http://baseballcardblogs.org Posts from the Best Baseball Card Blogs on the Net Mon, 21 May 2012 22:41:12 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 http://oriolescards.blogspot.com/2012/05/storm-davis-1992-stadium-club-728.html http://oriolescards.blogspot.com/2012/05/storm-davis-1992-stadium-club-728.html#comments Sun, 20 May 2012 23:13:00 +0000 Kevin http://baseballcardblogs.org/?guid=e7a541011aa130060957b5575550e582 There are good and bad things about baseball in 2012 as compared to 1992. On the "bad" side of the ledger, most players wear solid colored socks now instead of stirrups. However, you don't see hairstyles quite like Storm Davis' frizzed-out mullet any more either. Call it a push.

]]> http://oriolescards.blogspot.com/feeds/808780635705057369/comments/default 0 http://oriolescards.blogspot.com/2012/05/vintage-fridays-doug-decinces-1979.html http://oriolescards.blogspot.com/2012/05/vintage-fridays-doug-decinces-1979.html#comments Fri, 18 May 2012 16:20:00 +0000 Kevin http://baseballcardblogs.org/?guid=f985a0b16f9be2486541bf6a79d3215b By the time you read this, I will be in Chestertown for the annual reunion weekend at my alma mater, Washington College. I had to reach for an Orioles connection: Doug DeCinces is currently tied for 230th all-time with 237 career home runs. Two slots below him with 235 homers is Bill "Swish" Nicholson, a 4-time National League All-Star who spent most of his career with the Cubs and Phillies in the 1940s and 1950s. Bill was a Chestertown native and a three-sport athlete at Washington College. His 1952 Topps card, which mentions his collegiate background, is one of the crown jewels of my collection.

I took a different extracurricular path at WaC, opting for theatre over athletics. But I'll get to dabble in both this weekend. On Saturday night I'm pinch hitting for another actor in a series of short scenes that were written by fellow alumni. But the more daunting task for me comes on Saturday morning, when I'll be running in the Revolutionary Run 5K race. I ran cross country and track in high school, but my last race was way back in 1999. I've been "training" for several weeks, but even at 29 I'm a lot creakier than I once was. So wish me luck.

]]> http://oriolescards.blogspot.com/feeds/7682002145871996445/comments/default 0 http://oriolescards.blogspot.com/2012/05/mike-mussina-1997-score-team-collection.html http://oriolescards.blogspot.com/2012/05/mike-mussina-1997-score-team-collection.html#comments Fri, 18 May 2012 03:37:00 +0000 Kevin http://baseballcardblogs.org/?guid=83545b1fe2d36c463387ffd0de1340ef We're not even a quarter of the way through the 2012 season, and I'm already running out of superlatives to describe the odds-defying success of the Orioles. With their 5-3 win over the Royals today, they claimed the best record in baseball at 25-14. Last year, the O's didn't get to 25 wins until June 3. In the disastrous 2010 campaign, their 25th win came on July 4, leaving them with a 25-56 record. Incidentally, I'd nearly blocked out just how putrid the Birds were two years ago. At least it brought Buck Showalter to town.

One of the many encouraging developments this spring has been the team's success on the road. The Orioles are now 13-5 away from Camden Yards, which is no small feat when you consider that they were 30-51 on the road in 2011. What's more, the win today was Baltimore's seventh consecutive road victory. That's the best streak for the O's since they rattled off 10 straight in late 1999. To illustrate how long ago that was, the tenth and final win in that '99 streak was a 1-0 squeaker in Boston on September 24. Mike Mussina struck out eight Red Sox hitters in six innings, and Scott Kamieniecki and Mike Timlin held the line in relief. Bret Saberhagen was saddled with a hard-luck loss due to Derrick May's RBI single in the fourth inning. (Derrick, son of former Oriole Dave May, finished his 10-year career with a 26-game stint in Baltimore.) The only participants in that game who are still active 13 years later are Jerry Hairston, Jr. and Derek Lowe.

Despite those late-season heroics for the 1999 Birds, the team finished in a distant fourth place at 78-84. A few months ago, most pragmatic O's fans would have considered 78 wins a stretch for this year's team. It's starting to look like we could have aimed higher.

