograph contest. The Gregg and Britton autographs were for me.

 

 

I was able to snag a signed O's postcard of Gregg as well as getting my card signed. I have to say that, out of uniform, Kevin looked more like a large banker than a baseball player.

 

Even though I had prepped my card, Gregg's autograph didn't "stick" well. It wasn't the only problem I had with the Orioles provided sharpies. I think next year I will have to bring my own. 

 

 

Zach was promoted to AAA Norfolk before the 2010 Baysox team set came out, so I was happy to finally get this card signed. 

While I was at the Britton-Gregg-Arrieta-Powell autograph station, my dad was nice enough to help me out by going to the Jeremy Accardo-Jason Berken-Willie Randolph-Jim Palmer station. 

The Accardo & Randolph cards are joining my collection, while my dad got Palmer to sign one of the spots in his 1983 O's program and a Berken card that was also for Austin.

My dad was also able to snag an extra signed postcard of Berken & Palmer. Note to Jason- I know that you're pretty accommodating with fans' autograph requests and all, but look at your signature compared to Palmer, who I think has signed a few more items than you over the years. Let's work on our penmanship a little bit.

My last autograph station was for JJ Hardy, Brad Bergesen, Mark Reynolds & Dick Hall. Hall was late showing up and I was one of the first people in line for this one, so I missed him this time around. Luckily, I didn't need him for anyone.

 

 

 

It was my first time getting Hardy's and Reynolds' autographs and they both seemed like decent guys. I especially like Hardy's autograph, even though it looks like it's either missing the JJ or H. I can see one or the other in there but not both.

Bergesen's autograph was for Ryan, the blogger behind "O" No!!! Another Orioles Blog, who I had the pleasure of catching up with for a few minutes. He seemed to have had a good time as well, and has been posting about his Fan Fest experiences for the past few days. He was nice enough to bring me a box of cards with some of my set needs as well as some obscure Orioles cards. Ryan- your thank you box should be on it's way by early next week. 

 

 

Last up, the Aberdeen Ironbirds, the short season A affiliate of the O's, were giving away a signed 8x10 of your choice if you could name every Oriole pictured on their autographed 8x10s. I conveniently didn't tell them that the Orioles, and their autographs, were kind of my thing, so Kalina ended up with this nice Chris Hoiles autograph.

 

All-in-all I had a great time and added a bunch of nice new autographs to my collection. I was happy to help a few fellow bloggers fill some autograph holes in their collections too. Thanks need to go out to my parents and Kalina for tagging along and doing some waiting around as I scurried around the convention center. Now I can't wait for the season to start!

Orioles Fanfest, Thank You Justin & Set Needs- Updated Twice

Orioles Fanfest autograph vouchers went on sale this past Saturday morning at 10am. Since it used to be free, I'm not happy that you now have to pay $15 to get an autograph at each station, but it's nice to know that you are guaranteed to get an autograph of who you want. It was definitely a crapshoot in past seasons. Only 250 vouchers were available for each station, so I thought they would sell out fast. Luckily, I got vouchers for the four stations that I wanted, and surprisingly, there are still vouchers available for 13 of the 15 stations as of this afternoon. So much for them going fast.

My goal was to get an autograph of all the new Orioles who will be in attendance and to finally get my Matt Wieters SI signed. Assuming that everyone who is scheduled to be there actually shows up, I should achieve my goal. Matt Wieters, Kevin Gregg, Jeremy Accardo, Mark Reynolds, JJ Hardy, and Willie Randolph are among the signers who I should be able to add to my collection. For whatever reason, Derrek Lee isn't scheduled to attend, but at least I already have his autograph.

Since each station has 3-4 players/alumni scheduled to sign, I will be passing by a few players who I don't need for my collection. If anyone out there is interested, I can get you an autograph of any of the following players:
Jake Arrieta- Aaron
Troy Patton- Paul
Boog Powell- Paul
Jason Berken- Austin
Brad Bergesen- Ryan
Dick Hall (x2)- Zach- 1
Craig Tatum- Austin

Updated again with spots filled - Still have 1 Hall spot left

I just request that the item your item be small (card/postcard/3x5), that you include a SASE, and that you get it to me by January 29th.


Justin, of Justin's World  fame, deserves a major THANK YOU for sending me a huge package of 2009 Topps cards, and some cards for Kalina and my player collections. Thanks to him, I'm now only 12 cards away from finishing the set. Very cool stuff! If you've never seen his site, Justin collects Cubs, Colts & Grizzlies cards. Just watch out for that Grumpy Blogger!


Also thanks to Justin, I got up the motivation to update my set needs page. It's always linked at the top of the left-hand sidebar, or you can just click the link there. I pretty much have collected Topps' base & Updates sets as well as Topps Heritage over the past few years.  There are a few sets that I am very close to completing, like 08 Topps (1 card left!), so if anyone can help me out, I woudl really appreciate it!

Trade with GCRL

I've been on the receiving end of a few really great trades over the past few days and am excited to show off the newest additions to my collection!

The first trade that came my way is from Jim who writes an awesome Dodger blog called Garvey Cey Russell Lopes which highlights the Dodger's infield of his youth. But who am I kidding, if you are reading my blog, chances are that you've already come across GCRL. But if you haven't, click the link! Jim is truly dedicated to cards and even writes another blog called oh my o-pee-chee which covers, well obviously, o-pee-chee cards and how they are similar to or different from the Topps versions.

