I missed a month long opportunity to highlight some of my Negro League throwback cards to celebrate Black History Month.
I promise I will swing for the fences next year. In the meantime enjoy the whimsical short print from 2012 Topps featuring Cutch and the Pirate Parrot playing wiffleball in the old Homestead Grays uniforms made famous by guys like Josh Gibson, Judy Johnson, Cool Papa Bell, Smoky Joe Williams, and Buck Leonard.
You can revisit some posts I paid tribute to those guys by clicking on their name in the links above.
I was challenged by Fuji to somehow connect an Andrew McCutchen baseball card to celebrate Saturday's National Butterscotch Pudding Day.
It was extremely short notice so I didn't have time to gather up cards to somehow make that happen a few hours after reading that ridiculous idea.
But Fuji is a good blogging friend and I didn't want to dismiss the idea so before I get to showing off some pudding, here is my food journal for the day
I started the day off with some Cinnamon Toast Crunch
CTC is the perfect cereal if you ask me.
The back of Andrew's 2013 Topps card talks of how Cutch toasted pitchers in 2012, specifically a 50 at-bat span when he batted .560 and crunched 7 HR.
Cinnamon Toast Crunch is good!
In the afternoon for lunch, I ordered a Pizza Hut big box to share with the lady of the household as I watched the Steelers play against the Broncos.
Pizza and burritos are my two go to foods for lunch. I normally don't get Pizza Hut, but rather instead get pizza from the local pizzeria by my work. Since we were both home for the afternoon, we got the big box to share wings, breadsticks, and 2 personal pizzas.
On the back of Cutch's Bowman Chrome card, it discusses that he is also a pizza lover.
And yes I do sometimes put pineapple on my pepperoni pizza. It is a topping I recommend.
For dinner, I finished up with baked ziti.
Look on the back of a 2018 Bowman card featuring Andrew McCutchen and you can see that he is a fan of baked pastas too.
I never had baked spaghetti, but evidently Cutch makes a mean plate.
Finally we finish with dessert.
And alas, it was almost a perfect circle to where it all began.
Butterscotch pudding
Unfortunately I don't have any cards that reference pudding. You win Fuji, you win!!!
Wait, what's this????
Emerging from the Pirates Dugout?
Why, it's a rainbow foil field access Stadium Club card from 2014?
It's serial numbered on the back 12/25.
Is that significant to Pirates fans?
Does that have anything to with pudding?
Why yes it does! It ties in with this angry looking man who became baseball's first 300 game winner and the most pitching starts in a season (75), James "Pud" Galvin.
"Pud" pitched for Pittsburgh from 1885-1892. He is the franchise all-time leader in wins and was elected into the Hall of Fame in 1965 as part of the veterans committee.
Wanna guess his birth date?
Is "Pud" an acceptable tie in to pudding?
I'll let you decide...
Leave a comment below and tell me what else you would like to see in the coming days leading up to October.
The 2020 Cutch SP Frenzy is finally consistently under the triple digit mark. Coincidently the last card I purchased during that frenzy has arrived.
It took 2 weeks for this card to show up.
It is the 2019 All-Star Game Foil Stamp parallel.
It only cost me $1.98 delivered so it doesn't bother me too much for the slow processing. Keep in mind all cards purchased from COMC haven't shipped yet.
I will recap everything in a future post along with some of the other items I purchased that weren't card related.
You can revisit all the other items I purchased during the weekend of the frenzy here.
If you aren't familar with my 2020 SP Frenzy Challenge I took the funds available that could have been spent on buying the 2020 SP Cutch "swag" photo variant and instead used it to buy items I needed for my Cutch collection. The real challenge was I could only buy cards at the height of the SP Frenzy when they were going for $200-$300 regularly. This all occurred between the evening of June 27th to the morning of June 30th. Roughly 48 hours was the stretch of this card going for on average $250. A lot of the purchases were made via eBay, but there were also half a dozen purchases made on COMC.
There are a few more PWEs that need to trickle in and obviously the COMC cards I purchased won't be here for many months at the rate things are going.
So let's get started with a classic card on CollectingCutch
The 2005 Topps Update draft pick card of Cutch. I believe that 2005 Topps Update was the last Topps set to feature draft picks in their flagship release and we are all likely aware of what happened the following year with the Alex Gordon "Rookie Card". I am always on the hunt for more 2005 Topps Update cards looking for them in the $3-$4 range. The golds are numbered to only 2005 copies and I like to get them for under $20.
$17.98
I took advantage of the frenzy to grab another Big League card I needed.
This came via a PWE so I was able to save on shipping.
$1.99
A 1/1 for under $12?
Yup, I'm gonna do that all day.
Kyle Lohse gave up 3 homers to Andrew McCutchen in his career. More on this in a future post.
$11.90
I thought I overpaid for this when it first hit eBay, but there were a few things going for it that I really liked.
It had a black border
It's got that great 1985 design
It has a pinstripe on the relic that is centered fairly well
It is numbered to only 199 copies.
As it turns out the average of this card is in the $20 range still with only a few having been sold or currently listed for sale.
$23.98
2020 Topps Series 2 has a great throwback image for Cutch's main flagship card and I went crazy grabbing as many parallels as possible during the buying frenzy for the SP.
Unfortunately, my scanner doesn't pick up the foilboard very well.
