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Blog Bat Around: All Autograph Angels Team

This Blog Bat Around came from Zippy who offers up a great suggestion in highlighting your favorite all-autograph team, from your collection.

I'm an Angels collector, so my team will be only Angels players.

I'm taking a slightly different approach by starting at the very top, the owner:

It's only right to start this with the founder of Angels baseball, Gene Autry.

And if your gonna have a team, you gotta have a Manager to lead them:

Bill Rigney was the Angels first manager.

He didn't have many winning seasons, but I believe he was all heart.

Every good manager needs a great Bench Coach:

Jimmy Reese, beloved by any Angels fan.

 Getting into the Starting Nine, I went more with players I liked the most, not necessarily the best the Angels ever had.

1. Starting Pitcher

Honorable Mention: Dean Chance, Frank Tanana, Jim Abbott, Chuck Finley, Jared Weaver.

2. Catcher

Honorable Mention: Buck Rodgers, Tom Egan, Brian Downing, Bob Boone, Lance Parrish.

3. First Base

Honorable Mention: Rod Carew, Lee Stevens, Mo Vaughn, Albert Pujols.

 4. Second Base

Honorable Mention: Bobby Knoop, Dickie Thon, Mark McLemore, Adam Kennedy, Howie Kendrick.

 5. Third Base

Honorable Mention: Carney Lansford, Doug DeCinces, Gary Gaetti.

 6. Shortstop

Honorable Mention: Dick Schofield, David Eckstein, Erik Aybar.

 7. Left Field

 8. Center Field

9. Right Field

I think Vladdy would have taken one of those spots, but believe it or not, I dont have his autograph!

Outfield Honorable Mention: Leon Wagner, Mickey Rivers, Lee Thomas, Devon White, Gary Pettis, Dave Winfield, Jim Edmonds, Darin Erstad, Chone Figgins, Torii Hunter, Vladimir Guerrero.

 Designated Hitter

I had too many outfielders that I really liked, so I put Salmon in the DH spot.

Honorable Mention: Don Baylor, Reggie Jackson, Chili Davis.

 Relief Pitcher 1

Bob Lee was lights out for the Halos in the early sixties.

 Relief Pitcher 2

The Angels dominating closer in the 80's-90's.

Honorable Mention: Mike Witt, Scot Shields, Francisco Rodriguez.

Closer

One of my all-time favorites to see coming into a game.

 And you can't have a game without an announcer:

The Best Ever.

Good idea Zippy.

I Always Look Inside The Cover

Topps new sticker book for 2018.

I've known for several years now to check inside the cover because, as advertised, Topps includes a small sheet of stickers if you purchase the album. So let's look inside.

There's the sheet of stickers, stuck to the first page in the album, the Angels.

Nice sheet this year, with some big stars. Most importantly, Mike Trout is included on the sheet. That's why I bought the album.

If I recall, I had no interest in last years sheet as there were no Angels featured, even though Trout was the album cover boy.

The backs only vary in the sticker number.

I guess Topps figured the backs just get thrown away so why go to the effort of having any player information.

Good design on the sticker, typical of the recent sticker designs.

I think this design would have been nice for a regular issue card.

The Angels page, as well as all the other team pages, have the same generic stadium background.

One border has the team name and a popular player.

Pretty boring. But it gets covered up with stickers so I suppose it doesn't matter.

Other years were cool though because I'd keep two Angels pages: the stickered one and a non-stickered which usually had a large Mike Trout in the background.

1995 Skybox E-Motion Blog Shout Out

Still going on the other blog of mine: 1995 Skybox E-Motion, after a very slack two years, I'm trying to pick up steam again, determined to stay more consistent with at least 2-3 posts a week (an everyday post is way too much for me to handle). About 50 base cards left and the inserts, about 45 of them.

PRACTICED : adjective  prac·ticed  \ ˈprak-təst \
good at doing something because you have done it many times.

