It's Truck Day - Boston Red Sox

It's Truck Day in Boston. Don't know what that means? Learn more from our friends over at www.bostondirtdogs.com

What day do pitchers and catchers report?

Spring is in the air and pitchers/catchers are coming out of hibernation. CC Sabathia is gingerly stepping onto a scale, and Josh Beckett is inspecting his hand for blisters. It's time for some baseball. So let's do a quick recap of when pitchers and catchers report for some of the most important teams in baseball:

When do pitchers and catchers report?

Boston Red Sox - Feb 14
Milwaukee Brewers - Feb 16
San Francisco Giants - Feb 14
St Louis Cardinals - Feb 13
NY Yankees - Feb 14
Philadelphia Phillies - Feb 13

If you're wondering which team has pitchers and catchers report the latest it's the Florida Marlins they won't be driving across town until Feb 18.

March 31st (Opening Day 2011)

Yikes - it's been three months since our last post. The SF Giants are the champions of the world and Joe and I have been catching our breath. Excuses aside, please accept an apology from the both of us. It's been three months of silence from Opening Day Cards and that's unacceptable. A few thank you's are in order.

1. Thanks for season #1 - we had a blast building a vivid community, talking baseball and baseball cards, spitting seeds and watching our hometown teams fail.

2. Thank you number 2 is presumptuous... Thanks for coming back for 2011. Joe and I are working on a game plan for 2011 - more free baseball cards, baseball talk, maybe a spring training trip with video interviews? There's a lot to come and we're excited.

For now a quote from the great Rogers Hornsby - "I stare out the window and wait for spring."

We'll be back! Thank you for the community. Chris & Joe (ODC)

TTM - How to get Autographs Through the Mail

This is a guest post by Troy Kozlowski. This guy knows how to pull in autographs and it's been great getting to know him through Opening Day Cards. Thanks Troy!

How to Acquire a TTM Success:

TTM stands for through-the-mail autographs. This is any easy way to, hopefully, to get your favorite player to sign your favorite trading cards. You can also take it further than just sending a trading card. If you would like, you can send a photo, baseball, football, jersey, etc. The easiest thing to send is a trading card. First what you would have to do is write a letter to the player of your choice explaining that you think that they are a great player and that you would like to get them to autograph your card. The best place to mail your card to is the stadium address for the team of that player. Let’s say that you are sending a request to Jason Motte, pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals, you would send it to Busch Stadium address. This is a sample letter of something that you could send to your favorite player:

Mr. Motte,
I am a huge fan of both you and the Cardinals. I think you are an amazing pitcher and so glad that you are on the Cardinals. (You could personalize it with an experience that you had or some accomplishment that the person you are writing to has accomplished.) I was hoping that you could autograph my card for me. I have included a self-addressed, stamped envelope so that you could send it back to me. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy day to read my letter and hopefully you’ll get back to me soon.

Your #1 FAN,
And if this player takes the time to autograph your card, you could end up with the great autograph you see at the top of this post!

The most important thing to include is an envelope with your name and address so it can come back to you; but, for a chance to get a success you will have to add a stamp on the envelope coming back to you. If you are sending anything other than a trading card you must go to your local post office to check how much postage you need to put on your package so that it will come back to you. This is a great link to use to get team addresses to send your cards to: http://www.sportmapworld.com/map/baseball/north-america/mlb/.

Collecting autographs is a great hobby to get into. It is great for people that cannot get to the ballpark to get autographs from the players in person. An average wait for the return of your autographed card can be anywhere from 5 days to 3 years; but, a normal wait is usually about 3 months. Some bad things that can happen are: if you send your card to the wrong address you may get everything back with a yellow slip from the post office, which is called a RTS (Return To Sender). Also, if the player is in a hurry they could put the signed card right in the envelope after signing and it can get smudged.

If you really want to get into the hobby of collecting autographs, Harvey Meiselman creates a comprehensive book for every sport, every year, with the players’ home addresses. It is so great to use and you get the address for almost every current and retired player. The link to see how you could purchase it for yourself is here: http://www.sportsaddresslists.com/ . This is the best product to obtain retired players’ addresses and, during the offseason, current players. The Baseball Hall of Fame, in Cooperstown, NY, has recently added his Baseball Address List to the permanent collection in their library. Harvey gives updates three times a year for addresses that he found out didn’t work and gives a new current address. It is a great resource to have.


