Cuban National Team vs USA Baseball College National Team

I had the chance to check out the first game of the USA Baseball College team's friendly series against the Cuban National Baseball just up the road from my house in Cary, North Carolina.  I have done a few write ups on the games I have attended at the National Training Complex in the past, my favorite of which was a no-hitter thrown by Tanner Houck (Mizzou/Red Sox), A.J. Puk (Florida/A's), and Ryan Hendrix (Texas A&M/Reds).

The final out from that no-hitter from the arm of Ryan Hendrix, which was also against Cuba....

I have not been to many games yet this year between kids and work, so a holiday weekend is just what the doctor ordered.  It was a little bit hot at the start of the game, but overall a really nice evening to take in a baseball game.  The USA Baseball complex is a nice place to watch a game.  

There were a few players I was excited to see last night.  The main player of interest however was Clemson outfielder Seth Beer.  The past two seasons the slugging outfielder has been one of the better players in the ACC.  Beer should also be one of the higher draft picks coming up next summer.  

He had some really good at-bats early in the game, worked the counts, and showed good patience.  

The best at-bat of the game took place in extra innings after the game went into the "International Tie-Breaker Rules".  You say you do not know what that is?  Neither did I, nor 90% of the stadium, and likely 100% of the players on the US team.  Here's a quick tutorial.....

Anyway, Cuba was the road team, so they batted first and scored twice.  The US team then put Cuba in a bind by scoring two runs, loading the bases, for Mr. Beer.  The Cubans brought in the infield and their pitcher actually made a decent pitch breaking his bat, but......

Very cool game to watch.  Not as cool as the no-hitter game, but still one of the better amateur baseball games that I have ever attended.  I need to do one of those Friday countdown things this week to share out the cool ones.

There were autographs too.  Towards the middle of the game there was a table set up on the concourse of the stadium with different signers.  A few Olympians that I did not really know and a member of the 1984 Olympic Baseball team, former Rangers pitcher Bobby Witt.  He signed a ticket for me......

I mentioned being a Cardinals fan and the fact that I saw him pitch for the Cardinals in 1998.  He didn't seem thrilled that I remembered him as a Cardinal.  Not his best year.  

I'll Take A Second Beer

One of the hardest parts of the 2016 baseball season was the fact that the USA Baseball College team did not play any home games instead opting for a summer of touring Asia.  Their home stadium is about ten minutes from my house in Cary, North Carolina so they are always on my calendar at some point every summer.  They also usually tend to play a few games around other stadiums in North Carolina too, including the Durham Bulls Athletic Park.

Last summer the USA Baseball College team included one of the most impressive freshman in the country in the person of Clemson outfielder Seth Beer.  I am pretty sure that he is going to be a very high draft pick in the near future.  I had the chance to see him play at Duke last spring....

I also ended up with a Seth Beer autographed card.  

While the college team did not play a single home game last summer they still got some baseball cards in the Panini Elite Extra Edition product.  There are a few players from last year's team that I am hoping to find, but Seth Beer was a pretty big priority for me.  

I watched a few of his autographs on Ebay, but landed a really nice looking card off of a Facebook group page....

He has another autographed card in Elite, which just has an autograph, but I opted for this one with a jersey swatch.  I had a choice between the two cards.  Both are sticker autographs.  Overall, I just really happy to land another Seth Beer card.  Considering he was a freshman last year, I'd guess he leaves after his junior year, so we get three more chances to find some Beer cards.....

Beer Me.

I was supposed to make my way to the ACC Baseball Championship this past Sunday.  The tournament last all week and took place at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park.  Unfortunately the tournament fell on the same as progress reports at school, which means that I am hellaciously busy with grading and typing grades into a grade book.  I figured with a three day weekend, it would be fun to take in the game.

Well, it did not really work out that way.  The game was moved up Saturday night to 10am because of the impending Tropical Storm.  Then the game was pushed back to 11am.  I like going to baseball games, but my five year old does not do really well with rain delays.  We decided to watch the game from the comfort of our living room.  

8 hours, 31 runs, and a whole bunch of Florida State errors later the Clemson Tigers won this year's ACC Baseball Tournament.  

My son and I had a good time watching the first few innings of the game, but by the time Clemson had opened up a 13-1 lead the little guy had moved on to watching Lego Superheroes.  I stand by my decision to stay home and watch the game....