$2.97
This brings the total for all cards purchased during the SP Frenzy in today's mail day to $58.82. The collection added a limited print run gold prerookiecard, a 1/1, a black border pinstripe relic, and a few parallels. This collection of cards cost only about 20% what the top rates were for the Cutch SP during the height of the frenzy.
Sales are starting to "settle down" on the 2020 Series 2 Cutch SP and the prices are typically ending up under triple digits. I will continue to wait it out until they get under $40.
I am not sure what the rest of the world is doing in this concept of isolation, but I have been rewatching some of my favorite shows I haven't seen in nearly a decade. From Veronica Mars to Lost to The Simpsons, I am on an endless assault of streaming.
One of my favorite shows ever produced is the TV Series Lost. I made sure to watch every single episode each week. The show became a mainstream success and one of the best "water cooler" shows to talk about each week.
Without giving away any spoilers, the show focused on a group of plane crash survivors and how their lives connected before the crash. There were many great characters featured in the show, but one of the most polarizing figures was that of John Locke played brillaintly by Terry O'Quinn.
In the shows fifth season, Locke was revealed to be named another character, Jeremy Bentham.
To create a Lost style post I decided to make a connection to Locke/Bentham's birthday.
February 15, 1948
There is likely only one blogger I know of who can immediately recognize what baseball player was born on that day.
If you knew it was Ron Cey, congratulations. I'm sure the Night Owl is happy that the former Dodgers 3rd Baseman got a mention on my blog.
Coincidence or maybe it's "The Island's way of controlling things" I sent Night Owl an autograph card of Ron Cey on Mr. Bentham's expired passport (December 17, 2017) date and he received it a few days later.
He posted about it here as it was his Secret Santa package for 2017.
It should be noted that Ron Cey was nicknamed "The Penguin" by his former teammates for the way he waddled around the bases.
On June 13th, 2017 Andrew McCutchen hit a homerun against the Rockies with the recent Stanley Cup Champions, Pittsburgh Penguins, in attendance. The Penguins who clinched the cup just 2 days earlier were there to celebrate with the rest of the city.
Cutch made sure to step up for the celebration.
The image of Cutch looked familar in the final clips of the MLB video so I decided to do some research about the game and see what Getty Images had to offer.
Well that looks familiar...
That homerun was used for Cutch's swansong flagship Pirates card in 2018 Topps Series 1.
Here are 9 of Cutch's 2018 Topps Flagship Series 1 parallels.
Negative, Base, Purple (TRU exclusive)
Vintage /99, Father's Day Blue /50. Mother's Day Pink /50
Independence Day /76, Black /67, Gold /2018
Sorry for scanning them all grouped together and not following social distance rules.
So just as the great show Lost connected a sequence of completely ordinary events and showed how they all connect together, I was able to do the same via CollectingCutch.
Did you watch Lost when it aired?
Have you ever gone down an internet rabbit hole and tried to connect it to a baseball card?
Prior to the Coronavirus outbreak I picked up a pair of 2014 needs for a very cheap price.
Coincidentally they feature color parallels that are difficult to get true rhymes with.
The 2014 Opening Day purple was an exclusive to Toys R Us packs.
The 2014 Topps Orange is a factory set exclusive. These are very rare because most factory sets remain sealed and those that are opened only contain 5 cards of the 660 card set to be the orange exclusives.
McCutchen along with Kershhaw, Cabrera, Trout appeared on the cover of the box set for the 2014 Factory Set. I still want to get one of those for my collection. Sealed factory sets are ranging in the $100+ market.
There is just over a week remaining for this year's Save Second Base Event.
All contest winners packages will ship the first week in November with hopes that the winners link back to my blog and www.nationalbreastcancer.org
Please continue the support and Save Second Base into November.
The Big Prize for my main contest could be decided tonight if a double is hit.
Here are the contestants and who they selected to hit the first double in the 2019 World Series.
Nationals
Matt-Juan Soto
Nate/BucStops- Anthony Rendon
Gavin-Howie Kendrick
Brad Hill-Trea Turner
Lost Collector-Adam Eaton
On a completely unrelated to the World Series note...the NBA season is also scheduled to kick off tonight.
And because of that I am going to show off the bustiest Instagram star that can handle a basketball.
Jem Wolfie
She is an online sensation with her love of basketball, fitness workouts, culinary knowledge, and just really really good looking.
I recently discovered Jem Wolfie because I have become a big fan of the energy drink called Bang. It has all the energy enhancements of a Monster, Red Bull, etc but none of the side effects like body crashes nor is it loaded with sugars.
The drink comes in a wild assortment of fun flavors like cotton candy, birthday cake, starblast, cherry blade, sour heads, etc.
Had I not done some research on this energy drink I may have missed out on discovering this incredible young entrepreneur.
Jem has created a few businesses thanks to her success online.
In addition to being one of Instagram's most followed models,
She also does a lot of fitness videos
And can dribble a basketball like few other women I've seen in my life.
She has recently begun a fans only site where fans can access exclusive content of her for a monthly fee.
I don't have the desire for that and will stick to following her on more public social media sites.
Her YouTube isn't very active anymore, but there is still this Q&A that she answers questions from her fans
Her Instagram is still her most popular account with nearly 2.5 million followers
In 2018 Topps began putting player's social media accounts on the back of their cards. That trend continues today.
The 2019 Topps Chrome pink parallel is Cutch's first Phillies card to appear for my Save Second Base event.
Cutch is a favorite among fans for the content he posts on his Instagram account.
