1998 Best, Russ Ortiz

NN Russ Ortiz

Check out this early Russ Ortiz signature card. It is so early in his career, in fact, that he was still going by his given name of Russell. That may be why I was able buy this card for a mere seventy-five cents. At least that is what I thought until I got it and noticed it had a small wrinkle in it. But, for the price, I don't really care.

Russ pitched in the Majors for parts of twelve seasons with the Giants, Braves, Diamondbacks, Orioles, Astros, and Dodgers. He was mostly a starter and spent half of his big league seasons with the Giants. He was a 20 game winner once and made his lone All Star team that season. For his career, Russ was 113-89 with a 4.51 ERA and 1,192 strikeouts.

Russ pitched in one World Series for the 2002 Giants. After a solid start in the NLDS, where he was 2-0 with a 2.19 ERA, Russ started to have some issues in the second round. In the NLCS, he was 0-0 in one start with a 7.71 ERA. He got two more starts in the World Series and again had no decisions and a 10.13 ERA.

His poor postseason performance might have been the main reason why the Giants shipped him off to Atlanta during the off-season for Damian Moss and Merkin Valdez. The Braves got the better end of that deal as Russ had his All Star season in Atlanta in 2003. His postseason struggles continued, though, as he was 1-1 with a 7.24 ERA in three starts over two Division Series.

The Braves let him walk after the 2004 season and Russ's career as a journeyman began.

1997 Stadium Club, Jeff Montgomery

#135 Jeff Montgomery

At what point is too many autographs from one person a bad thing? From a collector's standpoint, I don't see it as a problem. If you have every card that was ever made of a player and they are all signed, that would be a neat collection. But, for the purpose of this blog, I think four autographs are too many. I can usually spread out enough material for three posts on one player. I might be able to do four if I have an interesting tale of how I got one of the signatures. For some guys that never even made it to the Majors, though, two can be too many. I guess it just depends of the guy.

The point of all of that rambling is that I have posted too many cards of Jeff Montgomery on here. Jeff is a really nice guy and he is at Royals Fanfest nearly every year. In fact, Fanfest is where this card was signed nearly eleven months ago. But, by my best estimate, this is the ninth card of Jeff that I have posted on here. And I am out of things to write about him.

So, here are all of the Jeff Montgomery cards that I have ever posted. I am sure that I will have some more after Fanfest next month.

1997 Score, Jim Eisenreich

#HR452 Jim Eisenreich

Here is one of my latest Jim Eisenreich signatures. And by latest, I mean that I picked it up at Fanfest about ten months ago. Jim is a regular at Fanfest and I have a few cards signed by him, mostly Royals. At this last Fanfest, my goal was to get some non-Royal cards signed. All that I had prior to that was a Phillies card signed. Jim also played for the Twins, Marlins, and Dodgers and, thanks to COMC, I was able to find a card of him with each team and get it signed. Here is the Marlins card I got.

Jim played for the Marlins for about a season and a half. He spent time in the outfield and at first for them, as well as pinch hitting. He hit .275 as a Marlin with 3 home runs and 41 RBI. He was on their championship team in 1997 and was 4-8 in the World Series with a home run and three RBI.

That was Jim's second and final trip to the fall classic, with his first being with the Phils in 1993. Over the two series, he hit .294 with two home runs and 10 RBI.

This card has a Hobby Reserve stamp on it. I have no idea what that means. I am not sure if these things were randomly inserted into hobby packs or if there were entire packs devoted to this product.

1997 Fleer, Jaime Bluma

#111 Jaime Bluma

This is the third and final Jaime Bluma card that I got signed at Fanfest earlier this year.

In my last Bluma post, I talked about his successful debut with the Royals in 1996 (5 saves, 3.60 ERA). Unfortunately, that was the end to Jaime's Major League career. He ended up missing all of the 1997 season to an arm injury and he was never able to come back from it. He continued to pitch in the Royals system through 2000, but he never had the velocity or command that he had before the injury.

