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Posted By: Ryan Christoff

That's a sweet card! You should get it graded. It will show up as 1 of 1 in the pop report. And an All Star card to boot.

About the middle name Mattingly, I pitched it hard as a MIDDLE name. Had to sell the fact that middle names don't really get much use so it wouldn't really matter what the name was. I also went for the "for short it could be Matt, like Matthew, so this is really Matt, except Mattingly" angle. Another selling point was the coolness factor. How many other kids have Mattingly as their middle name?

Other players I thought of just didn't seem to work. "Oscar Charleston Christoff" didn't quite have the same appeal. "Josh Gibson Christoff" wasn't much better. "Cool Papa Christoff" was my favorite but it wouldn't fly.

He appears to throw lefty at this point, so I am going to start calling him "Rube" (as in Waddell, not Foster).

-Ryan