Inching Towards Baseball Season

The Dodgers Fan Fest is almost upon us.  The fest is this Saturday and has a great line-up of signers scheduled to appear.  The list of current and former players that are going to be signing autographs is quite impressive.

Some big names are going to be showing up in the Dodger Stadium parking lot to mingle with the fans.  Such names as Tommy Lasorda and Matt Kemp.

The names that I am most looking forward to meet are some of the newest dudes to the Dodger family.  One of my top goals is to get a Zack Greinke autograph.  The Dodgers newest import from Korea, Hyun-Jin Ryu, is a player that I hope to get a signature from as well.

Mark McGwire is the Dodgers new hitting coach for this upcoming season.  He is probably going to be a popular signature at fan fest.  I am hoping to get a signed baseball by him.  McGwire was one of the stars of my childhood.  He was a masher that could hit a ball 500 feet.

Not all juicers could hit a ball that far.

Many of the Dodgers bloggers that I communicate with have expressed that they will be rolling to the fan fest this weekend.  Not only should I get some Dodger signatures, but I should also be getting some trade packages.  Some of the other members of the blog world that I hope to meet up with on Saturday, have been working some trades with me.  We will be conducting some old school face to face trades.

I used to trade baseball cards with people in a face to face gathering.  The other kids in the neighborhood and I would meet up on weekends and swap some cardboard.  I was living in suburban Philadelphia at the time and mostly traded cards with Phillies and Mets fans.  There was also some kids that collected cards of some of the stars of the 90s like Frank Thomas and Ken Griffey Jr.

I am glad that face to face trading isn't dead and is still a way for me to acquire some Dodger cards.

Another way that I accumulate Dodger baseball cards is by writing letters and getting some autos through the mail.  I got a couple nice returns recently.

Jerry Reuss was kind enough to sign this card for me.  This is also an odd photo choice for Fleer.  Reuss pitched over 200 innings, in 1983, the year before this card came out.  Fleer had many action shots to choose from but, settled on Reuss having a conversation in an empty stadium.  Weird move, Fleer.

Reuss made this card better with a nice blue signature.

I also miss Reuss as a Dodger broadcaster.  The Dodgers have Vin Scully as the greatest announcer ever.  They also have no one else in their stable of broadcasters that range from awful(Eric Collins) to mediocre(Rick Monday).

Fleer could have at least told Jerry Reuss to act wacky like Mickey Hatcher here.  Hatcher must be a league leader in goofy, comical baseball cards.  Roger McDowell may be up there as well.

A card that features a player in an odd pose, such as holding a giant baseball glove, always stands out in a dime box.  I noticed that an interesting photo on a card pops out of 3200 count boxes of ten cent cardboard.

I sent this card, as well as a couple others, to Hatcher while he was the hitting coach of the Anaheim Angels. I sent this through the mail request way back in March 2012 to the Angels spring training facility in Arizona.  When the Angels dumped Hatcher early in the 2012 season, I thought this return was lost in a TTM wasteland.

Hatcher rejoined the Dodgers organization in 2012.  He must have became a nicer person being apart of the LA baseball team and decided to send me a few signatures.

These were nice returns.  Some more signatures should be added to my collection this weekend.  I will see some of you at the fan fest.  I can't wait.