A Visit To Historic Kokernot Field

My son had told me about this sweet little baseball stadium in the town he was living in, Alpine, Texas.

So when my wife and I heard that he was having an art exhibit during the annual Alpine ArtWalk, we decided to surprise him and drive down for a visit. 

Our main goal was to visit him obviously, but I had hoped for the opportunity to see the stadium.

On a dead, ice covered Saturday morning I challenged the weather and headed over to the ballpark.

What a joy!

Also on the grounds is the H.L. Kokernot Jr Little League Field.

If you are ever in the vicinity of Alpine (down near Big Bend National Park) you have to go see this.

If interested, you can see more pictures and description at my other blog Small Ballfields.

Listians, Lend Me Your Ear!

And your eyes too so you can see the cards I've recently been snagging on Listia.

1988 Fleer Baseballs Hottest Stars #21

A little rough, but a Joyner card I needed for the collection.

Classic Joyner shot from the late 80's.

Picked up a 9 card lot of Angels cards but these were the only ones I needed.  

Actually I didn't need the Tim Salmon, but it was a good one to pick up for the trader box.

2008 TriStar Projections.

Snagged this because the Angels recently signed LeBlanc as a free agent.

Hopefully he'll get to pitch for the club, then he'll count towards the All-Time Angels Autograph collection.

2007 Bowman Chrome Draft X-fractor numbered 036/299.

Sweet card.

These are from another 9 card lot, but the only one's I needed.

Another Brandon Wood rookie.  Too bad he never really worked out, I was always a big fan.

Ivan Contreras bounced around in the Angels minors from 2006 to 2010.  In 2011 he went to the Blue Jays.

1992 Upper Deck Team MVP Hologram.

I thought this was a Dennys hologram when I first saw it.

I was unaware of this subset in the 1992 set.

Got these in two separate auctions from the same seller.

My only chrome Angels so far this year.

They're not as scuffed up as the scan makes them out to be.

Won this little Mike Trout card lot.

Both have turned out to be doubles, but you never know at the time.

Christian Yelich of the Marlins?

I can't recall why I bid on this.

I think it was more of an instance where I got it cheap, and saw maybe signs of greatness in him?

Mini Mike Napoli.

Still actively collecting him but I really haven't seen hardly any 2013 Napoli cards.

This is one of maybe two I have for this year.

Weird.

Another Mike trout insert I need for this year.

I dig his shadow on the wall and the stain on the green area behind him.

Good balance on this card.

2001 Topps Archives.

I have a bunch of these but I need a checklist for the archives Angels to see what else I need for this set. 

Check this out!

I won this lot of Mike Trout cards!

Again I didn't need all of them, but, I won this lot of Mike Trout cards!

Did you notice the difference between these two?

The top card is from the blister pack of American League All-Star cards and is identified by this foil logo.

I kept meaning to pick this pack up to get the card, fortunately now I can save the five bucks.

Mike Stanton and Terry Felton Returns

Mike Stanton signed two set cards, the 1991 Upper Deck and 1992 Stadium Club, as well as an additional 1990 Classic Pink in a quick 9 days from Magnolia, TX.

Thanks to LVs Autographs for posting a recent success with Mike Stanton.

Another set card, the 1983 Topps, came in from Terry Felton.

He signed these in 30 days from his home in Zachary, LA.

Patriot Fred Marion Return

1988 Topps, 1989 Pro Set, 1991 Upper Deck

Fred Marion was a Patriot for his whole career 1982-1991.

He made the Pro Bowl in 1985, after having an awesome season intercepting seven passes 

for 189 return yards, and helping lead the Patriots to their first Super Bowl.

Fred signed these cards in 67 days from his home in Orlando, FL.

Orlando Palmeiro Return

1993 Fleer Pro Cards, 1993 Fleer Excel, 1996 Collectors Choice.

Orlando Palmeiro was on the 2002 World Series winning Angels team.

He only had 4 at-bats as a pinch hitter, and hit a meaningless double in a game 5 loss, but he has the ring!

He signed these cards in 39 days from his home in Florida.

Completed Angels Team Set - 1995 Orange County Times

1995 Orange County Times Angels Team Set.

I think these were either a game day giveaway or a newspaper insert.

Nice 14 card set.

Each card measures about 4 X 5 1/2.

The backs are all the same with the 1995 Angels home schedule.

Here's a size comparison

The pose on Jim Edmonds card has to be one of my favorite shots of all time.

My sister recently brought me two of these sets she found in my parents stuff.

Carmelo Martinez Signed Someone Else's 1991 Upper Deck For MY Collection!

Card Buzz recently posted about getting some cards signed in person by former player Carmelo Martinez at a Cubs Instructional Camp where Martinez was an instructor.

