Monday Morning Autograph - Eric Davis

I own a couple of thousand autographs, the majority have never appeared on my blog. Here is a random autograph that I have never posted.  

Today: 2015 Stadium Club Autographs Eric Davis 

Why Do I Own This Card?  

Eric Davis is one of the most talented players from the 1980s and 1990s. He was also on the St. Louis Cardinals for a few seasons at the end of his career.  Why wouldn't I want to own one of his autographs? 

I have actually posted other Davis autographs on my blog, just never this autograph.  

When Did I Get This Card?

I pulled this out of a box of Stadium Club towards the end of 2015. It was a nice pull. I took a break from blogging for a few months at the beginning of 2016 and never posted this card.  

Back of the Card 

I love that Stadium Club uses actual card back on their autographs. We get statistics and a nice write-up describing Davis' style of play and one of his career accomplishments.  This is what we deserve on the back of baseball cards.  

The Career of Eric Davis In a Haiku 

Series Champ, Home Runs

Reds, Stolen Bases, Gold Gloves

O's, Cards, Tigers Too  

Pujols Post - 2023 Stadium Club

I picked up a few packs of 2023 Stadium Club last week. It's always one of my favorite products every year with the great photography. I was also lucky enough to land a copy of the Albert Pujols card. It was one of the reasons I took a chance on opening a few packs. My expectations for this card were pretty high prior to pulling it from the pack.    

Here is the front.  

I like that we have a picture of Albert Pujols tipping his cap on his final Stadium Club card, but Topps already used a similar photo for his final card in the 2023 flagship set.  Here is the front of that card.....

While they are different photographs, it's the same concept for both cards. Honestly, it feels like a huge letdown. Pujols is such an iconic player over the past two decades, so I am sure that there are some great photos out there that have not been overused that would have looked great on this Stadium Club baseball card.  

Heck, I would even take overusing a classic Pujols photo like him staring down his 2005 NLCS home run against Brad Lidge.  I do not know a single Cardinals fan who gets tired of this one......

Copyright, someone. There are so many copies of this photograph floating around on the internet that I am not sure who to credit. It's one of my favorites.  

Back of the card.  

Solid write-up on the part of Topps to summarize Albert's final season in the Majors. I wish the same level of effort that was used on the back of the card was also used in finding a photo for the front of this card.  

Random Ray - 1998 Stadium Club

I have posted almost every Stadium Club card of Ray Lankford, missing just a few. 

Here is the front of this week's random Ray Lankford card......

Nice action shot of Ray fielding a ball in the outfield. Not sure if this is a line drive or a tall hop off of the artificial turf shown in the picture. Either way, it's a nice, tightly cropped photo of the former Cardinals outfielder. There were not many teams playing on artificial turf that season, only the Pirates and Reds. However, I could not figure out when or where this game took place as the Cardinals played multiple day games against both teams.  

Back of the card. 

I love the effort here. The borderless, full color photo in the background with the stats over the top of the photo is a really good look. While the photo is the best thing here, I really like what Topps tried to do with the stat box. Before I get there, I want to go over my one negative, which is the fact that there are two little factoid boxes. There is the "Bottom Line" at the bottom of the card and then another little write-up above the stat box. I think that space could have been better used.  

I know, it's hard to read, and I am saying this as a person with really good eyesight.  Essentially, they use the quintessential back-of-the-card stats, home runs, RBIs, runs, hits, etc, and then add in the players ranking for that star within the Top 40 of all MLB players. 

For an underrated player like Ray Lankford, it really shows how good his numbers were playing for bad Cardinals teams. That's a lot of Top 40 stat finishes and if you squint your way to read all the numbers, there are a bunch of numbers within the Top 10. On the last line, which is 1997, Lankford finished in the Top 10 in home runs, walks, and on-base percentage.  In 1996, he was top 10 in walks, stolen bases, and triples. 

Really good idea, they just needed to crank up the font size a few notches.  

As a side note, the fact box mentions that Ray Lankford was closing in on the all-time home run record at Busch Stadium II. Lankford ended up with the record with 123 home runs, At the time he was traded to the Padres in 2001, Ray had 119 Busch Stadium home runs, but Mark McGwire would tie him late that season. Ray Lankford broke the tie and set the Busch Stadium home run record as a member of the San Diego Padres in 2002.  

