Collecting Cleveland Indians Topps team sets from 1952-present, as well as post-war minor and major league autographs.
New Arrival: Maui Ahuna, ss, San Francisco Giants … Maui Ahuna is from Hilo, but I never got him while he was in high school since I was not paying too close attention to Hawaii prep players at the time. He is one of the big reasons I have started[…]
In July 2005 Beckett Baseball magazine published a All-Time Hot List, tracking the last nine years worth of Hot List cards and ranking then #1-#244. This card, 1995 Bowman Best Andruw Jones, was # 14 on that list.
I am not a Yankees fan by any stretch of the imagination. But in the late-1980s, Don Mattingly was one of the most well-known players in the game, so I was well aware of his career. And I was also from Cleveland, so it’s not like there was anyone on the Indians who were going to outshine him.
Sterling Hitchcock was the 9th-round pick of the New York Yankees in the 1989 draft. He would spend 13 seasons in the big leagues, his prime from 1995 to 1999 when he was in the Yankees and Padres rotation. During that period he would go 55-51 with a 4.65 ERA/1.391[…]
Milan Tolentino was Cleveland’s 4th-round pick in 2020 out of Santa Margarita Catholic in California. He opened the season in the back-half of the Guardian’s Top 30 prospect list but has been on fire in 2022 at Low-A Lynchburg, hitting .333/.436/.428 with one home run. Tolentino is quickly becoming another[…]
Bryan Lavastida (2018, 15th round) is one of my favorite prospects in the Cleveland system. This past season he hit .289/.380/.456 with 9 HR between across three levels, which included 19 at-bats in AAA. The Guards thought enough of his season to add him to the 40-man last month. Good[…]
When I first got into autograph collecting, Esteban German was one of the Athletics biggest prospects and a personal favorite of mine. In 2001 he was the Athletics MiLB player of the year and looked like he would turn into a prototypical leadoff hitter at the big league level. But[…]
This was another card that I got from a collector selling off his signed 1990 Bowman set. David Cone was a very good pitcher, spending 17 seasons in the majors with a career record of 194-126. He was a two time 20-game winner, and led the league in strikeouts twice.[…]
Some new stuff that has come in over the last couple weeks. Alex Bregman 2017 Gypsy Queen – Very nice looking card of a player who is already looking like he will be one of the best players in the game come 2019. Last season he hit .286/.394/.532 with 31 HR,[…]
Barry Bonds was a very good baseball player. Maybe one of the best ever. So good that I imagine if he was not such a dick during his playing days people might be willing to overlook his PED use and he would already be in the Hall of Fame. Looks[…]