I noticed a 1991 Upper Deck in the group and asked if it was available.  

It was; we traded.

 Carmelo Martinez does not sign through the mail, according to sportscollectors.net. 

In fact, of the 24 requests logged since 2002, only 1 success was had and that was in 2005.

Apparently he's much more willing to sign in person as he signed 8 cards for Card Buzz.

Thanks for the trade.

That's A Wrap!

Actually, that's a wrap-per.

I needed this wrapper for the 1991 Upper Deck set I'm collecting.

I try to include wrappers, maybe flattened boxes, advertisements and such for the sets that I'm collecting.

Makes it a little more interesting.

I picked this one up on Listia.

It's from the High Number series.

The pack was unopened and still had the cards inside, but there was nothing interesting in there to even show.

Didn't pull an insert, or one of the two cards I need to complete the set.

Hey, anyone got an extra 1983 Topps or 2006 Fleer Tradition wrapper available?

Completed Autographed Subsets - 1983 Topps and 1991 Upper Deck Checklists

The recent Don Denkinger autographs allowed me to complete these two subsets.

Again, I went for umpires autographs for the checklist cards.

I tried to get guys whose careers spanned 1983 - 1991 so I could knock out two sets at once.

1983 Topps

Don Denkinger

Drew Coble

Terry Tata

Ed Montague

Steve Palermo

Ken Kaiser

1991 Upper Deck

Most of the same guys:

Don Denkinger

Drew Coble

Terry Tata

Rick Reed

Ed Montague

Steve Palermo

Ken Kaiser

Jim Evans

I appreciated it when they added their career years and/or their number.

Now back to getting autographs on the rest of the cards in the sets.

Don Denkinger On The Checklists

Don Denkinger has this idea of signing checklist cards down pat.

Nice bold signatures, dates, umpire number all on the front of the card.

Don signed these cards in...well I'm not sure.

I think I sent them in July to his home in Iowa, although the postmark is from Phoenix.

Maybe his Winter home?

He signed a couple Nolan Ryan no-hitter cards for me back in May.

Those cards I had cataloged on sporstcollectors.net but I have no record on these cards.

I don't know what my reasoning was sending him two more cards and not using another umpire for my 1983 Topps and 1991 Upper Deck autographed sets.

Oh well.

Angels System TTM - Mitch Stetter

Stetter had been in the Brewers system since 2003 and appeared in 132 games with a 4.08 ERA over 5 seasons with the big club when the Angels signed him as a free agent in November 2012.

He spent 2013 with the Angels AAA team in Salt Lake.

I sent this card to the Angels Spring Training facility is Mesa in February of this year.

Just got it back after 267 days postmarked from Illinois.

The Starting Lineup For YOUR Anaheim Angels

Lucked out on snagging a handful of Angels Starting Lineup figures recently.  

The complete set of all Angels Starting Lineup cards is one of my top 5 collecting goals.  

These got me a bit closer to that goal.

I started out finding an auction on Listia for this 2000 loose Troy Glaus.

Best part was it came with the card.

Sharp design on this one.

Reminiscent of the 1986 Topps Mini League Leaders cards.

After I won the auction I asked the guy if he had any more, and sure enough he did.

 He said he had a Classic Double and a Freeze Frame.

We settled on a GIN, he posted them and notified me, and ten seconds later they were both mine.

1999 Classic Doubles From the Minors to the Majors.

Darin Erstad edition.

Two figures and two cards.

Nice.

1999 Freeze Frame One on One

Two figures in one action pose and one card.

Nomar Garciaparra and Jim Edmonds.

Still nice.

I'm not concerned with collecting the actual figures so much as the cards.  The cards are what I mostly want.  But when I have to buy the figure in order to get to the card so be it.  

Given that fact, these SLUs ended up like this:

Tore up.

I had to get past the figures to get to the cards right?

Lets check out the Classic Double.

Erstad in his minor league Lake Elsinore Storm uniform.

And in his Anaheim Angels uniform.

The card on the left is classic Starting Lineup style.

The one on the right...not much thought went into it.

The blurry Storm logo background is distracting, and Erstad is blurry as well.

Also, in the photo I would have liked to see more of the jersey front with the Storm team logo.

Lets move on to the Freeze Frame shall we?

Nomah and Edmonds mixing in up.

I'm calling Jim safe (I'm biased).

If Nomah didn't still have the ball in his hand I would assume he had already thrown it to first to complete the double play.

I'm also assuming he's coming down with the ball and hasn't touched the base yet.

Not a bad card.

The streaky background works pretty good in this case.

However, the picture makes no sense at all.

Anyhow, three cards closer to my collecting goal.

Check my want list if you have any available for trade.