Heavyweight Retro Championship of the World – Card 3

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Here is the final 22 man roster:

#
Name
Pos
B/T
Ht.
Wt.
Birthplace
College
Year

34
Trevor Bauer
P
R/R
6-1
175
North Hollywood, Calif.
UCLA
Fr.

35
Chad Bettis
P
R/R
6-0
193
Lubbock, Texas
Texas Tech
So.

7
Bryce Brentz
P/OF
R/R
6-0
180
Crossville, Tenn.
Middle Tennessee
So.

14
Michael Choice
OF
R/R
6-0
215
Fort Worth, Texas
Texas-Arlington
So.

29
Gerrit Cole
P
R/R
6-4
215
Santa Ana, Calif.
UCLA
Fr.

4
Christian Colon
IF
R/R
6-0
185
Capey, Puerto Rico
Cal State-Fullerton
So.

27
Blake Forsythe
C
R/R
6-2
220
Memphis, Tenn.
Tennessee
So.

24
Yasmani Grandal
C
S/R
6-2
210
Havana, Cuba
Miami
So.

2
Sonny Gray
P
R/R
5-11
180
Smyrna, Tenn.
Vanderbilt
Fr.

6
Rick Hague
IF
R/R
6-2
190
Spring, Texas
Rice
So.

15
Tyler Holt
OF
R/R
6-0
190
Marion, Ind.
Florida State
So.

17
Casey McGrew
P
L/R
6-0
175
Delaware, Ohio
Wright State
Jr.

23
Brad Miller
IF
R/R
6-0
175
Orlando, Fla.
Clemson
Fr.

11
Matt Newman
OF/P
L/L
5-10
170
Phoenix, Ariz.
Arizona State
So.

19
Nick Pepitone
P
R/R
6-6
230
Houston, Texas
Tulane
So.

40
Drew Pomeranz
P
L/L
6-5
231
Memphis, Tenn.
Mississippi
So.

Jeremy Schaffer*
C
R/R
6-1
205
Houston, Texas
Tulane
Fr.

Rob Segedin*
IF/RHP
R/R
6-1
205
Teaneck, N.J.
Tulane
So.

37
T.J. Walz
P
R/R
6-0
175
Omaha, Neb.
Kansas
So.

5
Cody [...]

Continue reading about 2009 Team USA Collegiate Final Roster Announced »

I don’t care what uniform he’s wearing tonight.  I will agree that it will look weird as we’ve seen him in just 1 jersey for the last 20 years.  But it is, John Smoltz and he is finally making his 2009 debut tonight with the Boston Red Sox and I for one cannot wait for [...]

Continue reading about A Welcomed Sight – The Return Of John Smoltz!!! »

   I blogged yesterday about the coming National Convention in Cleveland,
noting that every collector finds different things about the annual event that make
the return to the next as inevitable as the arrival of the new cards every spring.
  

   I’d be interested in hearing the readers’ recollections of their first
Nationals, or maybe their favorite ones, and would ask that they be sent to my Sports
Collectors Digest e-mail address at: thomas.oconnell@fwmedia.com.
  

   I don’t recall if I even knew about the very first National in Los Angeles
beforehand; I was newly married in the early 1980s and wasn’t exactly flush, so the
idea of going to LA wouldn’t have even been on the radar screen. The next three were
all in the Midwest (Detroit, St. Louis and Chicago), and while I knew about them beforehand
from SCD, my job with the Empire State Games meant that there was no time off
for much of anything during the summer months,
   But by 1984 I was no longer under the iron grip of New York State employment,
I was living in Delaware and actively promoting my fledgling O’Connell & Son Ink
mail-order business. Parsippany, N.J., sounded doable.
   I was already on Bob Schmierer’s waiting list for the famed EPSCC Philadelphia
Show; I don’t recall if I tried to get my own National table or not. I might not have,
since I already had an offer to share table space with a dealer from Florida. Believe
it or not, I can’t remember the name of the company, despite the fact that I was extremely
grateful that he had provided me the opportunity to get exposure for the O’Connell
& Son Ink artwork.
  

   What a thrill! In the hours leading up to the show’s opening, I met a
dozen or more of the hobby pioneers, guys I had only read about from their advertisements
in the magazine-sized biweekly Sports Collectors Digest. Biweekly is one of
my all-time favorite words, since it means either once every two weeks or twice a
week. I would think that if you were talking about getting fed, or waterboarded, for
example, it would be fairly important to try to figure out which definition was being
employed.

   I do remember there were also a lot of auxiliary events taking place
at the hotel in Parsippany, like seminars, exhibits (HOFer’s jerseys, the T206 Wagner,
etc.) and even a Strat-O-Matic tournament, but once the show got going, I hardly got
to go anywhere at all, because roughly half of the table was mine and I had to stay
and man it.
  

   I remember I had constructed a giant wood display that held I think about
18 plastic frames (8-by-10) of the various prints I was selling at the time, along
with the Baseball Greats set (shown) that was my initial entree into the hobby. I
am to the art of fine woodworking as Pamela Anderson is to molecular biology, so that
particular bit of plywood finery remains as perhaps my finest creation in that arena.

   In doing research after I finished this blog entry (I work in mysterious
ways; most writers do the research before they hit the keyboard), I found the
National Convention issue of SCD. I had a full-page ad in that Aug. 3, 1984
issue, and a “See You at the National” note included – along with the National logo
– near the bottom of the page.
   Turns our, I was at Table B-22, along with The Baseball Card Stores of
South Florida. Thanks for everything, even 25 years later.

Continue reading about Tell us about your first National Convention … »

So as part of the Topps vs. Upper Deck court battle over alleged misuse of O-Pee-Chee designs, a judge has ordered Upper Deck to cease production and halt distribution of the cards and ruled that the company can’t market those cards.

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(This article was originally published in December 2008)
Looks like it might be time to stock up on Michael Jackson’s 1984 Topps rookie cards. Of course, I am talking about the self-titled trading card set put out by Topps Company in 1984 which Cardboard Icons recently busted on his blog (link). There is currently an unopened [...]

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With game-used relic cards being overproduced and around for over a decade, it’s no surprise many collectors have grown bored. One way card companies can revive the memorabilia card is by pairing it with a great design, rather than having the relic be the entire focus of the card.
This morning I found this Vincent Jackson [...]

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So far we are up to the sixth player.  I decided to focus on players who have signed first.   So I present to you card number 31 of the first 40 picks.  I will also create one for the NFL and NHL (after the draft is done).  I have been printing these out on cover [...]

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1988 Fleer Andre Dawson – Baseball MVP
Here’s another one of the ‘oddball’ Andre Dawson cards I picked up recently.  While the design is not as appealing as some of the other subsets that Fleer created in the late 1980’s, the picture is what I am drawn to…
Even well after ‘The Hawk’ took his mighty swing [...]

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Ed AcostaHere’s a guy that I just don’t remember at all. When I think of an Acosta, I think of Cy Acosta of the White Sox, but they’re no relation. Ed only played in part of 1970 with the Pirates, part of 1971 and then was up the whole year in 1972 wit…

Continue reading about #123 — Ed Acosta »

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Name: Matt Bush
Position: SS / P
Team Drafted By: San Diego Padres
Draft Year / Draft Position: 2004  / 1st overall pick
Signing Bonus: $3.15 million
The Hype: He was considered the best high school hitter of the draft.  The pick was highly criticized since there were so many better players to chose from but the Padres didn’t want [...]

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