Truth be told, I have actually already seen Clemson play this year.  Back in April, while I was on my vacation from blogging, I went to see the Tigers play Duke.  The Blue Devils have actually been playing a lot of their home games at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park in recent years, but they were playing at their on campus stadium Jack Coombs Field.  Coombs was a pitcher on the Philadelphia A's way back in the day.  Here is his statue outside the baseball stadium....

Jack Coombs is a small stadium.  The seating area is tiny and relatively flat.  Small stadiums can be nice when you have a good view, but then sometimes someone in a mascot uniform walks up and sits in front of you.....

Mascot Free.....

Mascot.....

Sir, your devil horns are obstructing my view of this baseball game.  So what does any of this have to do with Beer?  Great question.  If you are a fan of college baseball and have watched Clemson this year you will know exactly where this is headed, if not I will introduce you to a name to file away:

Seth Beer.  

Beer is the freshman right fielder for Clemson, the ACC Player of the Year, and should garner a few more pieces of hardware before the end of the college baseball season.  Beer graduated from high school in December of his senior season, so he was never drafted by a Major League team.  Just straight to college.....

Beer had a quiet game against Duke, but seemed to reek havoc against everyone else in the ACC.  Luckily, as a freshman, he is going to be around for a few more years.  I am looking forward to seeing him a few more times with Clemson, and I am guessing that he has a pretty good shot at making the USA Baseball College team too.  

While I was at the game I also picked up a card from a friend who I met up with at the game.  Also happens to be one of the biggest Clemson fans that I know.  The card was a Beer card.....

I rarely do in-person autographs, and while Beer has a few certified autographs from Leaf, I was really happy to land this card.  My friend actually was picking up a few autographs from a few of his favorite Clemson players.  Seth Beer stopped and signed and my friend was generous enough to give me one of the signatures.  Really cool card and a great player to watch in the future.  

End of the Weekend Post

Way back last Tuesday I had a stack of cards I needed to scan in order to start planning out some posts for the next few weeks.  There have been way too many 2015 cards enter my collection and sit on my desk.  Not really go anywhere or doing anything.  After thinking a nice long holiday weekend would help resolve the matter I am sitting here on Saturday night and I am feeling slightly overwhelmed by the fact that I have done almost nothing.

I posted a cool new Mark McGwire card from a Panini USA Baseball set last night, so I am going to stick with that same theme this evening.  I picked these three USA Baseball cards up awhile back, so this help clear a little bit of the backlog.  First up.....

Lucas Sims is pitching in the Braves organization.  I saw him pitch last summer for the Carolina Mudcats during my baseball tour and was really impressed.  Not a really great outcome for the Mudcats considering they lost badly to the Myrtle Beach Pelicans, but it was not really Sims fault that the team lost the game.  He has a few other autographs out there, but I really liked the looks of this jersey/autograph combo from the Stars & Stripes product.

How many times has Chris Okey played for USA Baseball?  I feel like I run into him every summer, or perhaps it's just the fact that I also see him when he plays for Clemson.  Either way, I like Okey and enjoy watching him play.  Is he a senior this year?  I think so which means he will likely be drafted by a team that I watch locally.  Okey appears frequently in games I watch now, I expect little will change once he is drafted.

and Thomas Echelman is here because I saw him pitch a few times over the years too.  Not in the same games as Chris Okey.  Okey goes to Clemson, Eshelman went to Cal-State Fullerton.  Nevertheless, he always seemed to pitch every time I watched a USA Baseball game two summers ago.  He is in the lower levels of the Astros Minor League system at the moment.  

#MyCardMonday

Who is the hottest player in all of Triple A?  The easy answer is Durham Bulls third baseman Richie Shaffer.  The Clemson grad has been on the Bulls for 18 games and has posted a .311/.411/.721 slash line with 7 home runs, 4 doubles, and 14 RBIs.  He had been playing well before this week, but he took it to another level this weekend when he posted a three home run game against the Louisville Bats (Reds).  Not quite Mark Whiten, but it was still a great performance.

So I figured today would probably be a good day to go ahead and share out my latest Richie Shaffer card which comes from his days back at Clemson.  This on card signature comes from the 2012 Leaf Valiant set.....

