Bonds Away

Last night, I was going back and forth between the Pirates/Cardinals game and the Marlins/Tigers game. My brother is a big Marlins fan and I was curious to see how the team would operate under Don Mattingly and their new hitting coach, Barry Bonds. The first five innings looked ugly as former Cy Young winner and MVP winner, Justin Verlander held the fish hitless.

Then the bats woke up. It was an ugly bullpen game from both teams. Former Bucco, Bryan Morris, gave up two solo shots in the 9th.

After that I stopped paying attention to that game entirely though because the Bucs were in the midst of lockdown bullpen battles with the Cardinals. It was amazing to see them win that game last night and seeing Gregory Polanco using all his tools on display reminded me of another speedy toolsy outfielder who swung the bat from the left side.

Can RunPMC (Polanco, Marte, Cutch) be better than AVS (Andy Van Slyke)  and the killer Bs (Bonds and Bonilla)?

I think so!!!

Until I can add more PMC cards, I will just show off this sick Jersey Relic of the HR Champ.

Check
Out

This
Patch

Buc to the Future

The Pirates Outfield of #RunPMC@PNC might be one of the best outfields the team has ever assembled.  The 1965 tandem of two Hall of Famers (Willie Stargell in LF and Roberto Clemente in RF) along with Bill Virdon patrolling Center Field might boast the most historic nameworthy for Pirates fans.  Back in the early 90s though the Pirates possessed one of the best hitting outfields with Barry Bonds, Andy Van Slyke, and Bobby Bonilla.

Recently someone was liquidating their Pirates collection and offering cards in bulk lots.  I grabbed 11 cards of Bonds and Bonilla for $4.

The most interesting card of the lot was this Barry Bonds.

The Cracker Jack Donruss mini was a close 2nd

#freebonds

It was just announced today that the Department of Justice is dropping their case against Barry Bonds. While I will never support cheating, I also will never discount the talent that Bonds had.

It stung a lot when Bonilla left for NY for the 1992 season and both Bonds and Drabek left after the 1992 heart breaking season loss to Atlanta.  That early 90s team was one of my favorite teams to watch. I still search for oddball and regional releases of the players on those teams.

Such was the case when I came across this 1992 Art Images Promotional Card for 99 cents with free shipping.

#tbt: Then & Now Barry Bonds Dual Jersey

Barry Bonds was on the path to becoming one of the greatest baseball players ever in Pittsburgh Pirates history.  After much debate, I truly believe that he was on the path to a Hall of Fame career even if he didn't get involved in steroids conspiracies.

This card is a good example of Bonds Then & Now.

I grabbed it for $6 delivered as a personal consolation prize because I lost 6 Barry Bonds National Treasures auto/jumbo patch relic auctions over the past two months.  $6 is a much better price to pay compared to the $400+ that the Bonds auto/relics I wanted were going for.

The rarest Barry Bonds 1989 Topps you will ever see

1989 Topps isn't known for their scarcity.  That's a simple fact.  However, a few years ago Topps opened their vault to some error cards that were produced and Chris Henderson, who has worked for Topps on projects such as Allen & Ginter Highlight sketches got a large amount of the misprint blank front cards and has been doing sketches on them through his ebay site.

I've previously had Chris do several commission sketches for me (Morton, Marte, McCutchen) and thought this was a perfect opportunity to purchase an extremely unique (1/1 sketch) of the HomeRun king on his actual 1989 Topps card.

Here's the sketch Chris came up with

What a great image of a presteroids Bonds.

If you're interested in purchasing some of his work, please be sure to visit his ebay site

Trade Post: Phungo, It's where the fun goes...

I recently made a trade with Paul of the blog Phungo, a Phillies card blog.

 

Paul had posted his thoughts on a rack pack of 2014 Allen & Ginter he bought back in August and had pulled an Andrew McCutchen mini.  I instantly jumped on calling dibs on it.

In addition to the A&G mini, Paul sent a package with his usual Phungo cards he produced himself.  Some of my all time favorites were included.

