Contest Winners Announced

Time is running out to join another of my Save Second Base/K Cancer contests.  Contest closes tomorrow morning!  That prize is a Jose Berrios clear acetate autographed card.

Last Wednesday the contest for writing a post about your favorite sports movie ended.  Only 2 people entered.

John and Fuji

I said I would random it off twice.

After the first time, John is still on top.

And after the second time, John is on top again.
Congrats to John from the blog John's Big League Baseball Blog.  John will be receiving this Tyler Glasnow autographed pink card.

Both Anthony Rendon and Corey Seager smacked 44 doubles over the regular season while being members of a National League team.

That means I had to use the tiebreaker rule and see who struck out less in the 2019 season.

Anthony Rendon struck out 86 times over the regular season while Seager struck out 98 times.

There were quite a few people who selected Rendon to win the Troy Tulowitzki pink card.

I put Matt, John Sharp, Mrbasepauly, and Captkirk42 into the randomizer

After 4 times, Matt was on top!

Congrats to Matt and John for their victories.

ALL CONTEST WINNERS PACKAGES WILL BE SHIPPED IN OCTOBER

Tomorrow we are all winners as I will begin my month long reveal of only pink (and shades of Pink) in an attempt to raise awareness for Breast Cancer.

Please visit the National Breast Cancer website at least once this month and consider making a donation.

Let's work towards a cure.

What celebrities would you like to see this year?

K Cancer Contest

The Playoffs teams have all been revealed and a number of teams look to be built for a deep October run.

Kate Upton, Jennifer Lopez, and Emily Ratajkowski will all be appearing in October for my 4th Annual Save Second Base Event.

The question is...
Which of the team caps pictured will have pitchers throw more strikeouts?

Will the 3 headed monster lead by Kate Upton's husband, Justin Verlander, paired up with Gerrit Cole and Zack Greinke take down the opposition?

Will the great Yankees bullpen shut down batters as the Bronx Bombers slug their way to a 28th Championship?

Will it be
The Los Angeles Dodgers lead by future Hall of Famer Clayton Kershaw deliver a Hollywood picture and the Dodgers capture their first World Series Title since 1988?

OR
Could it be another team?
It will all play out in October and here is the prize.


2018 Clearly Authentic Jose Berrios (ON CARD AUTO)

Now for the rules:
1)Must be a follower on twitter or frequent reader/commenter here.
2)USA residents only
3)Select which team will have the most striekouts by a team pitching staff
3a)Tie Breaker: pick a pitcher on that team's playoff roster starting staff and predict how many strikeouts he will have by end of Post Season.  Closest without going over wins.
4)Contest closes Tuesday morning October 1st at 7am Eastern Time/4am Pacific Time


Please share this contest and comment if you shared it.
I will randomly select one person who pimped the contest and they will receive an assortment of pink baseball cards.

All contest winners will be revealed in a recap post November 1st.

Ch ch ch Changes

Yesterday at work I sat through a four hour seminar on how to deal with change.  It began with us all sitting in groups of people that we typically don't work with from 5 regions of our company.  Our company owner has 5 stores and over 1700 employees.  There are about 100 leaders in our company and we all gathered to learn some new methods to deal with change and how to relate and relay changes to our teams to be successful.

From there we had an interactive activity to problem solve a situation.  As we attempted to solve the problem, our director would provide us with new changes that we would have to work through.

We were given budgets and time constraints to achieve the goal of building a bridge with certain dimensions using only a few pieces of paper, 5 paper clips, and a roll of 12 inches of tape.  For every piece of material there was a cost to it and we had to stay under the budget to meet the project guidelines and acheive a profit of 23%.

For every minute that went by prior to the build we got penalized with a cost.

For every minute saved by end result we were rewarded with extra profit.

As more and more things were thrown at our team we were able to adapt to the change thrown at us because we left so much profit margin on our design.  Some of these changes included new dimensions being modified, storage fees for unused materials, etc.

To disrupt things again we were forced to only have 2 team members physically touch the materials.  Then in the middle of construct our "builders" were replaced with other builders from other groups and we had to quickly get them caught up to speed on what we were building and how we were building it.  You see as we were tasked with building a bridge, other teams were tasked with building other things.  The new builders came to us with the "what the heck are you building mindset" because our design for building a bridge was much different then the team they left where they were building paper buildings or towers.

The short life lesson of the events were that change can be daunting and stressful, but a little extra planning for the end goal in beginning can help lead to more success and some fresh perspectives can lead to more success.

Obviously the lessons learned today were designed for our industry, but it also put things into life experiences as our CEO explained "We aren't in the retail food business.  We are in the people business that just happens to sell food."

I wonder if other companies have similar seminars or outlooks.

It seems like since Rob Manfred took over as MLB Commissioner he is trying to make some changes to a sport that for the most part has remained unchanged for over a century and half.  Since baseball is my favorite sport, I think this is great.

To help continie to make baseball players become model citizens, it was revealed yesterday in a Forbes article that in the next CBA agreement the MLB may start testing athletes for the use of Opiods without a written prescription from a doctor.  With the country's epidemic (and without getting too deep into politics) I think this is a great move by MLB to get ahead and make their product stand by a set of standards that many other sports don't monitor.

