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.

October Card Show Autograph

You know the deal by now. I'm catching up on my backlog of autographs. This one's from October, 2018. It was the last year of a 3-year playoff drought for the Cardinals, but I managed to meet 2 World Champions that October to make up for it.

Glenn Brummer 82 WSC

Dick Groat

Glenn Brummer
82 WSC

Dick Groat

Glenn Brummer is most famous in St. Louis for stealing home in an extra-inning game in 1982. He was the backup catcher that year, playing in just 35 games, mostly as a late-inning replacement for Darrell Porter. Gene Tenace was also on the team as a catcher, but was primarily used as a pinch hitter. At the autograph signing Glenn could best be compared to Don Rickles. He never stopped smiling, laughing, and playfully jabbing at and joking with the fans in line.

Dick Groat was almost 88 years old as of this signing, so he was a bit more reserved. I really only have one Dick Groat story, which I've shared on here before, and it's not even mine, it's my Dad's.  I believe it was at game 7 of the 1964 World Series. The crowd stormed the field, and when he and his  friend found each other again after getting separated in the crowd, the first thing he told my dad was "I touched Dick Groat!" Which, as I said before, would be a great name for a blog if you were for some reason a hybrid Cardinals/Pirates fan.

September Card Show Autograph

I must once again shamefully point out that this autograph is not from last September, but 2018. Let's see if I can stick with my goal of catching up.

Cesar Cedeno

Cesar Cedeno played for the Cardinals for part of just a single season, but it was a good one - 1985. He joined the team in August, acquired for a minor leaguer. They won the NL, and came tantalizingly close to winning the World Series. He then left for Los Angeles, played in 37 games early in the season, but was released June 5, 1986. Baseball-Reference says he was then re-signed by the Cardinals in July that year, but he did not wind up playing any games for them in 1986.

August Card Show Autograph

I'm catching up, I promise. This one's from August 2018.

After a few years of religiously attending my local card show most months, I find that often there's only one signer at any given show that I haven't already seen, if there's any new ones at all. Such was the case last August with Ted Sizemore.

Ted Sizemore

I was surprised to see I've never posted a Ted Sizemore card on my blog. I haven't posted cards frequently for awhile here, but I hope to get back to that before long.

Anyway, Ted Sizemore was NL Rookie of the year with LA in 1969, but only spent 2 seasons there before joining the Cardinals. The 1970s weren't a great time for the Cardinals, so his 5 seasons in St. Louis didn't result in any playoff appearances. He played 5 more seasons after that, going back to LA, then finally making the playoffs with Philadelphia, but unfortunately losing the NLCS to LA both years.

Part of the reason I blog these autographs is to remember my experiences of meeting the players, but my lag has seen my memory of the show completely wiped. I'm going to have to do a better job of writing these up in a more timely manner.

July Card Show Autograph

Once again, I'm way behind here...this was July 2018.

Aaron Miles

In my mind it feels like Miles mostly played for Colorado, but the stats say otherwise. He had his real career start there, after a couple of games with the White Sox, but played just 2 seasons. Then he had 3 with the Cardinals, playing 130+ games each season 2006-2008, including the World Series winning year of 2006. He then left for the Cubs, but after 1 year there was traded in the offseason to Oakland, then Cincinnati, then released, before returning to the Cardinals for a season, getting released again, and playing another 130 games in his final season with the Dodgers.

Miles is also memorable as our blowout mop-up pitcher several times, taking the mound 5 times for a total of 5 innings, and only allowing 2 runs, for a respectable 3.60 ERA.

May Card Show Autograph

May 2018, that is. I'm going to get caught up on everything I want to post one of these days; at least I keep telling myself that. Anyway, today's autograph is Lindy McDaniel.

Lindy McDaniel
#41

Lindy played for the Cardinals from 1955-1962, starting at the age of 19. He had his best season in 1960, earning a Save in one of the 2 All-Star games, and a Cy Young vote, finishing third. He continued with other teams all the way through 1975, his age 39 season.

March Card Show Autograph

I'm still catching up on posting all my autographed balls, so here's one I got last March. My last post was from last December's show, and I didn't attend the shows in January or February, although I can't recall exactly why now. Either the signers were ones I already had, or I had other plans. Anyway, in March, I got to meet Tom Niedenfuer.

Tom Niedenfuer

Niedenfuer spent most of his career with the Dodgers, but he spent his final season in St. Louis in 1990, making 52 relief appearances. My only requirement to be a part of my collection is to have ever played for the Cardinals, so a full season definitely qualifies.