He also included a bunch of new cards I didn't already have in my Pirates collection including the well worn, but brand new to me 1993 Fleer Atlantic Collector's Edition Andy Van Slyke.  All 10 cards pictured above are new to my collection except for the Cutch which I have one signed in person.  The 75 mini of Al Oliver and Bowman Heritage Aramis Ramirez are probably my runner up favorites to the playing card of Barry Bonds.  I just love those unique oddball items featuring players from the 80s and 90s.  I wish they would do stuff like that again.

He also included this unique 2007 Upper Deck NL Central Pennant Chasers insert of Freddy Sanchez.  The Bucs actually had a shot at winning the NL Central Pennant in 2007 despite having a losing record.

Paul thank you so much for the awesome cards.  Your package should be arriving next week.  I went to a card show last weekend and got some extra stuff for you.

Remembering 1992: Barry Bonds Highland Mint Bronze Rookie Card

Yesterday, the Pirates clinched the playoffs for the first time since 1992 (the same year they last had a winning record).  This year's Pirates squad has similar aspects to that same 1992 team.  The Pirates 1992 post season ended with throw from Barry Bonds that went just wide of homeplate, allowing Sid Bream to slide and score the winning run in Game 7 of the 1992 NLCS.

Bonds went on to win the MVP that year (his second of his career) before departing from the Steel City to become a member of the San Fransisco Giants.  He finished his age 27 season with 109 runs, 34 homeruns, 39 stolen bases, 103 RBI, and .311 batting average while winning a gold glove and silver slugger.  That equaled a 9.0 WAR for the season.

I came across the above Highland Mint Bronze rookie card of Barry Bonds for $10.  I didn't want to take the card out of the case to scan it so I just used the image the seller had on ebay.  It's a nice looking card and is numbered 477 of 5,000 on the certificate.  The actual card itself is not numbered.  It was produced in 1993 so having only 5,000 available actually is pretty rare for that "junk wax", "everything is a collectible" era.

Why I save for rainy days

Does anyone else have a change jar they use for emergencies?
I don't use mine for emergencies, I use it for my "rainy day" card splurges.  

Normally I put all my pennies, nickels, and dimes in a Poland Spring water cooler bottle and let it sit there until it's too full I can barely lift it.  Friends will throw money into it too when they come over.  It's awesome.  When it get's damn near full I cash it in and get a couple hundred bucks out of "useless change".

Then I use it to buy myself something nice.  Something like what's below...

I saw this card for sale at a card show for triple digits which is expensive as $#!^, but couldn't resist adding it to my collection.  

Honus Wagner jersey relics are very tough to come by (this is my first).  Roberto Clemente relics are always extremely expensive and sought after.  Combine them with another HOF Pirate player 7 time HR champ Ralph Kiner and you have a very neat card that spells out the Pirates nickname "The Bucs".  I love this card and it displays nicely in my man cave along with my other Pirates memorabilia cards like this one below

I bought this card off ebay after searching for a very long time for a Barry Bonds bat relic card featuring the HR King in a Pirates uniform.  When I saw this pop up on ebay I had to overpay to add it to my collection.  No sweet patches or autographs or 19 year old phenoms appear on this card, but it has a very low print run of only 9.

Barry Bonds TriFecta Complete

Say all you want about the steroid era of baseball but one thing is for certain, Barry Bonds is one of the greatest baseball players of all time.  I did a post earlier this year about Barry Bonds hall of fame candidacy and I still believe he should be a 1st ballot HOFer.  I'm not going to repeat myself about why I believe this, instead I'll show off my completed Barry Bonds trifecta (all in Pirates uniforms).

Feel free to leave an intelligent comment if you don't think he belongs in the HOF.  

Some sweet COMC Pickups

I saw a very limited dual auto of the Pirates 2010 Top Draft Picks (Jameson Taillon and Stetson Allie) on COMC and decided to use some of the money in my paypal account to pick up some other fun cards for my collection.  So for the price of two blasters, here's what I got.

a couple presteroid cards of Barry Bonds.  Notice how much bigger his head is compared to his body before going into San Fransisco.  LOL! I also got a Jay Bell(hop) card which just looked fun.  Well worth the price of a gumball for all 3 cards.

