5-1-12: Bowie Baysox @ Richmond Flying Squirrels

The big move is getting closer but I still had enough time to sneak out to a Flying Squirrels game this past week. I usually only go when there are free tickets involved or the Bowie Baysox are in town.  I had this date marked on the calender since the schedule came out because I really wanted the travel coffee mugs that they were giving away that night........ NOT!  Well the coffee mugs are nice I really went because I wanted this:

And I GOT IT!  Say what you will about Pro Debut, but this autograph turned out awesome!  And not to mention it's Manny freakin' Machado!  He comes as advertised.  He made some great defensive plays in the field and had a decent night at the plate going 1-3 with a walk.  I can't wait to see him play on MASN on a regular basis.

I also got Ronnie Welty on 2 cards which turned out great.  Ronnie's played pretty good so far this year so Triple-A might not be too far down the road for him.

I also got Jonathan Schoop on both of these cards from last year.  He's struggled a bit so far in Double-A but I'm sure he'll figure it out and start mashing again soon.

And the mystery autograph for the night.  Anybody that guesses who this is gets the satisfaction of knowing who it is.  He's been mentioned on the blog before (that really narrows it down).  He's a player that did a really nice thing for me at a Squirrels game last year.

The Baysox won the game 2-0 with a great pitching performance from Zach Clark and some timely hitting by the offense.  I had a good time talking to some of the other fans at the game and just being able to spend sometime not thinking about packing and moving.

Trade with Jack the Baseball Dad

A quick post of thanks to Jack the Baseball Dad for sending over a few Orioles cards.  I'm running around packing up the house and working extra shifts at work so there isn't much free time lately.

Jack seems to have a penchant for pulling purple bordered parallels from Toys R Us.  He sent me an Adam Jones earlier this spring.  So far this season, Chris Davis has been playing great and showing the power and on-base ability that he had in the minor leagues.  Hopefully he's got it figured out and will be a fixture at first for the O's for years to come.

Another Topps parallel from 2009 Topps Update.  I think this is the exact swing that Adam Jones made to break the tie in the All-Star game that year and ended up being the game winner.

I stashed this card down at the bottom since everybody's seen enough Gypsy Queen to make their eyes bleed.  If you're a loyal reader and made it this far, thanks for reading!  This is the initial card that started Jack and I's trade.  It's too bad that the scanner cut of the right side though, it really is a sweet mini!

Thanks again Jack, I really enjoyed the cards!

Trade with Michael of Sports Syzygy

I recently completed a trade with Michael of the Boston-centric Sports Syzygy blog.  Michael hooked me up with a nice pile of Orioles cards that fit well into my collections and it's a shame I can't show them all here.  

Mike Figga played a bulk of his MLB career as an Oriole (41 of 46 games).  He spent all of his minor league career as a Yankee and had a few (bathroom cup sized) cups of coffee with them in the majors.  He was selected off of waivers halfway thru the 1999 season by the Orioles and played out the rest of the season with them hitting his only ML homer.

This is definitely my favorite Iron Man card from the package because it's Gypsy Queen and it's a framed paper card.

There was a good selection of Roberto Alomar cards in the package too and this is the most unique of them all.  Apparently the picture taken on this card was done during Carlos Baerga's celebrity softball game.  I can honestly say this is the only card that I have of MLB players playing softball.

There were also another big chunk of cards of Dwight Evans in the package.  I could figure out why unitl I remembered that he played all of his career except for his last in Boston.  He had a decent season for the birds and retired after the season.

Another favorite from the package is a Platinum Team paralell of Arthur Rhodes from Score.  I don't know if Arthur will get another shot to play MLB again but he definitely had a great career.  It would be cool to see him pitch in Baltimore to finish out his career though.

Last but not least, a Zach Britton insert from Series 1.  It seems like a million years ago when series 1 came out!  I've been hearing encouraging news about Zach that he's finally throwing again without pain in his shoulder.  Not that the Orioles need starting pitching right now but inevitably they will towards the end of the year.  I hope Britton's rehab goes well and ends up back in Baltimore before the season is done.

So, thanks Michael for the awesome package of cards and I hope we can trade again some time.

Trade with Nick of Dime Boxes

I've been picking up a bunch of Gypsy Queen lately for my Orioles team sets recently and when I saw that Nick from Dime Boxes -- The Low-End Baseball Card Collector's Journey pulled a Ripken mini, I had to have it.  We turned this into a full blown trade.  Here's a couple of the cards he sent.

Here's the aforementioned Ripken mini.  It's just a regular back mini but that's fine by me.  It will fit nicely into the mini team set that I have going.  The only other that I've gotten is JJ Hardy, so if anybody has any other regular back minis of Orioles, you know who to contact.
Being a team collector and a Ripken collector, I will need another one of these regular minis along with any of the parallels.

I know I haven't said much about my One Card of Every Oriole collection but Nick was able to help me out with a few I needed.  Some Orioles players didn't have any cards featuring them in O's duds but luckily for me Mike Kinkade was featured on a couple that I know of.  He didn't spend long in Charm City but apparently was there when BJ Surhoff took a few year sabbatical playing for the Braves.  I only know this because Mike is wearing #17, BJ's number.

This Josh Towers card also goes into the binder with Kinkade.  I chose this specific card just because its orange.  Fleer Maximum did a great job of making the borders of each player's card the same as the team's primary color.    It's an underrated set for sure.
In making my list of wants for my One Card for Every Oriole collection I looked up each player that ever played for the Orioles on COMC, Ebay, Beckett Marketplace, and Google images and picked my favorite card of each player considering if it was an Oriole card overall, followed by the design, photo, other team (not many Yanks or Red Sox), cost effectiveness, and availability among other factors.  So every card that goes into this binder was painstakingly handpicked by me as a favorite. Yeah, I probably have too much time on my hands during the winter months.

So thanks Nick for the great cards.  I hope we can trade again soon!