1995 Upper Deck Minors, Stoney Briggs

#146 Stoney Briggs

Here is a card that Rod sent me from the '95 Upper Deck Minors set. I liked this set a bunch when it came out, but for some reason or another, I didn't get too many packs of it. Because of that, this is my first signed card from the set.

Stoney was drafted by the Blue Jays in the eighth round of the 1991 draft. He played in the Jays system for two years before being moved to the Padres. He played in the Padres system for five years and he made it up to AAA in 1997. He hit .269 with 11 home runs in what would be his only real look at AAA.

After that season, Stoney started bouncing around a bit. He spent most of 1998 in the Mexican League and the Atlantic League, as well as two games in the Pacific Coast League. He played in South Korea in 1999 before heading back stateside the following year to play some AA ball for Detroit. He played for Baltimore's AA team in 2001 and then he seems to have sat out the 2002 season. He resurfaced in 2003 and he spent his last two seasons playing for the Camden Riversharks of the Atlantic League.

It is hard to tell which minor league team Stoney is representing on this card because of the All Star game t-shirt. But, it looks like the shirt says California League, so I am guessing that he was with the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes at the time. I wish it would say that on the front of the card.

I like how Stoney crosses his "t" before he even signs it.

1994 Signature Rookies, Robbie Beckett

#23 Robbie Beckett

Like yesterday, this post is of a Padrograph that I posted about two years ago. The very first package of Padrographs arrived with 150+ different signed Padre cards and one of them was a 1991 Score card of Robbie. I didn't have much to say about Robbie then, so I will look into him a little more this post.

Robbie was drafted out of high school in the first round of the 1990 draft. By '94, Robbie had advanced up to AAA and it wasn't pretty. He posted an 11.79 ERA in 23 relief appearances. He ended up spending all of '95 at the AA level.

In 1996, he was picked up on waivers by the Marlins coming out of Srping Training.He pitched for their AA team for less than a month before getting claimed by the Rockies. He pitched for the AA and AAA teams for the remainder of the season and then got a September call-up. He made his Major League debut on September 12th of that season against the Braves and he pitched a scoreless inning while recording his first Major League strikeout. The victim of the K just happened to be Chipper Jones. Robbie finished that month with 13.50 ERA in 5.1 innings of work. It obviously went downhill from his debut.

Robbie pitched in AAA for most of the '97 season, but he did get another call-up in September. That month, he only got into two games and he posted an ERA of 5.40 in 1.2 innings of work. He went on to play in the minors for three more seasons, but he never reached the Major League again.

For his career, Robbie was 0-0 with an 11.57 ERA with 10 walks and 9 strikeouts. He gave up 7 hits and 3 of them went for home runs.

All in all, this is an interesting card. It is kind of weird how the photo is cropped and doesn't take up all of the card. It is also strange that it points out that Robbie is a first round draft pick even though that happened four years before the card was made. I also like how Signature Rookies announces that there are only 45,000 of these cards out there. For the record, Robbie didn't sign 45,000 cards. Rod got this card signed some other way. It didn't come out of a pack signed.

Robbie is playing for the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes in this card. It appears that the smog was nice and thick on the day this photo was taken, just like it was when I was at a Quakes game in 2008.