1993 Topps, Rusty Meacham

#321 Rusty Meacham

Sorry about the late post tonight, but I have been battling some food poisoning all day. I had to call into work, but at least I was able to see parts of the Royals game today when I was awake.

This is the third and final Rusty Meacham card that I got signed at a Staten Island Yankees game last year. Rusty was the pitching coach for the Vermont Lake Monsters then. He is not with them now and I am not sure what he is doing. But, you can see the first card of him that I posted here and the second card here.

While I do not really remember him as a player, Royals Retrospective has a good little piece about him. By their count, Rusty is the 98th best player in Royals franchise history. I'm not sure if that is good for him or bad for the Royals or somewhere in between.

The last two cards have both been the gold insert cards from the set. I probably have about twelve from this set and I just happened to get these two signed within a month of each other.

Speaking of the Staten Island Yankees, here are a couple of pictures of their beautiful ballpark that I took last year. It is deffinintely a uniquie looking ballpark with a breath-taking view, a view that was even better prior to 9/11.

1993 Topps, Pete Incaviglia

#7 Pete Incaviglia

Here is the second card that I got signed by Pete before game one of the American Associations championship last year. Pete is the manager of the Grand Prairie AirHogs. The first card, his '87 Topps rookie card, can be seen here.

Speaking of that last card, when I first got my site tracker working on this blog, I noticed that I was getting a rather large amount of traffic directed straight to that card. Being new to analytics, it took a few weeks to figure out most of the stats they tracked (I still don't know how utilize all of the stuff on there). Eventually, I figured out that I was getting traffic directly from the AirHogs webpage. I thought that that was odd, so I headed over to it to investigate. After a short search, I found what I was looking for. They had a news article called "AriHogs in Cyberspace". Someone would look around the web for stories about different 'Hogs players, probably just to kill some time during the off-season. At the very bottom of the page was a reference to my blog. It was only a one line shout out, but it did have a link to my blog and to the Inky rookie card. I thought that was pretty cool. If you go to the bottom of this page, you can see what I am talking about.

Found some '09 Goudey

I stopped by the card shop to get some sheets and was surprised to find some '09 Goudey. The first thing I noticed was the price. They were $5 a pack with 8 cards per pack. Boxes were $75 dollars for 18 packs. To me, that seemed a little steep when compared to Topps Heritage. Maybe that is just me, though. But according to the box, there is one game-used card and one autograph per box, on average.

I ended up getting five packs of the stuff. No autograph or relic for me today. Overall, I think that the design is bland. I deffinitely like last years better. Here are nine ramdomly selected cards that I got.



I also got two minis. The Aviles card was the only Royals that I got in the packs. I wish that I would have had it yesterday so I could have got it signed. Both of these are blue backs.



I also got two Sports Royalty cards. I'm guessing that these are short prints. The Bird card uses the exact same photo that was used in last years set. Nice work UD.



Here are the two big head cards (that's what I call them at least) that I got. Nothing too special there, although I do like the little devil on Pedroia's card.



I only got one base card of a retired player and it is of Dave Concepcion. I think that it is the ugliest card that I got today. There just isn't any depth to his face.




I think that this is the first 2009 card of Ken Griffey as a Mariner, part 2. What I don't understand is why they put Griffey with his new team, but not Trevor Hoffman.



The last thing I have to show is a 4-in 1. That is what it is called on the back. I'm not sure how these things go as far as SPs or whatnot. I only got one of them, but the card shop owner pulled two out of one pack. Check out how much more detail is put into Jeter's face compared to Yogi's or Concepcion's.



That's it. The highlight for me was the Aviles card that I got in the last pack. I might go pick up some more of these tomorrow.

Also, when I got home from the card shop, I had this card waiting for me in the mailbox.



This card and a thank you note were sent to me after I sent Sean about a dozen old wax packs. I figured that he would enjoy opeing some ftuff that was older than he was. Sean's father, Paul, runs Wrigley Wax and when Sean broke his arm, Paul set out to make him feel better by asking other people to send Sean some cards. He apparently gets jealous of his dad always getting cool cards in the mail and Paul thought that this might cheer him up. If you haven't already, I'm sure that Sean wouldn't mind some more cards. Thanks for this one Sean!

