2024 Twitter purchase: an old pitcher from an old friend

Tonight's should be a quick post as I'm showing off just one card, but it's a cool one from someone I don't get to mention too often these days. My BB4L/GB4L ((Alison) Brie buddy for life/Gracie (Lawrence) buddy for life) Greg of Plaschke, Thy Sweater is Argyle, who can now mainly be found on Twitter, was doing a thread where he sold a bunch of stuff back in February. I was mainly interested in picking up a card for a TCDb friend but was thrilled to get another one for myself in the deal, with $25 going to Las Vegas's biggest Clayton Kershaw fan.

Here's what I was excited to nab:

And the Jeopardy question is "Who are two pitchers who were fairly significant prospects back in 2008?" Andrew Miller was Detroit's first round pick in 2006, #6 overall out of UNC (oddly enough, one pick before a Dallas high-schooler named Clayton Kershaw and a few before Tim Lincecum and Max Scherzer went back-to-back) and was Baseball America's #10 overall prospect in 2007. At the end of that year he and fellow first-rounder Cameron Maybin were the co-headliners of an eight-player deal that brought Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis to Motown. Though he never turned into a top-of-the-rotation starter, he did become a fairly valuable bullpen weapon, mostly with the Yankees and Indians. I'm sure Detroit fans still appreciate him to this day for his part in Miggy spending 16 years in Detroit!

Meanwhile, Richard Joseph "Dick Mountain" Hill was a fourth-rounder of the Cubs out of UM in 2002. While he didn't have that first-rounder shine or make appearances on all the top-100 lists, by 2007 he'd been in the league for parts of three seasons, including his first full one, where he went 11-8. Who knew that the year the above card was made--2008--would be his last in the Windy City, before stops in Baltimore, Boston, Cleveland, LA/Anaheim, the Bronx, back to Boston, Oakland, LA, Minnesota, Tampa, Boston again, Pittsburgh, and San Diego? Who would have thought that he'd reemerge as a solid veteran presence in the rotation as he got older, nearly throw a perfect game, and appear in 19 total MLB seasons (with 2024 still on the table!), and remain active longer than the guy drafted four years after him?

Yet that's how the story played out for the two guys on this 2008 Upper Deck Premier Premier Pairings Autographs dual auto, which is numbered on the front /25. And also, who knew that this card would mark a pretty cool milestone in my collection: hit #150 of Mr. Hill? Even I didn't and I'm the one that keeps track of this stuff! That's pretty rad to me as he continues to account for more than 1/3 of my Michigan Baseball PC with the next closest contender being Zach Putnam's 35. My count includes 35 1/1s and something like 99 cards featuring his signature. What a crazy ride my collection of him has been to parallel his own wild career.

Many thanks to one of my favorite old friends in Greg. This one's for you, my dude!:

Everyone else who isn't aware of the absurdly talented band Lawrence, please enjoy the above video and others in their "Acoustic-ish" series (featuring some other absurdly talented musicians) and get on the hype train, because they're amazing!

2022 trade package #11: Scribbled Ink

It's a new month--we're already in June!--so let's look at more trade package cards that arrived in May. This evening's cards came in this large envelope,

from buddy of the blog Paul, who occasionally still blogs at Scribbled Ink and is much more active on Twitter @Scribble4me.

I'd piled up quite a few things for Paul thanks to some recent shows and some good luck adding some of his PC guys in my TCDB deals over the past few months. Paul had done the same, and then we both added a few things on each end from our TCDB tradelists. These tweets (1, 2, 3, 4) show most of what I sent northeast, and now you'll get a look at all the great stuff that came back my way:

Paul's packaging style is never boring! This time he packed my cards in that envelope inside this empty blaster of 2021 Chronicles Draft basketball. That ended up being somewhat appropriate since this deal did include a few cards from that sport, plus one of the cover boys, Cunningham, is a Piston.

As for the cards themselves,

First up is a seven-spot of 2021 Topps UK Tigers. Aside from Paredes, who was flipped for Austin Meadows just before Opening Day, everyone here is still in the organization, though of course Baddoo was sent down to AAA. So far the stories of the season have been a pretty resurgent Cabrera, who reached the 3,000 hit mark, and potential new ace starter Tarik Skubal, who's gone 3-0 since May and lowered his ERA and other numbers to excellent levels. Hell, the Tigers are even winning some games here and there!

