Recent eBay purchases

 I’m sure by now anyone who follows baseball knows that Tropicana Field had parts of its roof damaged by Hurricane Milton. This one really hits close to me for a number of reasons. First, because I live about 2 1/2 hours away. Second, because I’ve been going to games there since the Rays first season all the way back in 1998. Third, just because of the sheer amount of games I’ve been to. I would venture to say it’s at least 25, perhaps closer to 50. 

You can say what you want to about the stadium, but for me, since I grew up going the Trop at about 90% of the MLB games I’ve attended, I just really don’t think it’s that bad of a stadium. The dome served a purpose that overrode how bad or “unbaseball” it made the stadium seem. It kept the rain out. Starting in April some years, you will get rainstorms pop up out of nowhere in Florida, and it can go on until early fall. Not everyday, but some years it has hit close to 60 or 70 percent of the days, more if you are along the coast, which St. Pete is. Without the dome, there would be a number of rainouts, and it would wreak havoc on the schedule. All of the minor league teams in FL just have open stadiums, because let’s face it, MLB doesn’t care if a minor league team has 20% of the games on its schedule either cancelled or made up as 2 7-inning double header games. 

I will say that the area around the Trop just didn’t welcome you or even let you know you were near a baseball stadium. Aside from a billboard for the Rays along Interstate 275, no Rays-branded signs are near the ballpark. The signage only starts once you enter the main parking lot, and that should be expected. I can only hope the Rays do better with marketing the club with the new stadium. I’ve been to games in Pittsburgh and Washington DC in 2023, and with both clubs out of contention, they still had vendors selling team merch blocks away from the park, team signs everywhere, and just a whole different atmosphere blocks before you get to the ballpark. Perhaps if $ternberg would sign a player to an extension, a player would be recognized as the face of the franchise, and people would want to risk selling some jerseys outside of the stadium. 

With all that said, there is a potential that the stadium that is hated by many baseball fans and loved by me will have seen its final game hosted there. Even if the roof is fixed, the field needs to be drained, as nothing is keeping even more rain and who knows what from entering the stadium. There aren’t drainage systems because with no rain and artificial turf, it just wasn’t needed. I’m sure there is a small drainage system, because they do have hoses that spray the infield dirt before the game, but it’s not enough to handle rain that flooded many areas nearby. Who knows just where the rainwater ended up and if there are mold and mildew problems starting to develop. It might just be a better idea to play home games at nearby Al Lang Field across the Howard Frankland Bridge in Tampa, at the Blue Jays’ Spring Training stadium in Dunedin about the same distance away, or give them the best solution, and let them play at Disney’s Wide World of Sports complex in Orlando?  Orlando would attract more fans from the booming Orlando area, it’s still close to Tampa, so you would still get a number of them, and you would get the tourists coming as well. Orlando doesn’t have nearly the amount of retired people as the Tampa area, so you wouldn’t get the fans coming that lived somewhere else until they were 60 and aren’t Rays fans, you would have a number of more true Rays fans who don’t have other allegiances. With each of these parks, I think there would have to be some kind of artificial roof made in order to keep the rainouts from occurring so frequently. At least in Orlando you are away from the coast. 

If the Trop has indeed hosted its final game, I really wanted to see if I could somehow get a piece of the roof, as I have seen a number of people on various Rays sites post pictures of getting some from around the park. I didn’t really have a decent chance ar leaving the house for 6+ hours to potentially find a piece of the roof, but there was one listed on eBay that was about these and price that I was looking for, so I pounced on it. It showed up in the mail today. Actually 2 pieces, and both are maybe the size of my hand. I have a box in my garage of baseball memorabilia, posters, and other things that I want to hang up in my man-cave if I can ever get one, and in it is a piece of artificial turf used at the Trop, so I took a picture of the roof pieces with the turf piece. 

I don't know if I'll get the cave in this house or not. We've talked about adopting, and if that happens, I'm sure the guest room will serve as another kid bedroom, but at some point, if we are in this house long enough, I think the guest room will eventually become mine. If this blog is around in 10 or so years, you might just see pics. 

I've kind of been on a Rays-heavy quest when I've been looking on eBay ever since the Trop got hit with the hurricane. I've been wanting a few team photos. Number one, of the inaugural 1998 team, number two, of the 2008 AL Championship team, and number three, of the 2020 AL Championship team. There is a photo of the '08 team on eBay, but at 25 bucks, I feel it's a little steep. I'm willing to go about 10 plus shipping for a photo. The '20 team, surprisingly, has no photos except of the team celebrating, and I just want one of the entire team posed and sitting like on the '50's through '70's Topps sets. The '98 team has one that I would like, but it has autographs on it of 4 guys (Dennis Springer, Bobby Smith, Rolando Arrojo, and one other guy). Nobody even remotely memorable, even to a Rays fan, and the guy is asking 50 bucks for it. Sorry. 

