Pirate Autograph Project #13: Warren Morris

Lucky number thirteen.  Since Jumpin Jack Flash has already made his appearance, I have to go with my second favorite Pirate of all-time:  Warren Morris.

I've written about this card before.  But it'll always be one of my favorites, and from the set that got me back into collecting.

Morris could never totally recapture the magic of his rookie season, but was my favorite player during my first years that I was really starting to follow the Pirates exclusively.

Pirate Autograph Project #12: Jermaine Allensworth

The Pirates had a long and illustrious track record of center field duds until that McCutchen guy came to town.  Jermaine Allensworth, Adrian Brown, Tike Redman, Chad Hermansen.  The next great hope for a guy who could man either 1B or CF has long been a dream of Pirate fans.  First base is (still) a work in progress.  And while we piled up players who could rake in the minors and were often blazing fast, it never translated into major league production.  Not that I can completely blame them.  The Dee Gordons and Juan Pierres of the world are rare - guys who can put that contact hitting and speed together to maintain consistent major league production.  More players end up like Billy Hamilton or Michael Bourne.

But Allensworth was a lot of fun to watch in Pittsburgh, and didn't have a terrible career when you size him up against the other guys on that list.  

Pirate Autograph Project #11: Ted Savage

I was a big Wonder Years fan growing up.  This post has absolutely nothing to do with Ben Savage, though.

Ted Savage was a well traveled player before it was fashionable.  Over a 9 year career, he played for 8 different teams.  Pretty impressive for the pre-free agency days when pretty much the only way to change clubs was to be traded or sold to another club.

Savage made 149 at bats for the Bucs in 1963.  He would have a pretty solid year for Milwaukee in 1970, but otherwise was a role player and pinch hitter for the majority of his major league travels.

Pirate Autograph Project #10: Dave Wayne Johnson

I've never had to suffer the fate of having a common last name.  But I'm sure the struggle is real.  I don't need to add a bunch of numbers to the end of my email address to find one that isn't already taken.  There's no fear of one of those "mistaken identify" stories.

But imagine having a name so common that once you've reached the pinnacle of your profession - a place only a few thousand have reached - that you can't even claim your name.

Ouch.

There have been three Dave Johnson's in major league history.

This Dave Johnson was drafted out of college and pitched well in the minors, rising slowly through the ranks.  He finally got the call to the majors at age 27, and made it into 5 not so memorable games before heading back to the minors.

He ended up having a couple solid seasons for the Orioles as a started through 1989-90 before imploding in 1991.  But you may remember another Dave(y) Johnson that played for the Orioles who made a slightly more memorable impact on the franchise.

I couldn't find any photos of his brief tenure with the Bucs, so a card from his AAA days with the Bucs will have to do.

Pirate Autograph Project: #9

Keith Osik isn't your typical backup catcher.  Over his seven seasons with the Bucs, Osik appeared at third base, second base, left field, right field,  first base, and even a game at both pitcher and DH.  For those keeping score at home that means he popped up everywhere but shortstop and center field.  

He was a solid backup player for the most part, offering some pretty solid offensive skills for the position.  Of course his entire tenure overlapped with Jason Kendall's time behind the dish.  But the revolving door of catchers that would cycle through Pittsburgh over the decade after he left made Pirate fans appreciate the stability behind the plate during the Kendall/Osik seasons.

Pirates Autograph Project: #8

Freddy Garcia.  The other one.

Apparently bring first isn't always best.  With the announcement that Freddy Garcia has retired last week, I can't help but think about the other Freddy.  The other Freddy came to the Bucs in the 1995 Rule V draft, and looked like a steal.

At 24, he hit 291/342/582 in AA in 1997, and followed that up in 1998 with a 270/327/571 line in AAA.  He even slugged a very solid 256/332/488 in almost 200 major league at bats in 1998.

But for whatever reason, the Pirates dumped him to the Braves for a minor leaguer in 1999.  Remember, these are the same brilliant baseball minds who yo-yoed Jose Guillen and Aramis Ramirez between the majors and AAA like they were riding the tram around Disney World.

