RIP Flanny

Some very sad news hit yesterday when we learned that Mike Flanagan was dead at only 59 years old. And now today, multiple news outlets are reporting that it was an apparent suicide. I have no idea what might have caused Mike to take his own life but it just makes the news that much harder to accept.

I'm pretty sad about Mike's passing; I had the chance to meet him a handful of times over the years and he always seemed like a pretty nice guy and was known throughout baseball for his dry, witty sense of humor. For some odd reason, I've never done a post about Mike before today, and that makes me feel like I've done an inadequate job with my Orioles blogging over the past few years.

It's hard to rank Mike's exact spot in the Orioles pitching pantheon, except I would say that he's comfortably in the top five, along with Jim Palmer, Dave McNally, Mike Mussina, and Mike Cuellar. Flanny was the 1979 A.L Cy Young winner and was a member of the '78 A.L. All-Star team. In the all-time Orioles record books, he ranks third with 450 games pitched and 328 starts, fourth with 1,297 strikeouts and 98 complete games, and fifth with 141 wins.

Mike was involved with the Orioles off and on for the past five decades as a player, pitching coach, general manager and broadcaster. He was one of a small handful of former players who have stayed near the team over so many years and meant a lot to the franchise and the city of Baltimore. RIP Mike. You will be missed.

Tradin' with Troll

It's a rare thing for me to post trades, let alone two days in a row, but that's what I'm doing today. I shared my end of a trade with GCRL yesterday and today I'm showing off what the always giving Collective Troll sent my way.

The best part of the box that Troll sent was that he included cards/items for both me and Kalina. She did a guest blogging post to thank him a couple weeks back and now it's my turn. I have to start out with the more surprising and unusual items he included.



Like these two 14 year old starting lineup Orioles figures. My dad and I collected most of the Cal SL figures, but we never expanded to the other Orioles. These two have piqued my interest into possibly collecting all of the Orioles who were featured. But in addition to my bobbleheads, shelf space is a bit tight around the house already so I might need approval from Kalina before I start on this one...

He also threw in a few Cal card "packs" from the heyday of card production when you could buy cards in cans, tins, barrels, coffee mugs, and water bottles. Of course I kid, but only slightly.

Troll also threw in some awesome vintage O's and many of my 2009 Topps & Heritage set needs.

As I mentioned at the top of the post, Kalina already thanked the Troll for her cards, but we didn't have anything scanned at that point.

He included this awesome Nyjer Morgan autograph,

some really nice Carlos Pena cards, including this bat relic, and a HUGE stack of Scott Kazmir cards, including probably 10-15 jersey patches. 

THANK YOU so much Troll. This was an amazing trade package and we have a box with your name on it set to go out, hopefully by this weekend. Oh, and congrats on being a new grandpa! Atlas is a lucky boy!

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.

Unpossible Autograph- Dave McNally

Dave McNally 1962-74 (died 2002)

It's about time that the greatest left-handed pitcher in Orioles history makes an appearance on my blog! Dave's 181 wins are the second most in team history, behind only HOFer Jim Palmer's 268 and are by far the most by a lefty.

He won 20 or more games in 4 consecutive seasons from 1968-71, and was one of 4 O's starters to do so in 1970, along with Palmer, Pat Dobson and Mike Cuellar. As far as modern Orioles records go, he has made the second most starts (384) again behind Palmer, has the third most complete games (120), second most shutouts (33), and sixth best ERA (3.18) (among pitchers who started at least 100 games for the O's).

He also made 3 All-Star teams, came in the top 4 of Cy Young voting in three consecutive years ('69-71) and received MVP votes four times. His best season was probably 1970 when he led the league in wins and games started.

Dave also contributed to the O's World Series Championship seasons in 1966 & '70. In his only start of the '70 WS, he even hit a grand slam and won the game for himself! And yes, that bat is in the HOF since that's the only time a pitcher took care of everything in a World Series game.

Over his career, he won 12 decisions in a row three different times including once when he made it all the way to 17 straight winning decisions. That's amazing! Roger Clemens is the only other pitcher to have ever done that. Crazy stuff. I don't think I appreciated just how good Dave was until researching this post.

Very, very impressive stuff. I definitely say that he is the second best Orioles pitcher of all-time behind Cakes.



Dave also did something to clear the way for today's players in every sport to make the money that they do. He, along with Andy Messersmith of the Dodgers, challenged the Reserve Clause,
which basically said that once a player's contract ended, they were still property of that team unless they negotiated a new contract with that same team or asked to be traded or released. The link explains it in much more detail if you are interested but to sum it up, their challenge led to the advent of free agency as we know it so that all teams could bid for a player's services.

Dave passed away due to lung cancer on 12/1/02 in Billings, Montana, where he had lived his entire life. I wish I had appreciated your career more while you were still with us!