Custom Ink

There are a lot of nice things about moving (aside from the actual moving...that was terrible).  Going from driving an hour each way to being 10 minutes from the office is nice.  Not tossing a rent check into a financial black hole every month is great too.  But the best part?  Being able to stretch out a bit.  Our is a cape cod with about 1,400 sq. ft.  It's not huge, but after living in apartments or dorms since starting college, the idea of not having to store all your extra stuff in the same spot where you're also trying to live is a real nice change of pace.  And from a collecting standpoint, it's nice to be able to actually have my entire collection (well, mostly.  I still need to unload a few more boxes from my parents' house) in one place.

It had gotten to the point where new cards that came in were just getting tossed into boxes to be dealt with later.  There was no space to sort through them in our apartment.  Well, later has finally come.  There are probably 6 months + worth of mail that had just been added into boxes.  Cards that, for the most part, I had taken a quick glance at and then into the box they went.

In with that group were come customs that my collecting pal got signed for me during Spring Training this year.  She lives right near the White Sox camp, and I was able to whip up customs for lesser known players who didn't have many cards.  And she was gracious enough to get a few signed for me as well.

These two are by far my favorite.  It's almost impossible to find a photo of the LaRoche brothers together from their time in Pittsburgh.  This shot was the best I could do, even though I'd have liked to have both guys facing forward.  Andy signed this last year when he was in Sox camp as a non-roster invitee, and Adam apparently finished it up before he left the team this spring.

And the Zach Duke card is one of my new favorites, custom or otherwise.  Though they only wore them for 2 seasons and across a couple dozen games, it's amazing that no photo of the Pirates "McDonald's" vest made it onto cardboard.  Heck, even finding photo evidence that the jersey existed is tough.

COMC Haul - The Big Boppers

Since I joined COMC in 2010, I have been a pretty cost conscious shopper.  The vast majority of my purchases are of the $.50 and below variety, and I rarely add an card that costs over a buck or two.  It's not that I'm cheap (well, maybe it is...), but with the insane selection of cards, it's never difficult to get bang for my buck.  If a card I'm interested in might be a little more expensive than I'm willing to pay, it only takes a quick search or two to come across something else I can spend that money on that looks like a sweet deal.

But I decided to bend the budget a bit over the last month or two.  There haven't been any card shows, searching ebay is a huge pain compared to the ease of searching by player or team on COMC, and I was lucky enough to see some real gems pop up on the site at prices I considered absolute steals.  So here's the pick of the litter, if you will.

So for an appetizer, I've been after one of these Starling Marte Gypsy Queen autos for a while, but never was able to find one that was at a price I liked.  For $3.75, I was happy to pull the trigger on this one.  Marte still has some room to develop hopefully, and is one of the more exciting Pirates to watch in my opinion.

 This card has actually been sitting in my COMC account for almost a year.  But it was well worth the wait to see it in person.  The 99' Topps Tek Gold is numbered /10, and while I will never had a prayer at completing the entire pattern-maddness I'm happy to just have one copy of a gold.  At about $10, I paid close to the going rate.  But this was one of the few true "wants" I had been eyeing up.

 A few days ago I posted my Jose Guillen Century auto, and the Nunez fell into my lap during the Black Friday deals for about $5.  When the set first came out, you would have had to at least add a zero on the end of that price.  As I mentioned yesterday, I have fallen in love with this set, and the blues may be my favorite background color.

 Leaf has gotten a little redundant with the Valiant autos over the past few years, with no real tweaks to the design from year to year.  However, I have wanted this card since it came out, but was never willing to pay Marte's "prospect" prices.  Now that he's an established and successful major league regular, his prices have magically nosedived.  But that's cool with me.  This only set me back a cool $3.25, which is an absolute steal in my book.

 I love the look of Topps Black cards, but they are such a freaking headache.  I'll never come close to completing a team set, but when I can find a copy in the $2-3 range, it's mine.  Alllll mine!.