Jim sent me a bunch of Orioles cards, some of my set needs from 2009 Heritage and a few amazing custom cards that we he and I had discussed. I'm most excited about the customs, but am going to wait until the end to show them off.

 

Here's a small sampling of the Orioles that he sent my way, including some awesome vintage cards, an oddball Cal card, a few guys who you might have forgotten/never known wore the black and orange, a very skinny pre-roids David Segui, and a few cards from a very cool All-Time Classic set that I've never seen before. I'm pretty sure that's my first George Sisler card. 

  

I wasn't able to narrow my new stack-O-O's down to only nine cards to show off, so here's a few more. There's a really young B-Rob, a '93 Topps Flanny that I've somehow never seen, supercool sidewinder Todd Frohwirth in action, and a few newer B-Rob and Markakis cards that I didn't have in the collection.

And now, here's the highlight of our trade, in my opinion at least:

Jamie Walker's 2007, '08, & '09 Topps cards!

Why is this so exciting? Well, as some of you probably know, Jamie wasn't included in any of those Topps sets and has very few cards considering he pitched 10 seasons in the Majors. It's probably because he was a "replacement" player during Spring Training in 1994, so he isn't in the MLBPA, but so was Kevin Millar and he appeared on many more cards, so it's more likely because the card companies don't like to produce cards of relief pitchers. Jamie pitched in 162 games for the O's from 2007-09, including a league high 81 in '07, so I felt like he deserved an Orioles card. 

A little ways back, Jim asked if anyone was interested in custom cards being made for them, and I quickly submitted Jamie's name to him. Not only was Jamie a key member of the bullpen during my re-immersion in Orioles baseball, but he's also a great TTM signer, so I would like to upgrade my signed Orioles team card to a card of his own. Jim came through in a big way and sent these three customs to me, and let me say, I'm totally blow away! Outside of being on photo paper instead of card stock and lacking the pre-printed signatures, which only get in the way of autographs anyway, you can't even tell that these cards weren't in the set. Jim did an amazing job and I can't wait to send one of these to Jamie, I just don't know which one to send! 

Thank you so much Jim! I really appreciate the cards, and especially your customs. I will hopefully be sending your cards out by the weekend, but I'm afraid I can't match the wow-factor of what you sent my way.

First Alumni Autographs of the Year

These guys were the first Orioles Alumni Series Signers of the year and appeared at the MASN tent on Eutaw Street on Monday April 12. I've already shown off the Rick Krivda orange uni autograph I got, so I won't re-post that one.


It's always nice to see Paul Blair, he is such a nice guy. He also had some sort of health scare over the winter, so it was great to see him at the Yard again.



Tippy made his second or third appearance.

And Boog made an appearance to advertise his BBQ stand, a little further down Eutaw Street. He didn't sit down but signed for those of us near the booth while he was there.

Some TTM Successes

Dave Duncan 1975-76

Dave is probably best known for the good job he has done as the pitching coach on Tony LaRussa's A's & Cardinals teams over the past 20 years. He has coached four Cy Young award winners and is highly respected throughout MLB as an excellent teacher. This is even more impressive since Dave was a catcher in his playing days, and is one of few pitching coaches who did not pitch professionally.

He split time with Elrod Hendricks & Rick Dempsey as catcher on the '75-76 Orioles teams and was known primarily as a defensive catcher even though he hit 109 HRs over 11 big league seasons. The Indians traded Dave to the O's in February 1975 for Boog Powell and Don Hood, so for those of you who recall Boog's brief time as an Indian, it was because of Dave. The O's flipped Dave to the White Sox for Pat Kelly following the '76 season.

His career highlights include making the 1971 AL All-Star team and winning 3 World Series titles; one as a player on the '72 A's and two as a coach, '89 A's & '05 Cardinals. His two sons, Chris and Shelley have each played in the Major Leagues too.

Lenny Green 1957-59, 64

Lenny manned all three OF positions for the O's in the late '50s and was briefly back in the organization in 1964.

If you notice the top of the Orioles Crown card on the right, he made an attempt to personalize the card but it looks like his pen wasn't cooperating.

Stu "Bullet" Miller 1963-67

Stu began his career as a starting pitcher with the Cardinals in 1952 but was exclusively a reliever by the time he threw his first pitch on the Orioles in 1963. He is one of the more successful O's relievers of all time; he saved 100 games and had a 2.37 ERA in 297 games with the Birds.

While most players earned the nickname "Bullet" by throwing very hard or fast, Stu got the nickname for the opposite reason. It's reported that his fastball topped out in the mid 80s and his changeup was in the mid-upper 70s but he thrived by using the same arm action on both to fool opposing hitters.

He received MVP votes 4 times throughout his career, 3 of those times with the Orioles, highlighted by his 7th place finish in 1965. He combined with Steve Barber to throw a no-hitter on April 30, 1967 but the O's lost the game on a wild pitch and an error. Stu also made the 1961 All-Star team.

Unfortunately, Stu is probably best remembered as being the pitcher to give up Mickey Mantle's 500th HR. If you want to read more about that and Stu's life in general, the Baltimore Sun recently ran an interview with him.