TTM Success (I Guess) - Ken Holtzman

As you might be able to tell from the title of this blog post, I assume this was a TTM success from former pitcher, Ken Holtzman.  There appears to be, albeit really faint, an autograph on the above 1968 Topps All Star card.  May it is a dead pen, maybe it is pencil, maybe it was a hunk of coal, I don't know.  I am, however, going with that being an autograph on the card.  I kind of hate that I wasted a pretty cool-looking 1968 Topps, but what can you do?  I heard after the fact that you can get a better signature from Holtzman if you send money.  I didn't know that.  I almost would have rather had a refusal to sign, or a slip saying money was required than the light scribbling I received.  Not a big deal, though.  I will find someone who has bulk 1968 Topps and find a few that I can send off for my project that will be a better representation than this one.

Anyway, Holtzman (b. 1945) played in the majors from 1965 to 1979 for the Cubs, A's, Orioles and Yankees.  He had a career record of 174-150 with an ERA of 349 and 1,601 strike outs.  He was a 2-time All Star and won 20+ games once (1973).  He won the World Series in 1972, 1973 and 1974 for the A's and was on the 1977 and 1978 Yankees teams that also won the World Series (although he was not on their playoff rosters).

Holtzman came to Baltimore in a trade from the A's that also landed the O's Reggie Jackson in 1976.  Holtzman would later be traded away from Baltimore in a deal that would set up the 1983 World Champion O's (and the 1979 AL Champs) when he was dealt with Doyle Alexander, Jimmy Freeman, Elrod Hendricks and Grant Jackson to the Yankees for Rick Dempsey, Tippy Martinez, Rudy May, Scott McGregor and Dave Pagan.

I mailed to Holtzman on March 12 and got the card back on March 28 for a 16-day TAT.

More Cards From Scott F.

In the first trade package my buddy Scott F. sent me, he had included a few parallels and autos that I wanted to show off, but wasn't able to at that time.  I wanted to save them for a later post, and here it is!

Scott included this awesome purple chrome parallel from 2014 Heritage, a rookie card of Xander Bogaerts and Jonathan Schoop.  I recently organized my Schoop PC and found that I have quite a bit of Schoop's stuff, so this will be a welcome addition.

One of the autos that Scott sent was this 3/50 Lex Rutledge die cut from Panini Elite Extra Edition.  This is also a really cool card and looks much better in person.  I met Rutledge in 2013, and he was a really nice guy.  He had spent some time in Gastonia, NC, which is near Charlotte, so we talked about that for a little bit while he was signing autographs.

Finally, I picked up a little trade bait for my buddy, Max.  Since he is a super collector of Cubs cards, I figured he would like this Ken Holtzman card.  I haven't shown it to him, yet, but I'm certain he will like it.

Thanks for all of the great cards, Scott.