Braves A to Z - Bill the Cat's Favorite Player

(For those of you who have no idea who Bill the Cat is please search for Bloom County.)

Jim Acker was originally drafted by the Braves as a First Round pick in 1980 out of the University of Texas. He was selected by Toronto in the 1982 Rule 5 draft. I'm speculating that Bobby Cox may have had something to do with that since Cox went to the Blue Jays as manager in 1982.

Jim was traded to the Braves in mid-season 1986 for pitcher Joe Johnson. He spent parts of 4 seasons with the Braves and had a decent 3.71 ERA; however, in a reflection of how bad the Braves were in the late 1980's, he had a 7 and 27 record. He started 15 games for Atlanta but was mainly a relief pitcher and led the team in Saves in 1987 with 14.

In a fortuitous move, Atlanta sent him back to Toronto during the 1989 season. The Braves got reliever Tony Castilla and some catcher named Francisco Cabrera. If you don't know about Cabrera watch this.

I always thought of Jim as a decent pitcher on those bad teams.

Comments

It's All About George

Welcome back everybody! A friend of mine who asked me why I didn't restart SCAMB so I decided to take the suggestion since he is a professional writer. I'm not saying this is great literature though. I've been looking for topics for the relaunch and have a few in mind, but to start I wanted to highlight my number one player collection. I've been a George Brett fan since I saw him play at Tiger Stadium in 1980. He hit a home run and got into a brawl in the game. I was hooked. Like many collector's I've been going through my cards and other things during all of the extra time I've had at home and came upon two card albums. I think they came with Topps Attax kits that I bought randomly. They each have 26 pages so I decided to put my Brett cards in them and discuss each page in an installment. This will be a long term series that will be interspersed with other topics as I find cards I didn't know I had or want to highlight my favorit...

I Think I'm Done

I'm at the point that I am not feeling the trading card hobby anymore. It is too much. The ridiculousness of people fighting over cards at Target or Walmart even when the stores have jacked the prices up and the insane focus on spending money to have everything "slabbed" just has completely turned me off. I have tried to focus on the vintage cards I've collected the last couple of years and the autographs and memorabilia pieces I have from some of my favorite shows and movies but I no longer have the desire to open a pack of new cards. Maybe someday if I become independently rich I will continue collecting vintage cards to add to my Tigers and Braves collections or buy rare autographs from Star Wars or Games of Thrones or some other pop culture sets but that time is not right now as living paycheck to paycheck does not make that possible. I have away the huge stack of boxes that I had full of cards, probably 200,000 cards, over the summer by putting them out by t...

The Golden Age

I recently purchased boxes of 2013 and 2014 Panini Golden Age. These sets were similar to Upper Deck Goodwin's Champions in that they featured retired players and historical figures. They also tied in with Panini Americana as far as having memorabilia and autographs from pop culture figures. Each box promised two autos or relics. I had bought boxes when they orginally came out and pulled these a John Belushi shirt card and autographs of Angie Dickenson, Jan Stephenson and John Schneider. Here is what I got from this purchase: 2013 Bob Denver is most famously remembered as Gilligan from Gilligan's Island. I also have a memorabilia card of him from Donruss Americana. Billy Sunday was a baseball player but is better known as an evangelist. This card is a short print version as well as a rare white bordered parallel of the base card. I also got an autographed card of former Miami Dolphins running back Jim Kiick that I forgot to scan. 2014 Tatum O'Neal was 10 when she starr...

Sports Cards Ate My Brain

Search This Blog