2005 Fan Favorites Mark Lemke

Who is this? Mr. Dirt himself, the immortal Mark Lemke.

What is this? An autograph card from 2005 Topps Fan Favorites, card number FFA-MLE.

Where'd I get it? Boston Sports Cards offa eBay.

How much did it cost? $5.99 with FREE SHIPPING MOJO!

Why is this so special? I'm a little bit in love with Mark Lemke. He's the hero of the stolen 1991 World Series, subject of the greatest card ever, inspiration for the Homestar Runner cartoon, his career is most similar to Sibby Sisti's and he is now one of the Braves broadcast crew who get me through many a long night at work. These guys did a better job summing up his career than I could so go there for a full bio.

This is my first certified Lemmer signature, mainly because this is his only certified signature. I found this out by poking around in Beckett's alphabetical checklist. I have an old copy from the early '00s that is mostly useless nowadays. There have been so damn many cards released in this century that the old book is the size of one of the old Sport Americana Annual price guides while the latest one is the size of the Yellow Pages from a large city. Beckett offers player checklists online now so there's probably not going to be another phone book put out for a long time, but I'm the kind of guy who likes ruffling through a lot of pages when I do research. The last time I was at the local card shop, I snuck a peek at their copy of the book. It had all the cards up till 1998 that were in the old book, and his 2005 Fan Favorites cards. That's it. Lemmer's been in one release since he retired. He's not even in any team issues sets. It's a travesty! Of course this means if I want to become the Mark Lemke Supercollector, I can use my old book as a checklist which is cool. I've got a start on his 2005 releases here now. If it weren't for those goddamn press plates, ould actually maybe pull off getting one of every Lemmer card. I've got the autograph though, which is better than an old hunk o' tin.