Sunday, November 15, 2015

Signature Sundays - A Baker's Dozen

For last week's Signature Sundays post, I went with a Jim Palmer Emerald Autograph from 2005 Upper Deck Baseball Heroes, and mentioned that I was now up to a dozen Emerald Autos from that set.  I got a request in the comments to post all twelve at once.  Well, take heed my [handful of] loyal readers, ask and ye shall receive!

Before we get to that though, I've got another one of these to make it a baker's dozen:

Yes, baseball HOFer Paul Molitor is the latest on-card autograph I've been fortunate enough to acquire.  A 7-time All-Star, World Series Champ (and MVP!) in 1993, and member of the 3,000 hit club, Molitor was elected for enshrinement in his first year of eligibility.

Through an impressive 21 MLB seasons Paul recorded a .306 career batting average, and his 3,319 career hits currently have him sitting at 10th all-time.  What's scary is that Molitor missed over three seasons' worth of games combined due to injury over the length of his career, with many of those missed games coming during his prime younger years.  It's not inconceivable that he could have reached the top three in all-time hits were it not for those injuries. 

Those career hit numbers would have earned him a place in Cooperstown on their own, but Paul was an even more effective hitter in the post-season.  In 29 career playoff games Molitor hit an amazing .368, with 6 HR, 22 RBI and an OPS over a thousand!

Alright, time to take a look at the Emerald Autos I've accumulated to date.  There are 100 cards on the checklist, but only 20 subjects.  Each player gets four standard autos like the one above, plus a fifth auto with a horizontal, painted design.  As you'll see, Will Clark is the only player I've gotten more than one card of (and the only player I've got a horizontal painted card of); I'm just one tantalizing card away from finishing his subset of five.

Alright, no commentary, I'll let the cards speak for themselves!













Thanks for reading, see you next Sunday with another new autograph!

2 comments:

  1. Wow impressive collection there. You're onto something with Molitor - you could easily give 300 – 450 more hits had he remained healthy, which puts him in Stan Musial / Cap Anson company...

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