Wally Moon and Some Other Archives Autos

After our whirlwind day on Saturday, things calmed down a little for my wife and I on Sunday. We planned to go to church and then to the San Diego Zoo, but those plans changed a little bit. I've mentioned a few times that I served as a missionary in San Diego for a couple of years (2001-2002). We decided to attend church in the first area I was assigned to when I was here. I was worried that it would be weird or that no one would remember me, and we planned on just staying for the first hour.

But one family who I'd spent a lot of time with as a missionary remembered who I was, and they invited us over for lunch. We actually had to turn down a lunch invitation from another family in the congregation. We stayed for the full three-hour block of church, and then spent most of the afternoon at this family's house, eating and talking. A couple of their kids live in the area, so they came over with their families. It was an awesome visit, and they treated us just like family. It was a lot better than going to the Zoo, even the famous San Diego Zoo. It's good to be remembered.

After that, we rushed across town to the Sunset Cliffs to see what we could see before the sun went down. The cloud cover was such that there wasn't much sunset to see, but there were still some beautiful sights. There were also a lot of couples under blankets. We thought it was much too warm to be doing anything under a blanket, but I guess hormones can motivate you to do some crazy stuff. Once the sun was well and truly down, we went and got dinner, which was decent but not remarkable. My wife was supposed to leave on Monday morning, but she was able to obtain babysitting for an additional day and stayed through Tuesday morning.

She went and saw some tide pools while I was in class, and when I got out of class we visited a comic book shop. Then the insurance company called about the car wreck we had on Saturday and I spent some time talking with them. We closed out the mini-vacation by eating at a hole-in-the-wall joint called California Burritos. My wife wasn't crazy about the fish tacos, but the carne asada burritos were amazing. I would definitely hit them up if you are in the area.

On Tuesday evening I got a ticket to the Twins - Padres game, and headed to the ballpark for my third and final baseball game of this trip. The Padres won the game 3-0, with the offensive highlight being a 2-run homer by Austin Hedges. With the win, the Padres are an unbeaten 3-0 when I am visiting Petco Park. They should sponsor me as a mascot of some kind. I probably won't do much tourism stuff over the next couple of days before I head home, although I may get a wild hair and think of something if we get out of class early tomorrow. I only need 25 out of the remaining 80 points in the class, so I am having a hard time staying focused during the training.

And now I'll get to some cards. I showed off a Wally Moon parallel Fan Favorites autograph from 2017 Topps Archives a while back, but I also picked up the base version. I couldn't resist it, as I got a lot of four Archives autographs for just a little more than I would have paid for the Wally Moon on its own. You can't argue with that math.

First up among the 'bonus' autographs is this Dave Stieb signature on the polarizing 1990 Topps card design. This was one of the first sets I remember collecting cards from, so it has a special place in my heart. The blue color scheme on this one is pretty nice, a little less garish than some of the others I've seen.

The second autograph in this lot was Bill "Spaceman" Lee, who is famous as much for his antics as his pitching. I thought this was a cool addition to my collection, and his signature is pretty neat as well. His autograph card is based on the 1971 Topps design.

The final autograph in the lot was a Roy Oswalt signature on the 2001 Topps design. This is one of those card designs that released while I was out of collecting, so I don't recognize it without looking it up. Pretty much anything from 1996-2006 in Topps baseball is unfamiliar to me. I was collecting cards up through 1999 or 2000, but I was primarily gathering basketball cards, and there were a lot of other brands competing for attention at that time. Still, this is another really nice card from a former Astro and a Hall of Pretty Good player.