239,659?

I've talked on here about not purchasing many cards over the past year (at least in comparison to previous years) because of moving.  Now that things have settled down I finally requested shipment for my COMC inventory over the past two years.

Of course as soon as I submitted my order for shipping, the next day a /10 clear acetate League Leaders popped up.

2015 Topps - [Base] - Clear #127 - League Leaders - Justin Morneau, Josh Harrison, Andrew McCutchen /10

I wish I could have gotten this in hand with my recent order, but considering how far back my COMC order is in the waiting line, I'm hesitant to tempt fate and email them to ask if they can add this to my order. 

Yikes!

I find it hard to believe that they'll have my order ready in a month with that que level.

For those of you that have purchased from COMC in recent months have you seen hundreds of thousands orders ahead of you? 

Have you ever asked COMC to add cards to an existing order?

Rediscovering The Hobby Fun

So I did a thing while still (temporarily) living with the in laws.

I dug out some of my boxes of Cutch cards that I never scanned or sorted or entered into my spreadsheet.

This is just one of the five boxes of relics, autos, printing plates, and manufactured relics boxes I have to go through.

I am certain that there will be cards in here that I forgot about and I am certain I will find cards that I scanned but never entered into my spreadsheet and vice versa. 

I found so many awesome cards just hanging out in these boxes.

My goal is to knock out one of these boxes every ten days to sort, enter into my spreadsheet, and maybe even find some gems to blog about.

One card that caught my eye was this 2015 Topps silver frame league leaders card.

The 2015 silver frame cards were limited to only 20 copies and followed the success of the 2014 Topps Gold Label framed inserts.

The fronts and backs are identical to the standard base card, but they have a very heavy and sturdy silver frame outlining the card along with a serial number marking on the front of the card.

If you were playing NL Batting Title Bingo at the begining of the season and you had Ben Revere, Jonathan Lucroy, Josh Harrison, Denard Span, and Jayson Werth you just might have won.  

It's always fun to look back at some of the stat leaders and who were the guys you wouldn't expect to be in competition for that stat leader.

Cutch finished third in the batting title race in 2014 behind teammate Josh Harrison and former teammate Justin Morneau.

I thought it would be fun to look back at that 2014 batting title race between three guys who finished the 2013 season with the Pirates.

By the rules to qualify for a batting title, a player must have 3.1 at bats per game in a 162 game season.  This equates to 502 at bats to qualify for a batting title in a standard season.

Coincidently Justin Morneau had exactly 502 at bats in the 2014 Season and played in only 135 games.  On September 26th, Justin Morneau had his 501st at bat of the season and was substituted out of the game after a 2 for 3 performance at the plate and raising his average to .319.  The 4th place Rockies chose not to play Morneau in the second to last game of the season and would use him as a pinch hitter in the 7th inning to close out the season.  He got out, but kept his batting average at .319 if you round it up from it's original .318725 mark.  This pinch hit at bat on the final game of the season gave Morneau the opportunity to clinch a batting title.  If he had walked or gotten injured before completing this pinch hit at bat, Morneau would not have qualified for the batting title and the Rockies who finished the season with a 66-96 record would have one less thing to celebrate in a pretty forgettable season.

The Pittsburgh Pirates were battling for their second straight postseason push and were within a few games reach of winning the division heading into the final week.  

The Pirates had to play their stars to continue to make the push for their best shot at the postseason.  

In the final four games of the season, Cutch went 4 for 12 with an additional 4 walks.  Had Cutch gotten 3 more hits over the course of the season while maintaining his 548 at bats, Cutch would have won the batting title with a .319343 mark.  

The last Pirates player to win a batting title was Freddy Sanchez in 2006.  

Do you remember these silver frame parallels?

Who was the last player on your favorite team to win a batting title?

3 out of 4 ain't bad

A few days ago I showed a trio of 1/1 printing plates from the 2012 Archives Cloth Sticker insert.  While sorting through my 99 printing plates I realized I had a few other partial rainbows that I have never shown off before. 

I only have one true complete printing plate rainbow where I have all 4 plates used to create the card.  I also 4 sets where I have 3 of the plates. 

I showed the cloth sticker trio plates here.

And waaaaaay back when I showed another trio of Allen & Ginter plates when I was missing Mandy Moore "like candy" as part of my Save Second Base event.

Here are the other two sets I am trying to complete.
2016 Bowman Chrome missing black plate
2015 Topps League Leaders missing black plate

The Network

October is National Breast Cancer Awareness month.  Visit the official site here.

Breast Cancer will be detected in one of eight women in the US each year.
It is the second leading cause of cancer death among women each year.
On average every 2 minutes a woman will be diagnosed with breast cancer and every 13 minutes one person will die from breast cancer.
There are currently 33 million breast cancer survivors in the USA.

It's important to support the research for cancer.  Breast Cancer is often associated with the color pink so I will be showing off some pink Cutch cards.

In addition, you can expect to see some boobs with each post.  Who doesn't love boobs?

So let's start with what we're hoping to save!

Heidi Watney is my favorite MLB Network hostess.  No offense to Lauren Shahaddi or Kelly Nash, but Heidi Watney is more fun to look at.

Her brother was a professional golfer and she grew up a sports fan.

She has hosted shows such as The Rundown and Quick Pitch on MLB Network.

You may recognize Jenny Dell alongside Watney above.  She might be appearing this month also.

Here is an interview Heidi did in 2013 with Cutch during their first playoff run in 20 years.  A screenshot of it can be seen above.

The 2013 season was a magical time for Pirates fans.  They were pushing for their first postseason appearance in 20 years.  Just before the waiver trade deadline the Bucs had acquired Justin Morneau and Marlon Byrd to help the playoff push.  Both players left for free agency after season's end.

Morneau won the batting title in 2014 just a few points above former Pirates teammates Josh Harrison and Andrew McCutchen.

Who are some of your favorite female sports reporters?

Ooooooh you almost had it...

I am sure everyone knows that commerical where the guy says "oooooh you almost had it. Gotta be quicker than that."

Well, after winning my most recent 1/1 bringing my total to new heights (over 120 now) I began thinking about the missing 1/1 from my collection.

This isn't the first time I have managed to grab 3 of the 4 plates.  I will show some of the other near complete printing plate runs in a future post.

In 2014 both Andrew McCutchen and Josh Harrison were competing for the batting title, but Walt Weiss, the Colorado Rockies manager was sitting Justin Morneau a lot down the stretch (he did the same thing this past year with DJ LeMehau).

I am still seeking a few of the parallels (black 1/1 plate, pink,blank back 1/1)

The back shows just how close Harrison and Cutch were.
Makes me wonder what the 2014 Pirates season would look like with Morneau at 1B all season instead of that Jones/Sanchez platoon.