 But there two cards are the true unsung heroes of my COMC purchases.  I love the Donruss Stat Line cards, particularly the Season version with a rainbow foil finish.  This Mike Gonzalez card is fairly unsuspecting, until you flip it over and discover it's /10.  For a team set I might actually have a prayer at finishing, this card is basically the lynchpin to the set.  For $3, I couldn't hit the purchase button fast enough.

 And for the uninitiated, do a quick search for Donruss Crusades on ebay.  These are perhaps the hottest insert of the 90's, and for good reason.  The cards are drop dead gorgeous in person, and put any refractor to shame.  The Purple is perhaps the least attractive version in my book, but at 100 copies they can command a pretty penny.  Better yet, this copy was a victim of COMC's database issues, listed as the dreaded ??????.  I was able to wait out a couple price drops during the sales, and ultimately grabbed this for about $3.50.  Recent copies have gone for more than twice that, and it looks great alongside the Abraham Nunez from the same set I picked up last year.

Amusingly enough I now have both the Purple and Red /25 for Nunez and Wright, but am still missing the Green /250 for both.  Collecting is a funny thing.

The Streak: Lovable Losers Countdown, 5-1

Unlike VH1 countdowns, I'll spare you the annoying commercial interruptions between each and every entry during the last five.  I mentioned this, but I think it bears repeating.  And if any of the Pirate fans in the blogosphere disagree, I'd certainly love to hear that as well.  But when your team is consistently, historically, and predictably bad for a time frame longer than the lifespan of most household pets, it changes to mentality with which you watch games.

The players listed on this countdown weren't ever the best player on the field (in fact, I'd dare say some of these guys never were, t-ball through the bigs).  But they were the guys you loved watching play game in and game out, even when you knew your team had no shot.  When you know your team is going to be on the losing end far more often than not, you find other things to appreciate.  The small things.  And sometimes the big moments felt even bigger.  A walkoff win felt like you had just won the World Series.  A great defensive play could make the game, even if it came in a 6-1 loss. 

This team, hopefully with a nice playoff run, will be remembered by casual fans and diehards alike.  The average Yinzers will integrate A.J. Burnett and the Morneau trade into their sports lexicon for years to come.  They will inevitably misquote the details A.J. Burnett will become a free agent signing (rather than a salary dump trade by the Yankees).  Morneau will become "a trade with the White Sox or somebody."  They'll become casual fan factoids dropped into casual sports conversation by people completely and utterly talking out their ass who want to sound informed (I've spent the better part of two decades hearing about how Bobby Bonilla was traded to the Mets, which I knew to be factually incorrect by age 6 thanks to the back of my 1993 Donruss card).  But the guys on this countdown?  They probably won't ever get the recognition or appreciation they deserve.  A lot of these guys were just looking for a shot - the uniform or city probably didn't matter to them.  It was just a chance to play in the bigs when they probably wouldn't have for most other teams.  But for those of us who sat through game after game after game, any excuse to cheer and get excited was all we were looking for.

And with that said...

5) John Wehner - 1991-96, 1999-2001
No player embodies The Streak more than the original Pittsburgh Kid, John Wehner.   The Carrick, PA native defined term role player for Jim Leyland.  He came up as rookie when things were good, and spent most of the early rebuilding years bouncing between the majors and AAA.  You can't fault the guy for following Leyland to Florida in '97 where he picked up a ring.

And then it was right back to the Burgh.  He fittingly hit the last homer at Three Rivers Stadium, and logged 43 games with an atrocious team in 2001 before calling it quits.  From there he managed in the Pirates system before taking his thick yinzer accent to the broadcast booth as the team's 5th member, calling road games in place of Steve Blass.

Everything about him screams Pittsburgh, from the accent down.  He's the kind of guy who probably had no business being in the majors to begin with, yet somehow managed to log 461 games across a decade for his hometown team.

