Mookie Betts Autograph and Ball

My better half got me a Mookie Betts autographed ball last Xmas. Here it is:

It came with a certificate of authenticity (COA), but it was from the same ebay company that sold it. You probably know that you can't trust a COA from a company that certifies its own product, unless that company is a professional and trusted authenticator, like Beckett, JSA / DNA, etc. This company wasn't one of those. My better half, who has never bought an autographed collectible, didn't know that, and was also understandably pacified with the COA itself. The COA said:

"This certificate of authenticity guarantees the Rawlings Official Major League Baseball signed by Mookie Betts to be 100% genuine, being hand signed [sic] in person by Mr. Betts himself."

Sounds good, right? But what exactly is guaranteed to be genuine here? If you read it closely, the thing said to be genuine isn't the autograph, it's the baseball itself. Again, it says that the COA "...guarantees the ... baseball signed by Mookie Betts to be 100% genuine..." Whether by mistake (which I prefer to think) or by design, the COA sounds like it says it guarantees the autograph to be authentic, but it doesn't. It says the ball is a genuine Rawlings, which of course it is. Rawlings is the sole company that makes baseballs for Major League Baseball, and the commissioner's name is on it, but don't you want the COA to be for the autograph?

So I emailed the ebay company and asked if there was another COA or LOA (which really is what that was--a letter of authenticity; a certificate is usually a label or a card) that authenticates the autograph itself. The guy said No, but that he guarantees the autograph, or he'll give the money back.

I should mention here that the ball with autograph cost $70. Most Mookie Betts autographed balls, without a 3rd-party COA (like JSA) costs over $100, so this was a bargain. The ball looked really good to me--no smudges, dirt, cuts, etc. The autograph looked really good, too--no smudges, or blips, etc. Nice and clean with a good flow and solid contact.

After about an hour of research on ebay, comparing this to other authenticated Mookie Betts autographed baseballs, I decided this one was also genuinely his, and that I should send it out for authentication. (I did this just after I opened the gift on Christmas Day, before we continued opening things, because I'm an obsessive loser like that.)

So I saved up, because this stuff isn't cheap, and after a couple months I sent it to JSA (one of the three major 3rd-party authenticators, and JSA never sells anything--it only authenticates.) It took them about a month to say that it was, in fact, an autograph signed by Mookie Betts himself.

This cost $55. Not bad.

Then JSA sent it to Beckett, which grades the ball and the autograph. I wanted this done because this was the first autographed baseball bought for me by my better half, and because the ball and autograph looked good enough to grade, to better estimate its value and to protect them.

(I am violently upset with myself for allowing balls with Tim Wakefield and Jason Varitek autographs to fade from the sun. Now I have to replace those. Daniel Bard also--infamously, among my friends--autographed a ball and then smudged it to hell when he gave it back to me. I got back in a long line with a separate baseball to get another autograph, but got stopped just before I got to his table by an overly strict woman who said he was leaving. When I explained what happened, and that I'd been in line twice, she said she didn't care. [This was at Pawtucket's HotStove, where new players sign for free, usually in the beginning of January, when it's about four degrees. And the PawSox don't turn on the heat, either. Luckily Daniel Bard turned out to be...well, Daniel Bard. I still have the damn ball, too. Anybody want it?)

But I digress. So Beckett took another month to grade the ball and autograph--and its website somehow managed to screw up my account info., so that they had to mail me a separate invoice, and the regional sales manager had to email me when the ball was done and it was coming back to me.

This cost another $40. And I paid $18 to reimburse them for shipping and another $10 for insurance. By the end, you can see this isn't cheap: $70 (which my better half paid for the ball) + $55 + $40 + $18 + $10, for a total of  $193, plus the $28 I paid to ship and insure, for a total of $225.

Yeah, $225 to authenticate, encapsulate, grade the autograph and grade the ball. And that's with no guarantee that the ball and autograph were graded highly! (I've sent over 100 cards to SGC to get graded and slabbed, with no guarantee of what they'll say it is. Suffice it to say, I've won some and I've lost some. One big win was the Jim Bottomley 1933 Goudey, which you can find here.)

