Tampa Bay Rays Autograph Baseball Collection

Visited Jacksonville last night to catch up with former Rays pitcher Garrett Acton. He was one of the guys we couldn’t get to last season. While not impressed with the autograph (he apologized for the positioning🤪) I’m still grateful that he responded to my request. Also props to our new friend Herb for taking the photo of my interaction with the player. Finally, proof that my antics are real! 😜 4/7 Update: I'm glad I got to the player when I did. He was traded to the Minnesota Twins a few days after I caught up with him.

Another Rays spring camp in the books. I acquired quite a few autographs during Fan Fest and my 2 days this past weekend in Port Charlotte then Jennifer got even more the past 2 days, also in PC. Between the 5 visits and the guys we got the previous camps or in minor league cities amounts for every player with the team at this time. I don't recall us having such success this quickly.

3/20/26 UPDATE: Jennifer picked up the last autograph we needed from spring camp by getting new Assistant Hitting Coach Will Bradley. Now it's time to look into acquiring guys that will be assigned to minor league affiliates. Getting close to the time I'll be hooking up my little box camper for trips to minor league cities!

Another interesting find. Twin fuzzy face things with Florida Suncoast Dome helmets from the grand opening ceremony in March 1990. Each one is about the size of a half dollar. I always enjoy stumbling into hard to find pieces of memorabilia like this.

One down one to go. I finally got around to building a display case for our complete collection of autographed balls from the Rays 2024 season (see photo). I also constructed a case for our collection of balls from the recent 2025 season but can’t finalize the project because we’re 6 autographs short of being able to do so. With pitcher GARRETT ACTON being Designated for Assignment and the uncertainty of the Rays being able to keep now free agent pitcher ADRIAN HOUSER there’s no telling what will be involved in finishing up the project. Hopefully all 6 guys stay in the organization so we have a chance of getting to them during spring camp. As of the end of the '24 season our count of autographed balls being being displayed is 731.

11/6 update: Acton was picked up by the Rockies. That's another hemisphere when it comes to my traveling 😎

11/20 update: Everson Pereira was traded to the White Sox.

3/28/26 Update: With the acquisition of Garrett Action's autograph we've only got two more to go. A ball is headed to San Francisco (A. Houser). I'm waiting for Texas to come to town to hopefully get a ball in front of Travis Jankowski, the Rangers new 1st Base Coach.

Still busy dealing with hurricane storm repair issues but have found time to acquire at least some autographs. Some acquired in person, some purchased and some picked up by our friend in Durham. Yesterday I made my 2nd road trip of the season to Montgomery, AL to acquire some of the AA-Biscuits prospects. Had to get out of town for a few minutes just to clear my mind of the day-to-day crap we've been dealing with since early October. (Apologies for continuing to bring this subject up) As usual I'll eventually post their names and photos of their autographed balls when they debut with the Rays. Just got home to learn that TRISTAN PETERS got promoted to the big club yesterday. I acquired his signature last July when the Durham Bulls visited Jacksonville. His ball is in storage so nothing to view today.

It's been awhile since I updated this page. Anyone curious to know why this has been the case would only have to look at our house. We're into month 9 dealing with our storm damaged home so it's been difficult to focus on the collection, to say the least. But we haven't stopped collecting when time allows.

We did manage to collect all the new guys from the previous season. Because of the storm damage to the Trop there wasn't an indoor Fan Fest this year so I didn't race to create a new ball display case. I wasn't contacted by the organization but wouldn't have accepted an invite even if we had. Can't expose the collection to the sunlight and dust it would have faced if we had participated in the recent outdoor event.

As of last night we're current collecting for this season. Got some at camp, purchased a few, more with the help of Michael K. in Durham and just last night collected 3 potential future Rays that are currently playing with the AAA Durham Bulls team after their game last night in Jacksonville. Also got Manager Morgan Ensberg in anticipation of him eventually joining the Rays staff. Hopefully I'll be in a position to build new display cases for 2024-2025 soon then show them off at Fan Fest 2026.

Just found this interesting PBS documentary of how the Tampa Bay Rays came to be. I remembered most of the story but it was still fun to see it again. To read a more detailed story on the search for a stadium and MLB team I also suggest you purchase the book Stadium for Rent.

WEDU Documentaries | Rise of the Rays | A Devil of a Story Watch the saga of how the Tampa Bay Rays became our major league team.

I saw Eloy up close today for the first time. He's truly a huge person despite losing a reported 25-30 pounds. Probably the biggest position/DH player I've seen since Frank "The Big Hurt" Thomas. This guy definitely has the potential to help the Rays if he can stay healthy.

How a healthy Eloy Jimenez and Rays could make a good pairing The former White Sox slugger is slimmed down and motivated, and will have a chance to make Tampa Bay’s roster.

Another baseball season means another trip or two the Port Charlotte to catch the Rays spring camp and collect autographs. Not to my surprise the chase continues to get harder by the year. This year's problems are the addition of ropes throughout the complex limiting access to the fences. The only exception being the seating areas behind the backstops of the four fields. Fortunately quite a few guys found their way to waiting fans after their practices ended. During the previous 2 days I managed to get a ball in front of the following new camp invitees: Pitchers JOE BOYLE, MASON ENGLERT, ALEX FAEDO, JOEY GE**ER, JONATHAN HERNANDEZ & MIKE VASIL, infielders HA-SEONG KIM & ELOY JIMENEZ. Gotta include mention of CHRISTOPHER MOREL who gave a beautiful sweet spot signature and JONNY DeLUCA who also gave a nice signature. We already had balls signed by them from last year but MOREL's autograph wasn't his best and I purchased the DeLUCA ball from the Rays Authentics Shop. I'll get around to posting photos of the new guys autographs after they make their debut with the big club. Done with spring camp for this season!

Being an autograph collector I can appreciate the stories about baseball hall of famer Harmon Killebrew's insistence that fellow players provide a nice signature for their fans. Being the co-owner of nearly 1,000 autographed baseballs I can only think of three guys (off the top of my head) that supplied us with a truly artistic signatures in our 27+ years of collecting. I'm glad to hear there are other guys outside the Rays organization that still make the effort to create a nice signature. https://www.facebook.com/reel/1858450181229533

Cool story about Hall of Famer Harmon Killebrew - believed a messy autograph was disrespectful to fans. #mlb #baseball #sportsmemorabilia

This sucks. Dozens of autographed balls are soaked from our home being flooded during the hurricane. Fortunately most are backup balls or from players that never 👎 played for the big club. This is what’s being trashed from the first of at least 3 boxes of balls. We will also be trashing stuff from other boxes that were affected by the water. The good news is the actual complete collection was stored in another location that was in a dry area. 10/26 update: Turns out the complete collection is no longer intact. The display case containing our 2006 autographs got water in it during the night of the storm. Sadly over 1/2 of the balls are toast. Bummer.

I fought the urge but couldn't resist making one last trip to Blue Wahoos Stadium in Pensacola (FL) yesterday to grab more Rays prospect autographs playing for the Montgomery Biscuits. As usual I nailed everyone I was looking for. The latest are YONEIL CURET, DRU BAKER, TRE MORGAN, BRAYDEN TAYLOR and W***Y VASQUEZ. Special thanks for the help new friend and long time Rays fan Candy R. offered me in identifying some of the guys.

- Jeff