TTMCast This Week
Drew and Troy are joined by Les Wolff as they give a preview of this week’s National Sports Collectors Convention in Cleveland; Drew talks about his experiences at the All-Star game Village, and Arron Littleton drops in to talk about almost running over an important person with his car. Plus, the winners of the Pete Incaviglia giveaway.
You can listen to this week’s show here.
TTM Successes
Jason Bonsignore
Jason went fourth overall in the 1994 NHL Draft and scored a goal in his first game, but injuries and inconsistency limited him to 16 points in 79 career games. The former Cleveland Lumberjack signed these for me via his New York home in a week.
Joel Skinner
I’ve always had bad luck on Skinner: each time I got ready to send to him, he stopped signing. But this time I hurried and got these out and he returned them to me in about week and a half via his Ohio home. His 92-year-old father Bob is an excellent TTMer as well!
Franklin Gutierrez
I mailed out to Franklin two years ago after the late Jeff Baker got him back quickly via a Florida home address. I had forgotten that I had mailed this one out, so it was a pleasant surprise to see these returned in a short 631 days.
Zigmund Palffy
I always like when I have just enough foreign postage for a couple SASEs, and month ago I used up my last Slovakian stamps to mail over to Palffy and Jozef Stumpel. Ziggy was the faster one of the pair, signing these in precisely five weeks.
Brian Engblom
I always liked Engblom as a broadcaster: I missed his playing career but he was always the rinkside voice of ESPN growing up and later went on to work with the Jets, Blue Jackets, Avalanche and Lightning. He signed these through his Florida home in three weeks.
In-Person Outings
It was a busy and hot weekend here in North Texas as I spent five days battling heat and crowds to get players past and present to sling some ink.
Friday night, I went out to Frisco where the Northwest Arkansas Naturals came to take on the Frisco Roughriders. The AA squads for the Royals and Rangers, neither have any massive prospects (no one in the MLB Top 100), but the Naturals had several players appearing on some Bowman and Panini Prizm cards, and fortunately they were willing to sign.
Gavin Cross (#6 on the Royals Top 30) had already left the team for the Futures game an hour down the road so we didn’t see him. Another Top 30 player, Cayden Wallace, was injured, did not travel, and was traded to Washington days later. I did at least manage to get a couple of players to sign as they walked over from the team’s hotel: pitchers Mason Barnett (#4 in the Royals organization) signed one item per person, while Noah Cameron (#20) was willing to sign everything, enjoying the fact that I had several colored parallels of his 2021 Prizm card.
Over by the batting cage, Shervyen Newton signed three cards per person, while like Cameron, Luca Tresh signed everything including some of those great looking Prizm parallels. Both players are unrated among the KC prospects, but have appeared on several cards. I also got Abimelec Ortiz of Frisco on a custom card as he was dropped off out front.
Inside the park, Peyton Wilson signed one-per. Don’t expect much from his sig: the Royals’ #22 prospect will give little more than a P and a scribble that sort of resembles a W. While the aforementioned Barnett is also a one-per signer, he at least takes his time to give you a stunning signature. Kale Emshoff signed the lone card I had of him, while up at the bullpen, Beck Way and Eric Cerantola signed everything I had for them.
The coaches were a mixed bag: pitching coach Larry Carter signed three cards, Tommy Shields signed the only card I had of him (but has had no problems signing multiples in the past), Andy Laroche ignored us, and Chris Nelson sighed with dismay as he came over and signed one.
Postgame, Jake Brentz signed the three cards I had of him up at the bullpen. LaRoche finally signed one, and Peyton Wilson signed one-per once again. With the heat and knowing I was going to be busy for four more days, I called it a night with no waiting around outside for the Roughriders.
Saturday through Tuesday were spent at the MLB All-Star Village (formerly called FanFest) ahead of last week’s All-Star Game in DFW. I had not attended one since 1997 when I went to a single day as a 13-year-old at Cleveland’s downtown convention center. I remember having a good day there: they had a decent sized card show along with all the standard exhibits and activities, and I managed to get autographs from Bob Feller, Herb Score, and George Kell that day.
