2008 louisville bats dav team set review

2008 Louisville Bats DAV team set
Official Score – base hit
Manufacturer: Disabled American Veterans (undetermined printer)
Sponsor: Disabled American Veterans
Retail price: FREE SGA– not available for purchase

The Louisville Bats are the Triple-A affiliate of the Cincinnati Reds. After running away from the competition in the Western division of the International League in 2008, the Bats’ magical season ended when they flew into the wall that was the Durham Bulls in the first round of the playoffs.

When the home team takes to Louisville Slugger Field for opening day in 2009, they will be playing on a brand new surface of Kentucky Bluegrass thanks to sod recently imported from Indiana. The difficult part of writing that last sentence was deciding whether to end it with a period or a question mark! It is interesting that the Bats front office opted to replace the playing field the season after they hosted the 2008 Triple-A All Star game.

At any rate, a six-card team set hardly needs a checklist. I’m including one just the same because you never can tell who might be Googling for more information on Tom Shearn.

1 – [26] Bill Bray (p)
2 – [27] David Ross (c)
3 – [28] Homer Bailey (p)
4 – [29] Jay Bruce (of)
5 – [30] Jolbert Cabrera (if)
6 – [31] Tom Shearn (p)

I thought I’d start right off with a scan of the Jay Bruce card. So if you are only reading to see that particular card, you won’t need to continue reading this post. Before you leave, wouldn’t this baseball card look sweet with a sticker autograph haphazardly slapped across the front?

Autograph collectors should note that surface treatment is a semi-gloss that requires no special preparation prior to obtaining a signature. That’s right; just add a player and you’ll be cooking with gas!

Graphers won’t get any help from David Ross’s card in the task of identifying the catcher in his street clothes, but this action photo of Ross in full gear will probably look so good signed that you won’t mind the extra effort that might be needed in the effort. I wouldn’t hesitate to assume that Ross is probably on enough cards where his face is visible that picking him out of the crowd outside a ballpark won’t be impossible.

This limited edition minor league SGA team set includes two hitters, the aforementioned catcher and three hurlers. With the exception of the Tom Shearn card, all players are wearing the same style of uniforms. I haven’t the slightest idea why the Bats’ DAV team set contains only six players. As I understand it, teams were allowed to submit entire team rosters if they so desired. Apparently, the Bats did not so desire.

Enter pitcher Homer Bailey… Homer started 19 games for the Bats in 2008, accumulating a record of 4-7 with a 4.77 ERA and a 1.47 WHIP. Bailey struck out 96 batters while handing out 46 free passes over 111.1 innings. He was also touched for 10 round-trippers in the process. Lackluster as those stats may be, he didn’t fare nearly as well during his eight starts for the Reds in 2008. Bailey displayed an enormous amount of determination while pitching for the parent club last season. Unfortunately, that determination manifested itself in Homer’s uncanny impression of Josh Fogg.

There are no statistics on the backs of these cards. Instead you’ll find the same standard ad for the Disabled American Veterans as on all of their cards distributed in 2008. One of the things that I find most appealing about these DAV minor league baseball cards is the fact that only a few thousand sets were created in the first place. That, combined with the high probability that few sets will survive given that the average person who attends minor league baseball games probably doesn’t make any effort to retain baseball cards, should result in a collectible item that will prove extremely difficult to obtain even before a number of these players retire.

I’d like to think that I do a pretty decent job of monitoring the secondary market for these DAV team sets in order to have a little information to pass along about their value. That typed, I have yet to see one of the 2008 Louisville Bats DAV team sets up for auction on eBay. Given the limited supply of these cards, I would expect that this six-card set might fetch between four and five bucks in auction, and the winning bidder could expect to add an additional three to eighteen dollars (depending on the fine print) to have the cards shipped to their home or office.

– Kris

Tags: DAV, International League, Kris, minor league baseball, team set review, Triple A baseball