Spring Cleaning COMC Purchase: Highlights from the Random Stuff

So COMC had their Spring Cleaning sale in June (because that makes sense...) and I used it to grab up all sorts of stuff for my PCs.  As is normal though, I also just bought some random stuff that caught my eye even though I don't really have a place for it.

This post contains that stuff.

Boo-yah.

Card #1 is an MLB Showdown card of James Baldwin.  I love Showdown, and I remember Baldwin fondly during the mid to late 90's as a White Sox "ace," so I had to grab this:

What's funny is...looking at the stats...Baldwin was never that great.  He did make one All Star game in 2000, and his 14-7 with 4.65 ERA was okay, but his FIP was 5.33 - indicating that he didn't really pitch that well.  For his career, Baldwin's ERA was 5.01, so he was certainly an inning eater, but not really the ace I thought of in my mind.  Still a cool guy.

Also, while googling that 2000 season, the White Sox rotation blew my mind, as it was somehow good enough to win the AL Central that year.  The rotation?

Mike Sirotka
Jim Parque
James Baldwin
Cal Eldred
Kip Wells
Jon Garland (he and Wells each had like 15-20 starts)
(They also had a 21 year old Mike Buerhle who started 3 games)

If you remembered all 6 of those names off the top of your head - I'm impressed.  I personally didn't remember Sirotka or Parque.  Sirotka was actually quite good, and this was his breakout year, but he would never pitch again due to shoulder issues.  Parque started quite a few games from 1998-2000, but he then spent 3 quiet years in MLB before leaving the league.

I also grabbed a Showdown card of Big Papi with the Twins:

Not much story there...I just love Papi (being a Sox fan) and it's cool seeing him on a Showdown card in his old duds.

Do you guys remember The Collective Troll?  He was a pretty awesome dude...thinking of him brings back memories of guys like Beardy and all that who were around back when I first started blogging.

Anyways, I used to have a budding Dewon Brazelton collection, but I knew he liked Rays, so as I do I sent that collection to him in a trade at some point.  I recently realized I now have zero Brazeltons, and he's a guy I had to have at least one card of.  So I grabbed a real nice framed T206 auto for cheap:

Love the jersey number on this one...just a really classy card.

In the first baseball game I ever went to, Olmedo Saenz was a big time slugger for the Athletics.  I've never really forgotten my first cleanup man, so I grabbed a bat card of his from early 00's Pacific:

I think it looks great with those A's colors...awesome card.

This next card is actually from Dennis (some of the COMC stuff I got is stuff he found for me - we then traded on site!).  He bought it thinking it was a Griffey Jr., because hey, the jersey is next to Griffey.  But the small print indicates it is actually an Austin Kearns piece.  Weird right?

I told him I'd take it anyway - it's still a Griffey card, and Kearns was pretty well liked in the Moos household growing up during my little brother's Reds phase.  So it's still a cool jersey piece to me!

Speaking of Reds, I almost decided to flip this next card, because it's #'d /25 and the guy is pretty cool.  But on COMC, any damaged cards are marked with a disclaimer that makes them almost impossible to move.  So I figured for $1, it was worth having a rare, "damaged" (side chipped) Mike Leake in my collection:

The star has faded on this guy a bit ever since his days of jumping straight from college to the majors and stealing t-shirts, but he's still one of the better Reds pitchers, he's still very young, and there's a good chance he'll be the team's "ace" if Johnny Cueto is traded in ensuing months.  Him or Anthony DeSclafani anyways I guess.  If the Reds are smart they'll trade a lot of guys this deadline to re-up and put a better future product on the field, but I do hope they keep Brayan Peña and Billy Hamilton as those guys are so fun to watch!

The last two randoms here aren't baseball.  The first is a beautiful Brett Bodine autograph:

I always loved underdogs, and used to follow NASCAR, and when I did Bodine was my guy.  He was the kind of guy to start 37th and finish 36th, but I admired him sticking with it, especially given the relative success his brothers Geoff and Todd saw in various NASCAR arenas.   Bodine is still involved in NASCAR - I know I read about him driving the pace car one time and thought that was pretty cool.  He also has an awesome autographs, so it's nice to have a card of it in my collection.

Last but not least, we have another nice little auto, this one of Buccaneers RB Bobby Rainey, #'d to 50.

Like the Leake I thought about flipping this, but Rainey has been a blast to follow as he went from the Browns to the Ravens to the Bucs, and though he isn't likely to ever have a true starting job, he has shined in some moments and continues to fight for more playing time.  So an autograph /50 of the scrappy runner sounded perfect for my collection.