Signature Sundays - A World Series MVP

I've got a decent size backlog of autographed cards that I've been meaning to show on the blog for a while now, so I'm going to try to get one up at least every Sunday for a few weeks here.  Today's card is a very recent eBay win that just arrived in the mailbox this past week.  It's my first Allen & Ginter autograph of any kind, none other than Mike Lowell:

As a Red Sox collector this was a huge win.  Many considered Mike Lowell a throw-in when he came to the team from Florida in the Josh Beckett deal.  He quickly silenced any critics though, and wound up playing the final 5 seasons of his career with Boston.  In those 5 years, Mike hit .290 with 153 doubles, 80 home runs and 374 RBI.  Those numbers are even more impressive when you consider that due to injury Lowell appeared in just 612 of the Red Sox 810 games over those 5 seasons.  If you average it out he missed nearly 1 out of every 4 games.

One of the greatest individual season's I've had the pleasure to witness in my time as a Red Sox fan was Lowell's career season of 2007.  He was an absolute hitting machine in his second season with Boston that year, and was able to stay healthy as well, appearing in 154 games.  The result was a .324 batting average (the only time in his career that he topped .300), a career best 191 hits, 21 home runs and a career best 120 RBI.  Lowell was selected to represent the American League in the All-Star game, and finished 5th in AL MVP voting.  His strong play continued during the team's post-season run.  In the World Series against the Colorado Rockies Mike hit .400 with 3 doubles, 1 home run and 4 RBI.  He was named World Series MVP while leading the Red Sox to their second Championship in four years.

I know Mike's not a Hall-of-Famer or anything, but I was surprised at how little this card went for.  My cost was $4.06 plus a little over $3 to cover shipping.  Pretty reasonable for an on card auto of a World Series MVP if you ask me.