Remembering Hank

One of the game's greatest all time passed away today.  

Henry Aaron better known as Hammerin Hank was the All Time Homerun King when he retired.  

When I think of Hank Aaron, I remember doing a report on a significant black person to change history in grade school.  I chose Hank Aaron as my subject.  

I also think about Daniel of It's Like Having My Own Card Shop.  Daniel is a big Hank Aaron fan and has a really nice collection of the true HR king. 

Daniel sent me the card below back in 2017 as part of a trade package.

This card is the gold parallel /25 copies from 2015 Stadium Club Instavision.  

It captures my favorite homerun in recent Pirates history.

The Pittsburgh Pirates had made it to the post season in 2013 and 2014.  The team was surging just before the 2015 All Star Break, but so were the St. Louis Cardinals.  The two teams had the two best records in the league.  

On July 11th the Cardinals came to Pittsburgh and faced AJ Burnett and the Pirates.

Highlights of the game can be found here.

The complete game can be found here.

The Pirates truly were the Battlin Bucs as they battled back from being behind after the 8th inning THREE TIMES that game.

It culminated in a walkoff homer by the Pirates star centerfielder, Andrew McCutchen.

Cutch has hit six walk off homers over his 12 year career.

Hank Aaron hit nine over 23 seasons.

R.I.P. Hammer

Bloggers Blessings

I wanted to take a moment and thank some of the bloggers

Up first is Daniel from It's Like Having My Own Card Shop.  Daniel sent me a PWE of 2 cards and 1 coin he had set aside for me for a long time.

He also sent me the 2016 Heritage Pirates card that shows a celebration between Cutch, Josh Harrison, and Aramis Ramirez.  I just had a conversation with my brother about how good that 2015 team was and if there was ever a need to push the chips all in at the deadline it was that summer.  A pitching staff of AJ Burnett, Gerrit Cole, Francisco Liriano, Charlie Morton, and JA Happ should have gotten more than 9 innings in the post season.  Unfortunately they (again in the Wild Card) ran into someone who was pitching at elite level when they faced Jake Arrieta and his sub 1.00 second half ERA.  The previous year they ran into 2014 Madison Bumgarner.


Next Up is Johnny from (one of his hundreds of new blogs) Johnny's Trading Spot.  Johnny sent me this Honus Bonus Andrew McCutchen in exchange for a trio of Braves cards I had for him (2 Freddie Freeman 1/1s from Honus Bonus and a 5x7 John Smoltz Gold/10).  Unfortunately, Johnny's postmaster never put the package in his mailbox, but marked it as delivered.  Evidently this is an ongoing issue with his address so next time I am going to have send him something big and make sure it's marked as signature confirmation.

Thank you for this card Johnny.  It's odd that it features Kyle Lohse as I also have career Home Run #110 which was hit off of Lohse.  In his career Cutch hit 3HR off Lohse so I will need to find the other to complete the Lohse rainbow. Lol!


Finally we have Marc from Remember The Astrodome who sent me over some much needed Clemente and Cutch cards.

With the orange parallel I now have the complete rainbow from Big League Baseball.  More details about the Clementes will be available soon on my Roberto Clemente centric blog, Chasing 3000.
Thank you Marc for these awesome cards!

Daniel Delivers Cutch22

Daniel from the blog, Its Like Having My Own Card Shop, hooked me up with a great new addition to my Cutch 22 collection.

With the addition of this card, I was also able to add another piece of Daniel's perfect penmanship to my collection.

Young athletes should take note of this dude's handwriting.

Fantastic Sir!!!  Thanks for contributing to the collection.

Santa's coming, I know him!!!! (Daniel drops a Christmas gift on me)

Daniel from It's Like Having my Own Card Shop sent me a very unexpected Christmas present.

Included was a very nice hand drawn card that meant more to me than the gift itself.

In addition to the card he sent me this Gold Clubhouse Collection Relic from 2017 Heritage.

I didn't have this card so I am really happy to add it to the collection.

It didn't stop there.

He also sent me this 2014 Chips that I didn't have.

Thank you so much Daniel.

Merry Christmas to you and your family my friend.

Daniel delivers

Daniel from It's like having my own card shop hooked me up with two high end base cards.

Thanks so much for sending these my way Daniel.

It's fitting that I received the cards the same day I posted my other Inception cards I currently have.