Fat Bastard has a heart of gold

Last year I wrote about the feeding frenzy that was going on over Stephen Strasburg baseball cards. Extremely limited edition cards of the Nationals pitcher were fetching in excess of $20,000 at one point.

That sort of insane demand was based on the notion that Strasburg would explode into some combination of Nolan Ryan and Tim Lincecum and eventually make every baseball fan forget about every other pitcher who’s ever lived. And when he struck out a MLB record 32 batters in his first three starts last year it only made collectors that much hungrier.

We all know that Strasburg had to close it down last August for Tommy John surgery, which while not being a death sentence for his career certainly tempers demand for his memorabilia. Which brings me back to his rarest and most sought after baseball card.

I’ll let Chris Olds of Beckett Media provide the details:

A 43-year-old California man has found the Stephen Strasburg 2010 Bowman Chrome SuperFractor in a pack of Razor Rookie Retro and has big plans in store for the $21,000 baseball card.

Devin Grant will be launching a raffle next week to benefit the Brian Stow Fund — the Giants fan who was beaten by two men after a Dodgers game on Opening Day — two Little League organizations and two softball leagues in his area. He found the card in a pack at Peninsula Sports Cards in Belmont, Calif.

“It took about two days to know that this was something bigger than me,” Grant said. “I mean the act of pulling the card was phenomenal, but a card like this has some firepower and I felt that it could be used in a more powerful way.”

The card has, indeed, been a powerful force in the hobby initially selling for $16,403 before the Washington Nationals pitcher made his debut last summer and then re-selling for $21,403. It was sold the second time after its owner, Robert J. Power, received several negative and harassing messages after the publicity about his buying the card. The card was purchased by Leaf’s Brian Gray, who placed it into packs of his repackaged product that launched last year — but the card had never been found until now. (Beckett.com)

I say good for Devin Grant, that’s a hell of a gesture on his part and I hope that angle will prompt bidders to give a little more than they might be willing to given Strasburg’s current status. Here is Grant with his godson Tristan:

I had to do a double take when I first saw that picture because I initially thought I was seeing Fat Bastard and the kid who played Indiana Jones’ little sidekick in the flick where they eat the chilled monkey brains:

Moving away from movie resemblances and back to Stow’s senseless beating, there’s been some confusion of late regarding whether or not authorities have the right guy in custody for the crime:

As if the names Giovanni Ramirez and “Giovanny Ramirez” are not confusing enough, new LAPD inaccuracies are being revealed. For Giovanni Ramirez, the names, the tattoos, the hair, and the Henderson confusion are all making the LAPD’s case about Bryan Stow (aka Brian Stow) more problematic by the day.

First, is Giovanni Ramirez, the suspect arrested in the Stow case, the same person as Giovanny Ramirez of Henderson, Nevada? This week NBC Los Angeles reported that on “Tuesday night, KCBS [also] reported that authorities in Henderson, Nev., following up a January shooting incident as an attempted murder, are seeking a suspect identified as Giovanny Ramirez with the same birthdates as Giovanni Ramirez.” But a spokesperson for Henderson police also tells news that the local “Giovanni” Ramirez is not wanted in Henderson.

Second, more confusion about Giovanni Ramirez’s neck tattoos is coming out. As previously detailed on LALATE, the LAPD witness did not notice neck tattoos on the person who was beating Stow. No neck tattoos appeared on LAPD suspect sketches.

As previously reported here, Ramirez after the Stow beating was spotted by his parole officer allegedly trying to change his neck tattoos. A parole photo of Ramirez shows Ramirez with a “LA” Dodgers logo tattooed on his neck. But NBC Los Angeles reports that Ramirez’s attorney Anthony Brooklier “said Ramirez insists he has never been to Dodger Stadium.” (lalate.com)

If you’re interested in contributing to the Bryan Stow support fund, click here.

Will Stephen Strasburg’s injury make some baseball card collectors suicidal?

