Showing posts with label Gold Glove. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gold Glove. Show all posts

Saturday, April 20, 2013

Darwin Barney Gold Glove Replica Stadium Giveaway

I'll probably watch 100+ Cubs game this years between WGN,a friend with an MLB.TV account and hopefully catching the three game series in Washington in a couple of weeks. Unfortunately, this will mark about twenty years in a row without stepping foot into Wrigley Field. As a Cubs fan, that's sad in and of itself but it seems like they are really kicking it up a notch in the giveaways department too.

After hearing about the Darwin Barney Gold Glove Replica, I headed over to eBay. I wasn't in a big rush to get one because I know they usually are pretty pricey right out of the gate. Sometimes you can catch things for a good deal when the're listed to end at an odd time or there's some kind of spelling error, but while there were plenty of them available, I didn't see any obvious steals.

Later that day, I read Wrigley Wax's post that he was actually at the game and came away with three(!) of them with help from his family. I'm sure a lot of you team collectors know how tough it is to trade with other collectors of your team. I've been reading WW for two plus years, writing my own blog now for a year but this was the first opportunity I saw to maybe work out a trade. But what could I possibly have of value that WW wouldn't already have?

My usual reaction to a Wrigley Wax post.
When I jumped back into the hobby I came across the Topps Vault on eBay with blank back 1/1's. I picked up a couple of Cubs including Darwin Barney, Ryne Sandberg, and Starlin Castro but quickly reined in the spending. Eventually I picked up the Tony Campanas when I could but no more of these since then. While Darwin Barney is my favorite current Cub (almost by default though), I knew the card would have much more meaning to someone with a Barney PC.

Long story short, the deal worked out! He got his card and wrote about it here and I received my replica trophy:


It looks much better in person, trust me. It's about half the size of a bobble head but just as heavy/sturdy.


I repurposed the hard plastic cardholder that came with my repack box from last week, printed out a small photo of Barney holding the actual award and trimmed it to fit (sort of). You can't see much of the photo once the award is placed inside but the award itself is a perfect fit for the case. It works for me just fine!

Thanks for the trade Paul!

And here are a couple of other fun relevant pictures:


A photo from Twitter of Barney holding the replica, most likely for promotional purposes.


And a little tongue in cheek humor I found.

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Darwin Barney, Gold Glover

Some congratulations are in order for Darwin Barney. He is the 2012 Rawlings Gold Glove Award winner for National League second basemen. I stayed up to watch that announcement, even though some auto race ran long on ESPN2 and I knew I had to be up early this morning for work to compensate for being able to miss the past two days due to the weather. Still, I was excited.

Here is a new card for my 2012 set, an update card if you will.

Darwin Barney, 2012 National League Gold Glove Second Baseman

My phone immediately started blowing up as I recently signed up for a twitter account and am following about 80 people associated with the Cubs. Should have seen that coming. That feature is now disabled although I will probably reactivate it soon. Don't anticipate a slew of tweets in the offseason.

Curious, I logged into Twitter and noticed Darwin Barney was trending. I clicked on that and noticed that while a lot of tweets were positive, there also seemed to be a lot of venom towards the decision. After looking at the nominees for all of the positions, I thought that this one seemed to be a lock!

Whatever statistical category you can come up with, Barney ranked higher than Brandon Phillips (the favorite among Barney bashers).

Chances? 731-637
Putouts? 311-241
Assists? 418 -391
Double Plays? 96-73
Errors? 2-5
Fielding Percentage? .997-.992
Defensive Runs Saved? 28-11
Range Factor/9 5.6-4.55
Range Factor /Game - 4.7-4.33
Errorless streaks broken/tied? Cubs and National League broken, Major League tied - nothing

How can anyone say Phillips has more range when Barney has more chances, putouts and assists and fewer errors? Seems to me like Barney gets to plenty of balls hit his way. It also seems more likely that Barney plays the batters correctly and therefore doesn't need to dive and make highlight reel plays (of which he had plenty anyway).

Not only did Barney beat Phillips this year is all of those stats, he beat Phillips in almost all of those stats for Phillips' previous three Gold Glove seasons. Phillips is a very good second baseman, but as I've said before in defense of Barney, the Gold Glove Award is not a lifetime achievement award, it is annual. And this year was Darwin Barney's year.

I will admit it. I root for the Cubs first, then for anybody playing against another NL Central team. I am not a Reds fan...at all. Do I love that the Reds had 6 Gold Glove nominees? No. Do I love that they got shut out? Absolutely.

I challenge someone to honestly argue otherwise....without bashing the Cubs as a whole.