Starting here we have the mix of stuff Paul had set aside for me plus what I picked from his stuff for trade. Two tickets to the CroneZone, please! I happily collect Cochrane even though is A's days outnumber his games with the Tigers. Encarnacion's not a keeper for me anymore because he's a monster (look it up if you haven't heard about it, and if you have the stomach for it) but three of my favorite "G" collections in Grandy, Griffey, and Gwynn are always more than welcome. AJax suited up for six teams after his Tigers tenure and one of them was Cleveland in 2017, a year after he spent a season with the ChiSox. He never did complete the full run of the division.

Tigers legends Kell and Morris plus my top PC guy Ripken all get the Panini chrome treatment in three different products--Mosaic, Prizm, and Donruss Optic, and happily all three of those guys are HOFers! So are Larkin (Topps Gallery) and Maddux (Topps insert). Bubba (not Alan) Trammell never turned into a star but his potential was interesting until the Tigers left him unprotected in the '97 expansion draft and Tampa took him. And JV is most definitely going to Cooperstown when he decides to hang 'em up, but if this year's any indication he's in no hurry (or condition) to have to leave the game.

The last of the baseball stuff starts with four horizontal cards. Sparky's '80 Topps base shows him with his first of 17 Tigers squads he skippered. Then we go back to the CroneZone (shiny!) and see Maddux and the Iron Man represented once more each.

Besides those I asked Paul for the six 1994 cards you see at the bottom of the scan. Those came from Finest and Ultra and will go toward my set builds from each that I started thanks to the huge Facebook collection I purchased last year that I'll never shut up about because of how much it's impacted my collection!

Wow, a whole scan's worth of basketball stuff! I believe I picked out most of these from Paul's TCDB list. The THJs look great, 05-06 UD Hardcourt looked pretty good, and I'm really liking that shiny Chronicles Michigan uni card of Wagner.

My football and hockey loot was much smaller but that's fine since I've got other sources for those sports, plus these were fun additions. Harbaugh and Woodson are two of the best to ever put cleats to grass at the Big House and Pinnacle Mint is a product I still appreciate 25 years later. Turco's one of my top five Wolverine hockey players ever, and Compher and Werenski (Topps Stickers) are recent stars, with the former being part of a formidable Avs playoff squad.

It wouldn't be a package from Paul without a pocket schedule from his local Minor League team, would it? Man, I really need to get to another Minors game this summer, and maybe I'll finally head down to Toledo this year after saying I would do that for years.

Closing things out was this Mosaic bunch that I think Paul included on purpose? Not sure if he and his son decided to do another group break. Anyway, there's some good traders in here including some White Sox I'll be happy to send Jeff's way if Paul doesn't need 'em back.

Paul, thanks again for a fun trade that's already package #2 from you this year! I hope you and the kiddo have fun collecting, hanging with the Fisher Cats, and playing in games of your own this summer, and I look forward to hitting you back when I pile up more stuff!

2021 eBay purchases: Rich and Charlie's awesome Christmas

Yep, still lots to post, but today I'm going with the fewest cards instead of posting nothing! The two you see below should be my final eBay pickups of the year.

I had a good last couple months on the site, largely picking up some better stuff for Doug's Christmas package, and I also scored two pretty big cards for myself in November. Here they are:

Behind door #1 is Rich Hill's 2008 Bowman Chrome Yellow Plate. I'd go so far as to refer to it as "maize" in recognition of his Wolverines career, though of course the border's more of a highlighter  hue than the classic UM color. My latest Hill 1/1 (I believe I'm at around 30 when including my unidentified 2008 Triple Threads White Whales) set me back around $15 in early November thanks to a late bidding war, but I refused to be denied considering my spending was so responsible this year. It'll make a nice addition to the '08 Bowman/Chrome rainbow I've already put together:

I already had one plate to include in the bunch, the Bowman Cyan (not exactly a Michigan blue either!) you see at the very end, and now I can add a Chrome plate to that as well. As usual the Chrome plate's image is reversed due to that set's printing process so you get a rare look at old Dick Mountain as a righty!

I'm closing in on 150 hits of the southpaw who's making yet another return to Boston, and I hope to maintain my self-assigned rep as Hill's #1 collector with more scores like this in 2022!

As usual if I'm starting off with a plate or other 1/1 I have something even bigger to show off and that's true here! I occasionally search eBay for Charlie Gehringer autographs to add to my collection after having had lots of success doing so in the past, and often I try to find those made by Upper Deck brands because they feature nice designs. Cut autographs necessarily have less room for design elements like photos, but I still opt for those when I can.