A great website to use is Nolan’s TTM, He updates his website whenever he gets a success. His website is: http://www.nolansttmgraphs.webs.com/. Another great website that is always updating their user’s success is: http://www.fanmail.biz/ and click on the tabs for any of the sports and you get to see who signs autographs. I also use this website to see what he has gotten back lately: http://www.sportsautosttm.com/.

Even though I used the above example with a baseball player, you can send to NBA, NFL, and NHL players; but, MLB has the highest success rate if sending to players. I have been collecting since last Spring Training and I have just over 100 autogtaphs and still collecting. On one website that I have come across, someone did a test to see if he will have a higher rate of return if hand-writing the letter opposed to typing it. His study showed that he had a higher rate of return if he had hand-written the letter to the player. It is a really fun hobby and it blends right in with the hobby of collecting. The most important thing to keep in mind is to not send something of value, because you may NOT get it back. The players are not forced to sign items; they just do it for their fans!

Troy Kozlowski

The Red Sox Did Not Make The Playoffs

Well folks. The season is over. The Brewers & Red Sox are headed home early, but there's still some great baseball left. Congratulations to the NY Yankees, Twins, Rangers, Rays, Braves, Giants, Reds & Phillies.

Is the evil empire about to begin a new reign? Is the Big Red Machine back in town? October baseball, while not "Soxtober" baseball, will still be fun. Here at Opening Day Cards, it's been an honor to get to know you this year. We have some fun ideas to get us through the post-season and some excitement for the off-season as well.

Keep an eye out for some incredible guest posts, great card giveaways and yes, we've got a handful of video episodes in the works.

Enjoy the Playoffs!

Chris & Joe

The Red Sox Will Make The Playoffs

It’s mid-September the bumbling Red Sox are 6.5 games out of the AL East and 6 games out of the wild-card. All hope is lost right? It’s been a bummer of a year – Pedroia, Youkilis, Varitek, Ellsbury, Beckett, Dice-K, etc etc they’ve spent more time nursing wounds than playing ball. But four days ago I made a prediction as you may see in the post below – I believe the Boston Red Sox will make the playoffs and the evil empire will sit this one out. Three reasons why the Red Sox will make the playoffs:

1. End of Season Schedule – Whoever laid out the schedule this year really wanted the last few weeks to count. In our final few weeks, the Yankees and the Rays play 3 more times and the Red Sox and the Yankees play 6 times. With the Rays just taking 2 out of 3 from the Yankees and the Red Sox sweeping their West Coast series with the Mariners the Sox are closing in. The Rays are dominant – they will win the AL East and while doing so, set the Yankees back a few more games and Boston will be on fire for it’s end of season series with the hated NY rivals. That final weekend series in October will be playoff level baseball and the Sox will rise to the challenge.

2. Young Studs – So you wanna play in the big leagues? The Red Sox lineup has been stocked with minor league wannabees all year and it’s starting to look like the Sox turned on their stud-finder at the right time. We’ll be seeing a lot of these guys in the next few years but they are about to leave their mark on New England with an end of season run like nobody would believe – Ryan Kalish, Lars Anderson, & Daniel Nava.

3. Pitching – These guys have stayed healthy, there’s been some Cy Young rumors all year and Lester, Bucholz, Lackey, Beckett, Wakefield, Dice-K & Paps are going to come through when we need them. There are some seasoned hurlers in that crew and the next few weeks are plenty of time to string a few wins together.

So you heard it here – an outlandish belief in the home team squd, but it's going to happen. Also keep an eye out for the unlikely hero JD Drew. The injury prone, moody outfielder is going to come through big. Enjoy the rest of the season and see you in late October! Let me know what you think - am I off my rocker, how do you feel about the Sox chances?

Episode 37 - Relics relics relics!

Hey folks - big packs here. BIG packs. Check out some of the gorgeous cards we pulled in these packs. As always all the cards you see on the show are free - request the ONE card you'd like in the comments below - first comments gets the card!

You heard it here first. I'm calling the Red Sox making the playoffs. Yankees will falter. Rays and Sox will be in. We'll see what happens, but it's time for an end of year prediction.