Collecting Cleveland Indians Topps team sets from 1952-present, as well as post-war minor and major league autographs.
Nolan Arenado has long been one of my favorite National League players, so it was nice to see him have such a fantastic 2022 season. He ended the campaign with 34 HR and a 154 OPS+, which is the highest OPS+ of his career.
By now you have heard about Barry Bonds and the Hall of Fame. This past week, Bonds failed to get the requisite 12 votes from the Baseball Hall of Fame’s 16-person Today’s Game Era committee. So he won’t be gettting enshrined anytime soon.
I am a big Kyle Tucker fan. I was able to get him in person back in 2016 when he was with the Low-A 2016 Quad Cities River Bandits. So it’s been fun following his career ever since.
Paul Goldschmidt had a career year in 2022, hitting .404/.578/.981 with 35 HR. He led the league in slugging, OPS, and OPS+.
Mike Schmidt spent 18 seasons in the big leagues and would retire with 548 HR, and a career 148 OPS+. He was selected to 12 All-Star teams, and won 10 Gold Gloves and six Silver Sluggers. He won three NL MVP awards.
Zack Greinke ended his 2022 campaign by going 4-9 with a 3.68 ERA/1.343 WHIP/111 ERA+ over 137 innings. At 38 years old and 19 seasons at the big league level in the books, you have to think his career is just about to wrap up. It has certainly been an impressive career
Nothing illustrated the anemic 2021 Cleveland team more than the fact that they were no-hit three–and really four–times during the season. Insane.
Much like the Aaron card I posted earlier today, this card purchase was inspired by watching Ken Burns’s baseball documentary. I jumped at this card since the autograph was still nice and bold. It would seem many of these have not aged well, though from what I can tell it’s[…]
Watching Ken Burns’s baseball documentary reminded me of how amazing Hank Aaron‘s career was and inspired me to drop a little money to add another autograph of his to my collection. I liked this card, in particular, since it was an Emerald version. Green is my favorite color. It was[…]
Peak Vladimir Guerrero, from 1998-2008, was something else. During that period Guerrero hit .325/.392/.581 with 149 OPS+. He averaged 35 HR a season. My favorite stat is that he only averaged 70 K’s and 59 walks a season. The dude liked to swing. And when he swung, he normally made[…]