I was graduating high school in 1997 and baseball cards were the last thing on my mind. Because of that, I never saw these cards until I started blogging. That is too bad as I love this set. This is the perfect card for autographs. While there is a bit of gold foil on the card, there is no gloss whatsoever. In fact, these cards are the exact opposite of glossy. They have such a matte finish that they kind of feel a little fuzzy. That fuzzy matte finish even absorbs the signature a bit so that the sig looks matte, too.

They are absolutely perfect and I wish I had more of them. It is too bad this is the only one that I have signed.

1997 Bowman, Ben Davis

#193 Ben Davis

A few years back, Rod, from Padrographs, sent me a package of Royals and autos. This was one of the cards that he sent, but it somehow got skipped over the last time I did a recap. So, three years later, here it is.

A few years before that, in the early days of this blog, Rod sent me a package of over one hundred Padrographs. In that package was a Ben Davis card and that post can be seen here.

I posted that card in early 2010 while Ben was trying to re-invent himself as a pitcher. He had pitched in the Atlantic League in 2008 and in the Florida State League in 2009 with the Reds. He only appeared in 9 games that season, but he did well- 0-1 with 4 saves and a 3.09 ERA. I wondered then if his career was through or if he was still trying to make it as a pitcher. It turns out he gave it one more go.

In 2010, he was back in the Atlantic League with the Camden Riversharks. He appeared in 28 games, starting 23, and went 5-11 with a 4.61 ERA. He logged 136.2 innings and allowed 164 hits while walking 36 and striking out 84. That was Ben's final season playing baseball.

1997 Bowman, Jamie Bluma

#98 Jamie Bluma

Here is the second card that Jamie Bluma signed for me at Fanfest this past winter. Unlike the last card that had four players on it, this one features Jamie by himself and it came out looking really good. Jamie has a nice looking signature and it shows on this card. The last card had too much black on it and the lack of room really scrunched the signature.

Jamie was drafted in the third round of the 1994 draft by the Royals out of Wichita State. He had a fantastic debut season that year by posting a 6-1 record with 14 saves and a 0.98 ERA over two different stops in A ball. He was promoted to AA the following season, and was 4-3 with 22 saves and a 3.09 ERA, before getting a brief bump to AAA to finish the year. He then started the '96 season in AAA and was 1-2 with 25 saves and a 3.12 ERA before getting the call to Kansas City.

He got off to a rough start with the Royals, becoming just the second pitcher in franchise history to allow a home run to the first batter they faced. That first batter just happened to be current Royals TV analyst Rex Hudler. But, he settled down after that and posted some decent numbers that season. He was 0-0 with 5 saves and a 3.60 ERA with 14 strikeouts over 20 innings. That is not too shabby for a 5'11" rookie reliever.

1996 Topps, Jamie Bluma

#431 Jamie Bluma

Here is the first of three Jamie Bluma cards that were signed for me at Royals Fanfest earlier this year. These three are going to be coming nearly back-to-back-to-back, so it is going to ba a lot of Jamie Bluma over the next week. If it wasn't for another card breaking up the Bluma's, I would probably have a Jamie Bluma day like I did with Bob Apodaca a few years back.

Whenever I have a card signed, and it has other players on it, I always like to try to get the other players to sign it to complete the card. But, the more guys on the card, the harder it is. I'm have a handful of cards signed by two players and one card each signed by three and four. I would think that this card would be a difficult card to complete. That is based on the fact that it still needs three more signatures and that I have never heard of the two players on the right.

It turns out that, out of the four pitchers on the card, only Brandon Reed never made it to the majors. The other three were in the big league for a combined 149 appearances with Steve Montgomery leading the way with 72.

Nonetheless, it is difficult to get a card signed by four guys. In order to complete this card, I would have to find the addresses for the three other guys and then mail this card out three times and hope it comes back each time. That is a lot to ask for. The one card I have that has four signatures on it I was lucky to get. I sent it to one of the guys and he had the other three sign it, too. It was pretty cool and very lucky.