In this case I happily made an exception, and even went away from the UD brands to go with a Topps Co-Signers card from way back in 2006. The fact that it paired up the Mechanical Man with my first autograph of fellow Tigers star Harvey Kuenn was enough argument for me! The roughly $50 total cost, very reasonable in my opinion, was also a factor.

Though their careers didn't overlap--Charlie was in Detroit between 1924-42 while Harvey spent his first eight MLB seasons in Motown from 1952-59) they're both well-known Tigers from before the 60s. Kuenn was the '53 AL ROY and went to All-Star Games in eight straight seasons (two each in '59 and '60, the latter in his first season with the Giants) and played his best ball here, though the team failed to make it to the postseason during his Tigers tenure.

Other than lacking images of both players this is an excellent cut design. Both players' cut pieces--a Kuenn check and the usual Gehringer HOF plaque postcard--fit well in the windows set up for them and the signatures aren't cut off like you often see these days. The biggest flaw here, and no surprise from Topps, is that Harvey's last name is spelled "Kuehn" on both the front and back for some reason. QA's never been Topps' strong suit, though, so I'll give them points for getting this mostly right.

And anyway I'm thrilled to add not just my first signature of Kuenn, but also my 10th of one of Michigan's (state and school!) and Detroit's all-time greats, Charlie Gehringer. I think it's worth another look at all of them here:

That may be it for my eBay spending in 2021 but I still have lots to show you: three blogger trades, one TCDB deal, the results of the show earlier this month, and then possibly a show this weekend as well! Until then, stay warm and dry and enjoy the holiday season!

TCDB trade: randylaw

While I haven't made a ton of deals yet in my time on TCDB, I've definitely made up for it in the sizes of the trades I've completed. That was once again the case with fellow Michigander Randy (randylaw), with whom I completed my second transaction a few weeks ago.

I showed off the results of our first deal last year (part 1, 2, 3) and it's funny looking back it at since my end this time was fairly similar: a nice amount of vintage, plenty of oddball, lots of Tigers, and multiple sports.

The similarities don't end there, either, since this was another instance where I sent him way more cards than I received--around 700 vs. 200--because I was so excited to clear out some space filled by commons/traders and to receive useful stuff in return. A nice chunk of that stuff is trade bait that'll be heading out in some packages at some point this year, but the vast majority will be staying with me.

Please enjoy this scan-heavy post where I prove once again how great it is to trade with one of the most reliable folks on the site:

Like I said, I was excited to get even more vintage Tigers, like this bunch here. The first five are '61 Topps with Cash being the biggest name, though the Dumbo-eared Don Mossi is a fan favorite as well. Jones is from '62, Fox and notable SS McAuliffe are '63s, and then we jump way ahead to '72 for a Billy Martin manager card.

And I still have a few more vintage pieces to show off! Pitcher Tom Morgan's '60 Topps represents the oldest one I acquired for myself though I did end up with a '52 that I'll be sending elsewhere. The photos on team cards from '61 and '62 look remarkably similar. And I was super happy to add another vintage Sparky to his collection, with the one you see above hailing from 1973 Topps, made a year after he led the Reds to the NL pennant for the second time.

Besides vintage I picked up a variety of oddball stuff like this quartet of Topps stickers. Evans shares his '88 sticker with Cards P Joe Magrane, and future Brewers stalwart B.J. Surhoff graces the "Super Star" back. Morris features on an '82 foil piece that celebrates his first of five All-Star nods. Nokes is another Super Star back and I'm much happier to show that than the guy on the sticker up front, the execrable Ozzie Guillen. Sweet Lou's version from 1990 includes a way more respectable guy who earned himself a foil sticker: Eric Davis.

There's nothing vintage about these cards but the subjects are. An early 90s Score base shows old Tiger Stadium, where I witnessed plenty of games in my younger days (mostly losses!). HOFer Jim Bunning is represented twice, in each case as a Tiger, I believe. Detroit legend Ty Cobb pops up twice, including another Score base, this one showing off his Hall items. And I appreciate when modern products remember guys like Kuenn and not just the obvious MLB legends.

Speaking of Cobb, he was the star of Donruss' puzzle inserts way back in '83, the year I was born. I'd take these over some crappy gum any day! It's made up of 21 pieces and Randy only had 20 of them available, but I'm sure it won't be a problem getting the last one to finish it up.

Here we have the first of seven scans of guys associated with the Tigers. '84 champs Bergman and Brookes hail from sets 10 years apart. I added a bunch of stuff of Miggy, and while not enough to equal his 500+ homers, I'm not far off the number he's hit as a Tiger. Tony Clark is a former top prospect who panned out reasonably well even if he didn't turn into a big star.

