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!