1993 Ted Williams, Al Dark

#52 Al Dark

I got this card signed through the mail this past December. When I got it, two things stood out to me. The first thing is that Al tried to sign the card with a ballpoint pen. You can see that on the scan pretty easily by his A. The second thing I noticed is his signature. Al is creeping up on 90 years old and it looks like he was having a little bit of difficulty signing this card. It is very cool that he still signs through the mail at his age.

Al was a three time All-Star in the early '50s with the New York Giants. After his playing days, he went on to manage four different clubs (with two stints with the A's) and won one World Series title with the A's in 1974.

As for this Ted Williams set, I don't have too many of these cards. The only place that I ever found them was at a card show in '93. Most of the cards were of older players and they even included some Negro League cards, retired players in their minor league uniforms, and cards of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. I think that they might have even included some cards of Juan Gonzalez and Frank Thomas.

I like the design of the card. It reminds me of 1992 Studio, but without a border and with a better picture than the posed senior portrait.

1993 Ted Williams, Sal Bando

#42 Sal Bando

This card was a gift to me, I guess you could say. Back when I was basically given the '69 Topps Frank Howard card, this card was thrown in. I had the Howard card on my want list and Scott, from A Pack A Day, filled that void for me. I sent him a self-addressed stamped envelope and he sent the card to me. When I got the card back, I noticed a weird inscription under his return address. It said "You stole my A's". I had no idea what that meant until I opened the envelope and saw this card. Scott is from Philly and I live in Kansas and am a Royals fan. Once I put two and two together, I thought that it was pretty funny. Thanks, again, Scott.

Speaking of funny, I have had kind of a funny day. I woke up early and drove for three hours to Kansas City for the Royals game. I got there just before noon and set up shop by the Royals parking lot. When I got there, it was cool and cloudy, just like the weather report predicted. Then, it started to mist and then rain (not in the forecast). Then it stopped. I got a couple of Royals to sign for me while it was dry. Then it started misting again and that continued for the next two hours. By the time that I had had enough, I was up to 21 signed cards and I was cold and wet. So rather than go get something to eat and get ready for BP (which I was pretty sure they would not be having), I got in my car and drove the three hours back home. What a day. Only a couple of the cards smeared because of the persipitation. After the best pitcher in baseball (right now) signed my three cards, I figured that I had had a good enough day.

1993 Studio, Todd Hundley

#206 Todd Hundley

I got this card signed through the mail in the early or mid '90s. I probably got it before 1996, the year Todd set the catchers home run mark when he hit 41. For some reason, I thought that Mike Piazza broke that record. Come to find out, the most Mike ever hit was 40. It was Javy Lopez that broke the recod when he hit 43 in 2003. What was I thinking?

It is kind of funny that Mike Piazza replaced Todd in New York and Todd ended up replacing Mike in Los Angeles. It is also funny to see that Charles Johnson was in the package to LA in the Piazza trade. After that season, Johnson was traded to the Mets for Todd. The Mets then flipped him to the Orioles for Armando Benitez. I'm sure that Johnson wasn't feeling too popular that year.

1993 Studio, Charlie Hough

#205 Charlie Hough

Here is the third and final Charlie Hough card that I got signed through the mail last December. He signed three cards for me- a Dodger card, a Ranger card, and this Marlins card. Just like Brian at 30-year Old Cardboard, I had to get a Marlins card signed. Charlie was the starting pitcher in the very first Marlins game.

I will always remember the first Marlins game. I missed most of it because I had school and I don't even know if Hough was still in the game when I got home. But, I was pretty excited because they were playing the Dodgers. The fans looked like they were having a great time and the most memorable part of the game was when they were doing their Darryl chant for Darryl Strawberry.

As for this card, I really liked this Studio set. It was a big step up from the previous sets. They got rid of the posed senior photo shots and used more candid photos. They used jerseys and hats for the background, which really brightened this set up. With no borders and only a foil autograph and logo on the front, this set came out looking really nice. I wish I had more than two of them signed.