]]> http://oriolescards.blogspot.com/feeds/2945522862214443619/comments/default 0 http://oriolescards.blogspot.com/2012/05/kevin-hickey-1990-upper-deck-299.html http://oriolescards.blogspot.com/2012/05/kevin-hickey-1990-upper-deck-299.html#comments Thu, 17 May 2012 03:14:00 +0000 Kevin http://baseballcardblogs.org/?guid=2ed468268d799c44154b3402e641346e I've done more obituary posts than I care to count and it's always a struggle to find something meaningful to say. Kevin Hickey, who made the jump from the softball fields of Chicago to the mound at Comiskey Park, and was a key bullpen contributor for the 1989 Orioles after a five-year absence from the big leagues, is dead at age 56. He had spent the last decade back in his hometown, working as a batting practice pitcher for the White Sox. Kevin was an insulin-dependent diabetic, and on the eve of Chicago's season opener in Arlington, TX, he was found unresponsive in his hotel room. He reportedly slipped into a coma, and just passed away this morning.

Kevin's playing days were already over by the time I started paying attention to the Orioles, but in my near-annual viewing of the team's 1989 "Why Not?" highlights video, he came across as a free spirit who was responsible for helping to keep things loose in the midst of a surprise pennant race. He definitely chipped in on the field as well, turning in scoreless appearances 16 times in his first 18 tries that season and finishing the year with 7 holds, a pair of saves, a couple wins, and a 2.92 ERA. In parts of 6 seasons with the White Sox and O's, Hickey was 9-14 with 17 saves and a 3.91 ERA.

I don't enjoy eulogizing former Orioles, especially when they're relatively young like Kevin Hickey. But I do think it's important to take a moment to remember them.

]]> http://oriolescards.blogspot.com/feeds/2562627890216477126/comments/default 0 http://oriolescards.blogspot.com/2012/05/xavier-avery-2008-playoff-contenders-50.html http://oriolescards.blogspot.com/2012/05/xavier-avery-2008-playoff-contenders-50.html#comments Wed, 16 May 2012 01:44:00 +0000 Kevin http://baseballcardblogs.org/?guid=819f397287ecb59f329e8386f2d0ab36 Last night was not a good night to be an Orioles fan, as the team looked an awful lot like the losing squads of recent vintage in an 8-5 loss to the Yankees. There were blown leads, a short outing by a starting pitcher, erratic relief pitching, an offensive attack that stalled in the late innings, and embarrassingly inadequate defense. But enough sugar-coating.

The best moments in a dismal, rainy evening came courtesy of rookie Xavier Avery. The 22-year-old outfielder was playing in his second career game, having been plucked from AAA Norfolk to replace the ailing Nolan Reimold and Endy Chavez. Avery batted leadoff and was instrumental in a pair of rallies that resulted in all five O's runs in the game. In the first inning, he doubled against Ivan Nova for his first career hit and scored on J. J. Hardy's single up the middle. After Robert Andino started off the bottom of the fifth with a walk, the newest Oriole tied the game with a triple down the right field line for his first career RBI. Hardy drove him in again, this time with a two-run homer. That gave the Birds a 5-3 lead and it was all downhill from there.

Avery was Baltimore's second-round draft pick in 2008 out of Cedar Grove High School in Georgia. He is the third player selected by the O's in that draft to reach the majors, following first-round pick Brian Matusz and fourth-rounder Kyle Hudson. Speed has always been Xavier's calling card, as he stole 125 bases in 483 minor league games. However, his lack of power and plate discipline (minor league batting line of .266/.328/.363 with 477 strikeouts) seemed to pigeonhole him as a fourth outfielder at best. But "X" got off to a good start at Norfolk this year, batting .273/.373/.469 with 20 walks and 29 strikeouts in 33 games. At his young age, it's possible that he's made some legitimate improvements to his approach as a hitter, and if so, he could be the rare homegrown position player who contributes to the Orioles' big league club. That remains to be seen, but in the meantime I just wanted to show you that I actually had a Xavier Avery card. It's always good to see some kind of end result for a guy featured on a minor league or draft-pick card.

