February 27, 2026, Kinston Hot Stove Dinner

On Friday, Jesse and I attended the Down East Bird Dawgs hot stove banquet, which featured Ross Atkins being inducted into the Kinston Baseball Hall of Fame. I had known about the event for some time, so I picked up a few older minor league cards to take with me to have signed.

One of the cards, which was the actual card used to create his over-sized card for the ceremony, was missed when he was signing. Oh well. I'll be fine.

I found some old Akron Aeros team sets from the mid 90s. I believe there are two different 1998 and a 1999.

The event was fun. I'll never turn down King's BBQ. I could have gotten a couple cards signed by Chris Hatcher, but i didn't pull his cards. He was there, and talked to me for a bit. The best conversation I had was with Ross Atkins's mom. She was very nice, and was happy to chat.

I got 6 total autographs from Atkins at the event. A decent start to graphing season.

TTM Success - Mitch Nay

Some of my different years of Bowman are slowly whittling down as I pull cards fir graphing and TTMs. One such set is 2013 Bowman. I don't have many left, so it is always nice to pull one of a guy that signs and send it out. This card of Mitch Nay turned out ok; his pen looks like it is dying.

Nay (b. 1993) was a first round (58th overall) draft pick by the Blue Jays out of Hamilton High School in Arizona. He played in the minors from 2013 to 2019, 2021 and 2022 in the Blue Jays, Reds and Angels systems. He reached AAA. He had 700 hits, 79 home runs and a .257 batting average. 

I mailed to Nay on March 27 and got the card back on December 13, for a 261-day TAT.