That guy could run: Bert Campaneris

The all time latino stolen base leader, Bert Campaneris is one of those guys who amazingly does not get much attention from the hobby. If you ebay his name you'll come up with less than 70 results and surprisingly none of them is a triple threads, sterling, etc, etc, used/symbolic piece.

When you look at his stats you'll see he ran away with 649 bases and lasted 19 seasons.

Great stealer and not from Pittsburgh, he's guilty of batting more than 279 only twice and having a whooping 259 all time batting average. Imagine Bert with at least a 280 average and therefore more opportunities to fly around the bases.

I'm proud to own...

Catfish vs Termites

Even though in this crazy weather and high humidity environment we live in, I've never had problems with termites or any type of bug messing with my baseball cards.

At a flea market a couple of months ago I spotted this Catfish Crawford card:

It caught my attention (yes you're right, I was bore as Moses in the Grand Canyon) and $.30 later I was playing the taxidermists with it.

Maybe Sammy will also resurrect

Now that McGwire is back in a MLB uniform, I'll take a moment to blog about none other than Mark's nemesis and who helped him put baseball back on the map with their steriod-Hr race: Slammin Sammy.

In the late 90's Sammy was by far the most recognizable face the Dominican Republic had in MLB. His popularity was so outstanding that he couldn't walk around in public without 3 or more bodyguards breathing on his neck. The first and only time I've seen him in person happened at a gas station where your royal highness Sammy was just showing off his brand new Dodge Viper, the first ever that came down here. Right behind, 3 Ryan Howard type of guys were escorting him on a Mercedes S500. Saying he was cocky and arrogant would have been a compliment.

He bought several fancy properties in Santo Domingo, Casa de Campo and forgot the exact address of his hometown "San Pedro de Macoris".

Long back were the days where he played during our winter baseball season.

He's one of the worst cases I've seen of money changing totally who you are (or who WE think you are). In my opinion, he's not a bad guy but he fouled the ball hanging around with the wrong people. That was the problem.

Your weather forecast for the 80's

Prospecting has never been easy. It used to be a tough job only for scouts trying to make a living as pythoness and oracles but now they're not alone; diehard collectors/prospectors spend long hours attending minor league games, reading Baseball America reports and hunting young kids for autographs before and after ball games. It's a we'll known established business and it's here to stay.

Back in 1976-77 amateur drafts the Cubs were shopping around in the late rounds trying to make the most out of their rights but !damn! they got it wrong. Actually most teams got it wrong if you check Topps 1980 cards 661-686 but I'm not teasing the Cubs fans, is just that I like to write about cards that I proudly own.

When these are your Future Stars:

I just can say it's going to be a cloudy and stormy decade...

1991 Panini stickers

1991 was a great year. I was just starting high school and officially began collecting. The first baseball trading cards I got my hands on were the now cheap and famous 1991 Panini stickers. I don't know how much money we paid for the album and single packs back then, but I do remember I saved and used for this purpose every single penny I was supposed to spend on lunch and whatever extra cash I received from one of my crazy uncles.

Every morning, we would get to school early enough to buy and share our pulls. If you got there late and missed the seller and didn't fell like waiting until tomorrow, at 10:15am you had 45 minutes (lunch break) to sneak out and run 3 blocks down the street to a nearby private school where the seller was at that time.

Did I ever complete the 1991 album? No. Later that year we were introduced to "regular" baseball cards and never looked back.

For my surprise and delight, a couple of moths ago I found these stickers in a local flea market and I knew they were coming home with me right away.

Now that Panini is in the baseball business once again, maybe they'll resurrect this project and bring back the album glory days for our kids.