The tie-breaking home run was hit off of Woody Williams who was traded to the Cardinals for Ray Lankford. 

Random Ray - 1995 Stadium Club Members Only

I was into Stadium Club, but I was not in the Stadium Club.

Stadium Club had some exclusive club of card collectors who could buy fancier versions of Topps products in the mid 1990s. At some point during the year, for the low price of just $200, Stadium Club members could purchase said-fancy set, and not feel a sliver of doubt in their sound purchase. 

Feels like this "Stadium Club" should have had an infomercial.  

Every other great consumer product of the 1990s had one. 

Fortunately for me, there were other people who did spend $200 to join the "Stadium Club" in the 1990s and all of their Stadium Club Members Only cards are now in all the quarter boxes at card shops across the country.  

Here is my Ray Lankford......

I love the picture of Ray Lankford in his batting stance. Not sure about the four colored boxes, and I was trying to figure out what they colored over in the background. No idea?  It's like someone at Topps figured out how to put a picture of a baseball card in the Apple Photo Booth Warhol filter.  

Not sure I am a huge fan of this look on a baseball card.  

Back of the card.  

No stats, but this is a nice write up.  

Ray was certainly a talented player. Too bad a was stuck on a team with Tripp Cromer and Tom Urbani. 

Not my favorite card and I am still trying to figure out how Topps got people to join the Stadium Club.   

Random Ray - 1994 Stadium Club

Stadium Club is known for its quality photography. 

In 1994, Topps strayed from that formula in order to produce a baseball card set that looked like it was inspired by the episode of "The Simpsons" where Bart gets an embossing tape gun for his birthday and....

a ransom letter from a movie. 

Here is the front of the card.

I like the photograph on the card. I also like that the majority of the card is dedicated towards the picture and not wasted on other design elements. Now, let's talk about the name plate on the bottom of the card. It's half ransom letter and half embossing gun. Either is an odd choice for a design element on a baseball card, but together? 

It's terrible. 

Who thought this was a good idea?

I could actually handle the embossing gun tape if the color had some cohesion with the team colors. Although, the Marlins were in their teal phase, so I am guessing that wouldn't work. 

The back......

There is a lot going on here.  

First, the background is a zoomed in section of Lankford's jersey showing most of his number 16 and part of his name, but Topps just tinted the photo blue. On the right, a color photo of Lankford with something yellow in the background that is really distracting.

At the top, the embossing gun is back for his first name and the ransom typewriter note is there for the last name. They randomly squeezed in "OF" next to his bio information, which makes it look weirdly aligned. The "First Offense" heading is weird....The write up....could have....just .....used.....sentences....with ......less.......dots in......between......the.............................words. 

I do like that they have the hit direction included in the stats, but let's talk about the 'Topps Skills Rating System". What does this even mean? I flipped through a stack of these cards, all Cardinals, and have no idea how they came up with these ratings. For example, Luis Alicea's batting rating is 7.2, which is above average.

Were we watching the same Luis Alicea?

In summary, Topps says nothing bad about any players on the "Topps Skills Rating System" and this card back is one of the busiest in the history of baseball cards.  

I will choose a different Ray Lankford card in the near future.  

Pujols Parade - 2002 Stadium Club

 I love the older Albert Pujols cards that show him playing in the field at either third base or left-field. Twenty years later, these cards from the very beginning of his career look a little odd. Albert was originally a third baseman, but moved to the outfield full time after the Cardinals traded for Scott Rolen in 2002. 

Here is the front of the card.  

Great photo of Albert getting ready to field a ball here. Stadium Club always had great photography. Not big on the gray name bar going across the front of the card, but this was also towards the end of the original Stadium Club product line. Clearly, they were struggling a bit with the design here.  Still an above-average looking card.  

The back of the card.  

Stadium Club had these split stats for much of the late 1990s and early 2000s, which I think were great at the time. The write-ups on the bottom were always pretty thoughtful, as is the case here with Pujols. The player information is what it is, along with the small picture at the top.

Overall, this is a very good back that, with the nice photograph from the front, make this one of Topps better base cards of Albert Pujols in 2002.  