Another Clark reminds me of how much I love '96 and '97 Upper Deck, and then it's on to a five-spot of Big Daddy cards. Besides his Tigers tenure, I think most folks know he was with the Jays before the trip to Japan that preceded the seasons he spent in Detroit. However, after being flipped to the Yanks in '96, he spent the bulk of '98 with the Angels (as captured on that Ultra base), then got picked up by Cleveland for a couple weeks' worth of games later that year, his sunset season. I often tend to associate Fielder with Fryman since they manned the corners together for a few seasons, and you can see three of the four early/mid-90s base I snagged of him as well.

After another Fryman appearance we get one of a slightly more recent guy from the left side of Detroit's infield, Carlos Guillen. Henneman was a quality closer in the 90s for some bad Tigers teams while Hernandez enjoyed a highly decorated '84 season with the champs. And how cool would it have been if Herndon, A-Jax, and Lemon could have formed an outfield together at some point?

We're looking at mostly 80s stuff here, starting with another Lemon, but rising star Casey Mize makes the first of a pair of appearances too. Morris pops up on a pair, including a food issue from Chef Boyardee. And there's a pair of catchers back-to-back in Nokes, a late 80s favorite of mine, and the "Big Wheel" Lance Parrish, the type of catcher I'd love to see backstopping the Tigers again.

Noticing a lot of '84 Tigers? I basically checked Randy's trade list for anybody I collected, and a good number of those guys were on Detroit's most recent title-winning squad, like Petry, seen here on cards made around that year. I also added a whole mess of stuff to my Pudge collection, mostly Rangers cards since a lot of what I have was made during his time in Detroit. There's a nice range of '93-'97 stuff here, including some good looks from UD and Stadium Club.

The rest of the Pudge haul can be seen here, and what's fun is that all of them are shots of him wearing his tools of ignorance excellence. There's even one card each repping him with the Tigers and Astros, two more of his six career franchises. Sheridan and Tanana were post-'84 guys that made some contributions to Detroit but had to live through that playoff drought. And Thompson, who was traded to my annoyance in the deal for malcontent Juan Gonzalez, arrives on his card from Pinnacle's goofy-but-fun Inside product.

Miggy leads off the horizontal stuff with a pair, including a retail version of his '07 Ultra base (which you can tell since the foil around his name is silver and not rainbow). Fryman (cool shot!), Guillen, and Mize (along with rotation mate Skubal) each get another appearance. And Tram is the last of the vertical Tigers but those didn't divide up nicely into groups of nine. I love me some DKs, and I wonder if Topps will ever come up with something that spurs that kind of nostalgia in me, because rookie cups don't do it for me.

And now we're moving on to the non-Tigers PCs. Abbott, who tossed his amazing no-hitter 18 years ago today, makes three oddball appearances, including another food issue I don't see very often in Wonderbread. Griffey, meanwhile, adds three to his collection, including the not terribly interesting Topps Fire, to get within 30 items of the 1000-card mark.

Next, the designs on Gwynn's two early 90s items aren't anything to write home about, but the photos are pretty cool! Larkin joins a few other guys today out of '21 Donruss, and I even ended up with a few more to trade. Lata is the newest member of my Michigan Baseball PC. He was drafted in the latter rounds back in '89 by St. Louis and never reached the Majors, but he still managed to pop up on seven cards, including the 1990 Best above. Maddux joins Griffey and Larkin out of this year's Donruss, a throwback to the '87 design that doesn't look as nice with all that white space. Cal maintains his PC lead with two new pieces, including a variation of an '87 Sportflics card, plus a '92 Ultra base I can't believe I didn't have.

Yep, I grabbed some UM Basketball guys too. Fab Fivers Juwan Howard and Jalen Rose are joined by recent guy LeVert (check out Jeff's post filled with cards of Caris here), plus '89 champs Glen Rice and Loy Vaught. Rice continues to lead my collection of hoopers and is nearing 200 cards!

These football Wolverines seem plenty appropriate as Michigan opened its season with a convincing win this afternoon. Biakabutuka's and Grbac's shiny cards came out of 2000 Collector's Edge Odyssey. Take a wild guess as to which Brady card I was more excited about. And three WRs finish off the group: Heisman-winner Howard, DPJ on a 2000 Absolute Retail RC, and Streets, who scored a single TD for the Lions in his sunset 2004 campaign.

