Brian Roberts lives !

ESPN Transactions column - Saturday 8/9/14 

Yankees -  Placed C Brian McCann (in a large padded room). Assigned RHP Matt Daley outright to (a Starbucks in White Plains). Recalled C Austin Romine from (the Starbucks next to the one that Daley got sent to). Released INF Brian Roberts unconditionally. Agreed to terms with INF Scott Sizemore on (how much time he can have on the iPad on Sundays).

Brian Roberts -

no longer a Yankee, therefore no longer dead to me, however probably time to call it a career

Orioles are unlikely to sign him since Buck has decided to ride it out with Jonathan Schoop this year as he plays great defense and figures out how to hit over .215 in the bigs.

Item #2 -

O's all the way up to number 2 in some guy's power rankings for this week.  And I quote "The Orioles have emerged as one of the most balanced teams in the league."

Item the third

Picked up three T206 St. Louis Browns at the National in Cleveland about 10 days ago.  These are not scans of the exact cards that I bought, but they're pretty close quality-wise.  Howell, Jones, and McAleese.  Almost as famous as Tinker to Evers to Chance.

and finally, Number D

Night Owl has talked me into it.  My next set building project - 2011 Topps Lineage 1975 Minis.  Especially since I now own two boxes of the new Ultra Pro sheets sized to hold this size mini.  I have always loved the original 1975 set, and I kind of like the 2011 Lineage set as well.  The combination of the two is just too much to resist.  So the quest begins.  Hopefully, hundreds of dollars later, it will end up in a spiffy binder with pages that look like this.

A three game set with the Yankees in Camden Yards over the next three days.  No Sabathia, no Tanaka, no Kuroda, no McCarthy.  Happy dance.  Yankees are starting Capuano, Greene and a small green man with a really cool looking helmet.

Six - count 'em - six

Bada - bing

Bada - boom boom

Bada - Mr. I Swing. I'm Hacking. Sometimes you run into one.

Bada - how far did that go?

Bada - runnin' up the score.

And then there's the d-bag at Sports on Earth who think the Orioles are in first place by 5 games because of ... luck?  The guy at Comcast Baltimore refutes some of his lazy reasoning.

I don't expect 12 every night, but they're nice to get every now and then.

Tomorrow night, they face friend-of-the-Orioles John Lackey.  That would be a sweet win if they can get it. 

Macho macho macho maaannnn !!!

Manny makes the huge guy happy.

Friday Mail Bag

Time to look at some of the letters in the Friday mail bag.  And since no one except me actually reads this blog, these will all be letters that I have sent myself.  A bit self-centered, but .......  hey, I'm a bit self-centered, so it kinda makes sense.

Apologies if the above photo is too cute.  I felt the slacker aspect made up for the overt cuteness.  Looks like a cat that I could hang out with.

Our first letter is from a Mr. Richard Feder of Fort Lee, NJ  who writes "Dear Roseanne Roseanneadana - who the heck is this Billy Fleming that the Yankees just signed?"  Turns out Billy Fleming is neither the 6 year old kid who lives next door to me nor the 87 year old guy sitting on his porch in Mobile drinking a cold one, but a second baseman who played at West Virginia and is actually halfway decent.  He's no Brian Roberts, but who is?  Besides Brian, I mean. 

RIP Brian - dead to me now that you're a Yankee.

Our second reader asks "Hey 69Brooks, when are you going to the National?"  Good question.  And the answer is - IN JUST ONE WEEK I WILL BE WALKING AROUND THE CLEVELAND EXPOSITION CENTER AT THE NATIONAL !!!!   Yay !!!  That's the National Sports Collectors Convention, and this will be my fourth (two in Baltimore, one in Chicago, and now my first one in Cleveland).  Such a cool place to be for us baseball card fanatics.  So many cards to see that I haven't seen before, and lots of cards to see that I've seen about 5 million times (I'm looking at you '91 Donruss).  But I love all of it.  Can't wait to get there and pick up some new stuff.  Many thanks to the family for humoring me on this and letting me out for the weekend.

