Mr. October Arrives in July!!! And He Brought Some Legends with Him.

It's been a while since I last did one of these thank you posts. That's because there hasn't been a lot of SP cards out in the trading arenas that I frequent that I need. However, I did get an offer from a Richard Cavallaro from the good old TMB saying that he had a Reggie Jackson card that I needed. I reviewed his want lists, and offered him a ton of inserts that he needed for it. He happily agreed.

I also found two insert cards from the Walmart and Target Legends of the Game sets (one of each) that I needed as well. He was more than gracious enough to include them in the package. Today, I get two envelopes, one from friend of the blog Craig Parker (I'll get to his package in a minute), and one from Mr. Cavallaro. Rich sent both LLP11 and LLG11, and

Reggie Jackson #515.
Now, by the time I started following baseball, Mr. October had just ended his career. So I missed out on seeing him play. Short of him being in commercials (and shilling for a competitor's card products), the only time I saw him play was in the movie Naked Gun.

But reading about him...man was there a lot of stuff on Reggie. But know this...when he went up to the plate, it was truly home run or bust. He may have been on the bust side more often than not, but you can't take away those titanic home runs that he hit when making contact. And he was a champion...five times a part of a World Series winning team (1972-1974 with Oakland, 1978-1979 with the Yankees). He was the "straw that stirred the drink" all right. From fights with his managers (Billy Martin comes to mind) to his 1978 World Series performance, there was no doubt who was the star of the Yankees during the late 70's.

So thank you to Rich for sending Reggie. It is much appreciated, and now I'm down to seven MLB Legends SP's (Ripken, Ryan, Robinsons 1 & 2, Marichal, Gwynn, and Schmidt).

Back to Mr. Parker. He e-mailed me saying that he had some cards from my want list that I needed. Not as dramatic as the last time he e-mailed me with cards to mail, but still, how can I say no to anything that he didn't want that I need? The cards arrived today, and now I am two cards away from finishing the Target half of the Legends set.

But he also sent me a business card for a website called Great Checklist.com (http://www.greatchecklist.com). On this fledgling site, you can find checklists for many years and brands of Topps Baseball, and other baseball card sets. Each card is linked to an eBay search, so if you're really looking for that 1988 Topps Felix Fermin card (just an example), if there is an auction for it, it will show up on the link. It is worth checking out when you have time. The pages load quickly, compared to some other site, but still needs a lot of data. I still think it's a good alternative if you don't have the patience to use the number one site in the hobby's checklists.

Thanks again Craig. Just curious, are you involved with this website in any way, shape, or form???

Sincerely,

JayBee Anama