]]> http://oriolescards.blogspot.com/feeds/2262608228815413474/comments/default 0 http://oriolescards.blogspot.com/2012/05/ken-gerhart-1988-topps-toys-r-us.html http://oriolescards.blogspot.com/2012/05/ken-gerhart-1988-topps-toys-r-us.html#comments Tue, 15 May 2012 00:51:00 +0000 Kevin http://baseballcardblogs.org/?guid=f1078f5faaedbf4c3166b5e3590bf361 I feel bad for Ken Gerhart, because he is entrenched in a foggy netherworld of my Orioles fandom. Ken roamed the outfield from 1986 through 1988, meaning that I was 6 years old when he played his last game for the team. I was sitting here trying to find something to write about today, and I realized that I couldn't tell you what the difference is between him and Pete Stanicek. Sure, if I thought about it for a minute, I could tell you that Pete played second base and went to college at Stanford, but that's probably a lucky guess because his last name starts with "Stan". See? This was supposed to be about Ken Gerhart, and I'm rambling about Pete Stanicek. I had to search my archives to see if I'd featured a Gerhart card, and I found one post from 2010 that doesn't even mention him in the body. It's just me wondering what to do with all of my extra "junk wax", a dismissive term that lumps Gerhart in with all of his late 1980s brethern.

So, Ken Gerhart. He played college ball at Middle Tennessee State and was a fifth-round pick of the Orioles in 1982. He hit lots of home runs in the minor leagues, including 31 at Class A Hagerstown in 1983. He also posted a .384 on-base percentage that year, and a .407 mark in 68 games at AA Charlotte in 1985. He got a September call-up to Baltimore in 1986 and hit .232/.267/.304 with a single home run, hit off of Teddy Higuera in a 3-1 O's win. At age 25, he won the team's starting left field job in the spring of 1987 and hit .297 with 3 HR and 8 RBI in April. But his performance tailed off in each successive month, and an errant Doug Jones pitch in an August 12 game against Cleveland broke his wrist and ended his season. His final stats were .243/.286/.440 with 14 homers and 34 RBI. He returned as a regular in 1988, but his personal performance was just as disastrous as the team's overall play: in 103 games he batted .195/.256/.344 with 9 home runs and 23 RBI in 291 plate appearances. He never played in the majors again, spending 1989 in the minors with the Giants and appearing in a handful of games with the Indians' AAA Colorado Springs club in 1990. His final major league batting stats: .221/.271/.384, 24 HR, 64 RBI.

If anyone quizzes me on Ken Gerhart now, I'll be able to muddle my way through it. Of course, if anyone is quizzing me about Ken Gerhart, I might have bigger problems.

]]> http://oriolescards.blogspot.com/feeds/6178668991812444587/comments/default 0 http://oriolescards.blogspot.com/2012/05/miguel-tejada-2004-topps-finest-55.html http://oriolescards.blogspot.com/2012/05/miguel-tejada-2004-topps-finest-55.html#comments Mon, 14 May 2012 02:15:00 +0000 Kevin http://baseballcardblogs.org/?guid=7f0dd21b21fa44b1b4612ab81fbbe86c I took my time in addressing Miguel Tejada's return to the Orioles organization, as I was holding out hope that it was some sort of mad fever dream. There was also a lot of conflicting information being bandied about, and it was tough to pin down the details. Anyhow, this is my understanding of the situation:

The O's are allowing Tejada to work out at their Sarasota complex for a week or two, and assuming he doesn't crumble into dust, he'll officially be brought aboard on a minor-league deal. Dan Duquette seems to have reached an agreement with Miggi due to some misguided belief that he could provide an upgrade at third base. I don't agree, obviously. He did some great things in Baltimore, but he'll be 38 on May 25 and his talents seemed to have been just about exhausted last season when he hit .239/.270/.326 with the Giants and was released in early September. That's an awful 69 OPS+ in the National League. I don't remember being dazzled by his defense at the hot corner back when he came back to the Birds in 2010, either. So what gives?