Garcia slugged well in 2000 for the Red Sox, before heading to Japan for the 2001 season.  A rough season there would end his career at just age 28.  But boy...I can't imagine that power wouldn't have played at least a little better on some power starved Pirates clubs.

Pirate Autograph Project: #7

While guys like Manny Sanguillen and Steve Blass are probably the long tenured faces of the franchises' yesteryears for most current fans, one player who had perhaps the most interesting tenure with the Bucs was Bill Virdon.

Virdon played for the team for 11 seasons, including coming back in 1968 as a player/coach who appeared in 6 games.  He would take over managerial duties for the Bucs in 1972, and though his tenure with the Bucs wouldn't last as long as it should or could have, he managed major league clubs for 13 seasons.

He would come back to the Bucs as a coach in the late 80's, coaching through 1995 with the Pirates.  He came back for the 2001 and 2002 seasons as the team's bench coach, 30 years after managing the club himself.

Even since "retiring," Virdon has been a mainstay in Bradenton for Pirates spring training.

Pirate Autograph Project: An Origin Story

"It's not the destination so much as the journey."

There may be no phrase that more accurately captures card collecting (well, other than "you're going to lose money busting wax).  So much of collecting is the thrill of the hunt.  Whether it was ripping packs as a kid hoping to hist your favorite player, or endlessly scouring ebay hoping to see that elusive card, we're hunters.  And when we finally track down that elusive card, it's on to the next chase.

But the why always lingers.  Each collector has their own story, whether it's trying to recapture that childhood hobby, or the first time you peeled back the wax seal on a pack.

Kate and I went to see Deadpool over the weekend (which was awesome, by the way).  I was reading an interview with Ryan Reynolds where he said that if the film wasn't going to be an origin story, he wasn't interested.  And I think that's a really interesting perspective - grounding the how with the why.  And as the second Spider Man origin story, or the maddeningly long Captain America origin film teach us, if the journey isn't interesting, it makes the destination a lot less fun.

So this is my origin story.  Or at least the story of why I got the crazy idea of tracking down an autograph of every single guy to step onto a baseball field wearing a stylized P on their cap.

In the spring of 2004, or thereabouts, I joined the Beckett forums.  I was in 10th grade, loved baseball, liked collecting cards, and that was about as developed as my collecting identity went.  In an era when pulling an autograph out of a box was a possibility rather than a guarantee, my autographed collection was maybe a dozen cards between certified autos and cards I had gotten signed at local shows, etc.

As spring training approached, I saw a thread on TTM autographs.  I read through pages long threads dating back as far as I could find them.  I could write a letter, and end up with an autograph?  It seemed like the greatest thing on the planet.

I asked my parents for a book of stamps and some envelopes, and began carefully crafting my first requests.  Every day after school was filled with excitement, going to the mail box and hoping for a return.  And I certainly got off to a good start.  When that first white envelope came back in the mail, inside was my 2003 Donruss Team Heroes card signed by Duke Snider.

I was hooked.

In those days, the extent of resources and ttm collectors that are out there today were far more limited.  You either had to buy an autograph list containing home addresses of players, or scour the internet for addresses.  And as a high school kid, scour it was.

Somewhere around 2005, I stumbled across a site dedicated to Pittsburgh autographs.  I had been adding Pirate autos as often as possible, but my TTM options were limited to whose cards I already owned or could find in the dime box at the LCS.  Suddenly I saw dozens and dozens of signed vintage cards.  Players I had never heard of, but whose signature I suddenly wanted.

It was a pretty basic looking Angelfire page, but the Steeler Chief's website was, to my 15 year old brain, the holy grail of card collecting.

As I was starting to think and post about my autograph project over the past week, I wondered if the Steeler Chief site was still up.  After all, chunks of the internet get phased out all the time.  Like my old Myspace page.  But there it was, not much different from when I first discovered it.  It looks like the site has been inactive since 2007.

But suddenly I had a whole new hit list of players whose autograph I wanted to track down.  I started buying vintage cards on ebay and sending them out to the reliable signers.  And a few unreliable ones, which never came back home.

As I reached college, I was in accumulating mode.  I had hundreds of Pirate autographs, and jumped at the chance to add new players when I could.  But there was no real rhyme or reason.

