Recent Royals: 2008 SP Authentic Matt Tupman #/999

I have very few card collections given my limited resources and space, but I did decide some time ago to begin collecting on-card Royals autographs. It’s been a blast so far trying to track these things down and this is the latest addition to my collection. To view the cards currently in the collection, take a look at the Gallery. If you have any on-card Royals autos, chances are I need them so don’t hesitate to drop me a line!

For every wildly successful prospect, there are at least 100 guys who will never get their cup of coffee. And, if you’re looking for any and every Royals on-card auto, you’re bound to run into more than a few Matt Tupmans.

Destined to never be a Paul Bako...

Matt came up through the Royals’ farm system as a possible catcher-of-the-future and had a pretty good career in the minors. But, according to this article, Royals brass kept hiring short-term veteran backup catchers and never gave dude a chance in the bigs. Having just one major league plate appearance (a single, no less!), he was cut from the team in ’09 and hasn’t been picked up on the free agent market in his one year of free agency. Makes me wonder about the future of current catching prospect Wil Myers, whose 2010 Bowman Chrome autos keep zipping out of my price range.

At any rate, Matt here is a cautionary tale about the sometimes random world of success in professional baseball. Mark Grace was batting in the .200s when he got the call-up and he stuck. For some reason, Matt really never got the chance to prove himself at the highest level and it just doesn’t seem particularly fair to me.

Anyway, this card is window-signed which, while maybe not specifically on-card, is certainly better than stickers… when the player colors within the lines as Matt did here. I cannot imagine sitting down and signing 999 things in a row. Look at that hand… I bet it hurts. In more ways than one. [Cue violins]

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