Six Pack of Stadium Club Part 2

I am doing Stadium Club cards from the base set all week.  If you missed Part 1 I would encourage you to go back and check out six cool base cards from this year's Stadium Club release.  In the meantime, here's a look at six more cards that I enjoyed......

#143 Mickey Tettleton - Tigers

One of my frustrations with Topps, at times, can be their player choice.  They tend to use the same players over and over and over.  It's nice to see some cool names, especially when they are cool players from a past era.  Tettleton is not a Hall of Famer, not even close, but he did have a nice career.  He spent a lot of time with the Tigers, but also appeared for the A's, Orioles, and Rangers.  This card would be a little bit cooler if they included a picture of Tettleton in his batting stance, but he just someone different to look at, which is a good thing.  Here's a peak at his batting stance.  

Overall, Tettleton hit almost 250 home runs and collected over 1,100 hits in 14 seasons.  His career WAR is just about the same as Javy Lopez and he ranks just outside of the top 10, 11th overall, for home runs hit as a catcher.  Here's the stance in action....

#123 Lenny Harris - Reds 

Another cool player from back in the day who does not get much hobby love.  Harris played 18 years for the Reds, Dodgers, Mets, Marlins, and a few others for parts of season.  He never really played full time, but was one of the best bats off the bench for almost two decades.  Harris has entered the coach realm since retiring from baseball and is currently working for the Marlins as their third base coach.  

#164 Carlton Fisk - White Sox 

Tom Seaver and Carlton Fisk both on the same card is pretty cool, but the card is improved by the fact that they are both wearing those 1980s White Sox softball uniforms.  When I first started collecting cards this is how I remember the White Sox unis.  I know the Sox wear these as alternate uni now, but it's nice to see the originals with players who were around when I first started collecting.  

#185 Willie Stargell - Pirates

It would be cool to see this card in color.  I really liked the colors and stylings of the 1970s Pirates uniforms.  This card still stood out to me though as I flipped through the Stadium Club set.  My enjoyment of baseball and Stargell's career just missed each other, but I am very familiar with the Pirates slugger.  I am not sure if it's just I how I see him, but he always appeared to be one of those players who played the game with a smile.  Kind of a Ken Griffey Jr. smile.  Happy to be playing baseball and I imagine that this card is from a good year for the Pirates.  Is the guy in the background running on the field?  Perhaps a World Series winner.  

#168 Carlos Baerga - Indians 

This is a card that kind of grew on me.  At first glance I just noticed Carlos Baerga hanging out parallel to the ground.  I flipped past through this card a few times before coming back.  I did not really pay attention to the fact that the Indians are playing the Braves in the picture.  Check out the patch on Baerga's right sleeve and the patch on Klesko's left sleeve.  The Baerga patch is the 1995 World Series patch and the Braves patch is one they wore for the 1995 season celebrating their 30th year in Atlanta.  Klesko had a rough series, but did reach base on a hit in Cleveland and also reached twice on walks in the clinching Game 6 for the Braves.  Since the Braves are the home team, this is obviously the final game of the Series.  That picture is really cool by the way.  

#112 Paul Konerko - White Sox 

I do some farewell posts sometimes.  I did one for Lance Berkman and Juan Pierre.  Gave serious consideration to giving Paul Konerko a little love, but I passed.  If I had to do it all over I probably would have written one.  First base is a tough position and I do not think that Konerko has enough to be a Hall of Famer, but he was still a really good player for a long time.  He helped the White Sox end their World Series drought in 2005 and ranks high in several important offensive categories in the team's franchise history.  He won the MVP Award in the 2005 American League Championship Series.  White Sox fans gave Konerko a good send off, but it seemed to get completely overshadowed by all of the Jeter stuff last year.  Really cool to see a long time fan favorite get a good send off.  Really cool to see it captured a piece of cardboard.  

2013 Topps Allen & Ginter Henry Rollins Autograph

I do not do many non-baseball autographs and I cannot think of a single non-sport autograph in my entire collection.  I have pulled a few things out of different products over the years.  I got a Tina Carrere and Jesse Ventura autographs a few years ago out of a Donruss product while they were printing the fans of the game cards.  However, I quickly sold both cards and moved the money onto other cards.

Topps released its fantastic Allen & Ginter product this week which is always full of non-sport autographs.  The product is one of my annual pack busting experiences, but I have never pulled a non-sport autograph out of a Ginter pack.  In fact, I usually hope to just avoid the non-sport autographs all together and land my nice baseball related autograph.

Well, my streak of all baseball autographs out of Ginter ended this year when I was opening my box and landed an autograph of musician/spoken word artist/actor Henry Rollins.

2013 Topps Allen & Ginter Henry Rollins Autograph 

If you are not familiar with the work of Henry Rollins there is much to share, so I would point you in the direction of my favorite Rollins Band disc, but you also can't go wrong with his work in Black Flag.  I am not a consumer of spoken word material, so I am not going to tell you it's great, but people seem to enjoy it.  

Rollins has also appeared in several television series and movies.  I think the first movie I remember him being in was the mid 90s Al Pacino/Robert Diniro movie Heat.  Really, there is a lot the guy has done during his career.  Back to the card.

The one intriguing feature of this card that caught my eye was the signature.  Usually Topps provides signers with pens to sign their autographs which Rollins obviously did not use.  I am going with a Blue Bic pen on this card.  Pens on cards are a rarity.  In fact, after pulling this card I went back through my autographs, all 4,000, and tried to find another card signed with an ink pen.

I found no certified autographs in pen, but.....

I did find three cards that I did own, non-certified, that were signed in pen.  Whitey Herzog I got at an event in St. Louis and he was not putting down his pen.  Everyone got an autograph signed in pen.  In retrospect I should have brought a baseball to the event.  The Lenny Harris was from my brief period of TTM signatures.  The Donruss card is a pretty bad signature, but I have always really liked the Upper Deck.

The Rollins autograph is a really good signature in spite of the fact that Henry used a Bic pen.  Have not quite decided if he's going to stay in my collection or not, but I will enjoy the card while it's sitting here.