4) Evan Meek - 2008-2012
Speaking of the underdogs, you can't beat going from Rule 5 pick to All-Star.  Meek came to the Pirates from the Rays in the Rule 5 draft, was returned, and then purchased back by the Bucs. 

His early time with the team was rough, and he really only took on mopup duty.  Not that the '08 team was exactly loaded with talent.  But he made enough progress to stick in the pen in '09 before an absolutely wicked 2010 season.  He was the Pirates All-Star representative in Anaheim in '10, but was still one of the most personable and fan-friendly guys on the team despite his success.  Unfortunately 80 innings over 70 appearances took its roll, and he ended up on the DL the next season.  It's been a rough road back, including time as a starter for the Rangers' AAA affiliate.

But I haven't met many players that were more likable than Meek, and his sense of humor and interaction with fans was priceless.

3) Zach Duke - 2005-2010

Flashes of hope.  That's all we really had for two decades.  And nothing flashed brighter than Duke's 14 brilliant starts in 2005.  The lefty pitched to an 8-2 line with a 1.81 ERA (and an astounding 233 ERA+).  Along with a talented crop of starters, there was hope even if only for a short time.

Duke was a better starter than his stats indicate.  Never close to his '05 form, but he had some very good starts.  On a team that would regularly have the starter knocked out in the 5th, he pitched 6 complete games during his 6 years in Pittsburgh. 

And while he lost a lot more often than he won, I can't help but wonder if he might have looked a lot better with a stronger infield defense behind him.

2) Kevin Polcovich - 1997-98

Can you get a scrappier, more working class name?  And Polcovich certainly played the part well.  The light hitting shortstop never slugged higher than .382 in the minors despite playing in some hitter friendly leagues.

He wasn't fast.  He didn't hit.  He wasn't even the smoothest fielder at short.  But there he was, shortstop on the unlikely contenders during '97's Freak Show year.  In 84 unlikely games, he managed to hit .274 with a .396 slugging percentage.  The unlikeliest of heroes.

By the next season he had turned into a pumpkin.  But I don't know if I can think of any player who in name alone personified the emotions and experience of Pirate fans.  He was a guy you just couldn't not cheer for.

1) Rob Mackowiak - 2001-2005





That's really all you need to know.  On May 24, 2004, Rob Mackowiak and his wife had their son Garrett.  Later that day, the Pirates played a double header with the Cubs.  Mackowiak was unexpectedly in uniform, belting a walkoff grand slam to win game one delivering a 9-8 victory.

Capping off the day, Mackowiak delivered a game typing pinch-hit homer in the bottom of the 9th in game two, which the Bucs would eventually win.

I vividly remember watching both games, and screaming like a crazy person after both blasts.  It was a warm spring night, and I remember going absolutely crazy around 10:30 or 11 when the second game ended.  With my bedroom windows open, the neighbors must have thought I was crazy, and my parents certainly did.

Frankly I have no idea what a playoff win will feel like.  I don't know how I will react or respond.  I don't know what kind of emotions to feel, waiting so long for something that always felt so far away and now suddenly is right in front of me.  I don't know if the years of losing will make it even sweeter, or make me almost numb.  But I know that if it feels anything even close to how I felt watching Mackowiak hit that home run, it will be one of the greatest non-personal moments of my life.  It wasn't a playoff game.  There was nothing on the line beyond two W's or L's.  But the elation from that moment is unquestionably one my favorite moments in sports. 

That one hit sums up the entirety of what being a Pirates fan has meant to me.  Learning to cheer when nobody else can understand why you're that excited.

Back to Basics

Since moving back to PA, the sudden lack of card shows is leaving me feeling way out of touch.  One of the few benefits to being in Ohio was the regular access to card shows.  With a large show every month in Dayton and even larger shows in Columbus every few months, most of the commons from a new release and with some luck a decent number of the parallels would find their way into my collection within weeks of the product hitting the streets.

