The next night we recorded episode 23 with Craig Calcaterra of HardBalltimes.com. Craig has written the popular Shyster Ball blog on the HardBall Times site, and we didn’t talk about sports cards as much as we discussed the game of Baseball.

Both episodes were extremely fun to record and I had as much fun talking with them as I have anyone. Check out both of their sites. They are both at the top of the game in the subject matter that they cover.

It is the first ever 600 Home Run Club card, since he has been the face of Upper Deck since they first released back in 1989, they are releasing a 600 Home Run Club card of Ken Griffey Junior. So this should be a huge year for those rabid Griffey fans out there, there are 89 buyback rookies inscribed 20 years, plus we also had the exclusive announcement that Upper Deck will be inserting some buyback unsigned Ken Griffey Jr. rookies in to their 2009 set.

The final new piece of news coming out of our interview was about the 20th Anniversary set from Upper Deck. It will be a 2500 card set akin to the Yankee Stadium Legacy set last year. Listen to the podcast for all the details on this product!

So a few days ago I got an email from Sure Shot Productions that promoted the Shriners show in Boston that I went to. On January 10th at Jillians in Boston the Red Sox were hosting a charity event benefitting the Jimmy Fund. The signing was from 11:30 until 1:30 and I hadn’t heard a thing about it before hand, but looking at the guest list I knew I had to go.

The guest list for the event were as follows

The 2009 event welcomes the following players*:

* Justin Masterson
* Michael Bowden
* Chris Carter — Red Sox outfielder
* Lars Anderson — 2008 Red Sox Minor League Player of the Year
* Daniel Bard — 2008 Red Sox Minor League Pitcher of the Year
* George Kottaras — Red Sox catcher
* Josh Reddick — SoxProspects.com #3 ranked prospect
* Jason Place — Red Sox 2006 first round draft pick
* Richie Lentz — SoxProspects.com All Star
* Special Guest Terry Francona

That was the list, so I figured I had to go. There were a lot of opportunities for pictures there, I could meet Michael Bowden and get a picture with his Sterling Red 1/1. SoxProspects.com top 4 players for the Sox would be there, and one of the few people from the 04 and 07 World Series teams that I had zero things autographed by, Terry Francona would be there.

Also back in Spring Training I started a trend to make my fiancee back home happy. She made me a stuffed bear for my birthday last year and she begged me to take a picture of him at the Red Sox stadium. Well I brought him to the stadium, and ended up sitting with Johnny Pesky for a while, and decided “Ehh, what the hell” and the following picture was the product of this brain storm.

So this gave us the opportunity to get Lil’ Papi’s picture with a TON of future Red Sox, a legendary manager, and also a good deal of signatures for my autograph collection. So I stocked up on some ROMLB’s, a few cards, some pens that wrote on the cards after testing a bunch out, and Emily and I headed to Boston for this event.

We got there and after waiting in line for a short amount of time we headed in to the bowling alley at Jillians. I was surprised going in at first because there really wasn’t an enormous crowd. I figured just with Masterson and Francona alone it should draw a lot out in Boston, but sadly it did not. They did say later on in the event that in just attendance fees alone they raised 15,000 for the Jimmy Fund, so definitely was a good fund raiser.

But after a little bit, Emily and I got in line. I had a few cards to be signed and a few balls, and a “Francona” as I call it. We got in line and tried to survey everything to have my stuff in order for signing. The first person on the walk way of autographs was Jason Place, former 1st round pick of the Sox in 2006. I said hi to him, shook hands exchanged pleasantries and asked him to sign the ball I had. He was there to do that, so he didn’t deny me. Then for the Lil’ Papi part, my fiancee Emily was in charge of that. “Can we get a picture with him?” She asked, extending Lil’ Papi at them. Jason sort of laughed but agreed with no problem. Richie Lentz hopped in the back of the photo as well laughing.

Ok, I was in the back of that picture, so does that cover me?” Lentz asked. “Listen everyone from Johnny Pesky to Jonathan Papelbon has taken a picture with him. You can do it!”. He cracked up, but showed the respect to a Red Sox great that he deserves , “Well if Pesky did it, then I have to.”

Richie took an amazing picture with Lil’ Papi. He said after “I hope my picture was a little different than everyone else you get, so you remember it. You’re probably going to get on Leno with this bear.” Then we went to Josh Reddick. I had one of his Donruss Threads cards to get signed. I don’t have a scanner where I am now, so I will have to post that later. But I had tested out markers with the threads cards before, and found that a Bic Marks-A-Lot worked the best on them. This Permanant marker really signs well on glossy cards. I have heard great things about Lumacolor from Staedtler, but the ones I found weren’t too thick and didn’t sign too great. So Josh signed my threads card and Emily handed him Lil’ Papi and asked for the picture.

HE SIGNED LIL’ PAPI!!! Now at this point I should also meantion that Emily loves to get different shirts for Lil’ Papi, and the shirt he was wearing was one from ChowdahHeads.com that said “Little Papi” on the back and had #34. Now we had the #4 Prospect for the Red Sox signing the shirt in Silver Sharpie. “You don’t sign the bear, you take a picture with him!” yelled Lentz at Reddick. “Oh..uhhh…..” said Reddick. All the players around laughed at him, and he quickly posed for the picture.

Then next in line was Daniel Bard #3 overall prospect on SoxProspects.com, and 2008 Red Sox Minor League Pitcher of the Year. He was really nice, laughing at Reddick, and signed the ball for me, since all his Bowman cards are signed. Next up on the line was #1 Prospect, and the best player in 2008 Bowman Chrome, Lars Anderson.

