An awesome package from Pol brought to me by Yahoo

I don't know how many of you autograph collectors in the blogosphere are aware of this but there is a Yahoo group in existence for us. Through this group I have met a few fellow Orioles autograph collectors with similar interests but some different autographs to help me out.

Pol is the first person that got in contact with me through this group and has already been able to add to my collection. I have put together a package of cards to send to Pol by the weekend to return his kindness but if anyone else can help him, he collects autographs of Mets & Nats players and on '86 Topps & '91 Score cards. Thank you so much Pol!

Here is what Pol sent me:

Jay Aldrich 1990

Mike Anderson 1978

Ed Barnowski 1965-66

Neil Berry 1954

Fred Besana 1956

Art Ceccarelli 1957

Fritz Connally 1985

Butch Davis 1988-89

Ike DeLock 1963

Chuck Diering 1954-56

Bill Dillman 1967

Dave Ford 1978-81

O's auto trade list updated

I finally had the time to update my O's autographed card trade list last night; just click the link in the left hand column to check it out.

I now have a total of 183 cards for trade of 102 different players. All of the players either played for the O's or a minor league affiliate and if you are interested in a trade, just let me know. I didn't include the specific year or brand of the cards but can gladly send that out if you are looking for anything specific.

I have a few trades that are in the works rights now but will do my best to take care of everyone who is trying to build a collection of their own.

My plan is to also have my trade list up on the site sometime this weekend that will include all of my non-Oriole player autographed cards. This list should be pretty extensive and I will gladly trade those away for any Orioles to add to my collection.

Check out the list and let me know what you need for your own collection!

A few changes to the blog

Here's a quick post about a few changes I have made on this here blog.

First, there is now a blog search gadget on the left hand side to help you search for any specific players that I may have written about. I also added the list of players/topics I have blogged about at the bottom of the left hand side for even easier searching.

I am also working on my comprehensive list of non-Oriole autographs that I have and are available for trade. This has been taking some time since I would guess that the list will be somewhere around 500-600 autographed cards. Some of you have suggested that I link this on my blog so that I can possibly help out some of you with your collections. Trust me, I am working on it and will have at least a preliminary version of this on the blog by tonight.

Please let me know if there are any players or teams you are looking for and I will do my best to help you out!

Pete Incaviglia TTM success

I recently got my TTM request back from Pete Incaviglia and since it was my first success in almost a month I thought that I should blog about it.

Pete Incaviglia only played for the Orioles for a total of 60 games during the 1996-97 seasons and was done in professional baseball by the end of the 1998 season. Since he was only on the team for such a short time, he only has one Orioles card, which I was able to locate thanks to Kevin at the Orioles Card "O" the Day blog.

Pete is currently the manager of the Grand Prairie AirHogs, an independent league team in Texas, and that is where he signed from if anyone else is interested.
Grand Prairie AirHogs
1600 Lone Star Parkway
Grand Prairie, TX 75050

Bowie's First meet the team day of 2009

I briefly mentioned in one of my weekend Wieters' posts that I had attended Sunday's Baysox meet the team picture & autograph day.


I was lucky enough to get my picture taken with some of the Baysox biggest stars including:

Brandon Snyder


Troy Patton


& Brandon Erbe
Erbe also signed a card for me

I didn't get a picture with Jake but he did sign my card

My goal for the day was to get as many of the players to personalize their autographs for me. It was pretty easy since most of them are really nice guys like...

Ryan Keefer


Robert Valido (who asked if I was the Ryan he was personalizing the card to), Johnny Tucker and Dave Krynzel

Ryan Rodriguez only personalized one per my request


Ryan Ouellette, Paco Figueroa & Mike Costanzo (who went the extra mile with the "Best Wishes" inscription)

And only after all of this personalizing to me did I realize that there were 3 Ryan's on the Baysox. Kinda weird right? But I guess my name was just popular in the late 70s/early 80s.



I forgot to ask Brad to personalize my card
but still can't get over how his auto looks like B___ K__ K


Ambiorix didn't understand my request to personalize

Jim Hoey is on the DL so was at the game but didn't participate in the auto session


Adam Donachie was catching so I had to get him during warm-ups
Pat Egan was MIA from the table where his name was but I got him during warm-ups too
And Guillermo was signing in the concourse but he gets lumped in here

All in all it was a very successful day for Bowie autos and I had a great time.

A trade with Tim

So I was able to swing a trade with Tim, one of the loyal followers of the blog, that gained me 11 totally new autos and Mike Boddicker on an O's card, a major upgrade over the Red Sox signed card I had before!

Thanks for helping me out Tim and I'm glad I was able to boost your collection too. Just to remind everyone else; I'm always up for a trade!