If you’re a Washington Nationals fan, you’re absolutely sick over the news that rookie pitching phenom Stephen Strasburg will need to have Tommy John surgery.  He’s gone for the rest of the season and will probably be shut down for all of 2011 as well.

But you know who’s even sicker about this?  The people who’ve paid a lot of money for some of the Strasburg memorabilia that’s already hit the market.  I wrote about this back in May, before he’d even been promoted to the big leagues.

After that, the feeding frenzy for all things Strasburg only got more intense.  It seemed to peak earlier this summer when an accountant from Michigan named Robert Power purchased the Bowman Chrome “Superfractor” card of Strasburg for $16,403.  Only one of these cards (a “true 1/1″ in hobby terms) was manufactured by Topps.

However, the ceiling for this particular card hadn’t been met.  Here is Power himself being interviewed about his subsequent resale of the card (what a nerd herd these guys are):

So Brian Gray of Razor Entertainment purchased the card for $25,000 in order to offer it up as part of his company’s “Rookie Retro” offering:

In light of recent events, I’m pretty sure even the most rabid Strasburg fan isn’t going to pony up the cash to try to pursue the Superfractor through this Rookie Retro offering.  Basically, Gray bought a grenade that already had its pin removed.

And how lucky of a bastard is this Robert Power dude?  If he had sat on the card waiting for an even bigger offer than Gray’s, he’d be curled up in the fetal position right about now.  Instead, he dodged a bullet and pulled a nice profit in the process.

After news of the injury broke, I did a quick check on eBay and found one poor shlub who’s currently on the hook to pay at least $255 for a Strasburg card:

When the nation needed him most, Ian Driben answered the call

In case you missed Bo the Bailer’s now infamous bailout on a foul ball that ended up hitting his girlfriend Sara, click here:

Well, Bo and Sara are now through, but not before it generated one of the all-time epic screen captures of a Facebook page:

As we’ve all been trying to pick up the pieces from the wreckage of Bo’s douchebaggery, a sense of hopelessness has descended upon the land. Americans have been faced with the grim prospect that this guy was the new norm, that our nation’s ballparks have been taken over by nitwits.

We already know that NFL stadiums are filled with the dregs of society, that’s a given. But I shuddered to think that the disease had infected America’s pastime. What next, gangs of baseball hooligans roaming around outside of our ballparks after games?

But just when all hope seemed to be lost, Ian Driben stepped forward and became the hero we needed:

The guy doesn’t even break stride and his tray of food barely moves. How epic is that?

But don’t for one second mistake his actions as being casual nonchalance. No, what he displayed was grace under fire. If he had been standing in Bo the Bailer’s place, he would have snagged the baseball, quietly sat down and then casually taken a sip of his drink.

Today I celebrate Ian Driben’s entire catalog. In our darkest hour, he stepped from the shadows carrying nothing but a tray of food and drinks and proceeded to restore our faith in humanity

My take on the passing of Big Stein…

…is up over at FoxSports.com. click here to read it.  Also, please forgive this moment of blatant, shameless self promotion.

You always hurt the ones you love

After hitting a walk off grand slam for the Angels on Saturday, Kendry Morales jumped into a mob of his teammates at home plate and broke his leg. Talk about experiencing a range of emotions in a few seconds. I haven’t seen a celebration go that bad since Derek Zoolander ran on stage and accepted Hansel’s male model of the year award.

Baseball players are always eager to run out onto the field and celebrate, even when what they’re celebrating about isn’t that important in the grand scheme of things. Morales’ game winning shot ended a contest in May between two teams with losing records. But the way the Angels celebrated, you would have thought they had just won the ALCS.

So when the two teams hooked up again on Sunday and the Angels got another walk off homer (this time from Howie Kendrick), the celebration that ensued was much more subdued:

This isn’t the first time that an unruly bunch of baseball players has injured one of their own while celebrating. Remember the Twins’ Denny Hocking catching the final out of his team’s divisional playoff win over Oakland back in 2002? He wound up underneath a pile of happy teammates, got spiked and took stitches in a finger and was sidelined for the duration of the ALCS against the Angels.