We learned about Tyler Skaggs death a few months ago.  Then we learned about what caused it.  Had this change been in effect, maybe Tyler would still be alive today.

This is my only Cutch card that references Tyler Skaggs

3rd Annual Save Second Base Contest

This time next week I will be active in my 4th Annual Save Second Base Event (3rd on this blog).

For the 3rd time on Collecting Cutch I am running a contest to help bring awareness to a terrible disease that continues to plague our great world.

1 in 8 women will be detected with breast cancer in their lifetime.  This is heartbreaking to think that we haven't found a cure or what causes this terrible disease.

To help bring awareness, I will show off pink (and shades of pink including peach, rose, and magenta) cards throughout the month of October.  October has long been associated with breast cancer awareness and every day throughout the month I will be showing off some lovely ladies to accompany the pink (and shades of pink) cards I have.

Each year I have upped the game for sharing pink cards.
Year one was only Cutch cards.
Year two I introduced cameo appearances where Cutch was represented on either the front or back of a pink card.
Year three I am introducing the Falco Files pink cards.  This will depict pink cards of players who have replaced McCutchen on a roster.

I have decided to show SOME nonCutch cards in my collection that can relate to this cause and a few of the ladies I have chosen to spotlight to relate to the cards selected.

This year I will be providing multiple contests leading up to the event.

I have already ran a few of them and another is scheduled to end on Sunday when we know who the NL Leader is in doubles.

Each year I run a contest with "Pick Who Hits The First Double in the 2019 World Series" prize.

Tris Speaker is the all-time leader for doubles so getting a bat relic from the All-Time double leader and Hall of Famer seems appropriate for a prize.  This 2016 Pantheon dual relic of Tris Speaker and Sam Crawford is numbered 8/15.

The rules for this prize:
1)First person to correctly guess who will hit the first double in the 2019 World Series gets the card
2)All entries must be time stamped the day before game 1 of the 2019 World Series starts
3)Must be a USA resident
4)If the person who hits the first double is not guessed then the card will be randomed off to anyone who shared this contest on their blog (you must leave a link to the shared post in comments below).


Gavin has won the past two main prizes.
2017 event - Pete Rose: Save 2nd Base Inscription Autograph (here)
2018 event - Aaron Judge/Giancarlo Stanton Mother's Day Pink Awards/50 (here)

Can anyone stop Gavin from a 3-peat?

Target Acquired

Back in 2017 I talked about how I was finally able to secure the 2009 Bowman Sterling Black Refractor numbered to only 25 copies.  A recap of that post can be found here.

That post followed my Gold and Base cards I got earlier that year which I wrote about here.

A few weeks ago I was able to get another top target card of mine is any 2009 1/1s.  Rookie cards I don't have are always my top cards I am seeking. 

When I was at the Phillies game a few weeks ago I had to step out of line at Tony Luke's (cheese steak place at Citizens Bank Park) to make sure I won this card.  It is the 2009 Bowman Sterling Red Refractor numbered 1/1.

It goes nice with the 3 Gold's I now own

It also pairs up nicely with the yellow printing plate I have.

Keep in mind that any cards produced with a chrome finish have their printing plates printed reverse.

It completes yet another rainbow for me.

How nice is that black?

And above is the Refractor.

Woah

In the midst of all the attention the online consigners Probstein and PWCC have been getting I have actually been able to take advantage of some nice deals available.

This was an auction I won back in June.

• Pretty happy with the jumbo patch on this as it is part of the 2 from the front of the Pirates black alternate uniforms.

Nice Rack!

Not many sealed rack packs or similar items appear in today's market place.  I miss the days of those 1989 Topps with star players on the front.


Topps National Baseball Card Day and Target Exclusive Gypsy Queen packs are the closest thing I can get now.

I grabbed these 3 sealed packs of Phillies mainly because Cutch was on the cover for one of them.

I opened the Cesar and Jake packs and got a Cutch loose in the pack with Cesar.

I kept the Harper and Cutch for my PC and sent the others to Brad when I met up with him at the Philly Show.  He did a recap of what I gave him here.

A New Pair of Yankees

With the Yankees clinching their first division title since 2012 I thought today was an appropriate day to reveal a pair of cards I have had for over a month.

When I made my epic post about the Yankees role call and all my Cutch Yankees cards I own, I mentioned that I had another pair en route to me.

They arrived over a month ago, but these two bring me closer to completing the rainbow.

I still need the red Refractor /10 and purple/250, but have the others including the Superfractor  To see my June post about my Yankees collection click here.

Have any of your favorite players played on the Yankees, but aren't thought of Yankees first?

The Cole Train Keeps Chugging Along

Last night, Gerrit Cole made history when he struck out Shin Soo Choo for his 300 punchout of the year.  That makes him the 18th pitcher in MLB history to accomplish the feat.

I have about 50 autographs of Gerrit Cole and probably an equal amount of relics.

Below (in no particular order) I will show my 18 favorite Gerrit Cole autographs or relic cards.

Here are some of my favorites with Cutch

 

And here are some of my favorites with just Cole

And here are some others

Honorable Mention:
This 1/1 featuring a Josh Harrison Postseason patch