30 Day Baseball Card Challenge

Sunday, July 12, 2015

Open Mouth & Insert Foot

Depending on who I'm talking to... I have a tendency to wear my heart on my sleeve.  Around strangers, I tend to be shy and avoid opening up until I get to know people better.  But around my friends and family, I have no problem showing off my feelings.  Blame it on my mom and dad.  They always encouraged me to speak my mind.

Anyways... this blog allows me to open up to my fellow collectors.  Maybe it's because we've shared so many stories or maybe it's because there's a sense of anonymity, because I'm hiding behind a keyboard.  Whatever it is... I've made it clear that logo-less sports cards tend to be the black sheep in my collection.

Do I own them?  Yes.  But they're very much the minority when it comes to their cardboard brethren. If I were to estimate... I'd say that less than 1% of my collection features logo-less products like the ones produced by Panini and Upper Deck for baseball.

In fact... back in May, I left this comment on Julie's blog post over at A Cracked Bat:


My comment started off with a compliment... but I just had to throw in my two cents about Panini and their lack of logos.


This is where I open my mouth... and insert my foot, because a few weeks later this card showed up on my doorstep:

 2015 DK Signature Framed Materials Green #228 (#'d 4/5)

For those who aren't familiar with Mr. Graveman, he came over to the Oakland Athletics in the trade that sent Josh Donaldson to Toronto last November.  Donaldson has definitely paid off for the Blue Jays.  As for Graveman, the jury is still out.

During spring training, he wowed A's fans with an impressive 0.31 ERA in his six appearances.  He allowed only one earned run all spring, but the Texas Rangers blasted him for seven earned runs in his first regular season start.

By late April, he was sent down to Nashville.  The A's eventually brought him back and besides allowing four earned runs last Friday, he's actually looked really good.

But getting back to the package Julie sent... she also included this note...


The answer is "yes".   Along with expressing my feelings, my parents also told me to be thankful for what we have in life.  And Julie... if you can find the silver lining in a cracked bat, then I can definitely find it in my heart to love this logo-less card.  It's actually my very first Graveman

Thank you so much!  Stay tuned.  I'm in the process of building packages and like the growing list of bloggers out there... your name is on the list.

Happy Sunday and sayonara!

7 comments:

Zippy Zappy said...

Nice Graveman. He's not Sonny Gray but he could be a serviceable starter going forward. And I never knew that logo less cards were not welcome in your home. I guess I'll to take out the logo less A's I had piling up.

CaptKirk42 said...

I'm not much into the logo-less cards either but rarely turn them down. Like their logo laden brethern some can very cool looking and some can be (how can I put this nicely and blog-friendly?) ugly pieces of junk.

Fuji said...

Yeah... Sonny Gray is definitely their ace. As for logo-less cards, they're not necessarily shunned from the Fuji household. I just don't typically go out of my way to buy them... unless they feature affordable HOF autographs or their awesome 80's oddballs. In that case, I will sometimes chase them down.

However... outside of a blaster box of Goodwin Champions here and there, I typically avoid products that don't have logos. But I make exceptions. This year there are a ton of Gwynns in Panini products, so I've been slowly finding singles here and there for my binder.

Fuji said...

Well said. I should have just cut and pasted your comment into my comment for Zippy.

The Junior Junkie said...

Dang. She got you, bra.

acrackedbat said...

Hey there! Glad you kept the card! ;) I have you on my list for A's love. Sometime before this Summer is over, I'll have a package for you. :)

Fuji said...

Thanks for the gorgeous card! I too will have some Tigers for your collection out by the end of Summer.