And the final letter for this go round is from a Mr. J. Dunn from the early 19th century, who asks from beyond the grave "Did you just pick up a sweetheart of a T206 card of me on the 'bay this week?"  Why yes, Mr. J (also happens to be one of my favorite nicknames for my son), I did pick up a smart-looking T206 of you with an Old Mill back just recently.  A little paper loss on the back, but the price was right considering I had a $15 eBay Bucks certificate to throw in to the deal as a personal discount.

Schweeeet !  Maybe I can find a couple more T206's at the National that aren't priced through the roof.

Good night, and have a pleasant tomorrow.

The Heavy Sink

Nooooo - not a walk-off three run homer to the scruffy dude with the mullet!

It's OK Zach - the other two guys reached on a dribbler to third and a broken bat looper behind first base.  Just threw one sinker that didn't sink quite enough to Donaldson.  But give him credit - Mullet-man can take huge swings and drive the ball a long ways sometimes.

The O's came back and won on Saturday 8-4, with Zach picking up a one out save with the heavy sink.  Everybody gets the heavy sink.  Most times it works out.

Let's not talk about Sunday.  Sundays and the Orioles do not play well together this year.  6-10 on Sundays.

Is 33 days between posts too long ?   Obviously, I still need to find my rhythm with this blog post thing.

Walk-off #2 !

UVA persevered last night (or should I say this morning since the game ended at 1 AM EST ?!) for a 3-2 win over TCU in the College World Series, putting them in the driver's seat in their side of the bracket with a 2-0 record.  The game went 15 innings, which set a new record for most innings in a game for the new TD Ameritrade ballpark in Omaha and tied the all-time record going back to the old stadium, Rosenblatt.  I remember the game that set the previous record in the new park, a 13 inning game in 2011 that Virginia lost to South Carolina.  That one was excruciating, since it seemed like UVA had base runners in scoring position in every darn inning and couldn't get the winning run across.  Last night was actually less painful to watch because UVA could do absolutely nothing against TCU's bullpen from the 10th thru the 14th, so you just felt kind of numb.


Watching these games, it becomes obvious how much the combination of the new standards for the aluminum bats and the softer, high-seam baseball make for low scoring pitchers duels.  No one can even reach the warning track in this stadium with the equipment that they're using now.  I'd rather see it this way than 21-14, which was the score in a final about 5 or 6 years ago, when the bats were just catapulting balls to the farthest reaches of the stadium.  However, it seems like there should be a middle ground which might make more people happy with how the games are played.  It sounds like next year, they're going with a harder ball (similar to the ball used in the minor leagues) with lower seams, which should fly farther and won't let pitchers get so much break on their pitches.  Maybe that will get us to a happy medium of a couple of home runs a game and some 7-4 and 6-3 games along with the 3-2 and 2-1 nail-biters which rule the roost this year.

UVA doesn't play again until Friday, which is good, because I think their three best relievers - Howard, Mayberry, and Liewicki - who all pitched multiple innings in last night's game, need the rest!

 Go Hoos!

Matt and Tony

Just got the word yesterday that Matt Wieters is undergoing season-ending 'Tommy John' ligament replacement surgery for the ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow.  The Orioles have gone 15-20 since Matty went on the DL.  As Roch Kubato asks on his School of Roch website in a post about Wieters, is that record a coincidence?   Roch says "I'm going with 'no'".  Have to agree with him there.

The two guys who are currently trying to take Wieters' place behind the plate - Caleb Joseph and Nick Hundley - are hitting .123 and .147 collectively, with No (as in zero) home runs and 8 RBI between the two of them over approx. 100 plate appearances.  I think its safe to say that the catching position has become a black hole offensively for the O's.  Opening Day back-up catcher Steve Clevenger was hitting .243 when he was sent back to AAA Norfolk a few weeks ago, which isn't great, but its a fur site better than .123 or .147.  Even though Clevenger only threw out 3 of the 20 guys who tried to steal off of him, Buck may need to bring him back just so that spot in the order isn't just an automatic out.

Rest in Peace Tony Gwynn.  He left waaaaay too early (only one year older than me.)  Extremely classy guy and always one of my favorites.  Went into the Hall of Fame the same year that Cal did.  He was one of the good guys.