I picked up just a few cards for the player collection with not a single card costing me more than .55 which includes an Andy Van Slyke 1985 Topps Rookie Card

I also got a couple Heritage cards I needed getting me closer for my team sets to being completed.  I picked up 2 of Nate Baker because I'm hoping to get one signed at a future AA Altoona game.

I couldn't pass up these numbered parallels for the asking prices.  They ranged from .25 to $1.15.
Bonds 1125/1992
Taillon 284/309
Milledge 1595/2010
Vogelsong 573/2006

The above 4 autographs were all picked up for less than a $1 each.  Sure there's no HOF candidates in there, but it's nice to get on card autographs of Bucs from yesteryear. 
Tony Womack is 99th on the alltime steals list with 363 (122 in a Pirates uniform).
Kevin Young is 10th All Time on the Pirates HR list with 136 HR wearing a Pirates uniform. 
Al Martin is 18th all time on the Pirates HR list with 107 HR wearing a Bucs uniform. 
Brad Eldred...he was the first Pirate to hit a HR that my girlfriend and I attended a game together.  He also has 240 minor league homeruns which is ridiculous numbers.

I finished off 2 Topps team sets from 1971 and 1973.  I also got two nice looking vintage Gene Alley cards.

A COMC box wouldn't be complete unless it had some Jason Bay jersey cards in it so I picked up 3.  I'm really digging that 4 piece Canada jersey from 2006 Sweet Spot Sweet Beginnings.  The 08 Topps and 07 Sweet Spot cards were had for $1.99 and $2.50 respectively.

This was the big hit of my COMC purchase.  A dual auto from 2011 In The Game Heroes & Prospects of 2010 1st round draft pick Jameson Taillon and 2010 2nd round draft pick Stetson Allie.  This card had a print run of 15, but is not numbered.

Steroids and the MLB Draft

I've been wanting to add a Bonds jersey relic in a Pirates uniform for a long time.  The problem is that there are few to chose from and often times they fetch a lot of money.  This was on the fairly inexpensive side.  $13 shipped.  If I can just get a certified auto of this card, then I have a trifecta featuring his 1986 rookie.  That would be pretty cool.
My reason for this post though is that this 2001 Topps Rookie Reprint Barry Bonds jersey card got me thinking about two things recently.  How much the MLB Draft has changed and more obviously how much baseball has changed since drug testing.

First I'll examine the MLB Draft.
Back when Barry Bonds was selected, the NL and AL would rotate who got the top selection.  It was not mandated that the team with the worse record got 1st pick.  This means that the 1986 MLB's worse Pittsburgh Pirates would have had number 1 selection in 1987.  For those of you that don't know who went number 1 in 1987, it was future Hall of Famer Ken Griffey Jr.  How great would an outfield of Bonds, Griffey, and Van Slyke had been?  Would Griffey had been enough to get the Pirates into the World Series and possibly convince Bonds not to leave for San Fransisco?  Nobody knows.  One thing is for certain though.  The Orioles would had love to get that number 1 pick in 2010 since the Nationals had the number 1 pick in 2009 following the Rays in 2008.

I really don't want to beat a dead horse since so many other people have talked about steroid usage especially in light of Ryan Braun.  However, I will say this.  The 2012 Hall of Fame 1st Ballot election class has a lot of questionable names on it.  One of those names is the HR King Barry Bonds.  Did Bonds use steroids.  Yeah, it's safe to say he did?  Did that take anything away from him already being one of the best in the game in his early seasons?  No, he was one of the first players to get 40HR/40SB in the same season.  To the best of everyone's knowledge that was all done without any PEDs.  He was a 5 tool player in his early years in Pittsburgh before becoming the most feared batter in the majors while playing for the Giants.  I personally hope that Bonds makes it to the HOF on the first ballot.  If he doesn't, then what does the HOF stand for?  Was his career not excellence in nearly every sense of the word?  How many other HOF have 7 MVP awards, 4 of which were consecutive? The answer is none. 