I did find a way around it, and was able to find one item, which I'm not even sure of what it is. The front has the team photo, and the back just says its a raffle ticket for a MD charity. I have a feeling it is maybe smaller than a baseball card, so not quite what I am looking for, but it was 8 bucks, and I got it. I also found an old Rays magazine from 1998 that had a team picture in it that I am pretty sure I will be able to take out of the magazine, so I got that as well, and maybe that will be able to go up in the future man cave. 

Other than that, I got the 2024 Topps Update set. That gives me runs of Topps complete sets (with my yet to be shipped SportLot box) from 1980-2001 (with Traded), 2004 Topps, 2006 Topps .  Traded, 2016 Topps Update, and 2019-2024 Topps (with Update). I think I might focus on the missing ones in between the runs I have going so I can get a run from 1980 to now. I’m missing some of the key cards from a few of the sets, but do have some of the key ones like Betts (base), deGrom (base and Rookie Debut), Scherzer, Ohtani, Soto, and Acuna (all base), and some other guys like Verlander and Kershaw that I have an equivalent rookie from  another brand that I could probably use to trade for the Topps version. Maybe I can accomplish that in a few years. 

Hopefully the Trop can get a few more games in before it closes in a few years. If not, at least my last few eBay purchases

 helped me feel close to it and relive some memories. 

Thanks for taking the time to read my latest post. 

-Jeremy 

More Sportlots, updates, and some customs

 The last time I had made a post, I made my first Sportlots purchase. It finished my 1981-1985 Topps sets, as well as getting me close to the 1983 Traded set being finished. I searched high and low, and finally found a 1983 Topps Traded Darryl Strawberry card that didn't cost and arm and a leg, and I should finally have that in hand by tomorrow. 

Since then, I have kind of figured out that the 'box shipment' is the way to go with Sportlots, and went to work last night trying to finish the 1980 Topps and 1981 Topps Traded sets to give me complete runs of Topps sets for the '80's and '90's. Well, I got that, and a lot more. 

So it turns out, some of these rookie cards from early '80s Traded sets can get a little costly. I don't know if it was the same way before COVID hit, but dang, I really wasn't expecting to get hung up on the '81 Traded set by not wanting to pay more than 10 bucks for a Fernando Valenzuela Traded card (especially when he had a Topps card issued previously in the regular set. Well, as with the Strawberry card, I found one closer to my desired price range on eBay, so that one is en route as well. 

I was wondering the other day on what a 2000 Topps Traded set would run me, especially since the Miguel Cabrera rookie will only go up in value, so I was looking, and I found one on eBay (without Miggy) for a decent price. I figured if I could find an off-conditioned copy that I could come out cheaper than the price of a complete set, so I bit the bullet on it. Then, yesterday, I submitted an offer on Cabrera's rookie that was more what I wanted to pay, and I won. That would give me a run of sets from 1980-2000, but I wasn't done yet. 

I had maybe 20 cards I needed from the 2001 Topps main set, and knew I already had the 2 main guys from the Traded set (Ichiro and Pujols, plus the combo card of them), so I added those to the Sportlots box. I also had just a few cards left in 2016 Topps Update, and with no big name rookies, Sportlots put that one to bed as well. I threw in a few Junior Caminero cards, some copies of Rays and Tigers from recent issues like Topps Chrome and Pro Debut, added the 2 cards of Raymond (the Rays mascot) from the past 2 years of Big League, paid for my order, and went to bed.

Without the big custom project I finished, I wouldn't have had nearly the amount of cash to spend on cards that I have, so I was really thankful for that. I will reveal the entirety of that project in due time (no clue when, but that might even be something special enough to get it's own post). Recent things in life haven't been that great, though.