I think it's going to take a lot for the needle to move on Shaffer, but I am guessing that the Rays are going to give him an opportunity to be a big bat in their line up sooner than later.  His cards are still dirt cheap despite his success this year.  I am waiting for Shaffer to slow down a bit, but his 1.480 OPS over the last 7 days suggests that he is going to be just fine hitting in Triple A.  

Collecting the Durham Bulls: Richie Shaffer

Two days in a row with a Richie Shaffer post.  I will leave him along the rest of this week, most likely.  A little bit of repeated information:  Shaffer was the Rays first round draft pick in the 2012 MLB Amateur Draft out of Clemson.  He has played in the Rays minor league system the past two and half years for the teams A, high A, and Double A teams.  The third baseman has increased his home runs totals each season in the minors and he seems poised to do that again this year with 9 in his first 40 games (last year he hit 19).

Shaffer's first cards appear in the late 2012 releases.  His key rookie is in the dreadfully super airbrushed Bowman Draft set.  At some point in the future Topps should write an apology letter to all of the players included in the set and reissue a new rookie card.  What pains me about the Shaffer rookie card?  The jersey airbrushing is not terrible, but the helmet is not cool, and if you are going to go ahead and change out the jersey and helmet why leave the little things untouched?  Shaffer has two wrist bands, one orange and one purple.  The crowd in background is also wearing orange shirts, and if you squint, you can even make out the C for Clemson on the guy's hat to the right of Shaffer's wrist in the picture.  Charles Barkley says......

Shaffer also has rookie cards in Panini and Leaf products which show him in a Clemson uniform, but the logos are just blanked out on the cards.....

All three rookie cards, the Leaf, Panini, and Bowman Draft, all feature an autographed version which all can be found for less than $5.  In my opinion, I like the Panini and Leaf cards better than the Bowman issues.  I'd rather see him in a Clemson uni with no logos, then a Rays uniform haphazardly placed over a Clemson one.

Since entering the Rays system in 2012 there have been plenty of Shaffer cards in Bowman products and some of the other Topps Minor League products like Pro Debut and Heritage Minor League.  The cards are readily available and really inexpensive.  I like his Stone Crabs card from last year's Pro Debut product.  I am guessing he will have a card in this year's product as a Montgomery Biscuit.

Shaffer also has a handful of autographs out on the secondary market all of them were issued in either 2012 or 2013.  I have already talked a little bit about his 2012 signatures, but I am going to throw out one from that year which is, in my opinion, his best autograph.

I am sure the photograph is probably photoshopped, but the fact that Topps made an on card signature of Shaffer is the important thing here.  The Leaf cards from 2012 are also on card, but this is Shaffer's only licensed on card autograph.  If you wanted to add a Shaffer autograph to your collection this is my 1A pick.  There is one other good one, but mainly because of the product....

 Share's Bowman Inception autograph is a sticker, but this is from a really nice product with real, non-airbrushed pictures, of players in their uniforms.  I like Shaffer's signature and he has been really consistent throughout his time signing for card manufacturers.

#MyCardMonday

I had a few ideas for #MyCardMonday this week, but I was won over by a roster move by the Durham Bulls and the performance that followed on the field.  Sunday morning on my way to the ACC Championship game I saw an interesting tweet cross my feed.......

I am not sure how much I have, or have not talked about, Shaffer in this space over the past three or four years.  I am really intrigued by him as a player and was wondering at what point this season we would see the powerful third baseman make his first appearance in Durham.  Well, yesterday was the day.  We'll get into the specifics of his first day in a few minutes.  First some housekeeping.

I first encountered Shaffer while he was in college playing for Clemson.  The Charlotte native definitely stood out for the Tigers and enjoyed a great college career.  I found a cool old video of him from Baseball America facing off against, then Duke pitcher, Marcus Stroman.

The Rays took Shaffer with the 25th pick in the first round of the 2012 MLB Amateur Draft.  He has been through stops with the Rays A and AA teams before his promotion to the Durham Bulls on Sunday.  During the past two and half years his home run totals have slowly started to tick upwards.  From 4 in 2012, to 11 in 2013, and then up to 19 last year.  So far this year he is already at 9 with just 40 games played.  Two of which came yesterday in his first Triple A game with the Bulls.  

Shaffer makes his home debut for the Bulls later today against the Rochester Red Wings.  So, after a great debut the choice for #MyCardMonday is easy........