1/1 Letter Patch

Jason Grilli 2014 Topps Series 1 Letter Patch 1/1

Normally my wife and I travel a good bit in the summer, but as most of you know my surgery has put a halt to any plans of leaving town.  My days are spent in a recliner watching baseball with lots of Internet exploring mixed in between. Not a bad set up for sure, but cabin fever starts to hit pretty hard after the first week. Now it has been two weeks and I'm sure I'm driving my wife nuts.  I'm sure she is happy to leave for work every morning so she doesn't have to listen to me threaten to drive off somewhere to get out of the house.  In my mind I'm still my active 31 year old self, but in reality my leg begs to differ.  

With my new found free time I've spent a good bit of it on eBay.  For the most part I've been striking out trying to add Pirates except for adding the Grilli card above.  I've seen several letter patches for McCutchen, but this is the first one that I've noticed of Grilli.  Thankfully I won the auction and was able to add my first 1/1 of the former Pirate closer.  

Grilli was traded to the Angels not long after I added this card for Ernesto Frieri.  You don't often see two struggling closers get traded straight up for each other, but I suppose both GM's thought  a change of scenery would be beneficial for both to regain value.  The benefit for the Pirates is that Frieri is only 28 years old and has several years of team control left while Grilli is 37 years old and in the last year of his contract. The Pirates have had luck with turning around struggling bullpen arms in the past (Joel Hanrahan, Mark Melancon) so hopefully history can repeat itself again with Frieri.  

My hope is that I can venture down a few stairs to get to my cards this weekend.  If so, it is my intention to send out a bunch of cards in the mail.  While I was unable to add many cards to my collection lately on eBay I've had better luck adding trade bait for some of my blogger friends!  

Thanks for reading!