2008 PCL Top Prospects, Sam Fuld

#5 Sam Fuld

In 2008, I found myself at a Round Rock Express game and I ended up picking up this Top Prospects set. My thinking was that I could probably get quite a few of them signed. It turns out that I could only get three signed in the eleven years I have had the set. I got one that day, one the next month, and one the next year. This is the one I got in 2009. Sam was playing for the Iowa Cubs still and I got him in Des Moines between games of a doubleheader.

Sam spent parts of eight seasons in the Majors with the Cubs, Rays, A's, and Twins. Over that time, he hit .227 with 12 home runs and 112 RBI. One of his best seasons was in 2014 and it was also his craziest. He started off the year with the A's, but got picked up off waivers by the Twins in late April. He stayed with Minnesota up to the trade deadline when he was traded back to the A's for Tommy Milone. So, the A's basically traded a decent pitcher for a player that they had designated for assignment three months earlier. You do not see that everyday.

Over the course of that 2014 campaign, Sam played in 113 games and had a career high 351 at-bats. He finished the season a .239 hitter with 4 homers and 36 RBI.

Sam hit just .197 for the A's in 2015 and retired after that season.

1988 Iowa Cubs Procards, Damon Berryhill

#537 Damon Berryhill

Here is the third and final card that I got signed by Damon Berryhill at Spring Training in 2014. Damon was the manager of the Dodgers AAA affiliate at the time and he was nice enough to stop and sign while moving between practice fields. I posted the first card of him later that season and it can be seen here. The second one was posted Sunday and that one can be seen here.

Damon Berryhill is a guy I remember from my younger days and I was surprised to see that he was usually a backup catcher. Backup catchers usually do not stick with me over the years. Damon could have stuck with me because of his unusual last name. But, I am willing to bet that I remember him because he played with the Cubs and so many Cubs games were on WGN when I was a kid.

Back then, I would watch a lot of Cubs games just because there was never anything good on in the middle of the afternoon. While I do not have cable or satellite TV these days, I highly doubt that the Cubs get airtime on WGN like they did in the '80s and '90s. I wouldn't even be surprised if they were not televised on that channel at all.

This is just the second card from this team set that I have got signed. Jim Wright signed one for me in 2010 and that card can be seen here. I would like to get the Mark Grace card signed for the set, but that has not happened yet.

1991 Line Drive AAA, David Rosario

#215 David Rosario

Here is another Spring Training autograph from this year. This one features the former minor leaguer David Rosario. David is pitching coach for the Cubs Midwest League team, the Kane County Cougars, and he signed two cards for me after the minor leaguers worked out the day I was there. The other card he signed was this same card. So, if anyone needs it, let me know.

David played most of his minor league career in the Cubs organization. He started off going 3-10 in his initial minor league season as mainly a starter. After that, he worked almost exclusively out of the bullpen and he gradually worked his way up the ladder. He reached AAA in his fifth season as a pro, but he never got the promotion to the Majors.

He pitched five seasons in AAA, with three different organizations, before retiring after the 1993 season. He made a brief comeback in 1998 in the Atlantic League and a briefer one again in 2001. My guess is that he was a pitching coach at the time and stepped in when the team was hurting for pitching. I saw the Wingnuts do that a couple of years ago with their pitching coach. If that was indeed the case, his Atlantic League teams fared much better with him than the Wingnuts did.

When I got this card signed, David had to think for a bit about how he should sign it. He obviously went the vertical route.

1988 Iowa Cubs Procards, Jim Wright

#542 Jim Wright

Here is a card that I got signed on the day of the '85 Classic. I got to the game early to attend a tailgate party. But when I found out that the party was on the opposite side of Arrowhead Stadium and that the players were still arriving for the game, I opted to stay by Kauffman to get some autographs. That is how I got this card signed. Jim is the bullpen coach for the Rockies and he was nice enough to sign for everyone that wanted his autograph. The only two cards that I had of him were minor league cards, so I was surprised to see so many people wanting his autograph. It looked like most of the people had his '82 Topps card that Beckett lists as an error because it has a picture of a different Jim Wright. But Jim signed those cards nonetheless.

Jim's Major League career only lasted parts of two seasons with the Royals in 1981 and 1982. He was a pitcher and he has a career line of 2-3 with a 4.04 ERA and 36 strikeouts in 75.2 innings of work.

I've had this Iowa Cubs teamset for almost twenty years and I had forgot about it until I found it in a binder last year. Some notable names in the set include Mark Grace and Bob Tewksbury.

I have no idea who the I-Cubs could be honoring with the black armband. Any ideas?

I wonder what Fleer thought about this set.

The Iowa Cubs are still around today and they are still the AAA affiliate of the Chicago Cubs. They play in the same ballpark that this photo was taken in, but you couldn't tell if you went there today because of massive renovations.