December Card Show Autograph

I'm still catching up on a big backlog of stuff, so here's an autographed ball from last December.

Larry Jaster

The only signer at the December show I didn't have yet was Larry Jaster, a somewhat obscure player. But, he played for the Cardinals 1965-1968, including the 1967 and 1968 World Series. He only actually faced 3 batters during a single game in each series. He finished his career with Montreal in 1969 and Atlanta in 1970 and 1972. He didn't have a lot to say during the signing, so I didn't get any funny or interesting stories this time, but I'm happy to have one more World Series champ in my collection.

November Card Show Autographs

I got a little behind on posting, so hey, let's catch up. The last autographed balls I appear to have posted was from the 2 shows I went to in October 2017, so let's see what November brought.

Gary Gaetti                                                 Joe Cunningham

Part of the reason I write these posts is to show off the new piece of my collection, but another reason is to make a note of how the experience was getting the autograph. Nothing unusual happened when meeting Joe Cunningham, but for Gary Gaetti, the guy in front of me in line had a pretty interesting project. He had created prints using graphics from RBI Baseball (probably the greatest NES baseball game). I'm actually not sure he only had them for players in the game, or if he made ones for other players, but Gaetti was on the Minnesota roster in that game. I've talked before about starting an RBI Baseball collection of some sort, but this guy went above and beyond. The funniest part was that the guy left his binder with all his hard work behind on the table. And he had apparently done all his card show shopping and the autograph was his last stop, because someone had to go catch him in the parking lot.

I already had Gary Gaetti's autograph on a ball, but that one didn't fit my collection very well. It has several other players on it I met at the Cardinals Winter Warmup one year. I figured since I had the chance, I'd upgrade to a ball that fit with all my others.

Bonus October Card Show Autograph

There's a mostly-monthly card show not far from me, with lots of signers that aren't household names. Then there's the big annual one every October, with nothing but Hall of Famers and huge stars. I don't collect football stuff, but this one had Emmitt Smith, Marcus Allen, and Tim Brown. I also don't really collect hockey, but Scotty Bowman, Curtis Joseph, and several other old time Blues were there. I do collect Bo Jackson, but his price was a bit too high for me, and I already have autographs from Lou Brock, Bob Gibson, Ozzie Smith, and Red Schoendienst. I didn't make it there on Saturday for Bruce Sutter, but I did get this, which is now a cornerstone of my collection.

Tony La Russa 10

For some reason when I started watching baseball in 1992, I decided my second favorite team was the Oakland A's. As such, some of my favorite players were Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco, and La Russa was one of my favorite managers. I'm sure I've relayed this story on the blog before, but in 1995, some time after the Cardinals fired Joe Torre as manager (which was June 16), I was at a game with my dad and overheard some guys behind us talking about how they had some inside information that Tony La Russa would be the Cardinals manager in 1996. If I heard such a rumor today of course I'd go straight to the internet and see if anyone else was talking about it, but at that time all I could really do was tell myself that it'd be nice, but I didn't see it happening. Of course, I was a kid, I had no reason to feel like I knew what I was talking about. Tony did become the next Cardinals manager that offseason, and managed 16 seasons, winning 2 World Series.

When I was at the show, I wore a shirt I bought from Uni Watch a few years ago.

Tony took my baseball from the organizer next to him I had handed it to, looked up at me and gave a cordial "how ya doin?", then looked back at the ball, paused, looked back to me, and said "Dodgers?!". I suppose I hadn't really thought through his history with them, losing the World Series to them with Oakland and then being their division rival the past 4 years with Arizona. I also don't really think of the shirt as a Dodgers shirt, even though that's obviously what it's styled after. He was just giving me a hard time and laughed it off, but I can now say I was razzed by Tony La Russa.

October Card Show Autographs

I'm back to going to my local card show regularly, and collecting autographs of any Cardinals I don't have yet. This time I actually added a duplicate. I got a Kyle McClellan autograph at a free signing several in the fall of 2011, oddly enough during one of his best seasons. This one wasn't very expensive, and I got it authenticated pretty cheaply as well, so I decided to add it to my collection.

Dick Schofield

Kyle McClellan

Dick Schofield

Kyle McClellan

Dick "Ducky" Schofield was there along with his son, also Dick Schofield. As Junior didn't play for the Cardinals, I opted not to get his autograph. Senior played for the Cardinals 3 separate times, starting off his career from 1953-1958 when he was traded away midseason. He signed with the team for 1968 and was traded away again in the offseason, to the Red Sox, who traded him back to St. Louis after the 1970 season, but he was once again traded away after another half-season in July 1971.