Let's start with the hurricanes. I'm not going to be all doom and gloom with the next few paragraphs, just lay it out, but try to put a positive spin on everything. Hurricane Helene hit, and we got a little rain and wind, but nothing. A few weeks later, Milton hit, and it was definitely stronger. We were slammed at work, but fortunately for me, I was working Monday, off Tuesday, we got Wednesday off for the storm, and just had a half a day on Thursday before going back full days starting Friday. I have never got sand bags for a hurricane, but with the last big one (maybe Ian 2 years ago?) sending a little water flooding into our kitchen, I went looking for some on Tuesday when I was off. At a fire station not 5 minutes away, they had free bags and you just needed to fill them. I went, and filled 10 for our house (which was probably about half as many as we needed. I'll know for next time). I met a nice guy named Carl, and we tooked turns holding sandbags open for eachother while the other one filled them. Had I known about the station a little earlier and arranged for someone else to pick up Kyler from school, I would've stayed and helped the rest of the day. It was just nice to see strangers in the community coming together and not just out for themselves in the grocery store. Karen, Kyler, and I went to Karen's work and stayed there for the storm. Since she is the building manager at an assisted living facility, she is required to stay there until the storm passes, and her mom stayed here, so there was NO WAY I was staying with her. We drove up Wednesday morning, and after dinner I had 1 Angry Orchard and we started playing cornhole in an empty room. I had another, and was getting a nice buzz, and by the time it was over, a buzzed me and 2nd grade Kyler had beat 2 sober teams in 3 3-on-3 games. That won't ever happen again. We slept on an air mattress, and I kept tossing and turning, hearing updates on the storm as I was half awake. Our house in DeLand was basically fine. Power stayed on, 3 or 4 medium sized branches came down, and there was a little flooding in the kitchen and garage, but not like the last time. Karen's work is close to Daytona on the coast, and with the rain and low water table, there were areas of her facility that looked like lakes. 3 trees came down, 1 hitting the building and leaving an opening in a room. When I woke up, we had a few hours before I needed to be back in DeLand for work, so I helped their maintenance guy get the front of the building looking clean again, and he let me use a leaf blower for the first time in my life, and I tried to clear some of the leaves and smaller branches away while he got to work on one of the downed trees with a chainsaw. It's crazy because when the flooding came the last time, most of the roads had the ponding gone after a day, but this time, it had rained with Helene and we got some for like 3 days before Milton came, and there are 2 places I pass through on the way to work where it still hasn't subsided, and part of the road that is just past my work actually caved in and is shut down indefinitely. I'm sure you all have seen the damage to Tropicana Field. I don't know if the team will try to get it repaired, but if not, why not just send them to Orlando and have them play at the Wide World of Sports complex? It is a Major League grade facility where the Braves played during Spring Training for years. It has parking, a berm area that you could easily add seats to, and is really only missing a retractable roof. If you can host a minor league team there (which they did in the early '00's), you can host a Major League team without losing that many home games to rain. The showers usually hit in the afternoons, so put the tarp up after every game, or schedule 7 or 8 PM games, and you should get 80% of the games in. You won't get the Yankee fans that live in abundance near Tampa, and with it being in CENTRAL Florida, you will get the few TRUE Rays fans from Tampa to show up (it's maybe an hour away), PLUS the Orlando fans, guys like me from further North, PLUS tourists!!!  Maybe it will prove to Manfraud that Orlando should get a team. This might be my only chance for a team near me to win a World Series, as we all know that $ternberg won't spend the money to keep decent players or supplement a good team with top tier free agents. 

With all that being said, we got really lucky with the storm. Many people at my work took a while to get their power back, and there are people I know from south of me that still don't have it. This was still probably the fiercest hurricane I have seen in my 30 or so years of living in Florida. 

For loyal readers, you've known that Karen has been hospitalized like 4 times in the last year or so just being unable to breathe for long periods of time. Well, she was having trouble breathing this past week, and her pulmonologist had her in every day for IV steroids and antibiotics, and said on Saturday if she wasn't doing better that they were recommending her go to the hospital. That came and went, and she ended up going in on Saturday night and getting admitted. They are giving her more medicine and there is a chance she could be out tomorrow, but she is just having issues with her blood sugar levels bottoming out that are really scaring me (a Type 1 diabetic for 30 years). She had the same issues a few months back, and they kind of resolved themselves, but I would LOVE to know a reason, because I am scared for her to sleep or drive without knowing what they will do. Mayo Clinic has took her case a while ago, and they have her scheduled for a round of surgeries from November 12-21 (can't remember if I posted about that or not). 

