1995 Old Judge, Kym Ashworth

#2 Kym Ashworth

To commemorate the beginning of the American League Championship Series, here is a card of Kym Ashworth. What does Kym have to do with the ALCS you ask? Absolutely nothing. But, this card was given to me by Ryan, from The Great Orioles Autograph Project. The Oriole are, of course, hosting the Royals tonight for game one, so there is the tie-in.

Speaking of the start of the ALCS, the Royals Playoff Contest is officially closed. Thanks to everyone that entered and good luck. But, most importantly, go Royals!!

As for Kym, he was an Australian that was signed by the Dodgers at a young age. He made his professional debut with the Great Falls Dodgers in 1993 at the tender age of fifteen. Yikes! That has got to be quite an adjustment for a fifteen year-old to come halfway around the world to play a professional sport. At least he already spoke English. He made eleven starts that summer and went 3-3 with a 2.44 ERA with 52 strikeouts to 14 walks.

He was bumped up to the California League the next season and went 6-7 with a 3.95 ERA and 109 strikeouts. He even made one start at the AA level as a seventeen year-old. He took the loss in that game, but did strike out six with no walks.

He was in the Florida State League for the '95 season and was 7-4 with a 3.52 ERA and 97 strikeouts. Then he ended up missing all of the '96 season to injury and made just thirteen appearances in '97. He played one more season in the Tigers organization before calling it quits are the age of twenty-one.

This is the second card from this set that I have and both of them are Dodger players. I think it is kind of funny that the two guys got different D's airbrushed on their hats. Here is a link to the first one.

1996 Old Judge, Chad Renfroe

#28 Chad Renfroe

Here is another card that was sent to me by Rod, of Padrographs. It's another Signature Rookies release of a guy that never made it to the Majors. In fact, in four seasons of pro ball, Chad never made it to the AA level. He spent the whole time with rookie and various A teams. But, at least he is immortalized in this Old Judge set.

Does anyone remember buying any of these Old Judge cards? I don't recall ever seeing packs of them and I wondered if they were an insert or a stand alone brand. I only have one other SR Old Judge card and it was given to me, too. If it wasn't for those two cards, I doubt that I would have even known that the Old Judges existed.

I always chuckle to myself whenever I see one of these Signature Rookies cards and the number of these cards that they had the players sign. 6000? I couldn't imagine signing 6000 of these. My signature would probably change three or four throughout the course of the signing. It would be interesting to see how different the signature is on card 1 compared to card 6000.

1995 Old Judge, Karim Garcia

#14 Karim Garcia

This card was given to me as a Christmas gift from my dad when I was in high school. Why he picked this particular card is beyond me. I liked the Dodgers at the time, so I am sure that the local card shop owner talked-up this card to my dad. Either way, it is still a cool card to have. I wish I still got random autographs for Christmas.

Karim had a ten year Major League career with seven different teams. The most games he ever played in one season was 113. That was in 1998 with the exspansion Diamondbacks. After the 1999 season, he was pretty much up and down from AAA to the Majors for the rest of career. He might best be described as a AAAA player. He dominated AAA (.288 average, 205 home runs), but not the Major Leagues (.241 avg, 66 HR).

As for this set, I know nothing about it. This is the only card that I have from it. All I know is that it was made by Signature Rookies and the card is small (slightly bigger than an A&G mini). I have no idea if these cards made up their own set or of they were inserts in another set.