Now the ball looks like this:

As you can see, all's well that ends well: JSA said the autograph was authentic, and Beckett said that the ball and the autograph were both a perfect 10! That means that, by definition, even Mookie Betts himself won't have a Mookie Betts autographed baseball (or, to be more precise: an autograph and a baseball) in better condition than mine! I can actually say that nobody in the world--Yes, not even Mookie Betts himself!--will have a better Mookie Betts autograph, nor a better ball to have the autograph on!--than mine.

If he ever turns out to be a Hall of Fame player, this will be worth a ton. As it is, it's worth about $500, from some internet sales on authenticated and graded autographs and baseballs, on ebay and other sites, including auction houses. And Betts hasn't been to an All-Star Game yet, nor a playoff game. Once he does...

So here's another picker success, done in tandem with my better half. We spent $225 and it's worth about $500, for a profit of $275. Not bad, even by the standards of the Pickers themselves.

Don't worry, honey--I'm never going to sell it! But it's good to know the value in case we ever have to, right?

Sox 28-17 on May 24, 2016

A few things as we bask in the glory of the recent success:

--A few years ago (or during the first half last year), who would've thought JBJ would hit in 28 straight? With his offense and defense, he's probably one of the best players in the game. According to WAR, anyway.

--But keep in mind that he's been doing for a few months what Mike Trout has been doing for a few years.

--And I'm wondering why JBJ got so suddenly better, if you catch my drift.

--I hated to say that, because I spoke to JBJ for a short time a few years ago, at the Pawtucket Hot Stove League, and he's a very nice, soft-spoken guy. And he signed two baseballs for me, in the perfect spot, in a perfect marker with perfect handwriting.

--And, yeah, I'm sending those bad boys to JSA and then to Beckett ASAP.

--My comment a few spots ago holds true to Ortiz as well, who's having a resurgence with his power numbers at an age in which even the immortals (besides Bonds, of course) were beginning to feel it. I'm just sayin'.

--I was afraid for a moment there that the baking powder thrown at Ortiz after his game-winning double was actually the remaining HGH powder for both of them.

--Sorry.

--Carson Smith, who could've given the Sox three 7-9 guys that maybe rivaled the Yankees, is now out for at least a year after Tommy John surgery. What a shame. Wasn't last year his rookie?

--Not only are their 9 through 3 guys--Bradley, Betts, Pedroia and Bogaerts--very good hitters, but they're also all very fast. And great defensively. Few teams can boast four 9 through 3 hitters like that.

--To prove the point, the Sox scored three runs today when guys scored from first on a double. Your Sox of old would go 1st to 3rd on a double.

--I'll say about Christian Vazquez what I said about Bradley the last two years: with that great defense, all he has to do is slap-hit .250 and that'll be enough to make him a good big-leaguer.

--Clay Buchholz has to go.

Sox 8 Blue Jays 7: 4.8.16

Photo: The Brockstar, just after his grand slam, courtesy of the Boston Herald at this link.

A few quick things about this very exciting game:

--In his post-game comments, Joe Kelly said that this was a game Boston would not have won last year. He's right about that, and just three games into this year.

--In one game, we see the two most glaring problems for both teams: Boston--starting pitching; Toronto--relievers. Both may hit themselves into the postseason.

--Boston needs to bring the Freudian couch to the mound for Clay Buchholz and Joe Kelly. I mean that in the kindest way. They can maybe push it aside between pitches like other guys throw aside the resin bag.

--Buchholz has a defeated posture and attitude on the mound I just don't like. And when he was asked about the cause of his most recent performance, the first thing out of his mouth was "Twelve-minute rain delay." That tells you all you need to know about Clay Buchholz. And it explains why his performances are either shutouts or shellackings.

--And Joe Kelly has a deer-caught-in-the-headlights look on the mound that must be addressed fast.

