Blog: April 26-May 2, 2010
April 26, 2010. Felipe Lopez was sent to the DL and Allen Craig was shipped to Memphis. To replace them, Tyler Greene and hot prospect Jon Jay were recalled from AAA. Greene was assigned his familiar #27 while Jay inherits the #15 vacated by Matt Holliday... Jay appeared in the game, using a flame-finished LS ash bat... I received reports from the ballpark that the Authentics Store now has spring training jerseys for sale. They also have a new batch of bats, some used as recently as the 20-inning game on 4/17... Birdbats.com received its 50,000th hit just before noon today. I'm sure some sites get that many hits per minute, but for this rinky-dink blog, that's a pretty cool milestone. Thanks everyone for reading!
April 27, 2010. Freese was using a Gwynn-finished Marucci tonight, a slight change from his typical black... I experienced one of the negative aspects of the Cards' switch from LOAs to MLB holograms tonight. I'd thought about buying a Holliday bat for a friend, but the hologram number identified the bat as being "game issued." The bat was clearly used and cracked, but because the MLB rep didn't see it used, it can't be authenticated as game used. When hologram numbers can pinpoint a bat to a certain game -- such as the Jaime Garcia bat I bought from the 20-inning game on 4/17 -- they're great. But, when they identify a solid gamer as "game issued," well, I'd rather have the team LOA.
April 28, 2010. Schumaker must be trying to change his luck. He went high cuffed tonight, ala Brendan Ryan and Brad Penny. Looked great, and maybe it even helped -- Skip was two for three with a couple walks... If you ever get the chance to buy a "game-used" McGwire jersey from this season, you should keep in mind that he almost always looks like this during games. The ol' #25 jersey isn't getting much game use.
April 29, 2010. Tyler Greene made his 2010 debut swinging a black LS M9 with extremely heavy pine tar caked on... Joe Mather was swinging a dark Marucci. It could be black, but I think it might be the deep burgandy color Marucci uses. I'm going to call it a Hornsby finish on the bat use chart... Jon Jay was swinging an ash LS with a flame finish -- and the H&B 125th logo on the sweet spot. It was a 2009 bat with Mather's name clearly visible on the barrel... Hawksworth used an Adam Wainwright model LS natural ash bat during his plate appearance.
April 30, 2010. Brendan Ryan used a natural Marucci tonight. It's the first time this season he hasn't used the Gwynn-finished Marucci... I've finally updated the alphabetical and numerical uniform number lists. It took a little longer this year because I reformatted all 127 of those pages as tables instead of multiple columns of text. So, if you ever had trouble with the columns lining up correctly, that issue should be fixed. Next step is reformatting all the uniform numbers by season.
May 1 , 2010. Closer Ryan Franklin had his first plate appearance of the season today. He used a natural ash LS... LaRue used a black LS M9 and, for the first time this year, a natural ash LS... Coming out of commercial in the 8th inning, the camera used a tight shot of Brendan Ryan's natural Marucci bat knob as a backdrop for ad placement. The 33.5", 31.2 ounce stick was manufactured 4/26/10, just five days ago.
May 2 , 2010. Last week, I received an e-mail about this Ozzie Smith jersey asking if the lack of a straight hem was a sign of it being bogus. I'm not sure if Oz used a straight or athletic cut in his final season, but I did notice that the patch and tailored tag strip didn't look consistent with exemplars (offered jersey on left, an exemplar on right). I also knew Ozzie ordered many jerseys in '96 to give away as souvenirs. One such jersey, I recalled, was available on this Web site (seventh jersey down). I then noticed the autographs on both jerseys looked very similar -- as did the other elements. I'm convinced it's the same shirt. I'll keep you updated on my research, but needless to say, you might want to think twice before bidding on this Ozzie jersey.
