Maasterful New Signed Baseball! (...or not)

Hey guys, Drew back here! It was an epic weekend in sports, even despite a relatively lackluster "Fight of the Century" between Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao. I spent the weekend working and preparing for finals and school projects, but I will be done with school by May 13th, so I'm excited for that! Anyway, my dad brought me home a gift from one of his work friends last week, and it completely caught me off guard.

The surprise was a Kevin Maas signed baseball, and was from my dad's friend John T.; who has actually given me some neat baseball stuff before! I've recently become a fan of signed baseballs, and I specifically like to collect Hall of Famers and former Yankees, and Maas fulfills the latter. Maas was supposedly going to be the next Don Mattingly, and looked the part when he was first called up, smashing 10 home runs in his first 72 professional at bats. He was also made famous by a group of women in the right field bleachers (where a majority of his home runs were hit) at Yankee Stadium who would take their tops off and jump up and down whenever he would hit home runs. 

Maas would become one of the better "One Hit Wonders" in Yankees history, along with Shelley Duncan and Aaron Small in recent years. He played for the Twins in 1995 before moving on to Japan's Central League and eventually retiring. 

*UPDATE: I can't believe I didn't catch this before, but the ball is actually signed by Kerry Wood, as reader Jackson Traylor of Jackson's Autographs brought to my attention. This makes much more sense, and I'm curious to hear how that got lost in translation over time. Wood was an integral part of the 2010 Yankees team when he was traded midseason to New York, and I almost added him to my pitching staff when constructing my All Time Watched Yankees team I created and wrote about in March. I even own an autograph of Kerry's on a card I got from my friend Ethan's collection a few years ago, and still didn't catch on. Wood was a former Rookie of the Year was about as much promise as anyone in history, and although he never quite reached that potential he will still always be known for what some have considered the greatest pitching performance of all time. On April 12th of his 1998 rookie season, Wood struck out 20 batters, tied for the most in history for a single game. 

Well, I hope you all enjoyed learning about Kevin Maas, but this was my mistake for not noticing before. Thanks for pointing that out Jackson, and I'll be sure to make sure of these things before I post them in the future. Chalk it up as an error on the stat sheet for the writer.*

Thank you so much for the piece of history, John! Whether it's signed by Kevin Maas, Kerry Wood, or John Kerry, I greatly appreciate the kind gesture!

See Ya!

A Reminder of Why I Love My Hobby

Hey everyone, Drew back here. Sometimes, I wish I enjoyed this hobby with the same passion that I had in the beginning of my collecting "career". I rarely buy packs anymore because I simply lost faith in spending ridiculous amounts of hard earned dollars on useless cards. However, it's really nice to go back once in a while and recollect what it was like to be a 10 year old collector. I was recently given that opportunity by my good friend Ethan, who fell into and out of the hobby during our elementary school years. Ethan asked me if I wanted his entire card collection, because he knew I'd still be interested and he had no idea what to do with them. I gladly accepted his offer, and sure enough, he gave me a bag filled to the brim with cards that held great memories shortly after.

I spent that night picking through the stacks of mid 2000's greatness, reflecting on some of the cards I remembered him having. In 5th Grade, there were 2 lunch tables for each class; a typical rectangular table, and the round table. Sitting at the round table normally required rushing to lunch each day, due to it being so highly sought after and important. I had never seen more children cry about a table than I did with this round table. Anyway, eventually our teachers needed to stabilize the cafeteria atmosphere, so they allowed a certain 5 or 6 kids to eat on the 'cool table'. My friends and I got the table in the latter half of the school year, and we made good use of it. I introduced my best friend Mike to collecting cards, and from there we had every 5th grade boy involved in the hobby! Every day we would trade cards back and forth, holding more value in the players than of the card type. I remember a friend of mine trading a Jerome Bettis rookie card for a Peyton Manning base card, because Peyton was the man back then.

While picking through the cards, I remembered all sorts of small tidbits of 5th grade lunch. The Chien-Ming Wang base card laying deep within the pile acquired by Ethan for a Troy Tulowitzki rookie card. Boy, were we bad traders. I found the Boomer Esaison card that I so desperately sought after in 5th grade that Ethan would never let me trade for. Ethan didn't know much of anything about baseball or football, so he used our reactions to judge whether they were worth keeping or not. We all started elementary school with Yugi-Oh and Pokemon, but eventually grew up to sports cards. 

Today, only a few of my friends are still interested in the card hobby. Mike loves making custom cards for TTM requests, and Schuyler loves digging through discount boxes for shiny cards that strike his interest. They never became obsessed with the hobby to the extent that I had, so it's still the simple things that make their days. 

I, however, am too busy scanning these serial numbered cards separately, to entertain the collectors that prefer these "rare" cards over the usual. In 5th grade, we didn't even know what serial numbers were. And as for the 1964 Topps Dick Stuart, well; we cried over cards like that. At my first card show, I remember buying a 1969 Joe Niekro card for a few bucks because it would become the oldest card in my collection. I didn't even bring that card with me to school because it was that valuable to me. Joe Niekro was a decent pitcher, but today I laugh at the fact that I thought that highly of the card.

We didn't think much of relics back then either, as you can tell by the large crease going across this Joey Porter card. We knew that the materials were from games, but honestly, we didn't care at all. Today, collectors search through packs just to find these cards, and perhaps sell them on eBay. 

I never even knew Ethan had this Kerry Wood autographed card, so I was pleasantly surprised to find this in the bag. I sort of wish it wasn't there though, because I really was having a good time looking at the 2006 Topps cards that we revolved our entire lives around every day for a good chunk of my childhood.

It's crazy to think that at one point things as simple as this were that important to me. I've grown up quite a bit since my early days in the hobby, and all it took was a simple google search of "baseball cards" to completely shift my interests into the industry that's more of a business than a hobby. It's absurd that I've had this blog for well over 4 years, and how much my collection has grown in terms of value. I can't even imagine myself having any other hobby at this point, although there are a lot of aspects I don't really like about our hobby today. But whenever I have negative thoughts about the hobby, I'm going to pull out this bag and reminisce; and I'll remember how this hobby has stuck with me longer than most friends and all other things. One of the first things I was told as a young collector is that no matter what you go through in your life, even if you have to stop collecting at any point, the hobby will always welcome you back.

Thanks Ethan for reminding me why I do what I do.

See Ya!