Wonder Water to the Rescue

On Tuesday, the Daytona Tortugas posted on their Instagram account an image announcing a celebrity softball game to be played at their home stadium, Jackie Robinson Ballpark.

Seeing Rollie Fingers on there piqued my interest. I immediately e-mailed my brother to let him know about the game and he got back to me right away letting me know that he wanted to go.

On Saturday we'll be making the 155 mile trek from the west coast of Florida to the east coast.

I contacted the organizer of the game to find out who the "many more" are going to be. He was nice enough to e-mail me the full list of participants.

• Rollie Fingers
• Jim Leyritz
• Darrell Evans
• Tim Foli
• Jon Warden
• Mike Torrez
• Oscar Gamble
• Jeff Nelson
• Roger Maris, Jr.
• Andy McGaffigan
• Butch Benton
• Jim Perry
• Mark Whiten

The bad thing about finding out about this game so late was that I have no time to order any cards of players I need cards of.

I'm lucky enough to live near a baseball card shop, but I would never suspect that I could find a card of Butch Benton there. On a whim, I checked to see if they had a Facebook page, and they did, which really shouldn't have come as a surprise, but their personal website listed on there was a Beckett Marketplace site. I checked it out and started typing names on the list. I was shocked that most of the players I needed were available with multiple cards to choose from. Thankfully, Wonder Water was still open, so I called them to see if I could come into the store to pick these cards up in person rather than ordering and having them shipped. I was told "yes, just bring your list."

With list in hand, I walked in today. Unfortunately, my list was a little long (I also was buying cards for my brother and his son), so I was told next time to just e-mail it to the store and they could have the cards already prepared for me. Made perfect sense and I will definitely do that next time, but he was nice enough to pull all the cards from my list and it only took about 10 minutes.

I was surprised that I didn't have a card of Jeff Nelson, so I bought this 2002 Fleer Tradition.

I also didn't have a card of the aforementioned Butch Benton. Knowing my brother didn't have one, I bought him one as well. I would have bought 3, but the store only had 2. Butch didn't have any official MLB cards, but I was able to get 2 of these Senior Professional Baseball Association cards. What store has SPBA cards in stock? I feel very fortunate.

I also picked up cards that I felt would look better with autographs than the cards I already had.

I'll be replacing these:

With these:

The 1984 Topps card of Oscar Gamble is nice, but I have never gotten a 1983 Fleer card signed, so I decided to go with that one.

I wanted to get the iconic 1976 Topps card.

Photo courtesy of  http://www.nydailynews.com/

Sadly, it was not to be found on Wonder Water's site.

I'm very happy with the cards I bought and grateful for Wonder Water for helping me out.

I spent under $4 for 13 cards. I certainly would have spent much more than that had I ordered from Sportlots or COMC. From now on, Wonder Water will be the first place that I check when I need certain cards.

The only player they didn't have a card of was Jon Warden. He has a 1968 and 1969 Topps card and they both look nice.

Photo courtesy of  http://www.hardballtimes.com/

Photo courtesy of  https://www.pinterest.com/MikeMcInerney/1969-topps-baseball-cards/

I may just order one of those cards from another dealer and hope that I get to meet Mr. Warden at a future event.

If you're ever in the Tampa Bay area, be sure to visit Wonder Water. I first started going there in the early 90's. It only took me 20+ years to realize I could buy random commons from them.

They're also on Twitter, @WonderWaterSpts.