--It's one thing to pitch badly. But these two come very suddenly unglued. Which is even worse. Just ask Kevin Pillar. Or Josh Donaldson, for that matter.

--Whoever's the sports psychologist for these guys needs to be fired.

--Travis Shaw points out that the Brockstar is on a pace to hit over 60 homers this year. He's right, and that's why you don't look at a hitter's stats until a month into the season.

--Speaking of stats: I mentioned last time that the LOB stat needs to go on the NESN telecasts. Now I say that the OPS stat needs to go, too.  OPS is a useful stat for maybe four or five batters currently on Boston's 25-man roster: Ortiz, Ramirez, and maybe Shaw, Young and Pedroia--who reaches the outer fringe of OPS's usefulness. Technically, it's not Betts' or Pedroia's (or Holt's) job to slug, though they do that more often than your typical one-two guys will. But really their job is to get on base, not slug the runners in. Showing their OPS every at-bat, and those of the 7-9 guys as well, is wasting eye-strain. That's NESN trying to appease the stat-geeks and fantasy-leaguers, but even those fans know that LOB and OPS are essentially useless stats for most players on most occasions. The sport is polluted enough with numbers (and I'm a stat-aware guy myself), so let's dispense with them when we can.

--Let's watch when Boston has 7-10 straight games of leaving 10 or more guys on. I'll bet NESN will toss the LOB stat then.

--And I'd be okay with the OPS stat being replaced with the OB% stat, even every at-bat. Then Alex Speier can annoyingly but just occasionally remind us of the OPS of only the aforementioned players, when relevant.

--I see now that MLB.com has OPS in their box scores, too. Enough, I say.

--One last point (for now) about Buchholz and Kelly: Because they implode so suddenly, they can't be used as relievers, either, if later in their careers it's determined they can't be starters. This makes both essentially useless pitchers when they're like this, especially Kelly, who has closer-like stuff.

--The starters can't put their offense in this position as often as it looks like they will. The batters will literally get tired, and they'll sputter in the second half, just like overused relievers do.

--Toronto's carpet is a travesty.

--The last two home-plate umpires have been egregiously bad. Whoever the supervisor of umpires is now, he needs to talk to these guys. Have umpires across the leagues been this bad? John Hirschbeck's strike zone was (mostly) consistently a foot off the outside, and Fagan's zone was simply all over the place, inconsistently.

--Rarely do you allow 7 runs in 3 innings and not get the loss. In fact, Buchholz didn't get the L for his implosion, either. Tazawa did.

--Speaking of Tazawa, after the Sox brass said they would be more careful with using him this year, he's appeared in 3 of the team's first 3 games. But the relief was set in place last night once they had the lead after 6 innings. Both wins ended with Tazawa, Uehara and Kimbrel. But...

--100-loss teams this year: San Diego Padres; Milwaukee Brewers; Phillies. Maybe Atlanta, Minnesota and the Angels, too. They'll at least lose 90.

--Baseball rules aside, Noe Ramirez deserved the win last night, not Matt Barnes. Noe's two sanity-replacing innings saved the game.

--Note to Buchholz and Kelly: Henry Owens got the win in Pawtucket's opener, tossing six shutout innings and striking out 8. (I have his autograph, so I especially need him to do well.) You saw how The Overweight Panda lost his job? Look over your shoulders, guys.

--Guerin Austin has grown on me. I wonder if she's that naturally effervescent or if it's just for TV.

--I know I'm naive just asking that, but I usually like to earn my cynicism.

--Or did you not see Jenny Dell rip that overweight fan a new one when he stumbled in front of her during her segment a few years ago? But Jenny Dell always came across as someone who would rip you a new one--which, of course, was part of her allure. She'd kick your ass for ya, and that was OK.

--Considering how he's played the last few years, I wonder if she's been kicking Middlebrook's butt?

--Austin's a Miss Nebraska, after trying for the 2nd time, for those who care about such things. There's no truth to the rumor that she shucked corn (or juggled them) for her talent portion. (Sorry.)