So, if you want to follow another set blog, add me to your blog roll, and let's get this thing wrapped up this year!

No Hiding From The Expansion Draft

A Trade Post From Remember The Astrodome.

I love this card. I love it because Junior Felix is obviously playing for the Angels on it, but the banner at the bottom indicates he was selected by the Marlins in the Expansion Draft.

So it begs the question: Angels or Marlins card?

Even the back shows him as an Angel. And look at the "Contract Status" line at the bottom, "1 yr. thru '93". THRU. This is 1993 Donruss card, that means he's still part of the Angels!

Lots of other goodies in the package.

Game cards for the collections.

I might include the 1993 Triple Play Griffey with the Angels team set since it has their logo on it.

1994 CC You Crash The Game

1999 UD MVP #2

At first I thought Marc had sent two. The silver signature is hard to pick up on the second card.

1991 ProCards

Minor league cards are some of the best. I had never noticed the crossed American/Canadian flags on the Trappers jerseys before.

2014 Topps sampling of the mind-blowing number of parallels.

The yellow is probably my favorite.

Checklists are always appreciated.

And all the rest.

Thanks Marc.

Check Please!

Trade Post From Baseball Cards Come To Life!

Bo sent over two bags full of baseball checklists, I picked out my favorites.

I don't know about you, but when I get a checklist I usually do a quick scan of the names looking for any unknown typos. The older Topps checklists were notorious for typos. I also look to see any names of players I don't recognize. Just an odd fun-fact about me.

Ah, I forget that even the mini sets have mini checklist cards! I dig miniatures, I guess that's why I collected Hot Wheels for so many years and still build model kits.

Some really sweet cards in there Bo, thanks.

Trout 6-Card GQ Hangar Pack

Same as the retail pack but the wrapper is longer with a punch-hole at the top.

Most boring pack ever.

The Day Ohtani Came To Town

So, you’ve all heard about the Angels two-way sensation Shohei Ohtani. I won’t bore you repeating it. When the Rangers released their 2018 schedule I checked to see when the Angels were coming to town, and put those dates on the calendar, I wanted to catch Ohtani in person, and SCORE him in my scorebook (because to me, that’s the only valid proof that I saw a certain player in person, but that’s a whole nother story).

Ideally, I had hoped to see him pitch, but he had started Sunday in Oakland, and this series was only 3 games starting on Monday. I’d have to settle for him DHing. I knew that he usually sat out the day after he pitched (Monday) so I eagerly awaiting the release of the lineup for Tuesday…no Ohtani. Oh man (no pun intended), I hope he starts on Wednesday, I don’t want to have to wait until August the next time the Angels come to town... finally at about 3PM I saw he was penciled in at DH, so I headed out to get my ticket.

I walked around the stadium prior to gates opening, went in and hiked up to the upper deck observation to see the construction of their new indoor stadium, and caught some BP.

New stadium is pretty much just a hole so far.

I was glad to be able to catch the Angels BP.

 The Rangers have an Autograph Wednesday several times a season, and this happened to be one of those Wednesdays, so I was able to pick up a few autographs of players/coaches signing on the concourse:

The Rangers don't announce who'll be signing, you find out when you get there, so I pulled a small stack of Rangers to take with me. Fortunately I had this Drew Robinson card.

The team provides these photo cards if you don't have anything else for them to sign.

Game ticket with Rua autograph.

(A good detective would see that I didn't sit in my assigned seat)

Game Action: Glad I had my camera ready, I caught Ohtani's RBI single in the first, and some action when he moved over to second.

He went on to go 1-3 with a walk and an RBI. I was a happy camper with that.

Some Game Notes:
* MLB Debut for Angels starter Jaime Barria (Angels #7 Prospect), he went 5 and ended up with the win.
* Ohtani was picked off at first, it was overturned on challenge, but then Ohtani got picked off again.
* Elvis Andrus was hit by a Keynan Middleton fastball that fractured his elbow.