Saturday, October 4, 2014

Autograph Extravaganza

About a week ago, I got a bubble mailer from my pal Marcus of All The Way To The Backstop. It was a pleasant surprise before I even opened it. I was expecting a copy of Jedd Gyorko's 2014 Bowman card because he mentioned on his blog that he was sending one, but this was clearly much more than just that. Inside were two team bags, and one of them contained 27 autographed cards.

Twenty-seven autographed cards.

Yeah, seriously. I was taken aback. The vast majority were Padres players, but there were a few non-Friars in the mix. One was the 1985 Topps of former American League MVP Jeff Burroughs, father of Little League hero and Padres [bust is such a harsh word] Sean Burroughs.

I tweeted out a lot of the cards soon after opening the package, so in the interest of my laziness, I'm going to embed those instead of scanning the ones I haven't scanned.
My math was off. As I said in the lede, there were 27 cards. Somehow I didn't notice the Heath Bell one until the next day. That was a really cool bonus surprise. Speaking of that Bell card, I wrote about it and the one of Craig Lefferts that was also part of this package, earlier this week on their shared birthday.
Sadly, Sean Drinkwater never took his awesome name to the majors.
That offer still stands, by the way.
...as does that one.
...as does that one. It's only right, uh, right?
Here's another great minor league card. Unlike Drinkwater, Nelson made it to the majors; he was up with the Padres on-and-off briefly toward the end of the '80s.
I really like this custom card, even though Cantu's tenure was short and rocky.
Childers never reached the majors. Also, I misspoke. I don't have a Beaumont card of Cora. Yet.
In case you don't know (and why should you, really?), Craig Italiano was acquired by the Padres from the A's along with Sean Gallagher and Ryan Webb in July, 2009, in exchange for Scott Hairston. The Padres reacquired Hairston after the season, but that's a whole different post. Oh, and as for Italiano, he never reached the majors.
The card I referred and linked to is Thompson's famed Collector's Choice surfboard shot.
The matte finish is essential to this card. It wouldn't be as quarter as cool if it were glossy. It just lends to the painterly feel.
Keagle eventually reached the majors, but not with the Padres and not for very long.
Since I started with an MVP, a Cy Young Award winner seems like a good stopping point. That was just a little over half of the autographed cards he sent, so I'll get the other ones scanned and posted, hopefully sooner than later. And I haven't even mentioned the non-autographed cards he included. Those definitely deserve a post of their own; he knocked off some player collection needs, and then some.
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