This year, I went in prepared but even the annual visitors didn’t realize the scope of this thing. Typically the Village is in a convention center: large, but all enclosed in one air conditioned area. This year’s was mostly outside as they used Choctaw Stadium for the majority of the sponsor booths and kids on-field activities, plus the outdoor space along Mark Holtz Lake, and finally the lone air-conditioned spot open to all, the E-Sports Stadium. Many years you see a lot of baseball-related celebrities walking around: I was told by a friend that he had gotten Tony Clark, Jim Leyland, Bobby Bonilla, and others to sign in past years. But being in a more spread-out space involving outdoor walking in 100-degree heat, I had no interest in walking over to search for them before rushing back to get in another autograph line.
The autograph lines fortunately were run very well after some hiccups in the first session. Confusion with the “Express Line” for CapitalOne cardholders at one stage led to the line of Fred Lynn and Mike Cameron getting cut off pretty quickly. But ultimately, I only missed Josh Hamilton because his line was absolutely ridiculous; Danny Darwin and Jose Guzman because I can get them almost anytime; Mike Bacsik and Tom Grieve because I had nothing for them; Colby Lewis because he arrived late and left early; and Ruben Sierra because I had tickets for the Futures Game and wanted to check it out a bit.
Instead of focusing on the misses: how about some hits? Hall of Famers Vladimir Guerrero, Ferguson Jenkins, and Rollie Fingers all signed and were very personable: Guerrero even signed multiples which shocked me. I got Cameron and Lynn in the early session, followed soon after by Mark McLemore. Former All-Stars Vinny Castilla and Rafael Palmeiro each had two signing sessions.
I’m always on the lookout for former Cleveland Indians and this event had several: David Murphy, Oddibe McDowell, Bartolo Colon, Jeff Russell, Carlos Baerga, Buddy Bell, Toby Harrah, and Pete O’Brien were all there. Harrah could sit there telling stories all day: name a player or a place and I guarantee he will have a story about it relating to his career.
O’Brien has always been excellent at these events: the guy signed 16 cards for a friend of mine! I don’t condone dropping that many but he was a speedster, signing while chatting with everyone and it didn’t hold up the line.
Speaking of speed, Mark Teixeira had to leave early so he showed up 15 minutes early to start his line. The authenticators said he got through nearly 800 sigs in the hour he was there. That’s less than one every five seconds.
MLB had authenticators at each table which is both a blessing and a curse. Personally, I don’t care about authentication stickers on signed cards. I doubt any kids are going to care about having them on the sponge baseball they picked up from a sponsor booth. But they were insistent: any time I refused I got an “Are you SURE?” from them. Early on they felt a weird need to inspect every single item, causing the lines to back up. But as the weekend went on, they got faster and kept it moving along pretty well. If you’re getting bigger items signed, the authentication is an excellent touch.
Former home-team players are always popular draws, and Rangers were no exception: in addition to the many already named who spent time in Arlington’s red and blue, Al Oliver, Mickey Tettleton, Steve Buechele, Bump Wills, Yovani Gallardo, Derek Holland, Shaun Tolleson, Benji Gil, Dave Valle, Kevin Mench, and Jim Sundberg all signed on the stages. Former 1950s Negro League players Sam Allen and Pedro Sierra were set up at a table together, as were former AAGPBL players Gloria McCloskey Rogers, Jeanie Descombes Lesko, and Dolly Vanderlip Ozburn. Fortunately each of them had their own items to sign, whereas you had to bring your items for the others. Rogers even remembered taking a picture with me at a USA Baseball’s Women’s Team event in Arlington a few years prior!
Sponsors often had players drop in for photo ops and signings. Beware though, many of these are photo only, or only signing the sponsor’s promotional item. Security will often get overly heavy-handed, as they did when Pedro Martinez came over to sign for us. His photo line finished fifteen minutes early, and then he was almost literally carried off by security. The only ones who got him were a few kids, a woman that he promised he would sign for after, and a few people who shoved through and around the security phalanx: bad behavior got rewarded yet again.
Overall, I am impressed with MLB’s presentation, handling, and management. The Rangers have a history of messing up events like these and fortunately outside of the early hiccup this was run incredibly smoothly. If the All-Star Game is ever in your area, I highly recommend visiting the Village for at least a day. I’d love to do it again in an area with cooler weather (though if it’s down in Houston again soon, I’d go to it there just because it’s so close).
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