I had heard things about Lars being pretty abrasive in person, but earlier in the day had witnessed him interacting with some children from the Jimmy Fund, and he was extremely friendly to them and came across very genuine. I went up with him with a ROMLB that I wanted him to sign by himself to hold for a long term collection item.

“Can you sign it ‘To Rob” I asked him. He looked at me and asked “How do I spell Rob?” I laughed at this and fired back “Uhh, it has less letters in it than Lars.” He laughed and signed it for me. At this point Daniel Bard handed him Lil’ Papi for his photo op, and Lars began to sign his shirt. For the second time we got to hear “You take the picure, don’t sign him!!” Now I’m not someone to turn away another Lars autograph, I mean he was already signed. But Lars stopped and posed for the picture with Lil’ Papi, and it was an adorable picture that I hope will be famous when Lars is an All Star.

Next up was George Kottaras, who was extremely nice. He signed the ball for me, and took an amazing picture with Lil’ Papi. As we walked away he made sure to say to Emily that he really wanted a copy of the picture. Her and I do plan, as another experiment, to send the pictures through the mail to the players and see how many we can get signed.

There were only four guys left, but they were four that I was very excited to meet. Justin Masterson, Michael Bowden, Chris Carter, and Terry Francona were the last four that you would come up to. I had cards for Justin, Chris and Michael to sign. I also had got at Olympia one of the “Francona Jerseys” as I call them to have him sign.

The cards I brought were all refractors that I had powered some, and may even get some heat from people for getting high end cards signed, but I had Justin sign a Blue Refractor of his rookie, I had Michael sign his Gold Refractor Rookie, and Chris Carter I had a his 2008 BCDP Blue Refractor but for some reason when I got to his table I handed him a baseball to sign.

When I talked to Michael I wanted to get a picture that I figured would be fairly unique. I own his 1/1 Sterling Red Refractor, so the opportunity to take a picture of a player and their one of one rookie has to be extremely rare, but I was able to accomplish it on this day.

Then for the last autograph I got on the day I handed Terry Francona the “Francona” to sign. He signed it in silver sharpie, and I wanted to get a picture with him myself, but we handed him Lil’ Papi and Terry became the third person to try to, and the second to successfully sign the Little Papi shirt. So I got to ask the manager that steered my favorite team to the World Championship in 2004 and 2007 to actually take a picture with the small bear instead of signing him.

After meeting everyone in the autograph line, we walked around the area a little. It was a great set up. They had some really nice stuff for silent auction, and also had a table with more than you could have hoped for in a reasonably priced selection of autographed memorabilia. Nothing was priced over 100 dollars, and they had everything from Josh Beckett signed World Series, or All Star Game baseballs to 16×20 autographed pictures from players such as Pedroia, Papelbon, Buchholz, and Schilling. Emily and I got the 16×20 of Clay Buchholz for fifty dollars. It was a picture from his no hitter, and probably would have cost around 200 if we bought it in a store.

But one bonus that they really didn’t advertise was there were nine more Red Sox prospects that were hanging out and bowling. So we went up to them and got some more autographs and pictures.

Zach Daeges and Wes Littleton were the first two we saw, so we approached them. They were both very friendly, and were cracking up at the pictures with Lil’ Papi idea. While I was going around getting stuff signed, Emily was off discussing the whole picture idea with different people. I didn’t really know who she was talking to, but found out soon after.

Argenis Diaz and Felix Doubront were engaged in a vicious bowling battle, so we didn’t bother them at this point. There was one other group of players towards the middle of the alley, so we went over to them. This turned out to be a lot of fun.

Emily approached Mark Wagner about a picture and he started cracking up. “With the bear?” He asked. At this time NESN’s Camera’s were on Lil’ Papi, and also the person who Emily had been talking to came over for pictures, and I recognized her now as the Red Sox team photographer. Mark at this point rounded up the other players in the area “Come over here, take the picture with the bear!!” He shouted at everyone. Dustin Richardson, and Kris Johnson came right over and took the picture and signed the ball I had brought with me for the day.

When I had the opportunity to talk with Kris I asked about the rumor I had heard about him collecting his own cards. He said that his father was the real big collector of his stuff, and had been able to get a lot of, as he put it “The plates the cards were made from”. I knew I had seen RBadger on FreedomCardBoard.com with Kris’ Superfractor in his sig, so I told Kris this and he lit up. “Seriously, the Superfractor? My Dad would go nuts! I gotta tell him!” and he pulled out his Blackberry Storm and instantly emailed his father a link to FreedomCardBoard.com and Superfractor.com.

So after this Emily and I were almost ready to head out, but Michael Bowden ended up right in front of me. So I decided to take the opportunity to actually take a second and talk to him. I asked for a picture with both of us and the Red 1/1. He said he had tried to get a lot of his cards, and had seen that card before. We talked about what it cost me, and when I got it. I said how I had picked it up right before his MLB Debut and we had one of the coolest exchanges that left me a little speechless.

“Well, you made a good investment.” Michael said to me, and I had to take a second to answer him because it was a pretty cool moment for me. I was talking with the person about his best card, and he was complimenting me on getting a good deal on the card because he was going to be a success. I just thought that was great, and really makes me even more of a fan of Michael.

In all I walked away with a baseball signed by everyone there but Terry Francona. I got the jersey I wanted signed by him though. I got a 16×20 picture signed by Clay Buchholz from a game that is very special to me. We got to support an amazing cause in the Jimmy Fund and the fight to end cancer. Plus, Emily and I got a day that neither of us will ever forget.

Here are a few pics of signed stuff.

You read all the way down here?? Cool, just send me a PM and someone will win a Justin Masterson signed TTM Tri Star card.