1981 Donruss, John Mayberry

#29 John Mayberry

I warned you the Mayberry was going to three-peat here. But this time he is a Blue Jay (I had to mix it up somehow). Prior to the 1978 season, John was sold to the Blue Jays who were about to start their second season.

In 1975, John hit 34 home runs for the Royals, setting the team's single season home run mark. He held that mark for ten years until Steve Balboni broke it. In 1978, he set the Blue Jays single season home run mark with 22 and then set it again two years later when he hit 30. That mark lasted six years. Jesse Barfield broke it when he hit 40 in '86. I never realized Jesse ever hit that many home runs.

John is a member of the Royals Hall of Fame. I have no idea if he is honored in any way in Toronto.

1975 Topps, John Mayberry

#95 John Mayberry

I know. John Mayberry again? Yes and I apoligize. I know that I'm not mixing it up very well. The bad thing is that I have another Mayberry scheduled for tomorrow. But, it will be short and I will do another post after it to break up the monotany. I might do this a few times in the next couple of weeks since there are going to be some repeats.

Anyways, here is the second card that he signed for me last month. I actually bought this card a little over a year ago. I didn't have any Mayberrys and Royals Fanfest was coming up. So, about five days before the event, I decided to purchase one off of ebay. I figured that would be plenty of time to get it shipped to me since the dealer I bought it off of was in-state. Well, apperantly I did not read all of the information on the page because it turned out that the seller did not accept paypal (how does an ebay card dealer not except paypal?). So, I bought this card, sent a check, waited ten days for the check to clear, and then received the card two weeks after Fanfest. At least I was able to get it signed this year. Better late than never.

I love the '75 Topps. These cards were before my time, but I do have a few of them. This one is probably the one that is in the best shape for me. It's too bad Upper Deck couldn't do a better job with the OPC inserts this year. I guess we'll have to wait fifteen years and see how Topps does on their 2024 Topps Heritage.

1973 Topps, John Mayberry

#118 John Mayberry

I got this card signed last month when the Royals Caravan came to town. The Caravan came to Wal-Mart again, just like last year. I wonder if David Glass had anything to do with that. John was real nice and signed all three cards that I had. When he started to sign the second one, this guy came up to him and told him that they were only supposed to sign one card per person, but John just ignored him and continued signing the other two.

I got this card from Andy of 88 Score Rookie and Traded Set (and others). After he shut down his 78 Topps site, he offered up a bunch of older cards in trades. I asked him for some Royals. The next thing I know, there is a package in the mail one day with a bunch of '70s Royals cards. He just sent them to me. I eventually got him a couple of relic cards in return, but I thought that it was nice how he just sent them to me and then we worked out what I would send him.

This is the second John Mayberry card that I have posted on here. The first one was posted back in the early days of this blog.

1969 Topps, Frank Howard

#170 Frank Howard

Here is one of my more recent through the mail successes. I got this card returned in early February. It only took me about a week to get it back. As for the card itself, I got this card from Scott, a contributor to A Pack A Day. He checked out my want list and saw that I was needing a Frank Howard card. He emailed me that he had this card. He said that he got it to get signed, but he got in line too late and got cut off. I told him that I had the same experience a few years ago with Juan Marichal and asked him what he would like for it. He told me to just send him a self-addressed stamped envelope and it was mine. It was a good will offering for me missing out on Marichal since he met him in 1993. He even sent me a signed Sal Bando card, too. He said that he didn't want anything in return, but I sent him a few packs to rip for APAD.

When I had this card on my want list, I specified that I wanted him as a Senator on the card. It didn't matter if it was new or old, I just wanted to have a signed Senator card. The only one that I have now is of a Harrisburg Senator. I had an '84 Topps of Howard (Mets Manager) and I found some cheap cards of him on ebay as a Ranger, but I decided to hold off to see if the want list would pull through. And it did. Thanks Scott!

At the museum at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington, they have a Frank Howard Senators/Rangers jersey. It was a Senator jersey in 1971. When they moved to Texas, they pulled the lettering off and sewed on Rangers. But, you can still see where it said Senators. I think that these were only used for Spring Training. Here is a picture I took when I was there in 2006.

1992 Upper Deck, Bob Tewksbury

#512 Bob Tewksbury

This is the last 1992 card that I will be posting on here for a while. Of course, I got this card signed through the mail. I probably sent this card off after Bob was named to the All-Star team that year.

As you can see, 1992 might have been the height of my card collecting (and autograph collecting at the time). I think that I had a little over forty cards from that year signed, mostly through the mail. Four of the cards were given to me by Rod last year, one I got this past year TTM, and I got seven of them signed in person within the past year. So, that means that one year ago, I had thirty-three of these forty-five cards signed. Four of them were signed in person and one was bought. So I had twenty-eight cards signed TTM that year (or shortly after it). Not bad for a twelve year-old kid in the days before the internet.

Anyways, back to Bob Tewksbury. The one thing that I remember about him was his insanely low walk rates. If you look at best lifetime BB/9, a majority of the leaders in that catagory pitched before 1900. On that list, Bob ranks 22nd at 1.454. But, if you look at pitchers that pitched their entire career in the 20th century, Bob ranks 4th. Babe Adams (#18) pitched from 1906-1926 and posted a 1.292 BB/9. Dan Quisenberry (#20) posted a 1.397. Addie Joss (#21) pitched from 1902-1910 and he posted a 1.408 BB/9. Bob fell into line right behind him (and right in front of Cy Young). That is an impressive stat.

1992 Upper Deck, Keith Miller

#383 Keith Miller

I got this card signed in 1993 at the mall when the Royals Caravan came to town. This was the same Royals Caravan that included Steve Shifflett and Kevin Koslofski. Obviously, it was not the best caravan stop that I have ever been to.

Keith had just come over to the Royals from the Mets. He was part of the Kevin McReynolds and Gregg Jefferies (and Miller) for Bret Saberhagen and Bill Pecota deal. That trade didn't really work out for either team. Saberhagen was hurt a bunch and Pecota only played one year for the Mets. For the Royals, McReynolds only played two seasons in KC (91 RBI in that span), Jefferies had a very decent year before being dealt to St. Louis for Felix Jose in the off-season, and Miller had a decent first year in KC before being hurt for most of the next three seasons. During those next three seasons, he only played in 51 games. So, overall, it was a neutral trade for both parties, although Kansas City might have benifitted from it more for the first year.

According to Wikipedia, Keith Miller is now an agent. He represents David Wright, Brandon Inge, and Scott Rolen.

1992 Upper Deck, Ted Wood

#12 Ted Wood

I got this card signed through the mail after Ted got called up to the Majors in 1992. In 1988, Ted was a first round draft pick of the Giants out of the University of New Orleans. He represented team USA in the Olympics that summer and the next year he reported to AA. He had to repeat AA in 1990. But, in 1991, he was in AAA most of the summer and got a cup of coffee in the big leagues. It was the same routine for the next two years. He only made it into 47 games in the Majors and he had 109 at-bats. He spent two more years in AAA before calling it quits.

Here is another example of me picking the wrong card to send (too much black jersey on the card). But, since Ted was a "Star Rookie", I didn't want to send a card that I didn't have a double of. So it was this or nothing. As for me picking the wrong cards to get signed, it only took me about sixteen more years to figure this out. Now, I'm a pro (or so I like to think).