Papi Wins Game 1 of the CWS with a walk-off !

Mike Papi 'singled' to the warning track on a 3-2 pitch with two outs in the bottom of the 9th to win UVA's first game in the 2014 College World Series 2-1 over Ole Miss.  Nathan Kirby and Artie Lewiecki combined on a one-hitter to set the stage for Papi.  Here's the summary article from Charlottesville's Daily Progress.

Papi's blast

 Now that's one worth celebratin' !

Dogpile!

WE'RE GOING TO OMAHA !!!

WA-Hoo-WA

Boog & the Moose

I recently picked up a couple of cards on eBay that had been on my want list for quite some time.  The first was the 1964 Topps Stand-up of Boog Powell.  I usually like to pick-up raw cards instead of graded ones, and this card is getting harder and harder to find in an ungraded state.  This one isn't perfect, but it's pretty darn good for less than $15.  Looks like a picture of Boog standing on the dugout steps or something, but when taken out of context and floated against a solid color background, it looks like some sort of dance step that Peter Boyle's monster in Young Frankenstein might have favored.

The second card is a 1934-36 Diamond Stars card of Julius 'Moose' Solters, who played for the St. Louis Browns back in the 30's.  This card is part of my un-ending quest to track down as many St. Louis Browns cards as I can, since they were the franchise that would become the current Baltimore Orioles in 1954.

I really like the deco backgrounds on the Diamond Stars cards, and the bright colors.  I think they are right up near the top of my favorite card design list.  There is a lengthy article about Moose on the SABR website which goes into many interesting details of his life and baseball career.  Unfortunately, his career came to and end in 1941 after being hit in the head with an errant throw during pre-game warmups.  This incident was blamed for his loss of sight, which left him blind just two years later.  Even with the disability, it seems that Moose had a full life and a loving family, and lived until 1975.

Of course, Boog and Moose both fit in that category of easy, fun stadium noises that anyone who goes to a ballgame can make.  Come on, say it with me  --    

                         Booooooooooooooog

                                                                               Moooooooooooose

And for the 2014 Orioles, Cruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuz, who has put a grin on the faces of all of the O's faithful.

Nutty for Nate

A Nate Colbert reference!  Yay!  The Padres have always been my second favorite team, behind the Orioles.  And their cards are a lot cheaper to get than O's cards are in NoVa.  Anyway, Nate Colbert was one of my boyhood heroes, right alongside Brooks.  Loved those sideburns.  Nate was the best thing about those really early Padre teams, say '69-'72 or so.  Just when I was really discovering baseball, and baseball cards, for the first time.

Thanks, Nate.  And thanks to all the way to the backstop for the Nate shout out.

I'm Back - Maybe

So, I was reading some other baseball card blogs this morning, and I remembered - hey, I actually have a baseball card blog.  I searched for it on Google and - voila - it appeared as if by magic!  With the last post around three years ago, I figure it might be time for a new one.  Maybe.  I'm not real good at following through on things, and I suck at manipulating items for a cool looking blog post, but it might be fun.  Maybe.

With apologies to the various blogs that I lifted these images from, I'll throw in a pic or two, because they're fun to look at.

 First one is a custom thingy from The Baseball Card Blog with Cal Ripken when he was with the Charlotte Orioles at the very beginning of his career.  Since this blog could have easily been called 83 Cal instead of 69 Brooks, this definitely is a fun card to pretend actually existed.  And The Baseball Card Blog is just flat out brilliant, with interesting entries from Ben Henry, hilarious posts from Mike Kenney, and great custom cards from PunkRockPaint.

The second card I just came across today on The Five Tool Collector , who is an old Oriole collector (or should I say a collector of old Oriole cards), like me.  I'm not a big fan of the Lakers or basketball cards, but this is definitely one of the best floating heads cards that I have ever seen.

And then there is Vulcan Ty Cobb, logically working out in his head how much force it will take to coldcock the pitcher with that tiny bat.  (Thanks to Dime Boxes for this one)

And you can never get too much of that '57 Brooks.  A true classic.

See you next time.            Maybe.