There is a show in November.  Other than that, there is not a single show, mall show, awkward little hotel show, or anything else between here and 2014 in all of western PA. 

That's the long way of saying I know 2013 A&G came out.  But I don't know a damn thing about it, except that the design doesn't make me want to drive 5 hours to go buy them at a show (and yes, I am overlooking the far more rational and cost effective option of just buying the things online).

As I've started adding my Pirate collection to binder pages, it provides an awesome opportunity to view my collection from a new perspective.  Up until now, my dozen or so monster boxes and shoe boxes were organized as such: commons by year and set with dividers marking each year, inserts/numbered cards/rarer parallels in their own box(es), a shoebox of certified autos, and a couple monster boxes of ip/ttm autos organized alphabetically.  Of course there were the odd boxes of cards still in need of sorting as well.

Point is...I could never really see all the cards from one release in one place without either pulling a bunch of cards from different places or the magic of photoshop.

So when I gathered all the cards together and put them on the page...



Oh my. 

Maybe the skies didn't open, the clouds didn't part, and it wasn't one of those ah-ha moments the way it is seeing the Sistine Chapel or Roman Coliseum.  But it sure felt like it.

2006 Allen & Ginter was a thing of beauty.  Each card appeared to be a masterfully crafted piece of artwork, enhanced by the dirtied, heavy card stock.  Slap an autograph on there, and there are few things more aesthetically pleasing in this hobby.

I could complain about the decline in quality in more recent A&G sets.  The lack of care with each and every base card.  Cookie cutter design, creating "retro" sets that are no longer based off of an actual historical set.

But I really don't care.  Just look at those cards!  Ok, maybe I could do without the spring training jerseys in each photo.  But what is art if not for our enjoyment and criticism.

The Day After

Opeing Day came and went, and in typical Pirate fashion A.J. Burnett pitched well, but the offense just did not hit. Thanks to mlb.tv, I've been able to watch quite a bit of baseball over the last couple days, and I'm absolutely loving it as I sit here watching Yu Darvish pitch a (thus far) perfect game as I type.

I'm quickly accepting that I'm terrible at this blogging thing when it comes to scanning.  I'm still working my way through cropping scans from purchases and show pickups from a month ago as I prepare for the monthly show in Dayton this weekend, and imcoming COMC spring cleaning special shipment, and an absolutely mindblowing lot I snagged off ebay.

As I sit here watching that which shall not be named, I noticed that one thing the Pirates have been sorely lacking in is "memorable moment" cards.  I love cards that commemorate a special moment or event, whether it's postseason highlights, career milestones, or individual achievements.  Unfortunately, there haven't been many of those in recent Pirate history.



I loved the 2010 UD Season Biography cards, since they featured actual game photos from the game discussed and covered a more broad range of highlights than the typical season highlights fare.

Both moments are ones that I recall from an otherwise very forgettable 2009 campaign.  Jones came out f nowhere as a non-roster invitee to earn the nickname The Legend, providing power to a team desperately lacking in it.

The Duke game was more memorable to me for the unique hats than for Duke's shutout, as the Pirates commemorated a trio of officers who died on the job.  I love (and cringe at) the caption noting the "rare sellout crowd."  I can't remember the specific details of the game - it wasn't a bobblehead game, and was probably too early in the year for a skyblast night - but I'm sure some kind of added incentive was involved to draw such a large crowd.  Until recently, sellout crowds were a rare sight in Pittsburgh.  

And of course I don't think I need to say much about these final two.

You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'

http://battlinbucs.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-team-card.htmlI think by now it's safe to say that 2013 Heritage is an unmitigated disaster.

Hideous design?  Check.  Awkwardly cropped photos because they were too cheap to get dead on head shots?  Check.  An assortment of irritating short prints?  We're on a roll.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure the product will sell well.  I'm sure Heritage collectors will talk themselves into some half-hearted reasoning to justify building a set the way you justified your seventh grade girlfriend in hopes that you would get to second base.  And much the same, you'll probably find Heritage cheating on you behind the bleachers after school with Topps Fusion.

