1985 Topps, Dave Owen

#642 Dave Owen

Here is the card that I was going to post yesterday until the Dodgers coaches card showed up in the mailbox.

I got this card signed at Fanfest. Dave was the Royals bench coach last year. This season, he will be their third base coach. Out of all of the players, coaches, and alumni at Royals Fanfest, Dave seemed to be the most talkative. I've interacted (or tried to) with most of the Royals coaches and players by the Royals parking lot. But, I have never had a card of Dave, so I never had a reason to stop him and ask for an autograph. He was one of the few people I let go by without really saying anything to. Well, at Fanfest, he was signing my card and I asked him if he was excited about moving to the third base coaches box. He basically told me that "it was going to be interesting; if you send a guy and he scores, you get a pat on the back; but if send a guy and he gets thrown out, it is all your fault". I told him that he will do fine and wished him luck this season. He seemed like a really nice guy.

I had this card listed on my want list or some time. While I was getting ready for fanfest, I finally found this card at checkoutmycards.com for about ten cents. I was happy to finally have a card for him to sign. As for checkoutmycards.com, I was very pleased with my transaction. You can get a bunch of cards from different people and only pay one shipping and handling charge. It seemed like a better deal than ebay.

Dave didn't have much of a Major League career. He played parts of four seasons with the Cubs and Royals. I just noticed that he went to college at the University of Texas at Arlington. I'm pretty sure that is the same school that Royals manager Trey Hillman went to. I bet that they were teammates.

Also, I wanted to mention some more mail that I got today. I got another card back today from Spring Training. It is an '81 Donruss, so I will probably wait to show that on here after I go through the 1993 cards. I also had two boxes from Night Owl Cards in the mail. These were the dollar store packs that he was nice enough to get for me. They are mostly '83, '84, and '85 Fleer. Those were years that I have few cards of, so that was a nice pickup for me. Thanks Greg! I really do appreciate it. Then was was another package in the mail. This one was from Paul of Paul's Random Stuff. A week or two ago, he told me that he did not have a card of Mets pitching coach, Dan Warthen. So, I went to my local card shop and grabbed Paul a 1976 Topps Warthen card and sent it to him. I really wasn't expecting anything in return. But, he decided to send me about ten autographed cards for the one card I sent him. How about that? Half of them were somewhat newer cards of players that didn't make it to the Majors. The other half were of legit Major Leaguers. I will post one of them next week. The older ones I will save for after the 1993 cards as well. Thank you, Paul. I owe you one.