Glen Perkins Is Back!

Glen Perkins, the Minnesota Twins' closer and proud member of my Personal Collection, has been cleared to make his first Spring Training appearance on Sunday against the Orioles. Perkins was hurt in September with an arm strain and a few weeks ago he had a strain in his side which shelved him until now. Hopefully he put his injuries behind him for 2015 and he can have another All-Star caliber season.

I collect Perkins cards as he went to school with my sister-in-law and I mean how many good Twins pitchers have we had over the past several seasons? This first card has had an interesting history as it was a very hot card when Andrew Miller was prospect worth investing a lot of money in. Miller faded and since then Perkins has developed into a two-time All-Star reliever and this card has returned into a decent pick-up. And now even Andrew Miller is back and making huge money with the Yankees as a reliever. It just goes to show that you don't always know what you've got in your prospect cards until many years later.

2007 Topps Co-Signers #MP Glen Perkins/Andrew Miller Autograph

Many of these next autos are from my LTTP [long term trading partner] Reader Mike D. and I particularly like the 2005 Topps card as it is my earliest autographed card of Glen and you can see how his signature has evolved from clear separation between "Glen" and "Perkins" and his current signature which is like a glorious mess of lines and squiggles.

The non-certified autograph at the end is also my first inscribed "15" signature as well.