Waxing Avery.

I've been a wee busy lately. Unfortunately I haven't posted much over the last week. Thanks to the three of you who noticed. And yes, all is well. Aside from Chipper announcing his retirement at the end of the season and then having knee surgery to repair a torn MCL the next day.

I'll be posting a lot about Larry over the next few months. You Met fans may want to turn your heads for awhile.

But not today.

Today we'll clean up a couple of things. First, is this amazing autograph of Braves pitcher Steve Avery. Steve was the Strasburg of his era. And then he pitched 485 games and 8946523957 innings in his third year. His arm was never the same, although he did end up having a good career. And I will never forget the 1991 stretch drive and subsequent playoffs. One of the most dominating pitching performances I have ever seen.

Sid Bream and Francisco Cabrerra get a lot of the attention for the Braves worst to first year and of course John Smoltz and Jack Morris get most of the attention for that tremendous Game 7 of the World Series. (Kent Hrbek is a cheater. Period.) But without Steve's pitching in the last month of the season and throughout the playoffs, there is no World Series, there is no playoffs. He was the man.

I got this autographed card a loooong time ago from the Wicked One himself down in F.L.A. No fan fare, it just arrived stuffed in amongst a bunch of other cards he sent. But I've always treasured this one over the others. The reason I bring it up now is I was looking through a binder of Tom Glavine cards and I found this one mis-filed. And like all favourite cards of mine, it brought back a tonne of memories.

I always liked Steve. Maybe because he is exactly one day younger than I am. I always thought that was cool too.

In other and more recent news, I've recieved a few gift packages from fellow bloggers over the last couple of weeks.

Big thanks go to Ryan from Another Orioles blog, Oscar at Stealing Home, Cynicalbuddah of Collector's Crack and for these cards from Ryan of Ryan's Pitch.

I had sent Ryan a box of about 250 '91 Fleer. No, no! It's ok! He requested them! Really! He has a wantlist and everything. Please don't burn crosses on my lawn. Dayf has threatened that and more if I ever send him anymore '91 Hoops basketball. (Speaking of that, I'm about due to send him another package...)

Anyways.. where was I? oh yeah, Ryan sent back a package of Braves. He couldn't help much with my wantlists, but he sent a nice stack of Bravos including some oddball sets like Topps American Pie, Topps Super Teams, and Topps Archives.

He also sent these.

 No, this was NOT payback for sending him '91 Fleer. I actually wanted this card.

 See? It's from the traded set. I'm down to needing four more and my '86 Braves set is done. If you can help with that, or any other year, please checkout my wantlists. LINK HERE.

One card I almost missed because it was mixeed in with those others from the previously mentioned  Topps Archives set was this beauty of Lew Burdette.

 a nice 1957 Topps Lew Burdette to be exact. Very awesome. This was two years before Lew became a lefty. Some of you know what I'm talking about.

Who knew Lew's name was 'Selva'???? Yeah... you can call me Lew.

Thanks everyone for the great cards.