The lack of card shows for the past few months has given me ample opportunity to get caught up. Now if I could just convince myself to do so. These are from November, 2018. Just 3 more posts and I should be under a year behind and can at least leave behind the embarrassing need to specify the year. This was an interesting show, featuring a relatively unknown Cardinal with an otherwise famous name, Mike Tyson, and the rare-for-this-show current rising star, Luke Voit, although he had already been traded to the Yankees by this point.
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Mike played for the Cardinals through the 70s, as the starting shortshop (per baseball-reference's metrics) in 1973-74, and the starting second baseman in 1977-78. Those were lean years for the Cardinals, with no playoffs between 1968 and 1982, which tends to leave those players forgotten. I noticed he had a -0.3 WAR for his career, but looking deeper I saw he had a 1.2 in 8 years with St. Louis, followed by a -1.5 in 2 years with the Cubs.
Luke Voit grew up just outside St. Louis, was drafted by the Royals out of high school, then by the Cardinals 4 years later and 10 rounds higher. Being the data tracker that I am, I can see that I purchased the autograph ticket for him in March of 2018, when he had played just 62 games for the Cardinals in his rookie season of 2017. The list price was $15, which is about as cheap as ball autographs ever get at this show (although with the caveat that they run 30%-50% off sales frequently, alas my data isn't that detailed to know what I actually spent). Everyone seemed pretty high on him as a prospect, but by July he played just 8 games for the Cardinals and was traded to New York. He did get into 39 more games there for the year.
I guess growing up with the Rams in town, he was still following them, because he noticed my Rams jacket and asked if I thought they could win that day. They were currently 8-0 and going to New Orleans that day. We agreed it would be tough but they should pull it off. The Rams lost 45-35.
When I was pulling up this picture, I had to do an image search online for Luke Voit's autograph, because I was sure I had taken a photo of the wrong ball. It seems to match what's online. Somewhere in there is an L and V I suppose, although I really feel like I see an S or two.