Barry Bonds deserves to be a first ballot hall of famer.  If he's not, then I question the integrity of the Hall of Fame. 

Hopefully, the Pirates can start to have winning seasons again too.

Just in from ebay, another Jose Tabata 1/1

Just in from ebay is another Jose Tabata 1 of 1.  This 2011 Topps Heritage blank backed proof was won for $15.  I now have 2011 Topps Heritage Blank Back proofs of James McDonald, Jose Tabata, Garrett Jones, Pedro Ciriaco, and Evan Meek.  If anyone comes across the McCutchen, Neil Walker, Paul Maholm, or Alex Presley please let me know.  I would love to make a team set of 1/1s.

One thing that bothers me greatly with the Topps license monopoly is that they use the same photo in different sets.  I'm ok with using photos from the same photoshoot, but the exact same photo? C'mon Topps!

Jose Tabata is my second favorite positional player on the current Pirates team after Andrew McCutchen.  My Tabata collection has been growing steadily over the past year as I have tried to collect some of his rarer cards.  With his ex wife's legal troubles behind him, Jose can focus on baseball and be a future fixture in right field for the Pirates.  He will be only 23 years olds entering the season, which is still relatively young by today's standards.  Recognizing the huge upside and five tool player that Jose may one day become, the Pirates agreed to a contract extension prior to the end of last year while Jose was on the DL that could keep the Venezuelan native in Pittsburgh through 2019.  It's a very team friendly contract similiar to the one that Evan Longoria signed in Tampa after his brief success that looks like a steal now.   

In 193 career games, Jose has 210 hits, 35 SB, and a batting average of .284.  His offensive WAR is only 1.5 currently, but I suspect that will improve when fully healthy and he develops more power. 

His fielding is also very impressive as he had lead all NL left fielders in his rookie campaign in range factor and fielding percentage.  Jose has committed only 3 errors in his career through 193 games.  Jose has asked the Pirates organization to move to right field to honor his idol Roberto Clemente. 

I just realized my thoughts were all over the place in this post and for that I apologize, but I'm feeling a little under the weather again.  To further make this post more random, enjoy this cheaply purchased Barry Bonds graded 1986 Topps rookie card.

Trade with Too Many Grandersons

Dennis at Too Many Grandersons was looking to unload some Pirates.  Who am I to turn down some Bucs' cards?  Here's some of the highlights of the box I received.

Pirates love gold and I love gold numbered parallels.  Steve Pearce makes the funniest faces

Also in the group of cards he sent me was a bunch of cards I needed for my player PCs.  I got a Ryan Doumit 2008 Bowman Gold I needed for my Doumit PC, 3 Jason Bays I needed for my Bay PC, and 2 nice Barry Bonds cards for my Bonds Pirates PC.  I'm also happy to see a Roberto Clemente and strangely enough Oliver Perez in this box.

Dennis also included about a dozen Brian Giles cards and close to 30 Jason Kendall cards.  Above are some of my favorites from the lot.  I really like the 2 Brian Giles celebration cards.  Brian Giles was a powerhouse when he was with Pittsburgh.  I also decided to show off an Aramis Ramirez minor league card and a Topps Chrome Mike Gonzalez rookie card.

Now this is the centerpiece of the lot.  These are all numbered cards that Dennis put together that he said he wouldn't miss anything of.  The Victor Black auto is numbered to 50.  He's currently in A ball pitching in relief for the Bradenton Marauders.  The highlight for me of all these cards is the Chase D'arnaud refractor.  I've talked about Chase in the past and how he is my favorite of the Pirates positional prospects.  I was very excited to see that card in the pile.  I'm thinking I might add Chase to my players I collect. 

Thank you SOOOOOOOOOOO much for the awesome cards Dennis.  I hope you enjoy the cards I sent you too.