Sunday Night Procrastination

There are plenty of other things I could be doing at the moment. Most would be a better use of my time, but here I am writing about baseball cards and the whatnot. I have to work three days this week. I am not sure I am ready to teach tomorrow, but I am not going to worry about it at the moment.  

I spent the majority of my day doing chores around the house. I swept and mopped the floors, cleaned all three bathrooms in the house.  Cleaning is a good thing, most of the time.  That's a lot of productivity for a single day.  

I also took in the women's basketball game between NC State and Virginia. State is currently ranked second in the country.  

The Wolfpack ended up winning by 27 points.  Virginia is not very good.  

On to baseball card stuff.  

I have a huge stack of cards on my desk at the moment. There are so many cards that I could write about for this post, but I am going to stick with just one of them.  Mainly because it's already scanned and I have been procrastinating on the other cards.  Beyond scanning and school work, I have also been procrastinating on sorting too, which my wife files under baseball card cleaning. I am getting some side-eye about the amount of desk space my cards are taking up at the moment. 

I am going to put this card away after I write about it.  That's some productivity.  

Luis Patino spent a portion of the season in Durham, but eventually got called up by the Rays. He's signed a ton of autographs this year. I have not collected too many of them. The Rays got Patino in the Blake Snell trade with the Padres. His cards were fairly pricy at the beginning of the year, but they have gotten cheaper as the year has gone along. Nothing like a 21 year-old having an ERA of 4 to cool down the prices of his cards. I am sure you won't regret selling his cards cheap in four years. Keep sending them my way.  

Why this card?  I liked the appearance of this Stadium Club Chrome card. The finish did not show very well on the scan, but it's one of those shiny cards. The action shot on the front is just the sort of photography you'd expect on a Stadium Club card. I would also like to mention that Luis Patino has a great autograph. He's consistent too.  

Beyond the Luis Patino autograph, I also picked up an autographed baseball this week at work.  

One of the students in my class is Mackenzie Gore's cousin. She got him to autograph a baseball for me. 

It was fun writing this post. This was 10 minutes well spent.  

Random Ray - 1999 Stadium Club

Second 1999 Ray Lankford card in a row, but this 1999 Stadium Club card has a connection to last week's Fleer Brilliants card.  The back of the Fleer card used a picture of Lankford wearing a St. Louis Stars uniform from a "Throwback Game" that the Cardinals and Braves played against each other during the 1998 season.  

I really liked the Cardinals and Braves wore throwbacks belonging to Negro League teams.  As a fan, it's something different than the usual polyester 1970s or 1980s throwback.  I like the 1980s Cardinals, but how many times do we need blue polyester pull-overs?  I was also really happy to see several different card brands use pictures of the Cardinals (Braves too) from this game in their 1999 sets.  

I choose to use Lankford's 1999 Stadium Club this week due to the fact that it features an action picture of Lankford in his St. Louis Stars throwback uniform on the front of the card.  Stadium Club is a brand that was built on great photography and I feel like this Ray Lankford card fits that branding well.  

Love this action shot of Ray leading off of second base.  These are amongst my favorite throwback uniforms the Cardinals have worn.  The jerseys have a very simple design, but I like the color blue used for the socks and writing, the font used on the "St. Lous", and the red star on the side of the sleeve.  Throwbacks can sometimes look goofy with modern shoes, wristbands and batting gloves, along with the batting helmets.  None of those really look bad with this uniform.  

Bonus St. Louis Stars cards factoid before I post the back of the Stadium Club card.  I want to talk about late 1990s Fernando Tatis cards that use his picture from this game.  Here are two examples:  

The card on the left is from the 1998 Fleer Update set and on the right is a 1999 Fleer set.  

The Cardinals traded for Fernando Tatis from the Texas Rangers on July 31st, 1998.  The Braves and Cardinals game with these St. Louis Stars uniform took place on August 1st, 1998.  In other words, the cards showing Fernando Tatis in the St. Louis Stars uniform are from his very first game as a Cardinal.  I am not flipping through all my Fernando Tatis cards from 1998 and 1999, but I believe there are several other cards showing him in a St. Louis Stars uniform.  