Somewhere around 2008 or 2009, I found that one of my fellow team collecting buddies was working on acquiring autographs from every Astros player who had suited up for the club.  Tough, but as an expansion franchise it wasn't totally unreasonable.

I decided to see if I could compile an all time roster for the Bucs as well.  And just out of curiosity, see how many signatures from that bunch I already had.  I think you know how this one goes...

Some OCD set in, and I was shocked to discover I already had a few hundred different signatures.  And if you already have that many, why not try for them all!

It's been a journey from there.  The low hanging fruit - players with certified autos or who are reliable TTM signers knocked out somewhere around 20-25% of the players who have played in the modern era.  And from there, scouring ebay, card shows, and flea markets has helped fill in some gaps.

At north of 50%, I still have a long way to go.   And I don't know that I'll ever truly complete the project.  But it's been one hell of a journey so far, almost a full decade into collecting Pirate autographs.  And I can only hope the rest of the chase is as fun.

Pirate Autograph Project: #6

One of the hidden benefits to this project has been exploring the long history of the Pirates franchise.  I was still in high school when I started this, and it was really interesting to backtrack the history of the franchise and learn about some players I never realized had played in Pittsburgh.

Joe Orsulak best stuck in my brain as a guy who appeared on a lot of overproduction era wax as an Oriole.  That was it.  And in the days when my Pirate collection pre-1990 or so was woefully non-existent, I had much to learn.

Orsulak spent the first couple years of his major league career with the Pirates, and made a fair number of cardboard appearances as I would later learn.

Pirates Autograph Project: #4

Baseball wouldn't be as interesting without a guy like Lou Marone.  First off...the name.

Secondly, he pitched 29 games of 2.55 ERA ball out of the Pirates bullpen in 1969.  At age 23.  Not bad, right?

But in the pre-expansion era days, there were only so many slots to go around.  He appeared in one game in 1970, and was out of baseball by 1972 at age 26.

Man, am I feeling old.

Then again, maybe Marone was a flash in the pan.  He made the majors on the strength of 17 appearances in AA that year with a sub 1 ERA and 11 k's/9.  Add in the major league numbers, and it's a pretty nice year for a 23 year old.

But 1969 was also the only time, at any level, that he would post a sub 3.50 ERA.  But hey, if you're gonna peak, might as well do it in the bigs.

Marone died this past November at age 70.  The card, his only major league release, is a high number in the 1970 set.

Pirate Autograph Project: #3

I've been working on acquiring an autograph of every players since the end of WWII to appear in an MLB game for the Pirates.  I'll be (hopefully) posting one autograph each day.

I'm front loading the early portions of my PAP postings, but can you blame me?  This card is one of my favorites in my collection.  Not only is it a beautiful signature on a design that makes great use of white space, but it's also a pretty tough signature to nail down.

Benito Santiago's career travelled the spectrum from ROY, perennial All-Star and Gold Glover to...Pittsburgh.  In the mid 00's, Pittsburgh was the last stop on the bus for quite a few former all-star caliber players who had little to nothing left in the tank.

While Benito was in his age 40 season when he hit Pittsburgh, it was cool to see a bigger name player take over behind the plate after trading away Jason Kendall.

Santiago had come off of a decent but injury-shortened season with the Royals in 2004.  But his stop in Pittsburgh never really got a chance to get going.

And it's interesting how we remember things.  I thought Santiago fell into the old Davy Jones Locker outside PNC Park, performing at Derek Bell levels of woefulness.  In reality, the Bucs gave him a whopping 6 games and 23 at bats, during which he was playing about at his career averages.  Not bad for a 40 year old catcher.

I suppose at some point between trading for him in December and early May, the Pirates apparently decided they needed to get older.  This kind of well thought out planning was pretty typical for those Pirate teams.

Some ab's would go to David Ross, who has now acquired grizzled veteran catcher status himself.  But the Pirates would cut bait too early with him as well.  Instead, the bulk of the ab's went to Humberto Cota, who put up an OPS about 60 points lower than what Santiago had done the year prior.  It shouldn't shock you that Humberto Cota never reached the majors after the Pirates finally released him.

