More Australians, Less Profanity

In my time watching the Durham Bulls, the team has had two Australian players. The first appeared in 2008 when the Rays sent newly acquired relief pitcher Grant Balfour down for a little fine tuning. If you are not familiar with Grant Balfour, he is an excellent pitcher, but might be the angriest player who ever stepped foot on a baseball field. 

The confines of a Major League stadiums could not hold his f bombs and Minor League parks were no different. I'd like to think Balfour's most notable angry moment came in the 2013 American League playoffs when he started yelling at Tigers catcher Victor Martinez for who knows what reason......

While Balfour turned many live broadcasts into NSFW territory, nobody could really complain about the results. During his stay in 2008, Balfour had an ERA of 0.38 for the Durham Bulls with an impressive 14.8 strikeouts per 9 innings and 8 saves, all while sharing the closer role.  

The Bulls second Australian joined the team towards the end of the 2021 season with the addition of third baseman Curtis Mead. He's a top 100 prospect, one of the Rays top prospects, and the third baseman of the future in Tampa. The Rays called him up and he made his Major League debut this season. Mead's numbers weren't great, but he also got less than 100 plate appearances. 

Mead also managed to hit his first Major League home run.  

I have posted other Curtis Mead cards on here previously under the heading of "Troppo prices", which means they are crazy in Australian. Luckily, it seems like the prospecting crowd gave up the Bulls third baseman this year, outside of his first Bowman Chrome. Thank you prospectors for quitting a player I enjoy watching. I can now afford some of his cards without taking out a second mortgage on my house.  

For my first round of new Curtis Mead cards, I tried to focus on his Durham Bulls cards. He's had several produced over the past two years. I got all four of the cards featured in this post for around $25. Between a box of cards at Target or a few Curtis Mead cards, I will take a few Curtis Mead cards.  

The first card, out of 2022 Topps Heritage Minor League, is the most expensive and cost me roughly half the $25 I spent on this lot of cards. This card has a nice on-card signature and shows Mead wearing a Durham Bulls jersey. A real Durham Bulls jersey, not one that is photoshopped onto the card, which leads me to the really odd thing about this card. 

The photograph on the front shows Mead in a Bulls home uniform, but the photo is not taken in the Durham Bulls Stadium. Notice the players sitting in the dugout are wearing home white uniforms too. That is typically the visitors dugout in Durham. However, the top of the dugout is not right, nor is the color of the wall at the top of the stands.  

I will figure it out one day, but for the moment I am happy to own my second Curtis Mead autograph.  

These two cards are parallels of his 2022 Topps Pro Debut base card. The top card is the Chrome parallel, which is not serial numbered. Good looking card and I wish Topps had made a Chrome parallel for this set about a decade ago. 

The second card is the pink parallel, which is serial numbered to 199 copies. Another nice looking parallel. Imagine a pink Chrome card. I know, it's too much to ask.  

Last card.....

This is an insert card from the 2022 Heritage Minors set, which borrows its design from the 1973 Topps Pin-Up cards. Not the hardest insert to pull, but nice enough to add to the Curtis Mead collection.  

A few shiny Curtis Mead cards will be posted in the near future.  

Collecting The Durham Bulls: Grant Balfour

I like Grant Balfour.  I first encountered him as a player during the 2008 season when he had a brief stint to start the season with the Durham Bulls.  What's to like about watching Grant Balfour pitch?  He throws hard, he's a max effort guy, and he's extremely fiery.   Fans of Aussie pitcher in Tampa and Oakland dubbed the pitcher Balfour Rage which has caused a few run ins over the years.....

 
Grant Balfour has had his struggles with the Rays since returning to the organization before the 2014 season which ultimately lead to the closer being sent down to the Durham Bulls towards the end of April.  I can't say I am surprised that Balfour ended up in Durham, but I hope he's back somewhere in the Majors before the end of the season.  However, while he's in Durham I am going to take a look back at his baseball cards........

The first Balfour cards appeared in 2001 products.  He actually signed with the Minnesota Twins in 1997, but it took him awhile to get his first piece of cardboard.  He did have a few Minor League issues before 2001 along with an Australian baseball card or two.  I have actually seen more copies of his Australian cards then team issues from his days in For Myers, New Britain, and Edmonton.  His rookie cards in 2001 are not in every product, but some can be tricky finds due to the fact that they are short prints, or the fact that sets from that year have rookies of Pujols and Ichiro and have been locked away.

Once Balfour became a regular with the Rays his cards became frequent parts of most major base sets.  He's been in every Topps base set along with several Panini and Upper Deck products during that time.  My favorite Balfour base card is easily his 2011 Topps Update card.  I think the picture fits Balfour to a tee.

Balfour also has several certified autographs floating around too.  Several of his signatures are really cheap including his 2015 Topps Autographs and his 2012 Panini autographs.  Both are available with some frequency on Ebay and COMC and often cost less than $5.  Let's put it this way, if it costs more than $5, just skip it and wait and it will show up cheap soon.  His best autograph, I do not own it, is his 2013 Tier One autograph.  It's still not an expensive pick up and usually sells for somewhere between $5-$10.  Nice looking card too...