Back to Ray Lankford.  

Stadium Club cards did not have a consistent back design.  Some are better than others.  The 1999 set actually ranks pretty high on my list.  I like the larger color photo of the player on the back, which is also used as the background on the player stats box.  The photo is slightly muted in that area of the card, but you can still see the Cardinals logo on the front of the jersey.  

I like the split stats on the back showing home vs. road, left vs right, etc.  Feels like a card back would appear on a more recent set of baseball cards.  A baseball card with OBP before the book MoneyBall was published?  

I am surprised.  

Ray Lankford could draw a walk.

This Stadium Club is one of my favorite Ray Lankford cards from the late 1990s.  Two 1999 cards in a row, I will use a different year next week when I post another Random Ray.    

I'll Go Ahead And Cave

One of the biggest reasons I was excited about the 2021 baseball card releases was getting my hands on some Jake Cronenworth cards. He was on the Durham Bulls a few years back. The Rays ended up trading him to the Padres before the 2020 season. I would have loved to see him stay in Tampa, but understand that if you follow a Minor League team, trades are inevitable.  I am just happy Jake Cronenworth made the Majors after a long journey through the Minors.  

My only Jake Cronenworth card entering 2021 was a Durham Bulls team issue card from 2019.  

Cronenworth has appeared in several 20201 Topps and Panini products, even signed a bunch of autographs.  I was not really happy about the prices of his cards on eBay.  Earlier this year I tried to lay out a case for people spending less money on Jake Cronenworth cards.  He's a 27-year-old rookie and he went to the University of Michigan.  Those are two really good reasons.  

I have waited patiently, but being a Rookie of the Year candidate and making the National League All-Star team doesn't really do anything to make your cards more affordable.  So, I decided to go the opposite direction two weeks back.  

Here are some reasons to buy some Jake Cronenworth cards.  

-Cronenworth is one of my favorite Durham Bulls players 

-I don't really mind the Padres and there are a ton of other former Durham Bulls on that team. 

-He's a Rookie of the Year candidate who just made the National League All-Star team. 

-Cronenworth cards are still less expensive than Wander Franco's cards.  

I picked up three Cronenworth cards, two autographs, and one insert.  

The first one is from Topps Finest.  The background on these cards is a little odd this year.  The left side looks very 1980s/1990s this year with the pink and green background with the different shapes mixed in.  The right side is very plain with the Chrome reflective material kind of standing alone.  There is a little color in there, but not much.  

This is my favorite card in this post.  Love the action shot of Cronenworth sliding into home, even if he is wearing a ridiculous camouflage baseball uniform.  Some of the recent Stadium Club designs with the large player name at the bottom haven't really done anything for me, but I like this year's design with the bar at the bottom.  Feels like a throwback to the original set released back in 1991.  

Last one. 

I really like this card with Jake Cronenworth on the 1986 Topps design.  There is an autographed 1986 Topps-style card of Cronenworth too, but it's a sticker autograph that looks terrible.  

That's it for today.  I am really happy with these cards, glad to have a few Cronenworth's to look at, and I will live with the fact that I caved on price this time.  

Cards I Love Part 3: 1991 Stadium Club Members Only Ray Lankford

What is the best thing you have ever seen in person at a baseball game?  I have a short list.  One of the games at the top of my list was the September 15th game between the Mets and Cardinals in 1991.  What happened? 

Here is my scorecard. 

Pretty hard to read in the picture, but the correct answer is that Ray Lankford hit for the cycle.  He became the first Cardinals rookie to hit for the cycle in more than 70 years.  Cliff Heathcote accomplished the feat for the 1918 Cardinals, but did so in an 18 inning game.  Ray only needed the usual 9 innings. 

Somehow most of the card companies managed not to make a highlight of Lankford's cycle.  Topps did put one into their Members Only set.  It was a mail-in set, and I did not actually get one at the time of the cards release.  In fact, it took me a few years to run across one in a dime box.  The front of the card is not really all that eye catching, and I am sure that I passed this card over a few dozen times before finally parting with some pocket change to buy one.  

The front of the card does not even indicate that it was created for any particular event, or highlight.  It just looks like an ordinary Stadium Club card.  Flip the card over.  The back has no stats, only a write up about the cycle game, which is what makes this card a favorite of mine.  