Another Autographed Ball

Inspired by this post from the lost collector, I decided to send a letter to Commissioner Rob Manfred to ask for an autographed ball. I wrote a real letter, and gave him some feedback on some of the changes he's been implementing, hoping that maybe I'd get some sort of reply. I complimented his efforts to grow the fanbase of the game, but told him I thought the automatic intentional walk was a bad idea, citing Tony Pena, who has twice faked an intentional walk on a full count and tricked the batter into a strikeout. But, when my padded envelope came in the mail, there was no reply, except for this baseball with a nice clear signature.

Robert D. Manfred, Jr.

August Card Show Autographs

From my post history, it appears I didn't go to a card show from March until August. I made up for lost time, though, and got 3 autographs last month.

T.J. Mathews
Tom Lawless #12
Luis Alicea

T.J. Mathews was there along with his dad, Nelson Mathews, but I opted not to get his autograph, since he was never a Cardinal. T.J. was traded away in the deal that brought Mark McGwire to St. Louis in 1997, and was signed as a free agent again for 2001. He was released, played for Houston, then re-signed with St. Louis in August 2002, but never made an appearance.

Tom Lawless took his time signing his ball, and it shows in his perfectly legible signature. I always appreciate the extra touches like his #12.

Finally, there's a ball that appears to have some sort of cuneiform scrawled on it, but I promise that was written by Luis Alicea.

March Card Show Autographs

I returned to my local-ish card show after several months off, either due to uninteresting autograph signers, or just a busy Sunday schedule on my part. Everything came together in March, and I added two autographed balls to my collection.

Ken Reitz

Dick Hughes '67 WS CHAMPS

Ken Reitz

Dick Hughes
'67 WS CHAMPS

The guy in front of me had a 1980 All Star game ball, which impressed Ken Reitz. He said that was the only game that ever made him feel nervous, first because he found out he was starting in place of the injured Mike Schmidt, but also because he was the lone infielder in red, with the other starting 3 all members of the Dodgers, for a game in Dodger Stadium.

Dick Hughes kindly offered to put the '67 World Series Champs inscription on his ball, so of course I took him up on the offer. He only played in MLB for 3 seasons, 1966-1968, but managed to throw 222 innings in 1967 alone, and get a World Series ring out of it.

August Card Show Autographs

The monthly card show returns, along with one of the signers that was supposed to be there in July. Here's my haul:

Ivan de Jesus                    David Green                    Bryn Smith
1982 World Champ

Ivan de Jesus was supposed to be at the July show, but apparently missed his flight. He played for the Cardinals for just one year, 1985, so came extremely close to being a World Series champ.


David Green played for the team in 1982, so he gets to write the inscription on his autographs. He was sent by the Cardinals (with more players) to San Francisco for Jack Clark before the 1985 season. His line wasn't terribly long by the time I got there, so he took some time to talk to a kid that was there getting an autograph, and seemed like a really nice guy.

Finally, Bryn Smith was here during some lean years, 1990-1992. He played most of his career in Montreal, and his final season was in Colorado. Interestingly, the person in front of me was getting autographs on a Colorado Rockies inaugural season book, and knew Bryn won the first game in Rockies history. Bryn one-upped him and said "That's right, we started 0-2 that year". I looked it up, and of course he was right.

July Card Show Autographs II

There was another, much smaller - as detailed by CardinalsFan16 on All Cardinals All the Time - card show at the same location as the normal monthly one, but just 6 days later. I've been to their Saturday shows before, and they are typically smaller, but this one was practically nonexistent. There were 3 autograph signers though, all relatively recently retired former Cardinals that I didn't yet have in my collection.

Fernando Tatis          Octavio Dotel 28         Skip Schumaker 55

I promise that says Fernando Tatis on the left. It's at least consistent with other images I see online of his signature, but I made sure to catalog that one right away, because I might never decipher that if I had to. He's probably most well known in St. Louis for hitting 2 Grand Slams in one inning against Chan-Ho Park in 1999. Several people had him inscribe something related to that, though I wonder if those turned out legible.

Octavio Dotel was only a Cardinal for half a season, but it was the second half of 2011, meaning he was part of the World Series team.

Skip Schumaker was also a part of that 2011 World Series team, and was the player at the plate when the infamous Rally Squirrel ran through the batter's box, as you may recall seeing in 2012 on a Topps short print. That card is still tough to find reasonably priced, but there were several people with giant photos of the event for him to sign.