So despite 23 ab's and 6 games, somehow Benito Santiago was included as an autographed card in Topps Update, despite never actually having a flagship Topps card as a Pirate.  And having not played for either team pictured for at least 9 months.

But I'm more than grateful this card exists.  For a while, I'm pretty sure it was the most expensive non-Jack Wilson card in my collection.  I think it cost a whopping $7.  But hey, I was in high school and funds were tight.  And ebay shipping was also $2 on the high end back then.

Pirate Autograph Project: #2

Yesterday I went with a modern player.  So let's dig a little deeper.

From a purely aesthetic standpoint, I absolutely adore this card.  I love the colors on the sky and pine trees, and it's a really unique look.  In retrospect, I wish I had been able to acquire a copy in better condition.  But I got this card signed in high school, and I think at the time my priority was to track down the cheapest possible copy I could find.  And in the days before COMC, that could be a tall task on ebay.

Castiglione played for the Pirates from 1947-1953, seeing regular duty for some rough teams during '49-51.  He was a pretty effective utility player, splitting most of his time between third and short, but also seeing duty in the outfield and at first on occasion.

Pirate Autograph Project: #1

For me, becoming a team collector was actually a pretty long journey.  From "everything" collector, to Jack Wilson player collector, to Pirate certified auto collector.  But the jump between having a few hundred Pirate autographs and having 16,000 Pirate cards different Pirate cards, a wall of binders, and a mess that makes Kate consider murder every so often was a big one.  And the turn that took me down that path was when I decided to start my Pirate autograph project.

Instead of just collecting a certified auto of every Pirate who had one, why not get an autograph of EVERY Pirate to every don the stylized P?  That aspect of my collection has taken a back seat in recent years, but it's still one of the most enjoyable projects I can imagine.  Because alongside autos of Stargell or McCutchen I have guys like Mario Mendoza and Don Kelly, and they're all just as important to the project.

So while I've posted additions to the Pirate autograph project here and there throughout the life of Battlin' Bucs, why not go through and show off all 586 different Pirate players whose scribble I've managed to acquire.

I've made the arbitrary start date of the project players who played post WWII, to give myself a little more manageable goals.  But at about 56% completion, there are still plenty of autographs left to track down.

And what better way to start than with my #1 guy, Jumpin' Jack Flash.  Of all the Wilson autos I have, his signature on his rookies is by far my favorite before he switches to a less intricate and more loopy signature.

Over the coming months, I hope to get around to scanning and posting all 586 (and counting) autographs, and maybe even getting back to making a little bit of a dent in the project this year.  Hope you guys enjoy following along!

Isn't That Strange?

Doug Strange played in parts of 9 seasons in the majors before he wrapped up his career with the Bucs.  He's actually worked in the Pirates front office since 2002, but I've never been able to get his auto.  This signed 8x10 is actually an upgrade over a Leaf Signature certified auto I picked up off COMC that was from Strange's time with the Mariners.

Pirate Autograph Project: Running Through Walls

Turner Ward was a bit of a cult hero in Pittsburgh.  He put up some crazy numbers during 1997's Freak Show season and stuck around for 1998 though the results were more in line with his career numbers.

I was thrilled to find this signed 8X10 at a flea market a few weeks back, since I still needed a Ward auto.  And of course no mention of Turner Ward would be complete without this.

Flea Markets Finds: Picking Up Steam

Flea markets are always hit or miss for me.  Around here, there are always numerous vendors set up with sports stuff.  But more often than not, the guys act like they're a mall sports store (note: it costs like $10 to set up at the flea market...that isn't the same as having the rent for an actual store!).  Insanely high prices, acting like that common autograph is the holy grail of collecting, and hoping that everybody that stops by has absolutely zero knowledge of the card market.  More often than not, I end up walking by after a couple seconds.  The faded boxes of their bobbleheads are usually a dead giveaway, a victim of sitting out in direct sunlight for weekend after weekend after weekend at prices nobody will ever pay.  No, you aren't going to get $15 for your Ryan Doumit bobblehead.  Yes, there are 6 copies at the nearest Goodwill.