I wish the write up on the back of the card spent a little more time focused on the game, but it is nice that the card was even created.  Especially considering the Cardinals were not a very good team, Ray Lankford was not very well known at the time, it is sort of surprising that this card was made at all.  A nice card to remember a great game.  

  

A Great Way To Spend A Special Day

The last half of my summer vacation was spent hanging out in Grand Rapids, Michigan for my sister-in-law's wedding.  My wife was in the wedding, along with son and my daughter.  I was happy just being able to throw on a shirt and tie, and not have to rent a tux.  Most of my time was actually spent wrangling the flower girl.

With everyone running around for the eight hours before the wedding, I needed to find away to keep busy that did not involve getting the little one dirty.  No playgrounds, no parks, so we decided to check out the local card scene.

Grand Rapids has a nice card shop called All Star Sports.  It was easy to find for someone who is not from the city.

I spent a good amount of time just walking around when I first got into the store, which has a new owner, and a great staff.  They are clearly reworking parts of the store, but there are plenty of single cards, some old wax, current wax, memorabilia, and just about anything else that you would want to find in a sports card shop.  I think that the new owner has a good vision for the space too. 

I picked up a couple of modern singles for my collection, and if I had been better prepared for my visit, could have probably closed out finding all the single 2019 base cards of Cardinals, Durham Bulls, and former NC State players that I collect.  They also had some nice vintage singles that I flipped through, but at the moment I am looking for Durham Bulls players from the 1960s and earlier.  Not an easy find, but there were some sharp looking cards nonetheless.  

Since I have slowly drifted back into not having much of a card shop here in Raleigh, I decided to spend my time and money working on some 2019 Stadium Club.  The store owner Eric gave me a great price on the cards, and I sat in the store and opened the packs.  

Here is what I got out of two boxes.  

I am not sure of the exact breakdown of which autographs came together.  I do not really have any connection to Ryan O'Hearn other than he hit everywhere in the Minors, and had 1.2 WAR in 44 games last year with the Royals.  He's not having a great year, but he's on the Royals.  I am going to file this away for another day.  

Ray Black is a former Pitt Panther from way back when they first joined the ACC.  I know they have been somewhat of a train wreck in baseball since joining the conference, but they were actually decent when Black was there.  Three Major League players on the team with Black, Kevan Smith, and Matt Wotherspoon (not misspelled) from the Norfolk Tides.  He's beating the Durham Bulls as I type.  

Briceno played locally here a few years back for the Carolina Mudcats.  He's a defense first catcher, not much of a hitter.  None of that really matters though, this is an awesome card.  Pictures of walk off home runs always make for good baseball cards.  

Last up is my favorite Gwinnett Striper, pitcher Touki Toussaint.  He's good, but gets overlooked often because he's a young guy on the Braves.  One day the Braves will let Touki start, or they will trade him to a team that will start him. 

All the autographs are on card too.  

Here a few more of my highlights.  I did not finish sorting out my colored parallels of the base cards, but I know I have several reds, blacks, black and white, and sepia cards.  Mainly sticking with the insert cards for the moment.  

The bottom right Griffey card is serial numbered out of 99.  The rest are all non-serial numbered cards.  

Love that Snell card.  There is an autographed version of this card out there, but the copies are rather expensive at the moment.  Maybe at some point it will appear on a Blake Snell autograph post.  I wish.  

This is my bad scan for the week.  I love the Chrome cards, had to scan these even though I am trying to stick with inserts over parallels.  Might need to go find all of the Rays and Cardinals in this set.  

Good looking set of cards.  The Marp was my only Cardinals insert that I pulled out of my two boxes.  Some great young players in this insert.  

Love that Topps squeezed in a set for fast players.

So, overall......

I had a great time sitting in the store opening packs, and talking about cards.  All Star Sports Cards came highly recommended to me from one of my followers on Twitter, and I would completely agree that this is a great local card shop.  If you live in Western Michigan, or just pass through it, this is worth a stop.  I live 800 miles away, and would not hesitate to give them my business.

In the end.....

it was a great wedding, and a great way to spend my day.