Karen has always had 2 problems with her lungs. Trachial Malaysia (lungs collapsing) and asthma. We don't know which is the biggest problem of the 2. She takes steriods for the asthma, but they have their own fun complications. The lung collapsing is kind of tricky. She had a stent placed in her lungs before I met her which helped hold them open, but it was one covered with plastic, and her body didn't like it, so they had to take it out. She had an uncovered one made of metal placed in, and it lasted a while longer, but again her body didn't like it, and she had coughing fits for a while. At some point, she noticed she was coughing out metal, and turns out it was the stent, and the doctors had to operate and get the pieces removed.  She hasn't had one since (probably 15 years). Mayo wants to place a new stent in her lungs to see how much of her overall breathing problems are the lungs collapsing. Perhaps if it is the lungs collapsing and a stent works, they can reduce the steriods. The first part of the plan is to place a covered silicone stent in her lungs. It is 3D printed, so they think it might have a chance. They are going to observe her, and if  it looks like it's working, send her home, and do a bronchoscophy to make sure it is still working in a week or so after. If it doesn't show signs of her body accepting it, they will take it out and try a stent with a different type of material (another kind of plastic). If that one doesn't work, final option would be another metal one. I am hoping to God that the first one will work the first time and allow her to go off of such high dose steriods. This would do wonders for her and I. When we first started dating, she could do theme parks with no problem. Heck, she walked across the entire state of Florida going from West to East in 5 days with no problems. It would just allow her the freedom that she used to have. We could plan a date night (even just going out for an evening of dinner and the grocery store) without her feeling bad for cancelling cause she can't breathe. It would just allow me to not have to cook every damn day or feel like all of the housework depends on me. I wouldn't have to not get my hopes up when we want to go on a date or something fun is going to happen or feel bad because I know we won't be able to stay for the entirety of the day for something. There are days when she will push herself and do multiple things like drive to have lunch with me on a Saturday when I work and then go to a few stores afterwards, and even that will just be too much, and she won't be able to get off of the couch on Sunday or Monday sometimes because it was just too much for her lungs. If this surgery works, my life is just going to change so much for the better, and I'm trying to believe like it will, because I just don't know how much more of this I can take, and I know she's over it too.

I'll be going to the hospital with her, so I already have the 12th-21st requested off of work. I figure that will be a good time to devote to making more customs, since there's not much I can do with cards in a hospital room. My plans are to finish the missing player checklist from 2023 and 2024, and try to get as many missing Rays done as I can. I have been through 3 different laptops in the past decade. The first one had an older version of MS Paint, GIMP, and I could pull up templates from my blog just fine. The middle one could pull up the templates fine, but has a newer version of Paint. This latest one just doesn't do it for me. It has the latest version of Paint (which I guess I could get used to), and if I try to pull up any of the templates I've saved on my blog, they come out way too small, no matter how I do it (saving, copying and pasting, whatever). I found a way to install an older version of Paint, but same problem. I've been having to remake each and every template, which can be a horrible task. Despite all of that, I've been wanting to make more customs. Karen has been able to print for free at her work, so she can print out cards, and I have been wanting to get a complete Topps Rays master set for every year (Topps/Topps Traded regular cards, and Topps/Topps Traded customs). I've made and printed out the 1998 set, and have recently finished the 1999 set. 2000 is next. I made some last night, and I'll do some more tonight, and maybe tomorrow morning/afternoon (unless Karen gets discharged). Here are some of the latest customs.

Still haven't figured out how to do the curved lettering with GIMP, but a decent looking card. 

You would think with all of the history buffs, baseball photos, and archival projects that a suitable image would exist for not only Wade Boggs hitting the 1st Rays HR, but also Dave Martinez getting the first hit, Wilson Alvarez throwing the 1st pitch, as well as the 1998 team photo. I had to get this off of a YouTube video.

This was from the back of a raffle ticket. I might just purchase the ticket from eBay so I can have a pic of that first team. 

I was a Rays fan before 'The Rookie' movie came out. I've been to many game at the Trop. I have seen Jim Morris pitch at the Trop. I always thought his call-up was more of a gimmick to sell tickets. He never pitched well, and I feel like there were other younger options like Eddie Gaillard, John LeRoy, and Matt Ruebel who could've got more chances instead of Morris. I also thought the movie was just average. I thought some of the kids on the college team he coached were annoying, I felt like his son tagging along to everything was just something Disney wrote in so they could pitch the film as a 'family movie', and they even had him in the wrong era jersey, as they had him in the 2002-era Rays jersey that has the black/blue/green colors instead of the one on this card (and the Bobby Witt below) that have more purple and yellow along with a different font. With all that being said, I would've probably spent 1-5 bucks to get this card back in 1999/2000. 

Jr.'s Dad pitching for Tampa. 

One of the many teams Julio Franco has suited up for. 

Probably the best looking 2000 card I have made so far, fellow Type 1 diabetic Jason Johnson. 

We'll see how many I get through tonight. 

So that's about all I have as far as new cards coming in, sets completed, life updates, and customs. I'll probably order the 2024 Topps Update set in the coming weeks. Now I just need to decide to I try to get my run of sets to go up through the present (I really only need to get it up through 2018), or go for the '70's sets. And does anybody have any extra binders and pages? 

Thanks for checking out my latest post.

-Jeremy