July Card Show Autograph

I was supposed to get 3 autographs at the July Card show, but one player missed his plane, and the other rescheduled for an unpublicized reason. But Donovan Osborne showed up, and here's what I got.

Donovan Osborne
                   -31-

Of the three Cardinals scheduled that day, he was the longest-tenured, playing 7 seasons for St. Louis, so the crowd wasn't as disappointed as they might otherwise have been. Bill Madlock was also there signing, but he doesn't fit into my collection. I've shared this story on my blog before, but why not, I'll do it again, because it's my most vivid memory of Donovan Osborne. I was at a game with my dad when Donovan came to bat with the bases loaded. They put season stats up on the board at that time, and I saw he had 0 home runs that year. I figured he probably also had 0 for his career, which to that point was 3+ seasons, but I had no way of knowing that for sure. I told my dad he should hit a grand slam...and then he did. That turned out to be his only career home run, and made me awfully superstitious for awhile.

Another Mall Autograph

Adam Wainwright made an appearance at a local mall on Saturday, July 2. Unfortunately, I already had late-afternoon/early-dinner plans with some friends who were visiting in town. But, luckily for me, the Cardinals game was rain delayed an hour or so that day, and Wainwright was the starter, so his signing was delayed for a while. When I got home from dinner, I decided to head straight out to the mall and see if I could catch him before he left (and see if there were even tickets left to buy). Obviously there were, or else I wouldn't be writing this post. There were probably about 20 people left in line when I bought my ticket, so I made it with 10-15 minutes to spare. Here's my prize.

Adam Wainwright 50

This autograph is probably the biggest star I have among current Cardinals players, with Stephen Piscotty probably coming in second. There aren't as many autograph opportunities for the star players, especially during the season, so I was glad I was able to make it to this signing.

Saturday Night at the Mall Autograph

I always assume most of the country is like the St. Louis region, which I've lived in for my whole life. Routinely, I find out things I find normal are actually unique to our region. For example, apparently we're in the minority of the country in using the name Soda, whereas many more people use Pop or Coke, which sound weird when I hear them.

One of those things that's been "the way things are" in this area (and maybe yours, I don't know) for many years is that teens and preteens hang out at the mall on Fridays and/or Saturdays. It's from about whatever age the parents are comfortable dropping them off alone for a few hours, until around driving age. As a result, not only are our malls packed with extra shoppers on those evenings, they are packed with herds of kids. As a result, I generally avoid going to the mall on those evenings if I can, preferring to go during the day Saturday if there's really something I need there. But, the Cardinals had a day game Saturday, and one of the local memorabilia stores held a signing at 6:30pm. I decided to brave the crowds and meet Randal Grichuk

Randal Grichuk 15

He was a few minutes late (totally understandable and expected on a game day), and I bought my ticket as a walk-up so my line number was pretty high, so I had plenty of time to people watch in line. I saw kids dressed as anime characters complete with brightly colored wigs, teens dressed for the prom, and plenty of people who were craning their necks around to try to see who we were all waiting for. I always seem to have an inordinate number of strangers approach me in life, and keeping with tradition, for some reason I was the one people would ask "who's here?". Some seemed to have no idea who I was talking about when I said Randal Grichuk, and said "ah, cool" and moved on. My favorite one of those was a guy wearing this shirt:

Bill Murray

Once Grichuk arrived, the line moved pretty quickly. I got a ball signed, as you can see above. A young girl in front of me was having a photo signed, which showed him and her at a previous signing. I was imagining how I'd frame and display a set of photos like that to really show off the inception-like nature. For now, though, I'll stick with my baseball collection I suppose.

April Card Show Autograph

I've taken a few months off from my local-ish card show, due variously to lackluster autograph guests, or personal business to attend to. Also there have been a few shows featuring players I've already got autographed balls from. This one had two of those as well, Lou Brock and Red Schoendienst.

Whitey Herzog

But there was one signer I didn't have yet, probably the most well liked manager of the last 40 years, Whitey Herzog. There was a sizable crowd there, and I didn't buy my ticket in advance, so I had a rather high line number and had to wait quite awhile, because not only is Whitey one of the most popular baseball personalities around St. Louis, he also engaged everyone in conversation, and posed for pictures with anyone who wanted one. I consider this autograph right up there with the top stars of the 1980s Cardinals like Ozzie Smith, so I'm really happy to add it to my collection.