If Ya Need Me, I Will Be at the Ball Park, AGAIN!

So, of course I had a great time checking out the Rays vs. Marlins with Scott from the Smed's Cards blog... My wife worked a split double while I was hanging out at the ballpark... It didn't seem fair that I was off having a good time while she was hard at work, but I don't think she was too upset because when she finally got home from her second shift (after midnight) she shared this surprise with me...

Two excellent tickets to tomorrow nights ball game, the Pirates hosting the Baltimore Orioles!

Since the Pirates added lights at McKechnie Field they have had ONE night spring training game each year. The Wifey and I have attended ALL of them. It gets better - after the lone night game of the spring there is a fireworks display, so its gonna be super special and romantic, ha!

Oh, for today's shipping update: Packages were sent to the following zip codes - 30101, 92234, 23666, 23320 and 60586. At the beginning of March I purchased 30 padded envelopes and silently set a goal for myself - to send out 30 trade packages within the month of March. 30 trades in 30 days you could call it. Well, I am officially out of bubble mailers and I have sent out several packages in Priority flat-rates mailers, so I have sent out AT LEAST 30 trades in 30 days! And hey, even better, I am going to my second baseball game in as many days...

Gosh, I love my Wifey! Thanks Darling! Go Rays! Stories to follow... troll out.

My New Brother For the Bucs...

Yesterday I posted up the 14 cards I needed to finish off the 2011 Topps set. Several people in the blog-o-sphere made me offers and right now, pending delivery, my want list has been whittled down to just 3 cards. Thanks to reader Tim and blogger Brian I will just need 3 more cards - they are numbers 35, 331 and 639.

As cool as it is to get this close to finish off a set, I am more excited that I found a great new blog AND a fellow Yankee hating, Pittsburgh Pirates lovin', Rays fan and card collector... New bloggers ask me to pimp their blogs every now and then. This dude didn't ask, he just made me a trade offer and had a link to his blog. I checked it out and felt right at home. I don't know a lot of collectors who seriously chase the Pirates, but this dude has a GREAT COLLECTION!

He chases Andrew McCutchen and Ryan Doumit and like me is a big fan of Garrett Jones. GJ is seriously one of the nicest, most down to earth, friendly and really tall dude in baseball. I have several Garrett Jones stories that I will share someday. I need to get pictures from a friend to truly illustrate it, but I will just say he is a really fan friendly guy who I look forward to seeing in spring training each year. Anyway, I am really taken by this fairly new blog - I love seeing a serious Pirates collector and he has some great stuff. I know a lot of bloggers have a habit of pulling cards of the Pirates, Rockies and Angels and not having anyone to trade them to. Please check out this great new blog and hit him up with your Pirates hits...

You can find it right here, tell him the Troll sent ya! Oh, by the way, it is called the Pirates Treasure Room and he is a huge fan of Ryan Doumit... Oh, this doesn't mean I am done collecting Topps cards of the Pirates from the 50's and 60's. They are still my favorite historic team and Roberto Clemente will always be my favorite player of ALL TIME and Maz, Virdon, Stargell and everyone who played for those GREAT Bucs teams of the 50s, 60s and 70s will always live in my PC. I am just glad to find a fellow Pirates fan AND this dude comes down to Florida for spring training, so there is a chance of getting a face to face blogger meeting.

Please dig through your dupes and find me cards #35, 331 and 639 and send them my way... I will be posting packs 3 and 4 for Gint-A-Cuffs later today, so stay tuned... Go Rays! Go Bucs (it aint over yet!) troll out.

50 Homers is HUGE Again...

Congrats to former Tampa Bay Devil Ray and Pittsburgh Pirates slugger Jose Bautista on reaching 50 dingers… I think that 50 means something again and I think coming from someone like Baustista, it is an amazing accomplishment. I always wish the best for any former member of the D-Rays even though I don’t remember him playing for the D-Rays. He only played in Tampa Bay for 12 games, had 2 hits and no homers and was sent on his way. I DO remember him as a Buc. He was in Bradenton (my home towne) for 7 spring training seasons and he played for the Gulf Coast League Bradenton Pirates rookie level team twice on rehab assignments in his twenties. I have watched this guy hit a lot. He impressed me with his swing from day 1. That said there are hundreds of guys I can say that about and few of them even make the big leagues, so I am not saying I called this. I was pissed when the Bucs GAVE him away at the end of the 2008 season. Trading him for a weak back-up catcher was foolish. Sending him to the Blue Jays where he wasn’t even a starter was a bummer too. I remember watching him in a rare start at Tropicana Field last year at third base. He was a bench player who got the start in favor of Scott Rolen that day because it was a day game following a night game on the last day of a road trip. He made 2 key plays at third and drove in a couple of runs. I remember saying that if he could crack that lineup he could make a huge impact. I didn’t predict this kind of impact. I watched him this spring in Dunedin with the Blue Jays. He looked good at third base, but found a home in the outfield and started the season as the Jays lead-off hitter. His success this year reminds me a little bit of Carlos Pena’s breakout year in 2007 when he hit 46 homers. The difference is Pena was a first round draft pick and he had hit 20+ homers in the big leagues before. He was really just fulfilling the initial expectations of him. Bautista was a 20th round pick who had been a bench player and didn’t have much hope of being more with so many high priced players standing in front of him. I say congrats to Jose Bautista… Score one for the underdog. It isn’t always the high priced free agent or highly touted draft pick – sometimes the difference maker is already sitting on your bench… I still think it was stupid of the Pirates to send him to Toronto for Robinson Diaz, but I don’t think the organization would have given Bautista the chance to flourish like this. Makes you wonder how many other players out there have 50 bombs in their bat, but just can’t get the respect from management… I love this game! I love this hobby! Go Rays! Troll out.

