1991 Line Drive AA, Tom Carcione

#281 Tom Carcione

Here is a card that I got this past summer while I was in Lincoln, Nebraska. It was on our College World Series trip. When we make the trip, we usually camp out at a small state lake in Iowa. But, the state park was changed to a day use only park with no camping. When I found that out, I looked into another state park in Nebraska. But, with the chance of severe thunderstorms for the weekend, we opted to stay in a hotel in Lincoln. It is a little out of they way, but is so much cheaper than Omaha during the series.

So, the night we got to Lincoln, we went to a Lincoln Saltdogs game (American Association). I had cards of two of their coaches to get signed and got them both before the game started. We only stayed four or five innings. True to the weather report, it rained cats and dogs for almost an hour. Luckily, we made it out of the park before it came and sat out the storm at Blue Blood Brewery.

Tom played five seasons in the A's minor league system, reaching AA in parts of three of those seasons. For his affiliated career, Tom was a .229 hitter with 19 home runs and 151 RBI.

Tom is the Saltdogs hitting coach.

1989 Procards, Thomas Howard

#8 Thomas Howard

Here is another Thomas Howard card that was given to me by Rod, of Padrographs. He gave me a different signed card some time back and that card can be seen here.

For some reason, when I did my scans of some of the cards Rod sent me, the settings on my scanner were all jacked up. By the time I realized it, I had put all of the cards away and I didn't feel like getting them back out for another scan. So that is why some of my recent scans might have looked a little different. Most of them were OK, but this one is by far the worst. I know that you can barely see the signature on there. But, trust me, it is there and it is a much shorter version of the first Howard autograph I posted.

Thomas is playing for the Las Vegas Stars on this card and this is the first Stars card that I have posted. There is a team still playing in Vegas, but they are no longer affiliated with the Padres and they are not called the Stars anymore. They are now called the 51s and they are a part of the Blue Jays organization. How that came to be (Toronto-Las Vegas), I have no idea.

I do like how Procards added the "PCL Champions" text below the Las Vegas logo.