Welcome To PNC Park, Chris Archer

The Pirates sacrificed two of their young athletes (Austin Meadows and Tyler Glasnow) in addition to a third unknown player to be named later to acquire Chris Archer.

I will be heading over five hours west to get to the game so that I can see his Pirates debut at the beautiful PNC Park.  The weather looks to be cool (75 degrees) with a slight chance of showers.

For some people the beach is their happy place.  For me, it's PNC Park.  It is one of the most visually appealing stadiums with the Clemente bridge in the background.

Really looking forward to Chris' debut today.  I think it is so cool that he chose not to wear his old number 22 out of respect for Cutch's significance to the franchise.

I will take pics of the game to share.

On a completely unrelated note, former Pirates utility guy Steve Pearce had a heck of a game against the Yankees last night when he lead the Red Sox over a massive victory by powering 3 homeruns and 6 RBIs.  I wrote an article about him here and stand by the fact that if he was given enoigh consistent playimg time he could be a star.

Where's My Auto?

Remember back in February when I found an unknown printing error for a card designed to have an autograph on it?

Well...I got another one and have been holding onto it for a few months. I think I will use today's post to recap my adventure in Pittsburgh yesterday first though.

It's a six hour drive out west and I didn't think in advance to bring my car charger for my phone.  Shortly after arriving at the stadium at 5:35, I discovered I didn't have much juice left.

That kind of stunk because as I walked towards my seats in section 109 behind the Giants Dugout I encountered a small but growing crowd of people getting autographs.

This isn't anything new for fans to try and get autographs from the visitor team.

Well....except this visitor was Andrew McCutchen.

It was getting closer to 6pm and you can tell that Cutch would have loved to sign for anyone, but he wanted to start his pregame routine.  I overheard someone say he started signing as soon as the gates opened at 5pm.

When I first started Collecting Cutch and attending Pirates games I would have been pushing my way towards the front of the line.
Not this time though.  I was letting younger fans through.  Older women trying to get stuff signed for their grandkids.  There was so many cool stories I heard about as Cutch just kept signing balls, cards, photos, hats, jerseys, bats, etc.

The joy on their faces as they got his autograph.

I didn't go to the games this weekend to try and hound for autographs.  Sure if one fell in my lap, I wouldn't complain, but as I said to Matt from BobWalkThePlank via text, I already have 160+ different things signed by him.

Cutch is a visitor now in Pittsburgh.

I thought I would treat him like a guest and let the rest of the city get an autograph for what he did to this town that forgot what good baseball looked like.

I didn't need an autograph yesterday.  I could have easily gotten one, but I felt a greater sense of joy watching others get theres.

Maybe today I will actually try.

I didn't bring many options to have signed.  A few base cards to choose from and obviously my ticket stubs.

I wish I had brought my unsigned error card from Panini's 2017 Chronicles release.  The autographed version was listed as a SSP and for good reason.  Only one of each (signed and unsigned) has hit eBay since December which I proudly own both.

 The unsigned version has a more Prizm refractor look, but both feature the same backs.

I previously showed off the autograph version in December.