When Kate and I hit the flea market last weekend, it didn't look promising.  After the first couple rows, I had spotted a few things I was interested in.  But the prices were either insanely high, or there weren't any prices.  Maybe I'm weird, but just like at a card show, I like to see some actual prices on your stuff.  I hate playing the "how much do you want for _____" game.

 After going down two or three rows without any hopes of making a purchase, I was starting to worry I could leave empty handed.  And there was no way I was going to let that happen.

 I came across a vendor with a few boxes out.  He's a regular, and I've looked through his stuff in the past, but always walked away due to inflated prices.  But I was desperate.

He had some boxes out front labeled as dime boxes, but he said anything in the boxes was a nickel.  Deal.  I started digging through the rows, which were broken down by year.  At some point, most of these cards have to belonged to an Indians collector, because each row had a short run of all the Indians star cards of the year.  And while there were only a couple Pirates cards, I did snag some nice finds for my collection.

In the late 90's, some of the rookies would have netted a pretty penny.  I also grabbed Bowman Chrome rookies of Travis Lee and Sean Casey, both of which sold for a nice chunk of change at one point.  For $.05, why the hell not.

Having accumulated a whopping $2 in cards, I needed to keep buying.  I needed to, dammit!  Or at least I needed to kill some time while Kate did her own shopping.  So over to the dealer's toploadered boxes I went.  Most of the cards were, as expected, overpriced.  He told the cards were 1/5th of what they were priced.  And while I appreciate priced cards, doing math is not as exciting to me.

 It looked like most were priced at full book or above.  A McCutchen Topps Chrome refractor priced at $20.  And while $4 is a better price, so is the $.50 copy on Sportlots.

 But I came across some autographs in the box.  The pricing seemed inconsistent.  $4 (post-discount) for a Zane Smith auto?  Nah.  But the significantly tougher Lee Lacy for $2?  Sure, why not.

 I ended up paying $2 each for all three of these cards.  The Freese is a high number, and while I may have been able to get a cheaper copy at a bigger show, it probably wouldn't be by much and this one is in nice shape.  Stennett is an auto I didn't have and have been after for a while, while the Lacy is an upgrade over a lightly signed ballpoint pen signature I have of his.

And I figured that even if that was it for my finds for the day, I did pretty well.  And then, like all my flea market finds, I stumbled on some stuff that would empty my wallet.  I guess I never learn...

I'll have the real goodies up in my next post.

From Junk to the Collection

I've said a few times that on the blog that I could probably skip card shows altogether.  Any time I go through the boxes of cards at my parents' house, I always come away with a new stack of cards I want to add to my binders.  I guess it's my collecting compulsion.  But it's apparently not just my dime cards that sometimes get plucked from the stack.

This J.A. Happ auto has been sitting in my trade/sell box for a couple years now.  I bought it at my former LCS probably around 2005, when 2004 Donruss EEE seemed like the coolest set on the face of the planet.  I paid $5 for it, and thought I got a steal since the card was numbered /50, while the rest of the EEE autos in the box were numbered in the thousands for the same price.  This was back in my unfocused, "buy anything that looks cool" stage.  Which...I still do now.  I just also have a 15,000 card team collection on top of it.

The Happ sat and sat.  It became a reminder of why I was turning my focus to my Pirates collection, hobby dollars pissed away on a card I had no use for.

When Happ had his breakout year in 2009, I eagerly dug the card out of a box anticipating listing it on ebay.  I waited and waited, hoping he might win ROY.  When he didn't win, I still held onto the card even though a few copies had sold for $25-30.

And then J.A. happed himself.  And the card sat.  And sat.  I tried offering the card in trade to a couple of Phillies bloggers a few years back.  I didn't care what they sent back - I just wanted to be rid of the damn thing, a reminder of a hobby oopsies.  Whether oversight or disinterest, none of them ever responded.

And then the Pirates, making a push towards greatness, decided in their infinite wisdom that the only way to plug AJ Burnett's role in the rotation was with his alphabetic antithesis.  Think of it as the Reverse Flash to the Flash.  And Reverse Flash JA has.  He bombed his first start, and it was announced his spot in the rotation will be skipped on this next turn through.