This is a big wait-and-see. He hasn't played so much as an actual minor league game, so he's not close to the big league roster yet. It looks like Bill Hall and/or Steve Tolleson are getting their turn on the Wheel O' Third Base, and I suppose one of them could perform well enough to pull Duquette's finger away from the panic button. But this has the makings of one of the more bizarre personnel moves that I've seen in recent years.

]]> http://oriolescards.blogspot.com/feeds/405518601879978951/comments/default 0 http://oriolescards.blogspot.com/2012/05/adam-jones-2010-bowman-1992-throwbacks.html http://oriolescards.blogspot.com/2012/05/adam-jones-2010-bowman-1992-throwbacks.html#comments Sat, 12 May 2012 22:31:00 +0000 Kevin http://baseballcardblogs.org/?guid=e4147ccb2cf2e4480bb085d265faa524 Well, I'm 3-0 so far this season. My sister and cousin talked me into going to the Orioles' series opener against the Rays last night; admittedly it did not take much convincing. The first-ever Orioles-Rays first-place battle in May is a pretty good attraction, and as it turned out the fantastic weather put it over the top. It was 71 degrees, clear, with no humidity and a light breeze. It was Student Night, so my cousin used her college ID to get us cheap seats. Of course, once we were perched in the left field upper reserve, surrounded by loud, painted, and sometimes-inebriated kids ten years my junior, I realized why it had been so long since I'd been to a Friday night game. I'm already in training to be a cranky old man.

The game itself looked like it was going to get ugly. The O's promoted Dana Eveland from AAA Norfolk to make a spot start in place of Jason Hammel, and it would be an understatement to say that he was erratic. He put the Birds in a 3-1 hole, but relied on good fortune and damage control to limit Tampa Bay's scoring. The Rays loaded the bases to open the second inning, but a run-scoring double-play grounder by Sean Rodriguez and a flyout to left field by Jose Molina blunted the rally. Eveland stranded a pair of runners in the third, but faced another crisis in the fourth. In this case a walk and back-to-back singles packed the sacks with one out, and Rays shortstop Elliot Johnson drove a 2-1 offering to deep right field. Nick Markakis got a glove on it, but couldn't make the catch. Matt Joyce scored and Rodriguez broke for home as Markakis rifled a throw to Robert Andino, and the second baseman whirled and fired to Matt Wieters, who was blocking the plate as usual. Wieters made a perfect catch just as the runner leveled him with a forearm to the neck. Matt fell backward, sat in the dirt, and did his new trademark move. He flashed his glove at Rodriguez, showing him the ball, and turned and showed it to the ump. One run in, one runner out. The Orioles' star catcher strolled out to the mound to have a word with his pitcher and to catch his breath. As he returned to the plate, he was rewarded with a standing ovation. Buck Showalter and trainer Richie Bancells came out to check on Wieters, but he was unharmed save for a few scratches. Eveland intentionally walked Ben Zobrist to get a lefty-lefty matchup with Carlos Pena, but plunked Pena in the back with his first pitch to force in another run. Fortunately, B. J. Upton hit a short fly ball to Markakis and Tampa Bay doubled their left-on-base total to six.

At that point, Dana Eveland had thrown 71 pitches. Somehow he regrouped to post a pair of 12-pitch innings, pitching around a Luke Scott double in the fifth and a walk to Zobrist in the sixth. It may have been the ugliest so-called "quality start" in team history: in six innings, he allowed five hits, walked six, only struck out two, and hit two batters. One way or another, he handed things over to the strong O's bullpen with the game still in reach.

The Orioles haven't had the most efficient offense this year, but they've covered for their shortcomings by hitting for power. Adam Jones put the Birds on the board in the second inning with a leadoff home run to left field, already his tenth of the year. Last year, when he set a new career high with 25 homers, he didn't hit #10 until June 18. The O's didn't muster anything else against Rays starter Jeremy Hellickson until the bottom of the sixth, when Nick Markakis hit a two-out, full-count solo home run to right-center. It was the sixth time Nick has gone deep, and he's also well ahead of his 2011 pace; he didn't leave the yard for the sixth time until June 25. It's a promising sign for the right fielder, who has seen his slugging percentage drop every year since 2008.