But let's not dwell on the Heritage set that broke your heart - after all, Topps Heritage and I had some good times together.  Sure, it's ending messy.  But that doesn't mean we can't remember what we once had.

You see, I first met Topps Heritage in 2001.  Ironically, I was indeed in seventh grade at the time.  2001 is still by far my favorite collecting year - I had just started seriously following the Pirates, my favorite company, Donruss, returned to the hobby landscape, a crop of red hot rookies had card companies cranking up the presses, and a series of retro-inspired products seemed like the coolest thing ever to pre-teen me.  Topps was in their 50th anniversary season, celebrating with a series of reprint and retro themed cards in the base set, Topps Archives and Archives Reserve, Topps Gallery.  UD and Fleer even got in on the action. 

But none could compare to 2001 Topps Heritage.  Modern players pictured using the famous 1952 design?  Plus a stick of gum?  The concept seemed brilliant.  It would seem quite a few collectors agreed. 

The set had a lot to offer, despite the irritating base set SP's.  I mean, how could you go wrong with a classic set like 1952 Topps?  The following years continued to offer fun, fresh followups to the initial release. 

At the time, the idea of owning an actual '52 or '54 Topps card seemed unfathomable.  Instead, these cards of my favorite players in those classic styles were the closest approximation to "vintage" at a point when a 1978 Topps Dave Parker/Rod Carew League Leaders was the crowning jewel of my vintage collecion (followed in a close second by 1987 Topps Sammy Khalifa).

The Heritage sets still felt fresh and novel; something old meeting something new.  The twists and turns to the set felt more quirky, matching the actual quirks to the original sets, than formulaic and predictable.  Chasing the SP's and few inserts felt like an exercise in recapturing baseball's past than a bothersome chore for the cranky completest.

I never attempted building the full set, but I imagine the feeling must be pretty similar to inspect and appreciate each card individually.  The products offered a perfect bled of old and new, offering just enough to the nostalgic collector, set builder, hit chaser.  Aesthetically, the 50's-style Heritage cards just look sharp.  Maybe the success of the line is less a credit to 21st Century Topps, and more a credit to the timelessness of their designer's during the Cold War. 

So maybe it shouldn't be a surprise that my enjoyment of Heritage started waning a few years ago.  The late 50's designs are among my favorites, but the sets felt weak.  We just didn't have that connection like we once did.  Heritage had lost that lovin' feelin', as the Righteous Brothers would so brilliantly (para)phrase it.


A series of decisions seemed to take much of the glitter off of Heritage.  The autographs became more common, as the autograph subjects became less than inspiring.  Topps removed the Chrome and Refractor parallels from the set, instead inserting them in a variety of weak Topps products.  The photography seemed to be phoning it in, using dull, uninspired photos that were often recropped versions of shots used elsewhere.  Still, I wasn't read to give up on what had once been a good thing.

And Topps gave me hope with the 2009 set.  The 1960 design is one of my all-time favorite designs  (in case you haven't noticed, I really enjoy horizontal cards), and the set include all of the features that made it fun.  The set felt fresh again.

But the releases since then have again felt uninspired.  With the exception of a few outstanding cards, the sets just haven't offered much that interests me.  Couple that with strong irritation from last year's Heritage High Number set, and Heritage just isn't a release I look forward to at this point.  And it certainly doesn't help that the next few years are, in my opinion, some of the absolute worst designs in Topps history (though I do like the '65 set), and it's not a good sign.  Of course none of this is particularly newsworthy - Topps has been going through the motions each year with many of their retro themed sets.  And as I said - set collectors and casual collectors will continue to buy them.  Until a serious decrease in sales is seen, we can probably expect the same run of the mill quality and effort behind Heritage as we see in most Topps products.

But at least we've got Bill Medley to make things better...