Seeing as this is my largest baseball player collection and I need to get my havelist up to date and into pages and out of stacks, I will continue to share some of my favorites as I go.
First up we have the horizontal cards, starting with the already mentioned 1995 Emotion set. All three of these cards scanned great and have good color, especially the Emotion. The Emotion card brings up a fact you may not know about Klesko, that he is a former pitcher. He pitched at Westminister (Calif.) High School, and an arm injury sustained while pitching for the USA Junior Olympic team halted his pitching career. This AJC article from 2011 mentions if not for this injury he may have been drafted as a pitcher.
As I've mentioned I always enjoy cards where players are signing autographs for fans. Klesko's autograph should be an affordable one I can add to my collection someday.
I have at least 6 copies of this 1999 Topps Klesko, which means I should show off at least one of them on this blog post, right? The fun fact from this card back reads that Klesko hit a home-run against St. Louis that allowed Atlanta to break the 1941 Brooklyn Dodgers record for most consecutive games with a homer, the 25th straight game for Atlanta. I love baseball cards for these type of facts.
And that concludes the Braves portion of the post.
This is the only black and white card in my Klesko collection. This is another set I will likely want a team-set of Braves and Orioles from. The second card... well I just enjoy Topps Heritage.
Here we have different post-swings from Klesko. Looks like he hit both of these balls in the air. I'm going to assume they were both home-runs. The 2001 Topps Opening Day notes that Klesko led baseball in stolen bases among first baseman in 2000, stealing 23 bases. Impressive for a power hitter.
And lastly one of my favorite die cut sets from 2003 Upper Deck Standing O. Despite this being a tiny card, the die cut still has room for three years of stats and a lengthy write-up on the back.
One of these days I'll have my full Klesko collection listed!
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