Bravos de Margarita’s New 2012-13 Manager: Hensley Meulens

 Hensley Meulens ratificado como mánager de Bravos de Margarita

      While it’s a bit late, congratulations are in order for Hensley Meulens.  After being the fill-in manager for the end of the past two seasons for the last place Bravos de…

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      Progress is moving at a surprising pace these days.  In the past couple of weeks, I have been in contact with the gentleman who started the fledgling blog 1992 Mexican Leauge Baseball Cards.  He posted a link to some photos of cards and…

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     The more I dig, the more I keep finding on the 2005 Beisbol Cards set for the Mexican League.   Just yesterday, Google coughed up a listing on a site called Ofertopia.com for 158 different cards from the set.  I can’t quite make out what th…

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     I’m sure the few of you that read my ramblings have noticed that my interests typically lean toward the less-than-mainstream.  In this particular instance, however, it is rather surprising just how far outside the mainstream this subject h…

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(click here to skip the wandering preamble and get straight to the important stuff)

     A few years ago, when I seriously got back into collecting baseball cards, I decided to pick up where I left off on my Hensley Meulens collection.  I had mos…

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     Twice in as many seasons, the Bravos de Margarita of the Venezuelan winter league have parted ways with their manager as the playoff drive gets underway. Finding the team in last place with a 15-27 record, team vice-president, Tobías Enrique Carrero,  relieved manager Don Baylor of his duties, in what is described as a "mutual decision" (sure it was).

Baylor cesa funciones en Bravos

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      It would probably be no surprise to learn that players on the same team on a Future Stars card would be on the same team in the minor leagues.  What was slightly more surprising, however, was to find that I actually had all three pl…

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     By 1987, the minor league baseball card market had expanded enough that Modesto actually had a second team set.  For some reason, ProCards always numbered their cards as part of the master set that included all of the team sets they issue…

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Baseball Cards, April 1986, Issue #15, Volume 6, No. 1
Cover: Vince Coleman
Articles:
"On The Baseball Beat" by Irwin Cohen, Tom Seaver interview
"What’s New" by Steve Ellingboe and Vic Knight. pp22-23, 42, 44, 46.  Sets referenced: 1986 Fleer; 1986 Topps; 1986 Donruss; 1986 Donruss All-Stars and Pop-Ups; 1985 Fleer Update; 1985 Topps Traded; 1985 Donruss Highlights; 1985 7-Up Chicago Cubs;

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     Occasionally, I’ll just do random searches on eBay’s Sports Cards and Memorabilia section for “japanese” and see what pops up. A few weeks ago I did that, caught a seller unloading a nifty assortment of random Japanese baseball goodness and put in a token minimum $.99 bid (+$4 S&H). About a week later, this is what turned up:

Three 1988 Calbee cards and six 1988 Calbee wrappers:

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    I first caught this story about a week or so ago, on a Dutch site, and didn’t say anything because I thought it might just be a gag. Then I saw it repeated again today:

Bam-Bam’s odyssey is truly out of this world

     Apparently, Bam Bam is headed for the final frontier, courtesy of Space Expedition Curaçao, a new space program supported by Curaçao’s government.

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     I don’t hide that I don’t particularly like variations and parallels in baseball cards. I just think they’re the product of an extremely lazy attitude toward baseball card production. It’s bad enough that the companies reuse the same photographs over and over, year after year, but to basically make the same card, over and over, with no change aside from color, ELEVEN TIMES, is borderline

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      In 2005, La Liga Mexicana de Beisbol, known to most gringos as the “Mexican League”, began a big marketing push, thanks to a new league president, and part of that effort included a set of league-produced baseball cards (tarjetas de beisbol). I managed to pick up 55 cards from the set on Mercado Libre, and after three weeks of shipping, they have finally arrived. Until I can get them all

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     A little over a year ago, I posted a query about some Mexican League cards I’d found on MercadoLibre.com.mx, eBay’s partner site in Latin America.  Well, I contacted the seller, initially through a Spanish-speaking friend, learned that he did, indeed, speak English, and negotiated the purchase of all of the 1992 Mexican League cards he had.  Unfortunately, by this time, he only had five

