Follow My Career (from Things Done To Cards)...

I recently made a trip to my local card shop. The owners are nice enough to put up with my hours of searching for Bip Roberts, Don Mossi, Dick Pole, Pete LaCock, and Rowland Office cards. They also, on occasion, will set aside cards that they think I might appreciate.

They knocked it out of the park on my last visit. After searching through a box of '60s commons, in an attempt to fill out my Don Mossi collection, a stack of cards were set in front of me.

Quite possibly the most amazing stack of cards... EVER!

Thirty well-worn cards from 1958, and one from 1959 were in my hands. It was easy to see that the original owner genuinely cared for these players. Not the cards... but rather, the players on the cards. On each card, the owner carefully traced the progression of the player's career in ball-point pen. Most of the players on the cards are tracked through the 1961 season.

As you can see from the example above, this kid was pretty thorough. As you can see, Lou (The Nervous Greek) Skizas was picked up by the White Sox (in the 1958 Rule 5 draft), he then played for Bermingham (sic) and Charleston in '58. The tracking ends with Seattle (1959). At some point, he played a little third base.

Imagine how tough it was to follow all the transactions without the internet! I will forgive that the kid missed stops in Nashville, Macon, Indianapolis, Mexico City, and Denver. He did catch Havana, Cubans (couldn't find it on Baseball Reference), Sugar (Was it a lesser known nickname?), and I'm not quite sure what is written under "Sugar" (could it be an attempt at spelling "Rainiers"?)

Pretty impressive...

It gets better...

Joseph Paul Lonnett was signed by the Phillies in 1948. This card shows some of the places he hung his hat starting with the 1958 season. In the middle of the season, he was traded to the Milwaukee Braves. He didn't play for the Braves in '58, but did play for Wichita.

Then it gets CRAZY!

In May of 1959, he was traded by the Milwaukee Braves with Earl Hersh to the Detroit Tigers for Al Paschal (minors) and Charlie Lau. I'd have to do some more research to be sure why, but the players were all returned to original teams on THE SAME DAY! It seems Joe refused to report to his new team. (Did he kill the trade?)

That explains the MILWAUKEE BRAVE and MILWAUKEE.

In June of '59 the Phillies bought him back from the Braves. In '59 he played for the Phillies, Louisville, and Buffalo.

1960 brought him back to Philadelphia and Buffalo, so that explains the BUFFALO (x2).

DALLAS FORT WORTH, the SENATORS, CHARLESTON, and Little Rock can not be verified by Baseball Reference... BUT I'm gonna say that this kid knew something they don't.

I have 29 more gems like this that I will share between here and Things Done to Cards over the next few weeks.

Draft Time Change...

The time isn't working so well for quite a few people, so I am going to change it...

Twice...

IT IS NOW SET FOR:

Wednesday, March 30th at 9:30 EST (6:30 Pacific)

Card Blog League... 3 spots

The draft is tomorrow... Monday the 28th. Sorry about the late notice. Doc T and Chuck, you are in if you want. That means one spot is up for grabs.

Chuck, please send me your email (travis at punkrockpaint dot com)

Card Blog League Season 3...

Back by popular demand: The Card Blog League of Fantasy Baseball brought to you by Yahoo! and the 2011 Kia Forte.

If popular demand is two people asking...

Those of you who played last year should have received an email from Yahoo! about the league being renewed.

If you want to play again, just sign up. If you don't want to, let me know.

I promise this year I will care about the playoffs too. Even if I am the regular season champion, and the playoffs are stupid. ;)

Back From Vegas...

I just returned home from a week in Las Vegas with my girlfriend, Kerri. I didn't win enough money to buy a ring and propose (maybe I'll win one from Topps...), but we still had fun. We drove into town on Tuesday night and stayed at the fabulous Imperial Palace. Being (nearly) degenerate gamblers, we had a bunch of comped rooms from Harrahs. We were picking up Kerri's mom on Wednesday morning, so staying Tuesday night was kind  of a last minute decision. New slogan: "Imperial Palace... a great place to stay last minute, if your room is comped by the Harrahs Corporation."

Nothing baseball card related happened (until early Monday night - foreshadowing), so most of the week was uneventful. We moved over to Harrahs the next night, and that's when the excitement began.

We saw a few shows, had a few drinks, went back to the room...

and This...

fell on This...

and looked like This a few minutes later... 

(That is with the blood cleaned off...)

Faulty craftsmanship probably, but the staff was helpful and friendly. I was hoping they might comp me a few meals for my pain and suffering, but I got nothing :( Oh, well.

Far and away the highlight of the trip came late Sunday night. I was at the Flamingo casino playing the Lord of the Rings penny slot machine (highly addictive - DON'T DO IT!)

The game will save your stats, and you accumulate new bonus games the longer you play. To play where you left off, you just log in with your name and a password you create. Kerri had created my account a few months back, with the log in name: PunkRockPaint. Other than the fact that it is a little long to type, when all I want to do is gamble, it didn't bother me.

Back to Sunday at the Flamingo... I had been playing for a while, when the machine next to me became available. I was tempted to move over, because my machine was not paying well, but a guy sat down at the machine. He was friendly, and we struck up a conversation about the addictive nature of the game. I noticed his name when he logged in, and it seemed familiar. I briefly wondered to myself whether he was famous and I should know who he was. Winning a few cents on my next pull, I focused back on the game. As you might be able to see in the picture above, the player's log in name is posted in the upper right hand corner of the screen. Not too long later the guy sitting next to me leans over and says, "Punk Rock Paint?" 

I said sheepishly, "Yeah, that's me, I guess."

He replies, "THE Punk Rock Paint?"

At that point, I'm thinking... could there be more than one?

"With the LOST cards and the custom baseball cards?", he asks.

Holy shit!

Maybe that's why I thought I knew his name! Chuck Na! His blog, HamRamMobtown is in my favorites list! Bizzare! I guess I didn't know his name before Sunday night, but if he would have been silly enough to log in under Pop Startled or Standardchuck, I would have been the one saying, "THE Standardchuck?!?"

We talked about Baseball cards, Beardy, Baltimore, and a bunch other things that don't start with the letter B. We had a really nice conversation, but I constantly wondered whether this amazing, random meeting had ruined my random chance of hitting a jackpot. Chuck had no such problem. He won $219.00 on one spin!

Maybe I would have won that cash if I had moved over...

But I wouldn't change the way things worked out. I got a chance to meet a fellow baseball card enthusiast, fellow blogger, and all-around cool guy. Nice to meet you, Chuck!

Can I borrow $219.00?