And finally, although I don't want to be thinking about the weather typically associated with the sport, we have a few hockey items. Wings legends Lidstrom (Black Diamond!) and Yzerman (Flair Showcase!) flank a pair of former Wolverine Jeff Norton, a guy who often shows up in trade packages from Canada, so I'm surprised I didn't have those.

Whew, that was a lot of stuff to cover! Again, I very much recommend trading with Randy as long as you're willing to be patient with him given some medical issues that sometimes hold him up. He's fair, responsive, and has a nice selection to choose from, so if you go the TCDB route, please consider PMing him about a deal!

As for me, I'll either be showing off my eBay pickups from the last couple months or be doing a recap of yesterday's monthly show whenever I post next. I hope everyone enjoys their long weekends!

RIP Bill Freehan (1941-2021)

The Tigers lost one of their all-time greats yesterday as catcher Bill Freehan passed away at the age of 79 after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease. Freehan was John's favorite baseball player so he put up a quick post yesterday, and I'm sure we'll be hearing more from him when he's ready.

As for me, I thought I'd do a quick rundown of Bill's life and what I have of him in my collection.

Freehan was born in late November of 1941 in Detroit, and though his family moved from Royal Oak to Florida when he was in high school, he quickly returned to the state when it was time to go to college, opting for the University of Michigan and a place on both the baseball and football teams.

He played a season on the gridiron and hit a ridiculous .585 during the '61 baseball season, then signed with his hometown team (since the draft was almost a decade away).

Freehan got a four-game up of coffee in 1961, and then from 1963-1975 he'd appear in at least 100 games each season, ending that streak in his sunset campaign of '76.

1968 would prove to be his career-best season with 25 HR, 84 RBI, 6.9 bWAR, and a second-place AL MVP finish. He lost out to 31-game winner Denny McLain, naturally.

One of his biggest career moments occurred in that season's World Series game 5. With the Tigers on the ropes down 3-1 in the series and 3-2 in the  top of the fifth, Cardinals speedster Lou Brock doubled with one out, and it looked like St. Louis' lead would double when Julian Javier followed him with a single to left. But another Tigers legend, Willie Horton, was having none of it, and he made the deadshot throw you see in the video above to Freehan, who was perfectly positioned to block the plate and apply the tag to a furious Brock, who probably thought he was safe to his dying day.

From MGoBlue.com

Bill's bat was much cooler in the Fall Classic but it didn't matter as players like Cash, Horton, Kaline, and Northrup led the way, with McLain (1 win) and Lolich (3) doing the rest on the mound, leading to this famous shot of the Series-winning battery.

He retired after the 1976 season with his name in the record books for catchers, earning five straight Gold Gloves to go with 11 All-Star nods and two top-3 MVP finishes. Spending his entire playing career wearing the Olde English "D", Bill compiled exactly 200 HR and 44.8 bWAR. He's considered a top 20 catcher by several methods, at a very tough position at which to stay healthy and productive, and a good chunk of his career coincided with an era that stacked the deck in favor of pitchers. Sportflics rightly included him in their '86 Decade Greats boxed set as one of their three choices for the best of the '60s at his position.

The Hall of Fame didn't come calling, but #11's legacy with the franchise is a big one that deserves to be recognized with a retired number (since done for Sparky Anderson) and a statue (with Lolich, of course!) among the monuments beyond the outfield.

His contributions to his team and the game didn't end there, though, as he offered coaching to a fairly similar player in Lance Parrish along with other backstops. He also returned to Ann Arbor to helm the baseball team from 1989-95.

Bill became one of the guys I put more effort into collecting the more I started focusing on chasing PCs, especially both Tigers and Wolverines. Here's a quick look at some of my best items:

Relics: 10

Autographs: 13

Printing plates and 1/1s: 2

I also have a few other interesting pieces, including:

An IP/TTM autograph of his 1988 Domino's '68 Tigers card

A signed 8x10

Another signed photo, personalized "to Dennis" (given to me by another Dennis!)

And a bobblehead from a 2018 stadium giveaway (where I could have met John as we ended up going separately)

For me, Bill's passing leaves as big of a whole as a player like Kaline, and I'll miss him, though I'm glad he no longer has to suffer from the effects of Alzheimer's. I hope that the Tigers and MLB do a lot to honor the memory of a guy so crucial in the team's history but often ignored outside of Detroit. If you saw him play, tell your kids and grandkids about how great he was so future generations can pass down the name Bill Freehan. RIP.