Still, I didn't have high hopes when Hellickson rebounded to retire the next three hitters he faced. But with two outs in the home half of the seventh, but Chris Davis lined a single up the middle to chase the starter. Nick Johnson, who went 0-for-April, greeted reliever Joel Peralta with a high fly ball to right field. Zobrist was tracking it back to the fence, but it sneaked into the second row of the bleachers for a go-ahead two-run shot. It capped a perfect day for the O's DH, who also singled, walked, and stole his second base of the season!

As difficult as things were for Dana Eveland, the Orioles' relievers made it look easy. Darren O'Day (credited with his third win), Pedro Strop, and Jim Johnson (earning his tenth save) each tossed a perfect inning, combining for only 19 total pitches-17 for strikes. Orioles 4, Rays 3. The Baltimore Orioles have sole possession in the American League East two weeks into May. I still don't know exactly what's going on, but I'm doing my best not to question it.

]]> http://oriolescards.blogspot.com/feeds/3277126279131320325/comments/default 0 http://oriolescards.blogspot.com/2012/05/vintage-fridays-milt-pappas-1958-topps.html http://oriolescards.blogspot.com/2012/05/vintage-fridays-milt-pappas-1958-topps.html#comments Fri, 11 May 2012 21:02:00 +0000 Kevin http://baseballcardblogs.org/?guid=16626b5721b788cb673915f732eb0411 This is Milt Pappas' rookie card, depicting the righty as a skinny 18-year-old "bonus baby". Some 55 years and 209 career wins later, he celebrates his 73rd birthday today. Your humble blogger offers a tip of the cap to Milt.

Fun fact: Milt got a start at second base against the Athletics on September 11, 1958...in a manner of speaking. Two of the Orioles' weaker-hitting regulars were second baseman Billy Gardner (.225/.271/.298) and center fielder Jim Busby (.237/.320/.330). With the O's playing on the road, manager Paul Richards optimized his offense by writing pitcher Jack Harshman into the lineup as the center fielder batting fifth. Pappas was penciled in at second base batting seventh. If their spots came up in the first inning, Richards could pinch-hit with his preferred bench bats. If not, the pitchers could be pulled, and none of the bench players would be burned needlessly. With two runners on base and two out in the first inning, Gene Woodling indeed pinch-hit for Harshman and flied out to left to end the inning. Busby and Gardner took the field in the bottom of the first, so Pappas was subbed out without his spot in the order coming up. It was all for naught, as the Birds lost 7-1.

]]> http://oriolescards.blogspot.com/feeds/6747335331509737434/comments/default 0 http://oriolescards.blogspot.com/2012/05/nick-markakis-2010-bowman-platinum-88.html http://oriolescards.blogspot.com/2012/05/nick-markakis-2010-bowman-platinum-88.html#comments Fri, 11 May 2012 01:34:00 +0000 Kevin http://baseballcardblogs.org/?guid=e62ac9fdfac103874068034e8eca85fc Baseball is a pretty weird sport. The Orioles had five hits in the first game of today's doubleheader. They were all home runs, and the O's won 6-5. At the beginning of the game, each of the first three batters (Ryan Flaherty, J. J. Hardy, and Nick Markakis) hit home runs. It was the first time in American League history that a team opened a game with back-to-back-to-back home runs; it had only happened in the National League three times. The most recent team to perform the feat was the Brewers in 2007. Incidentally, Hardy was the second batter in that game as well. Rangers starter Colby Lewis proceeded to retire the next 18 Oriole batters in a row, striking out 12 of them. Then the bottom of the seventh started with an Adam Jones homer, a Matt Wieters walk, and a Wilson Betemit homer. It was just enough to support a great start by Wei-Yin Chen, who saved the Birds' bullpen with seven and two-thirds innings of two-run ball. Luis Ayala and Jim Johnson conspired on a three-run ninth inning to make things interesting, but the O's escaped with their first win against Texas in their last eight tries. Baseball, man.

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