Here are the new autos Tim sent me:

Benny Ayala 79-84


Don Baylor 70-75


Marty Cordova 02-03


Jim Dwyer 81-88


Glenn Gulliver 82-83


Terry Kennedy 87-88


John Lowenstein 79-85


Luis Mercedes 91-93


Carl Nichols 86-88


And here is the upgraded Boddicker:

Mike Boddicker 80-88

Tim also had a cool idea to create his own index card for Bob Boyd
Bob Boyd 56-60 (d.04)

And he made an O's Crown replica for Robert Machado

And finally he sent me a Lenn Sakata, which I thought I needed
but I found one in a box after we made the trade...

Thanks again Tim, I hope we can make another trade in the future!

My Impressions of Wieters

Happy Monday everyone! I'm finally recovered from seeing Matt Wieters make his major league debut this weekend. It's not every year (or every decade here in Birdland) that we get to see baseball's #1 overall prospect premiere to start his long and hopefully HOF-worthy career. Over 100,000 fans made it to the Yard this weekend to cheer on Wieters and the Birds and it was a truly electric atmosphere that has rarely been present in recent years. The level of excitement and fan-dom seriously reminded me of when Cal was nearing Gehrig's record during "The Streak."

I was able to attend Wieter's debut game on Friday and his second game on Saturday. It was awesome to see him get his first big league hit (a triple!!!) on Saturday and I later heard that he was only the 5th catcher of all-time to have his first hit be a three-bagger. Now that's the way to push the hype to the next level. Not only were his first 2 hits off of Justin Verlander who was really dealing but the triple only missed being a home run by about 2 feet.


But I would say the best part of Wieters premiere was the way he handled the pitching staff. He had caught Friday's starter 15 times between Bowie and Norfolk so they were obviously comfortable working together and it showed. Bergy lasted into the ninth inning (that never happens around here) and was given the chance to get the complete game W. Saturday's starter, Jeremy Guthrie, had only ever worked with Wieters in spring training bullpen sessions but never in a game atmosphere so I wondered how they would click. Let's just say that Guthrie matched his career high with 10 strikeouts and while he wasn't quite as sharp as I would have liked he kept the O's in the game.

Wieters catching his first big league pitch from Bergy

So all-in-all it was a good weekend and a nice debut for my boy Matt Wieters.

First Major League AB-faced Dontrelle Willis, flied out to left

Also, yesterday was "Meet the Team Day" at Bowie so I got a ton of autographs and pictures of me and the players. I will try to get a post on that this week but my best friend's bachelor party and wedding are Thursday and Saturday respectively so I will be a little busy.

WIETERS WIETERS WIETERS! Happy Wieters Day!!! & Hernandez's great success

So even though I will get to David Hernandez's successful debut shortly, I have to start by talking about how today is the day baseball's #1 prospect premieres for the Orioles.

I can honestly say that this is the most hyped Orioles prospect premiere of all time. The crowd expected tonight is at least 10-20,000 more than normal and I think the scene will be amazing. Every Orioles fan I know in Baltimore has or is trying to get tickets to this game. It will be the largest crowd at an Orioles game in recent years, not counting Opening Day, or Skankees/Red Sux games. This is all my speculative opinion but I would venture a guess to say that tonight's attendance will exceed the total for the past 3 games (not too tough since it will only need to be about 35,000).

Matt was Baseball America's top prospect of 2008 and he has absolutely torn up the minor leagues for the last year and a half. Kalina and I have been lucky enough to see him play about 15 times, mostly in Frederick and Bowie last season along with our one game in Norfolk this season. Most of the pitchers in the minors were afraid to pitch to him and he seemed to walk every other at-bat.

My Matt Wieters collection includes two different bobbleheads, a signed picture of him & me, 2 signed cards, about 20 different unsigned cards, and countless pictures.

Here is one of the cards

Now about last night's game,

Nolan homered for the third consecutive game

Luke Scott hit 2 HRs, had 4 RBI, and 8 total bases-and earned himself a curtain call!

But the biggest story was David Hernandez's largely successful debut. He pitched 5 2/3 innings (Trembley pulled him mid-inning to get the standing ovation) and only gave up one run while striking out 3. His fastball was hitting 95-96 all night and he also used a curveball, slider and changeup.

I got this card signed last year at a Baysox game but remember David not signing too often

His first Major League strike

David's Win earned him a post-game shaving cream pie from Adam Jones

It was also an Alumni autograph day so I added Calvin Maduro to my collection and got autos from Joe Orsulak & Ken Dixon as well. Since I have had Orsulak on here recently, I won't add more scans from him.

I also added Cesar Izturis to my collection.

Nolan signed for fans

And I got Adam Everett on the Tigers side, but missed out on
Justin Verlander, Bobby Seay, Brandon Lyon & Fernando Rodney

One additional note: the O's have had 4 pitchers win their Major League debut this season, Koji Uehara, Brad Bergesen, Jason Berken and now Hernandez. I think that has to be some sort of record and I was luckily at 3 of the 4, only missing Koji's debut W.

Happy Wieters Day everyone! My prediction for tonight-Wieters goes 5-4 with 8 HRs.