jeff bagwell is in my hall of famer collection

jeff bagwell was voted in to the hall of fame in 2017 on his seventh ballot. it's taken a while for me to add him to my hall of famer collection as well, but he's there now with this card as his entry:

that's a 2017 topps five star heart of a champion autograph, numbered 18/35. here's the back:

bagwell deserves to be in the hall of fame, and one can only assume that the reason it took him so long to get there was due to suspicions (never proven) of ped use during his career. i don't have an opinion one way or the other, but i do know he was a dominant force in the national league during his peak years.

i sort of lost track of bagwell once the astros moved to the central division and out of direct divisional competition with the dodgers. i did, however, reacquaint myself with his exploits each year as i continued to collect cards and add him to my extensive list of player collections. then in 2001, when i returned to fantasy baseball, i made bagwell my first round pick (i picked third, i believe), passing on randy johnson. as a result, i followed bagwell pretty closely that season, and while he had a subpar year by his own standards, he still slashed .288/.397/.568. still, the big unit would have been a better pick.

i continued to follow bagwell after that, and was sort of pleased that he made it to the world series in 2005. due to the stupidity of mlb having different rules for each league, there was only a dh in the games played in the white sox' home park, so bagwell, who couldn't play the field due to his shoulder injury, only pinch hit in the astros' home games. that's better than his birthday buddy frank thomas, who missed the series altogether due to injury.

bagwell did not return to the majors after the 2005 world series, and officially announced his retirement in december of 2006. his counting stats include over 2300 hits and over 1500 rbi, along with 449 home runs and 202 stolen bases. he is one of only 13 players to hit 400 home runs and steal 200 bases and would probably be the last member you would think of (the others are alfonso soriano, carlos beltran, andre dawson, jose canseco, gary sheffield, reggie jackson, frank robinson, sammy sosa, willie mays, alex rodriguez, hank aaron, and barry bonds).

you can see bagwell and the other players in my hall of famer collection here! 

collecting k's

i don't usually write about this stuff, but work has been really great the last couple of years, and i decided to direct some of my rewards towards expanding my collection in a very specific way.

i started following searches for sandy koufax autographs.

since he rejoined the hobby in 2000, there have been a significant number of releases that have featured koufax in the checklist.  however, the only koufax signed card i owned before this year was his 1998 donruss signature series card.

i waited and watched for a while to get a sense as to what koufax autos were selling for, and then made a move on a couple of cards.  first, a 2002 upper deck sweet spot legendary signatures card

and then a 2001 upper deck ultimate collection ultimate signatures card

people seem to avoid graded cards sometimes, which means they sell for less than they should. i don't mind, as i can either free the card or keep it slabbed (which is how this card remains).  i will say i passed over some slightly cheaper koufax autographed cards due to either a poor design (in my opinion) or a shaky/smudged autograph.  these two cards are pretty good in that regard.  i think i did well, and i will likely try to pick up at least one more card signed by the left hand of god.

while i was at it, i decided to do the same for another dodger lefty, clayton kershaw.

over the past few months, i've picked up a few different on-card autos of the future hall of famer, but i'll only show two of those cards here.  first up is a 2015 topps museum collection archival autograph card

not sure if it's a blue parallel or if that is the base design, but it looks good.

i wasn't quite sure about the next one as it looked a little gaudy at first, but i did wind up buying this 2017 topps five star card

in the hopes that it looked better in person.  it did.

this foray into specifically targeting these sorts of cards is not necessarily new to me, but it has led to a more widely scoped angle to my collection. i'll get in to that in my next post.