Spring Training 2010

I had a VERY busy weekend, but the weekend ended the same as most do, searching through my photos sending them to various editors. One of my assignments was to pick a photograph from Pirate City that summed up the start of Pirates spring training without a word. I thought this shot of super prospect Pedro Alvarez had it covered, but the publication didn't agree with me. They bought a different shot, so I own this one (so I might as well use it...). Florida baby!

Spending the Day at Pirate City With My Little Brothers...

The local schools in my area had an admin half day today. That worked out awesome for me because I had the morning off from work. I wanted to check out some spring training action as I hadn’t been all week, but I figured I would leave the planning up to my little brother. On a side note, I would whole-heartedly recommend volunteering as a big brother or big sister to anyone and everyone reading this post. It is very rewarding and it’s just a fun thing to do. You can get more info from the Big Brothers national website HERE. Anyway, I called my little brothers mother last night and she confirmed that he wanted to go to Pirates camp. I asked if any of his friends wanted to come and a few hours later she called and asked how many kids I could handle. Well, I sometimes have a rough time taking care of myself, but when baseball is involved, I say the more the merrier! I knew we would have a crowd so I decided to rent a car for the day, went with a minivan, fortunately. When I arrived at lil bros house (we will call him Dan for the sake of this post) he had 7 friends with him. All of them had their baseball mitts and wanted to come along. We all piled into the car and hit Pirate City. I brought along all of the Pirates cards that I had and we split them up among the kids when we got there. I didn’t have too many current Pirates at all, but I had quite a few Akinori Iwamura cards, so every boy got at least 3 of them. I also gave each one a ball (not official league, but they worked) and a sharpie magic marker. We all watched BP for a while and then went off to the side to play catch together. Chuck Tanner came by on his golf cart and pretended that he was scouting the kids. He posed for some pictures with them (which I won’t post here) and he signed some of the boy’s baseballs even though they had no idea who he was. After an hour and a half we stopped our game of catch and returned to watch the big leaguers take BP. That wasn’t too exciting for them because they didn’t have a great view of what was going on from behind the batting cages. The nice thing was that as each guy finished his round of BP, they came out to sign autographs for my boys. I only had cards for them of about 6-10 players each, but I bought “Dan” a gray tee Pirates tee-shirt and they each had baseballs, so by the end of the day each boy had at least 20 autographs. Not every player stopped to sign for them. They were most disappointed that Andrew McCutchen didn’t come over as he seemed to be the kid’s favorite. Bobby Crosby and Ryan Doumit both denied our requests as did most of the pitching staff. Some of the most friendly players and best signers included (fortunately) Akinori Iwamura, Ryan Church, Garrett Jones, Brandon Jones, Tony Sanchez, Ramon Vazquez, Steve Pearce, Lastings Milledge, Jonathan Van Every, Brandon Moss, Chuck Tanner and Javier Lopez. The two best signers were Ryan Church and Aki. I only had 1 Church card for each kid, but he signed all of them, plus their baseballs, shirts, rosters and then posed for pictures with each kid and then signed all of their gloves. I had 25 cards of Aki (all in a Rays uniform) so each boy got 3 and then after I dropped them all off, “Dan” gave me back 3 autographed cards-an Aki, Brandon Jones and a Garrett Jones (my other favorite Pirate). It made me want to cry. Seriously, it did. Aki was in more of a hurry than Church, but he did sign a total of 25 cards and pose for a group photo with the boys. His English was better than I remembered with the Rays as he said “how are you” to each boy. It was weird for me to see my one of my favorite Rays in another jersey, but I am glad that he landed on a team that appreciates him and he really seems to get along great with everybody. I am not very impressed with the Pirates staff, but offensively, I think they are a team that can get on base and manufacture runs. I want to thank “Dan” and all of his friends for a fantastic day. I think the two of us will ride our bicycles out to Pirate City again next week and once the games begin, we will go to one each week. There will be more on Aki the Pirate in my next post, stay tuned!!! Spring training isn’t going to last much longer, but if anyone has any cards of current Pirates that they can spare for my next field trip, I would appreciate it. These boys loved getting autographs of big league ballplayers, but other than “Dan” who has a binder full of cards from me, the other kids had never seen baseball cards before. The hobby is in a lot of ways too costly for most of the next generation and I would hate to see my favorite hobby dry up and go away, so please, send your common cards of Pirates and Rays over here! I will also add that when players like McCutchen snub their young fans, it doesn’t help the games popularity any either. Go Rays! Go Aki! Troll out.