Stars aligned

As I mentioned last week I have a bunch of Cutch autographs sitting in a box that I never entered into my spreadsheet.  

Below is a pair of them.  

The odd thing about these booklets is the different relic types used and the window for the relic.  The jumbo camo jersey has a window that says Cutch 22, while the jumbo bat relic doesn't have any phrase.

The set number and card number are identical as well.

Did Panini make different booklets for each serial number?

Only time will tell if any others pop up for sale that I can,compare the numbers on. 

Sign Stealing!?

The Astros sign stealing scandal going through baseball is going to leave a bad mark on the sport for many many years to come.  With early rumors of video surveillance to garbage can hitting to buzzers on players shoulders, there are now more questions than ever about how far teams will go to try and win.

With that being said, the 2017 World Series Champions Houston Astros won on the road where they didn't have an advantage.

The 2019 Champions, Washington Nationals, won 4 games on the road where the Astros supposedly had a homefield advantage. 

I believe that cheaters should be punished and I believe that the appropriate disciplines have been set in motion.  3 managers lost their jobs.  1 GM lost their job.  4 future draft picks were removed from potentially joining the corrupt organization. 

George Springer is still a Sports Illustrated Hero.

The city of Houston, which had suffered so much during the summer of 2017 due to a hurricane that is still impacting people's lives in and around the city, used the surging Astros to rally their entire city around.

There is no need for asterisks.  There is no need to remove an MVP from Jose Altuve. 

The only need that should be implemented is changing the way the game is viewed going forward and having MLB more involved in what goes on in the clubhouse. 

Make every game of a 162 season feel like an NFL game.  Make the games viewership feel interactive.

Baseball has the strongest amount of history and tradition of any of the 4 major sports.  And that is what is hurting the sport.

You want to make the game more enjoyable and accessible to the viewer?  Put a camera BEHIND the catcher.  Let viewers see what the look of a Clayton Kershaw curveball looks like compared to his fastball.  Try hotting a Michael Kopech fastball.  Or a Gerrit Cole slider. 

All the best video games relating to baseball have a view where "you're in the box".  Let the fans see that famous Willie Stargell quote truly makes "hitting a round ball with a round bat square on" is one of the most difficult things in sports.

Then let's see how many signs are stolen. 

I miss the Pirates Zoltan symbol of celebration when they did something good in a game.  It was unique to the city and helped the fan base interact with the players.  It's the same thing the Nationals did this year with the Baby Shark celebration or the Cubs and the magic hands celebration. 

Steal those signs baseball.

Don't steal the signs of the catcher!

Debut of a new auto?

I am in the ever long process of trying to catalogue all my Andrew McCutchen cards.  Back in 2017 I had 125 unique certified autographs of Cutch.  You can revisit that post here.

Cutch has begun signing a lot more for Topps and Panini in the past two years and in 2019 alone there was 90 uniquely designed cards bearing a certified autograph of the former MVP.

It didn't hit me how insane that is until I personally went through to count them all.  I probably have close to half that many which is still an insane amount, but among all the autographs I have of Cutch NONE of them look like this 2019 Topps Chrome Debut Materials Autograph numbered to 50 copies.

You might look at that signature and not think anything looks unique about it.

A closer inspection of the signature will show some breaks of the pen not found in other Cutch cards I have signed.

I have seen Cutch put a break in the pen between the "T" and "C" on multiple occasions.

Even the one I got in person has a very slight break after the "T"

But I have never seen two breaks after the "T" like in the 2019 Rookie Debut Relic.  Often times I actually see no breaks for his newer style signature (post MLB debut) as can be seen below.

With so many players just putting legible initials at best as their signatures it is nice to see Cutch actually make a legible and identifiable signature on all his cards.

The back of the 2019 Topps Chrome Rookie Debut Gear Relic identifies this as an authentic signature of Andrew McCutchen.  I am sure it is a legit auto, but it is just odd to see a style signature he has never used before.  And with nearly 200 unique signatures of Cutch in my possession I feel I am an aspiring expert.

With only 8 more posts until I reach 1,000 posts here on Collecting Cutch, I have been slowly putting together some quality no filler posts as I march towards the millennium mark.

Bust(in)er Posey

Maybe I am the only one that does this, but each year I like to use a player's name and make a fun interesting name out of it for my fantasy sports team.

This year my two fantasy football team names are BoswellThatEndsWell and WhatJuJuTalkinBout.  So far my teams are 1-1.

My best team I ever assembled though was a team for my ESPN fantasy league where my team lost only 1 week the entire season.  1 week! That was it.  My team name that year was Bust(in)er Posey.   To this day, my girlfriend still calls him that because of how well my team did and how I always talked about my ridiculous record that year.

I recently made a fairly cheap purchase considering the low numbering, product, players, and design of card.

Buster Posey and Andrew McCutchen were team mates on the Giants for a short time, but they also were team mates in their youth too.  You can read the article about they traveled to Taiwan together in high school here.

What will likely be my only pairing of Cutch with Buster Posey both in a Giants uniform was acquired for the very fair price of $26 delivered.  There aren't any nice patches on the card, but that is what Topps Diamond Icons generally has.

Here are all the pros for the card
1)booklet from high end set
2)$26 delivered
3)both players in Giants uniform
4)numbered to only 10 copies
5)different color swatches

Here are the cons
1)remimder that Cutch isn't on Pirates anymore
2)back is very boring
3)Jersey swatches have no patches for a high end set

In need of a custom card maker...

I am in need of someone to design a card and produce it of Aroldis Chapman's record throwing 106 mph fastball to Andrew McCutchen.  I realize that the speed of this fastball has been disputed, but I think it would be awesome to get a dual jumbo booklet of Chapman and Cutch commemorating this pitch.

I have 2 jumbo relics that can be chopped up if needed.

You can see them below.

If anyone has any design skills and would be willing to create this dual booklet for me, leave a comment so we can get this card going.

Thank you for any help that leads to making this card a reality.

It's official!

Gerrit Cole has been announced as the team's Opening Day starter.  For the first time in 3 years I won't be going to see the Pirates on Opening Day, but.... I will be seeing game 2 of the 2017 season in my first trip to Fenway Park.  I am pretty excited about that.

Here is one of my older booklets of Cutch with a jumbo jersey swatch of both Cole and Cutch.  It's numbered to only 5!!!

I have a few other low numbered Cole/Cutch combo cards.

I will show them off in future starts by the Cole Train.