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     As I mentioned in my previous post on Venezuelan stickers, I finally received my 1981-82 Dave Henderson. I held off on this one for awhile due to the price, but then finally came to the conclusion that if I didn’t pick it up, I’d miss it forever. This is actually a different sticker/card than the one posted months ago as the former had some black staining along the bottom edge on the

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   Since the early 1970s, Venezuela has been the venue of many sets of cards and/or stickers that go all but unnoticed to the wider collecting world.  As a result, sets like this can be very frustrating to player collectors, as they can be very poorly documented.  Case in point:

1991-92
     Thankfully, my Karl/Tuffy Rhodes saved search on eBay caught this one, or I wouldn’t have known there was

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     Despite having over 950 different cards of Dave Winfield, I’m still over 1100 short of completion, based on SportsCardForum.com’s Inventory Manager. Here are a couple of his most recent cards that represent a really annoying trend by Topps…endless reprints and rehashes of the same cards, over and over and over, no matter how underwhelming those reprints may be.

     Here is what I’m

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     I caught this a month or so ago in the course of my usual daily eBay Winfield hunt. Having no idea what it was or from whence it came, upon its arrival in the daily post, I plunged deep into the murky depths of the web seeking enlightenment. As happens more often than not, ManOfSteal over at Rickey Henderson Collectibles had the scoop. He’d picked up his 1988 Rickey Pop-Up years before.

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      In 1992,  Original Products, Inc., issued several sets of static decals featuring random Major League superstars and team sets.  You can find more information about the set over at Rickey Henderson Collectibles.  I didn’t even know what these were until a few years ago, but I’ve finally managed to snag the Winfield, in a lot of random oddballs, after a couple of years of not wanting to pay

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       Over the last 100 years or so, the sports section of various newspapers around the U.S. have featured illustrations or even “baseball cards” of baseball players.  In the 1920s and 1930s, syndicated columnist and cartoonist Jack Sords, in his “Sords Points” pieces, provided wonderful illustrations to go along with his pieces, both historical and contemporary, of all manner of athletes.

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     I picked this one up awhile ago and forgot to post anything for it.  I’d seen several copies on eBay for awhile, but finally found one at a price I liked (under $10) and pulled the trigger.  This is another Hall of Fame Induction Day cover, this time in a series with Kirby Puckett, called Hometown Hero Station.  This is another full size #10 envelope with the art printed directly on the card

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photo from http://bravosdemargarita.com
Bravos con nuevo mánager
      Congratulations are in order for Mr. Meulens as he has been appointed manager of the Bravos after the sacking of Luis Dorantes, manager for most of the season (but who apparently missed three days with the team for organizational meetings with the Pittsburgh Pirates), who led the team to 4th place after 61 games of the 74

Continue reading about Now managing for the Bravos de Margarita….”Bam-Bam” Meulens! »

     An eclectic trio of Winfield goodies showed up today, spoils of the almighty eBay. The first was yet another silk cachet/first day cover/postmarked envelope with a picture on it, this time, Colorano’s contribution commemorating Dave Winfield’s 3000th hit on September 16, 1993.

     This is another that I didn’t even know existed until I happened to catch the auction. I am still hunting

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    If there could possibly be a “white whale” of my Steve Howard collection, this would be it.  As mentioned in the post on the 1986 Chong Modesto card, singles in this set are extremely hard to find due to the presence of the Mark McGwire cards and the the very low (relative to other contemporary sets) print run.  The 2006 Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards puts the original print run at 500

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     Now that the Giants have wrapped up their season, while some get to go home, others just get to go back to work, albeit in warmer climes.  While Burrell and Rowland rest their creaky bones, and Renteria goes home to stare at his new trophy, coaches Hensley Meulens and Roberto Kelly will both have to pack their bags and board a plane to Venezuela to pick up their winter jobs, already in

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