But finally this damn card has a place in my collection.  It knocks out one of my needs for my Pirate autograph project of getting an auto of every player to suit up for the Bucs.  I was tempted to dismantle the card and pillage the sticker for a Pirate photoed custom, but after all these years together I just can't do that to my good friend JA.  Instead I'll probably just buy a cheap sticker auto off ebay or COMC to repurpose.  But this guy?  It will be going into my "Pirate but not a Pirate" mini-collection featuring one-time Bucs in other stages of their careers.

Finally, JA is at peace.  But damn, I sure wouldn't mind having that $30...

Signature Sunday

As as Pirate fan, it's been a big change the past couple years to be adding rather than subtracting at the end of the season.  And late season pickups like Marlon Byrd have been a big part to the success the team experienced heading into the fall months.  The down side if that most of those guys have missed out on having cards as a Pirate.

But with a little photoshop magic and some good signers, I've been able to fill in some gaps in my collection.  Kyle Farnsworth is a guy who it feels like has been around forever.  But he was a decent bullpen addition plucked off the scrap heap for the Pirates.  There aren't a ton of photos from his short Buc tenure out there, but I was pretty happy with how this card turned out.

Talking, Buying, and Talking Some More

You never know who you'll meet at a card show.  I found some great cards over the course of the weekend.  I filled in some holes in my Pirates collection.  But the most enjoyable part of the weekend for me was taking the time to get to know some of the folks at the show.

Early on the day on Friday I came across the dealer from Boston who I bought a ton of stuff off of last year.  This year he drove down with his buddy, who deals in pretty much nothing but 1952 Topps cards, and has one of the most impressive collections of graded and signed 1952 cards I can imagine.

I spent a good chunk of the weekend talking with them, working out the occasional deal, and then talking some more.  They Jimmy and Tom are two great guys, and it was a real pleasure getting to spend time just bullshitting.

I even ended up getting some professional contacts out of it, since Tom's brother is in education and is doing the kind of work I'm hoping to eventually move towards.

After spending three days talking and even watching their tables a few times, I figured I couldn't leave empty handed.  Most of Tom's collection cards were well above my usual price point.  But for just $14, I couldn't pass up on this signed Ed Fitzgerald.  I already have an autographed Fitzgerald Bowman card in my collection, but you can't beat the iconic Topps set.  Better yet, the colors on this card are by far the best on any of the 5 '52's I own, and looks amazing.  There are a couple spots of paper loss on the front, but I think the overall condition of the card and the boldness of the colors more than make up for that.

The cardboard itself is great.  But the quality of the company and conversation was a big part of what made this past weekend so enjoyable for me.  It sure as heck is a nice change from the usual array of card dealers gruffly grunting or avoiding eye contact at local shows.

Filling in the Gaps

As a team collector, there is nothing that bothers me more than a player not having a card commemorating their time in Pittsburgh.  For that relief pitcher who gets 3 innings in September, it's tolerable with gritted teeth.  But anything more than that, and I want some cardboard!  Especially when we have a Pirates Ben Grieve card out there.

But even in the era of 60 card sets per year, there were quite a few players who slipped through the cracks.  There were probably a number of factors - both Fleer and Topps scaled back their flagship products significantly in the late 90's.  Donruss was temporarily out of the game.  Pacific actually put out pretty comprehensive sets, but they were the 4th wheel at a 3 seat party.  So what do you do when the big companies didn't put out a card?  Well, you make one yourself, of course.

Joe Oliver's tenure in Pittsburgh is one I'd rather not think about.  The Pirates gave up on Jose Guillen way too early in exchange for a catcher on his last legs in the aftermath of Jason Kendall's nasty 4th of July ankle break.  It's a time I'd rather not think about.

But Pete Schourek?  Schourek made 17 starts for the Pirates in '99.  Sure, they weren't good starts.  But he was the team's 5th starter none the less.  But in the days of a chopped base set and a '99 Pirates team set that barely acknowledged the team was indeed a part of major league baseball, ole Pete didn't stand a chance.