November Card Show Autographs

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.

Mike Tyson

Luke Voit 45

Mike Tyson

Luke Voit 45

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.