From the world of eBay

eBay is a wonderful place to do some shopping, especially for sports memorabilia. I look there often for several different purposes. There are hundreds of baseballs, bats and jerseys on there, all signed, and quite honestly, I would recommend going to eBay for jerseys before ever buying one in the stores, especially if it's a specialty jersey.

I went perusing and found some stuff I thought was pretty cool. I left out the typical signed baseballs, signed footballs, and jerseys, and just went for some stuff that was a little more unique on some way, shape or form.

Cool, but still in no way affordable for an average fan

Here we have statues of five great players in their sports. Kareem Adbul-Jabbar from the NBA, Wayne Gretzky from the NHL, Joe Montana from the NFL and Ted Williams and Stan Musial from MLB. These pewter statues look amazing from the photos and would be awesome to have on a mantle. However, with a Buy It Now price of $3,600, more than most guys could justify to their wives to buy a few statues.

Next, we have a flag from the 2000 Master's at Augusta. It's signed by an astonishing number of players and would be a sweet piece to have framed and up on a wall. Again though, the Buy It Now is around four grand. Opening bid: $3,299. Happy bidding.

For $2,500, you, yes you, could own this beautiful signed robe from Muhammed Ali. It never claims in the listing that this was worn by Ali, otherwise I could see $2,500 being a bargain. However, it's still a cool piece, and it comes with a CoA and a photo of him actually signing the robe, so this is one piece that you can actually feel safe that it's completely authentic!

A six-foot replica Dale Jr. car! I have no interest in NASCAR, but if I had a memorabilia room with a replica car in the middle of it, I'd have to say it's already a pretty sweet memorabilia room. Reserve is not met, and I can't imagine a 6 foot replica car is going to be anywhere near cheap, but who knows, I could be wrong, current bid is at $95 only.

Affordable, and kinda weird:

Anything that involves Bob Uecker is automatically cool. But this picture is borderline weird. First off, what the hell is that thing he's leaning on? It appears to be an oddly proportioned, very large baseball bat on some sort of wooden pedestal. But why is there an oddly proportioned 10 foot baseball bat on a pedestal somewhere? And why is Bob Uecker wearing a Cosby sweater and having a picture of himself taken next to this bat?

Alright, "kinda weird" doesn't cut it for this one, but I didn't want to make yet another listing. Here, we have some bizarre looking candle with some miniature Marlins stuff pressed onto it to make it sports themed. I don't know of anyone who would pay $7 for an ugly candle with ugly Marlins stuff pressed onto it, but if you're such a person, leave me a comment, I'd like to know what makes you tick.

Pretty cool, and actually affordable:

A hammer autographed by The Hammer? That's what this would be. I have to be honest and say I have absolutely no idea who Dave Schulz is, but if this seller is accurate in that his nickname is The Hammer, then it's a pretty sweet idea to actually take a hammer to get signed by him. This one ends in about 15 minutes from as I'm typing this, so no real chance for anyone who would read this to bid, most likely, but right now it's going for $25.

$250 may not be as afforable as the hammer, but this is a sweet item. A 1954 Cardinals scorecard(apparently, on a day they played the Dodgers) signed by 18 players including Pee Wee Reese and (insert fanfare here) Jackie Robinson!.


From the "what is this guy thinking?" category:

A picture of Chamberlain, West and Frazier playing, all in the same picture. It'd probably be a cool piece to have, and this guy claims there's a family medical emergency that is the cause of the sale. The thing that amuses me is not that the guy is asking for a cool million on the "Buy It Now" but take a look at the shipping cost. This guy better have Jerry West personally handing me the picture for that price. Oh yeah, the picture on it sucks because he's afraid someone might rip him off, so don't rip him off.

Here's a pretty nice piece: A game-used bat from Derek Jeter. Game-used equipment have to be towards the top of the list of the "cool memorabilia" items, especially when they've got a good story behind them. However, this guy has the Buy It Now listed at a monstrous $8,200.

New Ownership for the Cubs?

Now, of course, being early April, I had to check the date this was posted, but given the April 2nd posting date, I assume this is legit. The Chicago Tribune has in their paper today that they intend to sell the Chicago Cubs.

The article itself reads a little unclearly, but it appears Chicago billionaire Sam Zell, who owns a minority stake in the White Sox, convinced the Tribune, where he also owns a stake, to sell off the Cubs so he wouldn't have to sell his White Sox share.

For the most part, this doesn't really matter to me, but there is one scary part of this: Mark Cuban.

I think Mark Cuban is one of the best owners in American sports today and if any of the teams I was a strong fan of was struggling, would love to see Cuban come in the door of the owner's box to save the day, but Mark, don't go to my hated Cubs! That would break my heart to have to see a guy I root for so hard own a team I root against so hard.

Anyway, on to the opening night commentary now.

It seems like, watching that game last night, there were several critical moments and that most of the critical moments came when the Cardinals were at bat. The Mets had several 2 out base hits and were able to push across 6 runs, 5 against Carpenter. However, these were not the critical plays.

These are:

1) The failed sac-squeeze. The game was 2-0 at the time, and Carpenter's bunt, had it been even 4 feet further up the first base line, probably would have scored Kennedy from third and given the Cardinals some momentum. Instead, the Cardinals failed to score that inning and in the following inning, the Mets put up 3 more runs to make it 5-0.

2) This one is from the Monday-morning quarterback files, but Oquendo choosing to send Eckstein home with 1 out on a base hit by Wilson with Pujols coming to the plate. Obviously, this is a conversation we wouldn't be having if the throw was up the line by 4-5 feet, but since it was damn near a perfect throw to the plate, we are having this discussion. Even with the 5 runs, if these two runs scored, we're talking a 5-2 game, and maybe some momentum would carry in another run.

3) The double play in the 8th that Scott Rolen hit into. It was fairly hard hit, bases loaded, and if it squeaks through, we're talking 2 runs in with either men on 1st and 2nd or depending on where the throw goes, maybe even 2nd and 3rd. Again, this would have been a huge shift in momentum too.

There's 4 runs that the Cardinals basically threw away. Carpenter wasn't his sharpest, and seemed to be overthrowing in that 4th inning, but that doesn't concern me. The concerns for this team are going to be the middle of the lineup after Pujols and the rotation, sans Carpenter. Izzy is a secondary concern for me, because if the rotation can't hold up, Izzy's worth declines quite a bit, healthy or not.

Anyway, it was still awesome to see the banner go up. I almost actually put down the cash to buy tickets on eBay, but I couldn't see myself swinging $100 a ticket(erm, I mean, face value for tickets, plus an additional $100 or so to buy a baseball card valued at $1.50 in the price guides). Maybe if we hadn't just bought a new car and put ourselves in a whole new batch of debt, I could have justified it to myself.